All Power to the People! on AllMovie

Working as a TV cameraman during the 1992 L.A. riots, Lee Lew-Lee became curious about the history of American race relations and the Black Panther Party (founded in Oakland in 1967). His research led to this fast-paced documentary, made with a transfer of video to 16mm. Archival footage is combined with interviews, from ex-CIA officer Philip Agee, journalist/filmmaker Gordon Parks, and former FBI Special Agent W. Swearingen to various Panthers and political radicals. The film covers slavery, civil-rights activists, assassinations in the '60s, and it explores methods used by police, the FBI, and the CIA to divide and destroy the key figures in the Black Panthers. The film expands beyond the Panther history to more recent times, covering Reagan-Era events, privacy threats from new technologies, and the failure of the War Against Drugs.