USA,
1994, 90 min
Shown in 1994
CREDITS
- dir
-
Randy Holland
- prod
-
Randy Holland, Albert Lord
- scr
-
Randy Holland
- cam
-
Jurg Walther
- editor
-
Barbara Kaplan
- source
-
Tara Releasing
- gga award
-
Certificate of Merit, Film & Video: Sociology, U.S.
-
COMMENTS
Randy Holland in person.
OTHER
Randy Holland’s thoughtful documentary takes the 1992 Los Angeles riots as a starting point for a history of the Black community viewed from within. Using archival and current newsreel footage, Holland traces the roots of unrest to the earlier disenfranchisement of Blacks who migrated to LA from the South. Interviews with public figures such as Betty Shabazz (Malcolm X’s widow) and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, as well as residents and community leaders in South Central L.A., show how the failure to address problems of poverty, joblessness and inadequate educational resources after the 1965 Watts riots demoralized a vital Black community and guaranteed that history would repeat itself with greater intensity. In Holland’s provocative film, the combative posture of the Black Panthers during the 1960s and 1970s is played down, and they appear as a major source of community cohesion. Their decimation by the LA Police Department left a leadership vacuum which more nihilistic youth gangs soon filled. The Fire This Time is an intelligent and lively antidote to the mainstream news media’s focus on isolated events.
—Ella Taylor, Sundance Film Festival
FACTOID #217
A sporadic SFIFF tradition, fashion shows are lighthearted affairs that help raise funds for the Festival. In 1968, Oakland designer Richard Tam mounted a show at the Fairmont Hotel that attracted high society; the Examiner commented that the show ’combined Tam’s simple daytime elegance with his almost theatrical evening gowns.’
