Remembering the Black Panther Party, This Time with Women

Remembering the Black Panther Party, This Time with Women
by Jennifer Williams|Ms. Blog

“What we remember about the [Black Panther Party] is sort of like ‘sexy black men with guns,’” Tanya Hamilton (left), writer and director of the Indie Spirit Award-nominated new film Night Catches Us, told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in a recent interview.

Few people know about women’s leadership in the Party’s education and free breakfast programs for children. Even fewer are aware that Elaine Brown chaired the party for three years in Huey Newton’s absence and used her authority to place other women in leadership positions and to combat the sexist behavior of male party members.

Hamilton had those women in mind when she created Patricia “Patti” Wilson (Kerry Washington), the female lead of her debut film Night Catches Us. Set in 1976 Philadelphia, the film witnesses the ruins of a movement. Ex-Panther Patti, an attorney, is raising a precocious daughter, Iris (Jamara Griffin), on her own after her husband’s murder by the Philadelphia police. She refuses to talk about the painful past but still lives in the house where her husband was shot.

Hamilton considers Patti “the most complicated character” in the predominantly male-cast film. “A lot of the women I think were kind of the backbone [of the movement],” she said in an interview with Michel Martin. Patti remains the backbone of her community by bailing young men out of jail and raising money for their defense. When former Panther Marcus (Anthony Mackie) returns to Philly after a mysterious four-year absence, Patti is the only one who believes he’s not a snitch.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Blog

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Jennifer Williams is a writer and professor of English at New York University. She blogs at for colored girls who drink cosmos when suicide seems to gauche.

Filmmaker Tanya Hamilton 'Catches' Up With Ex-Black Panthers

In Tanya Hamilton's Night Catches Us, ex-Black Panthers confront the ways in which their former radicalism has since shaped their lives, years after they cut ties with the organization.

Set in 1976, the movie tells the story of Marcus, a former Black Panther who returns to Philadelphia for the first time in several years for his father's funeral. Before he left home, his cohort Neil was killed in a police shootout; several other Panthers accused Marcus of telling the cops where to find him.

Upon returning to town, Marcus encounters Neil's widow, Patricia, now a civil-rights lawyer who is raising a daughter alone. He also encounters Patricia's cousin Jimmy, who grew up seeing the Panthers and idolizes everything about them — and appears to be headed for his own violent confrontation with the cops.

"I think Jimmy is my favorite character," filmmaker Hamilton tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "He's the most flawed character in the film. Jimmy is someone who borrows someone else's history without understanding where it comes from and how it's being fought."

Hamilton's film traces the ways Marcus deals with these complicated relationships he left behind — and the ways in which his fellow ex-revolutionaries have struggled with understanding their own radical pasts.

"I often try to say that there's something both tragic and very romantic in that period, during the civil rights [struggles] and the transition into black power," Hamilton says. "I felt like the film not only needed to talk about the waning days [of the Black Panthers], but also about what ultimately destroyed the Panthers and the complexity of that destruction."

Hamilton, who wrote and directed the film, explains that she titled the film after a common saying in Jamaica: "Don't let night catch you."

"That simply means come back at a decent hour," she says. "I felt like the film is about these people who are all running in various directions. And it spoke in a way of their history and how it was going to catch up with them, and they were going to have to contend with it."

'Night Catches Us' and the Dilemma of High Art

Has pop culture made true fine arts offerings unpalatable for mass consumption?

'Night Catches Us' and the Dilemma of High Art
Mychal Smith | TheLoop21

I don’t live in one of the major U.S. cities, so my access to indie films is severely limited. I’m never included in those “limited cities” that are privileged enough to get the initial release, due to their large populations and reputations as taste-makers. So when I found out that I could rent the newly released 'Night Catches Us' on iTunes, and bypass the long wait that typically accompanies the release of small independent films to the market-at-large, I was excited.

Based on the trailers and cast/crew interviews, I believed 'Night Catches Us' was going to be exactly the type of movie I enjoy but rarely get the chance to see. My suspicions were confirmed. Writer/director Tanya Hamilton’s debut film is a tense, emotional drama that asks the audience to see behind the still photographs, the leather jackets, the guns, and fiery revolutionary rhetoric of the Black Panther Party and consider the effect the fight for freedom had on the lives of the flesh-and-blood human beings who participated and were left in the wake of the dismantled organization. The film offers a rare opportunity to humanize the oft-romanticized Black Panthers and give audiences a glimpse into the world these brave activists had to face after going to war with federal infiltration, informants, and murder that made it difficult to trust one another. Out of that world, Hamilton has crafted an auspicious debut film that features top-notch performances from Kerry Washington and the scary-good Anthony Mackie.

On the rare occasion that a film of this quality featuring an all-Black cast (and written/directed by a Black woman, no less) is produced and makes it to theaters, there’s a clarion call from the trumpets of the Black intelligentsia for Black people, en masse, to go out and support with our dollars. I understand the sentiment, and have stood behind this sort of consumer activism in the past. But I’m wondering now, is that really what we want? Is the popularization of “high art” a laudable idea?

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

Kerry Washington Talks 'Night Catches Us' with ReelBlack

Image Award winning Actress KERRY WASHINGTON (Ray) recently visited Philadelphia for the premiere of her new movie NIGHT CATCHES US. In this exclusive clip, she talks about what attracted her to star in the film, working with Anthony Mackie and finding balance between independent and Hollywood films.

The Root Review: 'Night Catches Us'

Starring Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, Tanya Hamilton's moving debut takes us back to 1976, when Jimmy Carter was about to be president, funk was king and the Black Panthers were trying to pick up the pieces.

The Root Review: 'Night Catches Us'
by Salamishah Tillet|The Root

The Black Panther Party in its twilight, circa 1976. Gone are the breakfast programs, dashikis, megaphones and big Afros, as well as the gun-toting, black-leather-clad militants. In the wake of the formidable black nationalist movement are both ruin and rumination. Single black mothers trying to save a community, former Black Panther members turned vigilantes, and fatherless daughters haunted by the legendary leaders of the past.

Set in Philadelphia, Tanya Hamilton's moving debut feature, Night Catches Us, is neither nostalgic nor sentimental. Her attention to period details is focused, meticulous and unswerving. Within the first few minutes of the film, the viewer is caught up in a faraway past: When Jimmy Carter was on the verge of becoming president, plaid pants and pageboy caps were in style, and Cadillacs rested on every corner. Most remarkably, it was still a time when black people held bail parties for those wrongly incarcerated and refused a "stop and frisk" by cops because it denied their constitutional rights.

Anthony Mackie plays Marcus Washington, a former Panther leader who mysteriously returns to Philadelphia to attend his father's funeral. Where has he been all these years? In prison for his Panther activities? Or laying low because he was secretly an FBI informant? The ambiguity surrounding his recent past is a tension that drives much of the plot.

But the true mystery that Hamilton tries to unravel is far more ambitious. Moving past the grand narratives of Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Hamilton turns her camera to the everyday lives of Panther members, people who valiantly fought for racial freedom but who now are plagued by the reality that they may have won certain battles, but ultimately they lost the war.

Read the Full Review @ The Root

Trailer: 'Night Catches Us' with Anthony Mackie & Kerry Washington

ReelBlack Talks with Director Tanya Hamilton of 'Night Catches Us'

Reelblack sat down with filmmaker Tanya Hamilton to talk about her debut feature, NIGHT CATCHES US. Filmed entirely in Philadelphia, it took nearly 10 years to develop and stars Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie. A hit at the Sundance Film Festival and Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films, It opens in Philadelphia, New York and Santa Monica on December 3, 2010.

ABOUT THE MOVIE

In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus (Anthony Mackie, "The Hurt Locker") returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia (Kerry Washington, "Ray," "Lift") and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone's beliefs as he rediscovers his forbidden passion for Patricia.

Official Website with Trailer and FB info