The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 utilizes dozens of hours of 16mm footage shot by Swedish documentarians during the height of the Black Power movement to tell the era’s story of radical revolutionary promise and what happened when that promise went unfulfilled. The film sat in the basement of a Swedish TV station for decades.

Contemporary director Göran Olsson (who also helmed 2009’s Am I Black Enough for You? doc about the Philly music scene) used this footage, including interviews with Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Kathleen Cleaver, along with modern commentary from Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli and Melvin Van Peebles, to create this new film, now being released by Sundance. After a limited NYC/Los Angeles theatrical run, it’s supposed to air on PBS.

I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff anyways, but damn this looks amazing:
 

 
(via Nerdcore )

 
Text and photos culled from the Jet magazine (starts at page #22) where Cleaver discusses the philosophy behind his pants, which, to quote the former Black Panther Party leader, “are just the tip of the iceberg.”

It’s a fascinating read.  Cleaver goes on to describe his then-plan to open a finishing school for boys where they’ll learn, among other things, manners, how to dress, and how not to rape.  And here’s the text that accompanies B. Laner’s prior post:

Life is just a chain of daisies when you slip into (careful, now) these revolutionary hot pants – with their ever-so-daring accent provacateur – just unveiled by famous radical designer Edridge Cleaver of Paris.  They’re bad, they’re mad, they’re up front (but never out of sight)... and, of course, they’re for men only… REAL men… the three-fisted variety. ‘There’s no mistaking they are men’s pants,’ says M. Cleaver (seen here modeling a high-waisted two-tone pair of ‘Cleavers’ with side zipper and matching ‘appurtenance.’  ‘The pants that men wear now will be seen as girls’ pants after my models are sold.  And don’t forget…heavy on the starch!”

 
Eldridge Cleaver in Jet Magazine, 09.21.78

 
In light of Bradley’s penis pants post I’ve had several hipsters point out to me that Eldridge Cleaver was there first, and so he was. Lord have mercy.
 
thx Heather Harris And Deborah McElmeel !

 
After reading Ginia Bellafante‘s NYT review of Lords of The Revolution (last mentioned in these pages here), I’m now even less inclined to spend my 5 hours on the VH1 special.  That being said, Bellafante does single out for praise the installments profiling Timothy Leary and The Black Panthers.  Despite their generational link, though, Leary and the Panthers didn’t always see eye-to-eye. 

After escaping from prison in 1970, Leary found refuge in Algeria with the Panthers’ Eldridge Cleaver, who was himself on the lam for attempted murder.  But rather than receiving Leary as a kindred spirit—and displeased with his drug-touting ways—Eldridge kidnapped Tim and his wife, Rosemary Woodruff…er, placed them under “revolutionary arrest.”  Eldridge eventually freed the pair, but, in the clip above, you can still get a sense of their uneasy Algerian alliance.