“It is a beautiful black animal which never attacks, but defends itself ferociously.”
Black Panthers is an Agnew Varda short observational documentary following the Oakland CA Black Panther Party on a hot August Sunday, 1968. The film is a montage, tying together clips from a protest, establishing shots of the area and area police force and an interview with Huey P. Newton. Newton was a Black Panther party co-founder and two years prior to filming, was arrested for the murder of a police officer. Varda captures the essence of a peaceful protest beautifully, as well as a wider historical snapshot of the conclusion of the civil rights movement.
The film plunges directly into the action, expositional voiceover doesn’t come in until about three minutes into the film, leaving the audience to slowly gather themselves in the world around them. Varda attentively captures the colourful 70s outfits, the natural hairdos, the traditional african dress and the kind faces which make up this rally through naturalistic sweeping shots and extreme close ups. The camera lingers fondly on the children playing and the protestors sat calmly talking to one another. The audience is shown almost immediately that these people aren’t a danger, despite what mainstream media at the time may have been suggesting. In contrast, the few shots of the police that are shown are fleeting and far away from crooked angles. This may have been the most practical way of filming them (as openly filming may have gotten Varda in trouble due to the time and context of the documentary being made), but it also gives the impression that the Police are in fact the dangerous ones. The camera spies on them from behind corners and observes their actions delicately from afar, as you would observe a threat. The audience are made to feel scared and unwelcome, as the Black Panthers surely did in Oakland at the time.
Colour is an important device in this film. The Protest is shot in the heat of the summer when simultaneously political unrest is reaching boiling point, and the sun is captured for all it is worth. The world looks warm and the protestors faces look golden complemented by the surrounding array of summer technicolour. To contrast this, the deep, shiny black of the Panther-signature leather jackets, along with the guns of the police and the bars of Newton's cage, reminds the audience that while this day and these people are joyous there is a sinister undercurrent of racism and oppression that is ever present, even at the peak of a colourful and joyous summer. Using this visual/contextual contrast has a powerful effect on audiences and has since been replicated in more mainstream narrative cinema, for example Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989).
The documentary mode of this film is also very important. This is an observational documentary. As a white woman, Agnes Varda completely removes herself from the narrative and instead focuses on using her platform to let others speak. She uses long, uncut clips of people at the protest talking about issues that are important to them, and films Huey P. Newton in a similar style, without edits. This gives the film an honest feel, which is key in a documentary but sometimes can be lost with excessive editing or un-naturalistic camerawork. Not with Black Panthers though. Varda understands better than anyone that sometimes the most powerful cinematic gesture is just to look and listen.