Screening

About Nationtime

Rating:

Not rated Not rated

Year Released:

1972

Closed captioning:

Closed captioned

Genres:

Documentary

Metadata:

Directed by William Greaves

Best known for his avant-garde meta-documentary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, William Greaves directed more than 100 documentary films, the majority focused on African American history, politics, and culture.  Nationtime is the long-lost film Greaves made about the National Black Political Convention of 1972—when 10,000 Black politicians, activists, and artists went to Gary, Ind., to forge a national unity platform in advance of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions. The delegates included a wide array of political thinkers: Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale, Pan-Africanist Amiri Baraka, PUSH founder Jesse Jackson, elected officials Ron Dellums, Charles Diggs, Walter Fauntroy, Richard Hatcher, Carl McCall, plus key women in the fight for racial equality—Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Queen Mother Moore (who was arguing for reparations). Entertainers Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, Isaac Hayes, and Richard Roundtree lent their star quality and entertained the crowds. Narrated by Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, Nationtime was considered too militant for television broadcast at the time and has since circulated only in an edited 60-minute version. This new 4K restoration from IndieCollect, with funding from Jane Fonda and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, returns the film to its original 79-minute length and visual quality.