The Murder of Fred Hampton
Screening & Live Event
The Murder of Fred Hampton + The Revolutionary Was a Cop
Sunday, October 31, 2021, 5:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image – Bartos Screening Room
With director Marc Weiss in person
The Murder of Fred Hampton
Dir. Howard Alk. 1971, 88 mins. New 35mm preservation print. “This hard-hitting documentary exposé of the police assassination of the Black Panther leader dispenses with narrative or editorial comment to make its damning case by purely audiovisual means instead: interviews with police, black revolutionaries, the State Prosecutor (later implicated), and detailed examinations of the apartment where Hampton was killed. The introduction of animated lettering at the end, consisting of rapidly emerging quotes from Hampton's last speech (as he is heard delivering it), is one of the most powerful and radical uses of this device in cinema.”
The Revolutionary Was a Cop
Dir. Marc Weiss. 1971, 32 mins. “In a series of interviews with young American SDS radicals, the activities of an agent provocateur in their midst are discussed, including his organizing new SDS branches and proposing bomb plots. The film is based on an actual case history. In the subsequent trial, the SDS members were convicted, the provocateur freed. The director, on camera, accuses him at the end.”
