MLK/FBI

OUT 22 FEBRUARY / CERT 12 / 106 MINS

A lot of films are testament to the power of pop culture, treatises on how the cinema creates empathy. It’s not often considered how American film has been used as a propaganda tool, but MLK/FBI displays some of the clearest evidence of it. Directed by Sam Pollard, a long-time editor for Spike Lee, the film documents the Bureau’s obsessive white supremacist crusade against Rev Martin Luther King Jr. It’s entirely made of archive footage, as off-camera interviews break down the significance of the imagery, some standout moments displaying the complicity of the film and TV industries in propagating the image of the FBI as the ‘good guys’, aiding their success in portraying King as evil. Pollard’s organisation of the evidence is unsurprisingly sharp, and the film’s thorough, journalistic approach to the story is as fascinating as it is galvanising.