IN CINEMA
Thursday, August 21st, 2025 at 7PM
A BLACK AUGUST FILM PROGRAM
People’s Communication Network (Bill Stephens), 1973
BLACK AUGUST is an annual commemoration that honors Black political prisoners and the struggles for Black freedom, primarily in the United States. It takes place throughout the month of August and highlights the history of resistance against racial oppression. Founded in 1971, following the death of political prisoner and writer George Jackson, it marks a time of political education and fasting. It recent years, groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement have used the time to bring attention to issues such as international solidarity with the global south and freedom for political prisoners.
Tonight’s program looks back at two seminal figures in the Black Freedom movement and prison justice, Queen Mother Moore and George Jackson.
WORLD IN ACTION: GEORGE JACKSON:
A DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY 1972
DICK FONTAINE for WORLD in ACTION/GRANADA TV
Directed by Dick Fontaine, 1972, 30 min.
The life and murder of political prisoner/Black Panther George Jackson featuring commentary from Black Panther founders Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and former political prisoner Angela Davis. From the British TV Show “World in Action” (Granada TV)
FOLLOWED BY
QUEEN MOTHER MOORE SPEAKS AT GREENHAVEN PRISON
COURTESY OF VIDEO DATA BANK
Directed by People’s Communication Network and Bill Stephens, 1973, 17 min.
Two years after the riots and deaths at Attica, New York, a community day was organized at Greenhaven, a federal prison in Connecticut. Think Tank, a prisoners' group, coordinated efforts with African-American community members outside the prison walls to fight racism and poverty. The event was documented by People's Communication Network, a community video group founded by Bill Stephens, for cablecast in New York City, marking the first time an alternative video collective was allowed to document an event inside prison walls. Seventy-five-year-old Queen Mother Moore speaks of her support of Marcus Garvey in New Orleans and her involvement with African-American education in Brooklyn. Her powerful delivery of lessons in black history, first-person accounts of resistance in the South, and finally her own a cappella performance of "This country 'tis to me, a land of misery...," is a testament to the importance of people using media to document their own communities and tell their own histories.
JOY JAMES is a political philosopher who works with organizers. Her books include In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love; New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner; and Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon. James's edited volumes with Pluto include Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons (Pluto Press).
ALAN TAKEALL is a Lecturer in the Urban Studies Department at Queens College, City University of New York, and he is a member of The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, New York City chapter. He lives in Brooklyn.
Journalist timmhotep aku is a Brooklyn-bred and based cultural worker who has written and edited for Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NPR Music, Complex, The Fader, and other publications. He is the story editor on the Signal Award-winning podcast series, “The Blog Era” and his Black art-inspired radio show, “Subject To Change,” airs monthly on London’s NTS Live.
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Alan Takeall, Malcolm X Grassroots Movements, journalist timmhotep aku, and Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and The After(Life) of Erica Garner
$15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price
