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

Michelle Sales; Bruno Muniz

doi:10.21814/vista.5505

Authors

Michelle Sales Departamento de Artes Visuais, Escola de Belas Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1589-4003
Bruno Muniz Associação Humana Povo para Povo Brasil, Salvador, Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9109-7439

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21814/vista.5505

Keywords:

decolonial, Black independent cinema, Angela Davis, abolitionism

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).

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Author Biographies

Michelle Sales, Departamento de Artes Visuais, Escola de Belas Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Michelle Sales is a researcher, teacher and independent curator. She is an associate professor at the School of Fine Arts at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2010), and collaborator in the Postgraduate Program in Multimedia at Universidade Estadual de Campinas. She is a coordinator of the research network Cinemas Pós-Coloniais e Periféricos, in Brazil and Portugal, and of the project As Práticas Artísticas Contemporâneas e o Pensamento Pós-Colonial e Decolonial. She holds a PhD in Contemporary Studies from the Pontifícia Universidade do Rio de Janeiro and the University of Coimbra (2018–2020). Between 2014 and 2020, she was an integrated researcher at the Centre for 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Coimbra, where she coordinated the research project À Margem do Cinema Português (2020), funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Former fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in the Foreign Researchers program (2013–2014). She works in the following areas: postcolonial studies, intersectional feminism and film studies.

Bruno Muniz, Associação Humana Povo para Povo Brasil, Salvador, Brazil

Bruno Muniz holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he studied the Funk É Cultura social movement in Rio de Janeiro under the guidance of Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Mike Savage, and Paul Gilroy. His thesis utilized postcolonial theories and critical Bourdieusian analysis, employing semi-structured interviews and multisite ethnography. Bruno was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, involved in the POLITICS project, which examines anti-racism policies in Europe and Latin America, focusing on incarceration rates by ethnic self-declaration in Peru and Brazil. Bruno is highly experienced in fundraising and project management, working with various international and governmental agencies.

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