This film was released on Friday 30th October 2015 and is no longer screening. 

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Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, as a response to persistent police harassment of the local African-American communities, The Black Panthers were named for an animal that will back away when threatened, but attack when cornered. With their afros, black leather jackets, turtlenecks and sunglasses, The Panthers were media-savvy from the start, and their version of black empowerment was a brashly confident alternative to Dr. King’s humble, assimilationist approach.

Charting the movement’s rise from a sub-culture to a position where FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover pronounced them the single greatest threat to national security, Stanley Nelson’s rigorously researched and detailed film mixes to-camera interviews with ex-Panthers with a wealth of archive footage to winning effect. Beset with internal strife and FBI interference, the Panthers’ all-too-brief story ultimately plays out like a thriller. Notes By David O’Mahony

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