Synopsis
The story of the Black Panthers is often told in a scatter of repackaged parts, often depicting tragic, mythic accounts of violence and criminal activity; but this is an essential story, vibrant, human; a living and breathing chronicle of a pivotal movement that birthed a new revolutionary culture in America.
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Cast
- Kathleen CleaverSelf - Black Panther Party (archive footage)
- Julian BondSelf - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]
- Jamal JosephSelf - Black Panther Party
- Blair AndersonSelf - Black Panther Party
- Omar BarbourSelf - Black Panther Party
- Elaine BrownSelf - Black Panther Party
- Scot BrownSelf - Historian
- William CalhounSelf - Black Panther Party
- Clayborne CarsonSelf - Historian
- Eldridge CleaverSelf - Black Panther Party (archive footage)
Recommendations
- 100
The New York Times
What is clear from this sober yet electrifying film is that the power of the Panthers was rooted in their insistence — radical then, radical still — that black lives matter. - 90
Salon
What we see in Stanley Nelson’s urgent and necessary documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the story of an organization that meant many different things to many different people, and that changed so dramatically during five years or so in the national spotlight that it could almost be described as reshaping itself month by month and putting forward a distinctive face at almost every moment. - 88
RogerEbert.com
The film avoids hagiography, and in doing so, brings out the undeniable humanity of its subjects. - 80
Village Voice
The film, with its traditional mix of talking heads and vintage footage, does not try to hide the Panthers' advocacy of violence. - 80
Time Out
Strikes an intelligent balance between funk-scored pride and a more universal story of activism threatened by in-fighting and accidental celebrity. - 75
The A.V. Club
Stanley Nelson’s absorbing, provocative documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution measures how much and how little has changed since Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale co-founded the Panthers in Oakland in 1966. - 75
New York Post
This is mostly a sad and bloody tale, as the Panthers are decimated first by the machinations of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and then by dissension in their own ranks. - 70
The New Yorker
With no narrator to shepherd us along, the movie feels noisy and restless. The period is revived by a wealth of songs on the soundtrack, and by the sleek and succulent Panther look.
