The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) — watch online on iFILM — is Stanley Nelson's documentary tracing how a party founded in Oakland in 1966 became one of the most surveilled organisations in American history.

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton built the Panthers around two parallel programs: free school breakfasts and armed neighbourhood patrols. Nelson stitches the story together from archival footage and interviews with people who were there — Kathleen Cleaver, Elaine Brown, Jamal Joseph among them. Fred Hampton, the party's most compelling organiser, was shot dead by FBI agents at twenty-one while he slept.

Nelson does not resolve the contradictions — he holds them. Idealism and internal fractures, genuine community work and catastrophic miscalculations sit next to each other without a verdict. That refusal to simplify is what makes this worth watching. Stream The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution online on iFILM.