Huey P. Newton: Prelude to Revolution

What we have here, folks, ain't filmmaking, it's stock footage. Prelude to Revolution is a 35 minute (not 76 minutes, as listed on the video box) interview with Huey Newton in 1966 in his Oakland, California jail cell (the 26-year-old Newton was awaiting trial for manslaughter in the death of a police officer, though there is nothing in the film or on the video box that explains the circumstances of his imprisonment). In this video transfer of a shopworn 16mm print, the camera pretty much stays on Newton the entire time while he rambles over standard Panther rhetorical territory: racism, revolution, the struggle for black self-determination and political power. This is not Newton at his most impassioned or focused--perhaps understandable given the circumstances of the interview. Filmmaker John Evans intrudes periodically with leading questions, in what seems like an effort to punch up the energy and drama. During the course of the interview, visuals shift several times to bullet-riddled walls (scenes of Panther shoot-outs, one presumes). Then the film ends. Given the intense scholarly attention being given these days to the Panthers and other '60's social and political movements, this primary source material might be a useful purchase for larger academic library collections. Public libraries interested in general background on Newton and the Panthers are directed to California Newsreel's Berkeley in the Sixties. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)