HMB Film Society is showing a documentary about MOVE on Friday

Friday the Coastside Film Society features films about black power, flower power,  and paranoia. The films will be shown Friday Oct 8, 2004 at 8:00 pm in Community Methodist Sanctuary in Half Moon Bay. Admission is $6.00 per person

The main feature is MOVE. Woven out of interviews and archival material, the movie looks closely at the issues surrounding black identity, separatist living, political racism, and police brutality. The filmmakers plan to be at this screening.

MOVE was a loosely-knit, mostly African American group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology. In 1985, members of the group began broadcasting profane anti-government messages via loudspeaker over the rooftops of their middle class neighborhood in an effort to free nine members who had been convicted of killing a police officer.

MOVE’s neighbors complained of constant harassment, that the stench of human and animal feces was overwhelming the neighborhood, and that MOVE members frequently brandished weapons.

One morning in 1985 police tried to serve arrest warrants for four MOVE members, reporting they were met with gunfire. They fired back, touching off a 90-minute gun battle.  By the end of the day, the police resorted to using explosives in an attempt to remove a fortified bunker on the MOVE rooftop and started a fire that burned an entire city block to the ground. That fire destroyed 61 row houses, and left 250 people homeless. Of the 11 people killed in the fire, five were children.

There will also be two shorts.

CIA + LSD = things are out of hand—Shot in the style of a 50s documentary meant to scare kids straight the movie provides a history of the CIA s investigations of LSD as a tool for national defense.

Norah is "Listener #684448"—a civil servant in a futuristic, oppressive regime where thought and emotion are regulated by "protocol".  She dutifully records the secrets and suppressed longings of the collective psyche of the city, until a "Talker" reveals a plot and Norah is forced to make a decision. Mahri Holt is a locally-based (Oakland) film maker who recently graduated from SF State Grad school.  She will be at the screening to discuss her film.