Film Club #1: Judas And The Black Messiah

"You can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder a revolution."

Damn that’s a good trailer. I’ve been looking forward to this one since I saw the trailer when I was at my first movie since the pandemic started—Tenet, which I write about here.

Judas and the Black Messiah is about Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and the illegal police surveillance sting COINTELPRO which led to his assassination. It looks fascinating and powerful and it’s the perfect movie to start our film club with, especially given this is Black History Month.

I’ll watch the movie when it comes out this Friday, both in theaters and on HBO Max, and write up a review. Then we can all have a discussion about it—if the film was any good and what it says about America and our troubling history with race, authoritarianism and revolution.

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Some details:

Director: Shaka King

Screenplay by: Will Berson and Shaka King

Story by: Keith Lucas

Starring:

Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton

LaKieth Stanfield as Bill O’Neal

Jesse Plemons as Roy Mitchell

Dominique Fishback as Deborah Johnson

Further Reading: The Assassination of Fred Hampton by Jeffrey Haas