Liberating Minds: The Intellectual Legacy of Angela Davis and Its Images in Film

Abstract

We propose thinking of Angela Davis's intellectual legacy from a decolonial perspective. We point out that just as the fight for civil rights and the end of racial segregation in the United States helped to consolidate the Black movement in Brazil, the circulation of anti-colonial ideas during the struggles for the decolonization of African countries in the 1950s and 60s was crucial to the circulation of abolitionist ideas and anti-racist movements in the United States and abroad. We will analyze interchanges capable of pointing out "the recognition of multiple and heterogeneous colonial differences, as well as the multiple and heterogeneous reactions of populations and subjects subordinated to the coloniality of power" (Bernardino-Costa & Grosfoguel, 2016, p. 21). Our contribution seeks to analyze Davis as a public and militant intellectual through her images in film. Beyond considering Angela Davis's image in cinema as representation, we also analyze how her intellectual and political activities were involved with the flourishing of a new Black cinema in the United States. This paper analyzes films such as Child of Resistance (1973), Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2015), and 13th (2016).

Keywords

• decolonial
• Black independent cinema
• Angela Davis
• abolitionism