Today the Angel Orensanz Foundation blog is dedicated to the recognition of a film producer who emerged on the movie scene during the 1980’s as an independent director and has transformed the way African- Americans were perceived in Hollywood films ever since. His artistic visions has spread even to our Foundation.
In earlier years, The Angel Orensanz Foundation acted as a set of enrichment to spectators who were told the story of the Black Panthers, a movement that will never be forgotten. On that day, the Foundation introduced for the first time the director Spike Lee and the actor Roger Guenveur Smith in their seventh collaboration to produce their newest film, the 2002 release “A Huey P.Newton Story”(AHPNS).
In an intimate setting with a live audience, Smith created, wrote and starred in a dramatized account of Huey P Newton, the late co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. His monologue manifested an intimate portrait of Newton with use of chain smoking as prop and hues of green and yellow in the dimly lit atmosphere. Newton, portrayed as a rapid talking, slightly absurd revolutionary, entertained the audience as they stood on the perimeter outside of a cage, which separated them from the speaker in symbolism of a jail cell.
Creative genious Spike Lee employed a mixture of film and archival footages in both color and black & white to capture Newton’s “inner mind” on big screens that covered the synagogue and surrounded Smith in character. These two men, by way of a dramatized reenactment, brought to life the history and philosophies of the revolutionary icon Huey P. Newton.
“And the people create what they call a leader. A leader is everything the people want to be but everything the people will never be. So when the leader fails, which he will every time, being just flesh and blood, then the whole construction of the concept of a leader becomes a matter of contempt.” – Huey P. Newton
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