Filmmaker Shola Lynch's documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, examines the life of political icon Angela Davis. According to The Grio:
"The movie centers on Davis’ implication in a courthouse murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy effort on August 7, 1970 in Marin County, California, the trial that ensued thereafter and Davis’ eventual acquittal. Though only 26 years old at the time, it was the culmination of a riotous period in Davis’ life, where she had already been labeled a terrorist by the government, and fired from her job as a professor at UCLA.
“Angela Davis is associated with [the Black Panthers] and she stands up for her rights and her beliefs,” Lynch explains. “It starts with UCLA and standing up for her job. It went against the school policy and the law, I’m pretty sure, for the school to try and fire her for being a Communist…That’s what democracy is all about, that we have freedom of speech, and academic freedom, within the context of the university, to discuss ideas that may or may not be popular. So, the idea that she was standing up for her rights unequivocally is very attractive.”'
The documentary, executive produced by Overbrook Entertainment partners Will Smith, James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Roc Nation, is slated to premiere in select theaters in the U.S. on April 5. Watch the trailer below.
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