Free Angela and All Political Prisoners is the dramatic true story of college professor Angela Davis and how her social activism implicated her in a botched kidnapping attempt, landing her on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.
The documentarysketches out its subject’s graduate education in Europe, early support for the Black Panthers and aborted career as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, before chronicling the trial and dramatic related events, including Ms. Davis’s weeks as a fugitive and 1972 acquittal. The stands taken by many involved lend a stirring idealistic drive to the film.
Ms. Davis, today approaching 70, cannot be contained by what is going on around her. She retains an elegantly barbed wit and remains a resonant speaker. Although “Free Angela” approaches hagiography, Ms. Davis supplies a certain spark simply with her presence.
Writer/director Shola Lynch is known for her Peabody Award winning 2004 documentary Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, on the political career of Shirley Chisholm.
Beyond Boundaries is curated by Jason Parker and Professors Ruth Goldman, Meg Knowles, and Michael Niman and and is sponsored by: Buffalo State’s Equity and Campus Diversity Office, Communication Department, and Burchfield Penney Art Center