Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

 

Under pressure from FBI’s COINTELPRO, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and his wife Kathleen left the United States for Algeria. There he set up the International Section of the Black Panther Party which quickly became the hangout of revolutionaries from the Vietnamese and African liberation movements. Klein’s* moving interview follows up with Cleaver during the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers, where he expounds upon the Vietnam War and Black Power during a time when “revolution was the main theme of the day.”


* When in Algiers to film the Pan-African Cultural Festival in 1969, Klein met Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Information, in exile after being charged with murder in the US and now invited by the Algerian authorities to take part officially in the Festival with his African-American Information Center. Klein is fascinated by this charismatic and controversial figure, openly advocating the use of violence by the Black Panthers as a legitimate revolutionary practice, and at the same time involved in humanitarian activities and an international solidarity network bringing together activists from Cuba to Africa to Vietnam. The documentary portrays Cleaver’s manifold personality against his daily life in Algiers, as he talks to Klein and to other Festival delegates about American society, the war in Vietnam and the ongoing struggles for independence and civil rights across the continents.
Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther
William Klein, Algeria / France 1970, 35mm transferred to digiBeta, 75 min, English and French with English subtitles
Source: ARTE