Black Panthers + The Sixth Side of the Pentagon
Another Country: Outsider Visions of America
August 2 - 14, 2019
Varda’s casual, open-air portrait of the Black Panthers during her 1968 L.A. journey is made with delicacy, grace, and political urgency. This double bill moves eastward with a contemporaneous work by Varda’s comrade Chris Marker: his evocative essay on the October 1967 Mobilization to End the War demonstrations.
Introduction by Tobi Haslett on August 2. Ticket holders on August 2 are invited to a post-screening reception in the Furman Gallery.
One of Varda’s most transformative encounters during her 1968 L.A. journey was with the Black Panthers, then at the height of their influence. Her casual, open-air portrait of the group, centered on a bustling “Free Huey” rally in Oakland, is more densely packed with reportage than many of her other documentaries, but it’s made with no less delicacy, grace, and political urgency. This double bill moves eastward with a contemporaneous work by Varda’s comrade Chris Marker: his evocative essay on the October 1967 Mobilization to End the War demonstrations. Through its depiction of the thousands then gathered in DC, we discover a national mood shifting, a radical consciousness emerging, and a tactical imagination expanding. “If the five sides of the pentagon appear impregnable,” reads the Zen proverb of the film’s epigraph, “attack the sixth side.”
Black Panthers
Agnès Varda, France/USA, 1968, 31m
The Sixth Side of the Pentagon
Chris Marker and François Reichenbach, France, 1968, 28m
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