I was a bit young to quite understand what had happened in the sixties and it took me a long while to see how the revolution was not coming. I didn’t quite get it because all my teachers were hippies and they were still optimistic about great social change, or at least it seemed that way to me when I was a kid in the sixties and seventies.

It was weird and wonderful to grow up with these great role models such as Angela and the others, but it was equally strange to see how the right in American culture, pop culture and history was active in portraying sixties revolutionary figures in a negative light as “scary and radical” and “fringe” figures in a complete rewrite of history.

Then, in the 80s there was a movement to smear many of these political figures and tell us all how great Reagan was….I did not buy it, but only because I was lucky enough to be at a fairly radical women’s campus, Douglass College at Rutgers University in New Jersey….and I was lucky enough to have professors who explained what was happening during this period of rewriting history…but I do know a lot of people who bought into these lies and revised history. It is so important to disseminate this knowledge and films such as Free Angela are terribly important in these culturally impoverished & economically challenging times.

I have written a great deal about how incredibly difficult it is for independents – particularly African American female directors – to get funding to get their projects off the ground. I am very enthusiastic about the future and the work we will see from Shola Lynch….Many kudos and much appreciation for your powerful work.