S&A In Conversation:
Shola Lynch Talks
'Free Angela
& All Political Prisoners'
Shola Lynch and Angela Davis
Shola Lynch’s second feature length documentary, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners has been one of the most buzzed about films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The festival honored the film with a Gala premiere at the 1900 seat Roy Thomson Hall, a privilege usually reserved for Hollywood blockbusters.
Angela Davis’ enduring iconic status, as well as the presence of two of the film’s Executive Producers, Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, certainly added to the event’s prestige, but ultimately, it was the film itself which drew several bouts of spontaneous applause throughout the screening as well as a lengthy standing ovation as the credits rolled.
The Director has had a busy few days, appearing on a panel the following day with her mentor and legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, to talk about the making of the film as well as her approach to her craft. Later on that evening she participated in a press conference alongside Ms. Davis.
Today, we had the opportunity to sit down for a face-to-face chat with Shola as she winds down a successful stint at TIFF 2012.
Lisa: So congrats on the premiere. Obviously we’re all seeing the result, but I would imagine that the process of getting here has been arduous. Tell me a little bit about getting the film together, especially given that Angela Davis is still a contentious figure.
Shola: Oh my goodness. You have no idea, no idea, no idea. Yes, that’s precisely what was hard about it was raising money and getting people to kind of partner with a project about somebody who is a black militant and who in many ways is still regarded as dangerous. It’s crazy to me 40 years later. And being a black woman making a film about a black woman I came under that same criticism as though immediately I’m going to just simply just celebrate her or uplift her and you know, there is suspicion over what kind of things I would leave out of the story. You know the challenge in telling this story where there are a million details related to both the crime and the trial and her politics is to find a balance between what is necessary to know and what you don’t need to know and what is necessary to know is the stuff that allows the narrative to move forward and to not leave out anything that is essential, right, right? So I had somebody on the phone today with me who said, “ You know the guns were registered in her name.” And I said, “Absolutely, yes.” “But you didn’t say that one of the guns was bought several days before August 7th.”
Lisa: And therefore you’re skewing.
Shola: Right! Exactly. Exactly. Therefore you’re skewing but because I dealt with the guns in...I chose to deal with the guns in a general way because she bought guns in places that she went. And she had them in various places like the Soledad Brothers’ house, which she was setting up, but in order for me to tell that story in the film that’s ten to fifteen to twenty minutes in a ninety minute film, so you know, what stories do you decide to tell? What is necessary? And I am frankly shocked at the way...listen. As a journalist, as a historian, as a storyteller, just because somebody tells me something is true, I don’t check the facts?
Lisa: So even at this stage you’re encountering blowback over how you told the story?
Shola: It’s just beginning to happen.
Lisa: How long a gestation has this project had?
Shola: It’s seven years…a year to talk her into it. Most of it was fundraising. I couldn’t raise enough to really be 100% in production so I would do it in fits and starts. You know but in that time I also got married and had two kids and had work for hire projects. Life had to happen because the way I fund raise for independent projects I try to put as much into the actual production in the development stages. So it’s not like I raise $50,000 and it goes to my salary, you know?
Lisa: There is a risk that in making a film about someone like Angela Davis that it could end up seeming polemic but you’ve described this film as a crime thriller. How and why did you decide to take that approach to the storytelling? Why those particular years of her life?
Shola: Yes, well, so really what it is is more of a crime drama and I think those years of her life are where she’s deciding who she’s going to become. You get to see the growth and evolution of Angela Davis the professor, the young 26-year-old graduate student and into the international icon. These are the things that kind of catapulted her to that. There’s her choices and then the intended and unintended consequences of her choices and how she responds. I mean I think it’s interesting to have the weight of the state on you and to think about how you would...how you would deal with that, the pressure of that. And you know, while there are things that I admire about her there were some of the choices where I’m like “Really? That?” So along with everybody else I wanted to know what happened really. And also to get to know the woman behind the icon. You know, who is this person?
Lisa: Which brings me to my next question. With Shirley Chisholm you had somebody who was largely fading into obscurity to a certain extent. With Angela Davis you have somebody about whom there is a huge amount of information, misinformation, disinformation. There’s a mythology. She’s an icon. How was your approach to those two subjects different? Did you approach it feeling like there was a record you wanted to “correct” or things that needed to be investigated?
Shola: There were questions that I had. I mean I really wanted to investigate, particularly I wanted to know what happened around that crime and you know, what her involvement was or wasn’t because it’s really the thing, there’s Ronald Reagan and what he says that gives her this national platform and then the fact that she’s tied to the crime, it just explodes the whole thing and explodes her kind of..what people know about her and the way she’s portrayed and she becomes definitely a nationally known figure and an internationally known figure as somebody being hunted by the FBI.
Lisa: What was her take on becoming involved in the project? There is a lot that’s been said and written. I’m sure she’s probably been approached before to talk about her life. How did you convince her to become involved?
Shola: It took a long time to convince her and partially it’s that..you know it was getting to key people in her life first and getting them to talk to me and then consent and then see the film, Chisholm. And then she finally watched the film, Chisholm and what she said is “I thought I knew that story” and the way she said it made me realize that there’s so much about her own story that she doesn’t know. You know for instance the whole scene with the FBI. She had no idea about any of that. The photographs that were in the FBI file, you know, I am sure she had completely forgotten and there’s footage she’s never seen before and so in a way the story is being brought alive again, not just for her but for everybody involved in that period who lived through it, watched it happen in real time either on television or as an activist.
Lisa: What did you discover about her that surprised you?
Shola: That she is who she says she is. Yeah, that she’s kind of consistent and principled and the story hasn’t changed over the years and everything that I checked out turned out to be accurate and so..like usually...for instance with the Chisholm story, she left out many things, you know. And one of the things she left out and she would not have talked about is Ron Dellums. She talked about Ron Dellums only in the positive and when I interviewed her I didn’t know that he had...we found that out only through the archival footage because nobody would talk about it. And so there are certain things in people’s lives, certain hurts, that they won’t talk about necessarily and I think in some ways you know Angela has been pretty consistent about what she says.
Lisa: I was struck by the part of the interview that dealt with her relationship with George and her expression of the pain and anguish she felt at having their letters read in open court and printed in the newspapers. For me personally I was quite surprised to see the veil kind of lift for just a moment. How did you feel about approaching that kind of more intimate subject matter with her?
Shola: (Laughs) I was going to approach it whether she liked it or not. And you know for a long time I wanted her to...Of course we hope when we interview somebody that they’re going to be like “You know what? Let me take the mask off and just give you everything I have”. Right? But it doesn’t...we’re complicated, we’re so complicated and so it took me a while to see all of the places that she did that because you have to get to know her and her personality and there’s things you notice when she…her body language becomes really important and I didn’t see that at first. I didn’t see how revealing she was being cause you know, you listen to it, you read the transcript..so, so what? It’s not the words, but it’s everything. Seeing her response is everything. She was never going to be like Philipe Petit in Man on Wire “Oh my god! I loved it!” That’s not her.
Lisa: One of the things that stood out for me was your choice of music. Right from the pre-title sequence, we’re thrown into the chaos, thrown into the drama. It’s arresting. It’s from Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (with vocals by Abbey Lincoln). Is that a piece of music that you had always had in mind? When did that come into the process?
Shola: (Nodding enthusiastically). Every time I thought about the crime I thought about Abbey Lincoln’s scream. I mean I’d worked on the Jazz project with Ken (Burns) so I had…you know I’m not a jazz head but there’s certain things when we were working on that that I just always wanted to spend more time with and was attracted to. And the scream, which is so beautiful and so broken and so full of emotion, it fits that because nobody was happy about that shootout. You know what I mean? Nobody wants all that death. There’s an intense political kind of battle going on and you know these events get started and nobody wants to see so many people dead or killed. There’s anguish in that. I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you’re on there’s anguish in that and sorrow. And it’s part of the reason why…there weren’t any words that I found that could make me feel enough. I said, “Let’s get the funerals. Let’s see how the communities dealt with it and it’s the sorrow on both sides.
Lisa: It works. In the liner notes for that record they talk about it being a “revolutionary re-writing of history”. You’re a black female filmmaker who has so far made two films about black female public figures. Do you feel like that statement kind of describes what you’re doing with your career – “a revolutionary re-writing of history”?
Shola: You know, I mean, I won’t fight that but I feel..Ok, my dad is West Indian. He is from Trinidad and Tobago and he studied West African, Caribbean and urban American history. In our house, we always had you all very colorful folks. (laughs), particularly the West Africans. And now listen, you don’t just come up into the house and lay down facts. You tell a story! You are the griot. You know our tradition of telling stories about each other has been lost. We don’t do it anymore in the same way and we rely on other people to tell us our stories, so we’re lost. We’re only seen in very two-dimensional ways, often, this is not always the case. And so we need to tell our stories. We need to ask our own questions. I’m not saying we all have to love each other. I’m not saying we all have to agree with each other. I’m not even saying we have to like each other but let’s respect each other enough to find out what really happened and not just take it on face value. You know that’s what I intended to do with this is find out what really happened to the best of our ability. But history is like archaeology, especially in this period. So I found new pieces. The vase is not complete. The dinosaur has not been built. There are obviously missing pieces but this is my contribution to that and it has taken us a little bit closer. Who’s to say in 10 years...I guarantee you that in ten years somebody will come along and revisit this or when the biography is written and there will be a whole new, either interpretation or a new set of facts that come out.
Lisa: So you’re just making your contribution
Shola: I’m making my contribution and I am doing it by all the standards of the practice. Plus, I want to make sure it’s a good film, so filmicly as well.
Lisa: You’ve made it quite clear that you want this film to play broadly, outside of the usual, what people consider to be the usual documentary market. What’s your ambition for it, what’s your greatest hope?
Shola: I really want it to get to the big screen. I guess part of it is that sometimes in the business there’s cynicism over whether there is audience for a story about a strong woman or a complicated woman or perhaps, an unlikeable woman in the sense that she’s not “nice”, you know? She’s controversial. I don’t think that’s true. I think that we are a little more capable of taking on a variety of characters so it would be great to have it on the big screen, it would be great to have people talking about the issues that are brought up in this and discussing them. Respectfully.
Lisa Harewood is an independent producer from Barbados, whose first feature, A Hand Full of Dirt, was nominated for Best First Feature Narrative Director at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles and won the Reelworld Audience Award in Toronto. She's back in Toronto this year as one of Reelworld Film Festival's Emerging 20 filmmakers. Follow Lisa on Twitter @islandcinephile.
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TIFF Review
- Shola Lynch's Sobering,
Candid 'Free Angela
& All Political Prisoners'
BY
SEPTEMBER 9, 2012
Question: You had a pretty bourgeois and comfortable childhood, in Birmingham; and so did your sister [Angela]; can you trace the development of someone from that kind of background into a revolutionary and Marxist person?
Fania Davis: I see in her life, the makings of a revolutionary, not a tragedy. From her time in the south (Birmingham) to her experience with white people in the north, Angela’s education is now being put into practice.
A conversation between a journalist and Angela Davis’ sister, Fania Davis, from a scene about mid-way throughShola Lynch's no-frills, candid feature documentary Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, soon after Angela’s arrest, and initial confinement, following 2 months on-the-run, with the FBI in chase.
This specific interview block really sums up Free Angela; Attempts to discredit her, countered with statements and actions that honored who she had become - an activist, an intellectual, an inspiration, a fearless leader, a communist, an African American, a woman.
For those in power, all those elements combined together in one being spelled “Dangerous;” hence the political conspiracy to ensure that Davis was imprisoned and be eventually put to death.
Fania’s reply immediately made me think of Sam Greenlee's incendiary The Spook Who Sat By The Door, with Dan Freeman, the "spook," educated under/within a system built and controlled primarily by whites, using their tools to master, inform and enlighten himself, and later turning against that very same system, utilizing that same acquired mastery, to inform, educate, enlighten, and inspire others – primarily those oppressed – to revolution.
Not to suggest that Angela’s motivations were so meticulously thought out and planned, as were Dan Freeman’s, from the first time she was introduced to the then burgeoning youth movements calling for revolution. But, like some young revolutionaries of the time, who may not have had any idea of just how bloody a real revolution can really be, allow me to romanticize the possibilities.
In October 1970, Davis was arrested in New York City in connection with a shootout that occurred on August 7 in a San Raphael, California courtroom. She was accused of supplying weapons to Jonathan Jackson, who burst into the courtroom in a bid to free inmates on trial there (the Soledad Brothers) and take hostages whom he hoped to exchange for his brother George Jackson, a black *radical* imprisoned at San Quentin Prison. In the subsequent shoot-out with police, Jonathan Jackson was killed, along with Judge Harold Haley and two inmates. Davis, who had championed the cause of organizing black prisoners and was friends (later became involved) with George Jackson, was indicted in the crime, because the guns used in the shoot-out were registered to her; but she went into hiding, becoming one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted criminals; she was apprehended only two months later. Her trial drew international attention. Eventually, after about 18 months since her capture, in June 1972, she was acquitted of all charges.
Making its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Shola Lynch’s Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, relives those eventful, uncertain, transformative early years of Angela Davis’ life; it wants to raise awareness and reignite discussion on the movement she joined and eventually led, by introducing it to a new, younger generation, in a simple, straight-forward, accessible style.
The title says it all – Free Angela & All Political Prisoners. It announces its intent immediately. You know what its POV is; it’s not a retrial of Angela Davis on film - that’s not the film’s intent; rather, it tells the story of an injustice done to a young woman whose life changed completely, radically and swiftly, after being thrust into the spotlight when then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, insisted on having her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California, due to her membership in the Communist Party; a young woman who would become a scapegoat/example for the government’s (then under Nixon’s presidency) intolerance for radicalism, the embodiment of a constructed imaginary enemy; a young woman who would soon become the prime spokes-person for the freedom of all political prisoners.
But as she herself noted in the film, despite what seemed like insurmountable obstacles at the time, the revolution was right around the corner, and they saw it as their responsibility to usher it in.
After a brief introduction to Davis, the film doesn’t waste much time diving right into its main narrative; Covering a trial that occupied almost 2 years of her life, from August 1970 when she went underground, after she learned she would be implicated in the Marin County Courthouse incident (leading to her being only the 3rd woman to be put on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list), to her acquittal in June 1972, there’s enough material here for an HBOmini-series, telling this particular riveting story, with its wealth of characters, and subplots:
- Davis’ early involvement with the Black Panther Party
- The Soledad Brothers case, and Davis’ decision to make it her cause
- Davis’ relationship with George Jackson
- The Marin County Courthouse incident itself
- Davis on the run, underground, and eventual capture
- Davis’ trial
- The zeitgeist of the period, notably what was a burgeoning anti-government movement, otherwise deemed as radicalism, after the deaths of MLK, RFK, the rise of the Black Panther Party, anti-Vietnam war sentiment, the Watts riots, etc
- Some 10 years after the second Red Scare (aka McCarthyism), COINTELPRO and J. Edgar Hoover’sattempts to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including communist and socialist organizations, organizations and individuals associated with the civil rights movement, black nationalist groups, and more.
- The worldwide movement in support of Angela’s freedom.
- And even the nameless/faceless boys and girls, men and women, who may have only just then learned about, and then were inspired by this 28-year-old black woman (when she was acquitted), during those 2 years.
And more… however, there’s only so much one can squeeze into a 97-minute documentary.
It’s not an Angela Davis biography, so don’t expect a retelling of her entire life story. The film's focus is primarily on the aforementioned transformative 2-year period of Davis' rather eventful life.
But it does a sufficient job of giving the audience a sense of the setting, the era, the key figures involved, whether directly or indirectly, and all the central elements that contributed in some way to the film’s main focus. You get a good sense of the uncertainty and paranoia that plagued the country at the time.
Footage includes photos, as well as archival tape and present-day interviews with Davis herself of course, her sister, mother, attorneys representing her during the trial, journalists, Black Panther party members, and more.
Recorded audio of Nixon repulsed by Davis’ acquittal, seemingly assured of her guilt, labeling her a terrorist, was especially chilling.
Watching a mid-20s, seemingly self-assured, brilliant and articulate Angela Davis giving magnificent rousing speeches, ushering in what was felt to be imminent revolution, were invigorating, and, at times, elicited an impulsive applause in acknowledgment from this viewer; but were also sobering, as I remembered where I was, and what I was doing at that age, not-so-long ago, which certainly wasn’t leading revolutions.
Recreated scenes shot by Bradford Young help visualize parts of the narrative for which no archival footage exists, as those sequences, as well as archival footage of relevant American cities during those years, help keep the senses stimulated.
All those still and moving images are complimented effectively with a form- and content-enhancing soundtrack – notably, early on, with music from the fiery We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite album by Max Roach, withAbbey Lincoln on vocals; an album that was profoundly described as, “a record of transgressions against that body; of the anger, the hate, the sorrow, the dirt and the hope that body has known for four hundred years..."
Fitting in this case, I thought.
Free Angela & All Political Prisoners moves along briskly, touching on such matters of importance at the time, like structural racism, the Vietnam war, rapidly rising levels of incarceration (“The Prison Industrial Complex" that eventually became a cause Davis took up), government accountability, while simultaneously working to provide an education for subsequent generations, and some insight into where, in the grand scheme of things, America and Americans stand (or are headed) collectively today.
It took a worldwide movement of people to acquit Angela Davis, but, in the end, that an all-white jury acquitted a young black radical/revolutionary, in the early 1970s, on all charges against her, despite unrelenting attempts by the government to discredit and vilify her, is astonishing, if not hopeful.
Marking the 40th anniversary of Davis’ full acquittal, Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, likely won't teach much new to those already familiar with Davis’ history, as well as that of the movement she was a part of. As already suggested, the film is more of a primer for the uninitiated, and will introduce Davis and her engaged life to a new generation.
Although even for the initiated, it could serve as a reminder, and further act as newfound inspiration, and even a call to action, capable of inciting this new generation to similar acts of collective radicalism, all in the name of progressive change.
As Davis, herself, said in a recent interview on her reasons for wanting to have this film made:
“I was most interested in the film being made because I thought that it would not only capture me as a person, and it’s important that people recognize that figures that are media-produced are very different in their own lives. But what was also important to me was that people understood the power of the movement that emerged… What I’ve discovered is that many people who are around my age, a little younger, a little older . . . who experienced that moment, look back with this very interesting nostalgia and I came to recognize that they’re thinking about themselves, they’re remembering their own youth and they’re remembering all of the possibilities and potential and the creativity. That was created not by me, but it was created by the movement that came together around my case.”
Indeed.
The film’s scant 97-minute running time will leave you wanting even more.
The trailer follows below: