Concerning Violence (February 12th and 13th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[CONCERNING VIOLENCE screens Thursday February 12th at 6:45 pm and Friday February 13th at 9:15 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Now that AMERICAN SNIPER is a historic hit, associated in the punditry with patriotism and Right icon Clint Eastwood, how can the red-diapered Left come up with a suitable response? Putting aside the fact that nine out of ten motion pictures out there are, somehow along the line, the product of the red-diapered Left anyhow?

University Circle Marxists can rejoice, however, that their rejoinder is here in the lumpy form of CONCERNING VIOLENCE, a 2014 Scandinavian-American docu-compilation, from the creators of the earlier THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE. I liked that one, an eye-opening gaze back at black-militancy and liberation movements in the USA in the 1960s and 70s via interview footage captured by Swedish TV journalists, seen by almost nobody here previously. Evidently believing that the Swedes were not compromised or allied with Washington DC or the FBI in the manner of America's lily-white media, the likes of Bobby Seale and Stokely Carmichael spoke with the Nordic reporters with unguarded ease and frankness, in the process becoming real people rather than sloganeers and public enemies.