Nationtime

Our new virtual cinema will allow us to continue sharing curated, cinematic gems with you by bringing the art house directly into your home while also helping support O Cinema.

NATIONTIME is the long-lost film that William Greaves made about the National Black Political Convention of 1972, when 10,000 black politicians, activists and artists from across the political spectrum went to Gary, Indiana, to forge a national unity platform in advance of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions.

Considered too radical for television broadcast at the time, it has since circulated only in a heavily edited 60-minute version. The new restoration, long thought lost and unearthed in a Pittsburgh warehouse in 2018, returns the film to its original 80-minute length and colorful visual quality 48 years after the convention took place.

The film is narrated by Sidney Poitier combined with poems recited by Harry Belafonte. Delegates included Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, Coretta Scott King, Pan-Africanist Artist and Activist Amiri Baraka, Dr. Betty Shabazz, PUSH founder Rev. Jesse Jackson, Fannie Lou Hamer and Queen Mother Moore, and elected officials Ron Dellums, Charles Diggs, Walter Fauntroy, Richard Hatcher, Carl McCall. Activists and entertainers Belafonte, Dick Gregory, Isaac Hayes and Richard Roundtree performed for the crowds over the three days.

Seale said at the Convention, “Revolution is about the right for the humanity of Black people in this country here and across the world to survive.”