Black Panthers

Black Panthers (1968) is a documentary short you can watch online on iFILM. Agnès Varda made it over a single California summer, turning up with her camera in Oakland during the rallies to free Huey Newton — a party co-founder then standing trial.

In twenty-eight minutes she captures what mainstream American TV was slow to broadcast: the Afro worn as a badge of pride, the slogan "Black is beautiful," speeches from Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver, children singing for Newton's release. Varda doesn't lecture from above. She hands the microphone to the activists themselves and lets them reframe the courtroom case as the political argument the party wanted it to be.

The outsider's eye is exactly what makes it valuable — a visiting European recorded the movement while it was still raw, before the textbooks froze it in place. Today it works both as the early work of a major filmmaker and as rare footage shot from inside the moment. Short, but dense with its era. Stream Black Panthers (1968) online on iFILM.