In 1998, SVT made a documentary about Leila K’s claim for stardom called Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much. The event focuses on an incident that happened during the 1996 Swedish Grammis awards. In 2000, she appeared on Daisy Dee’s “Open Sesame” video, a cover of her own 1991 hit. Daisy Dee was the presenter of the show “Viva Club Rotation” at the time. In 2003, Swedish media reported that Leila K was living on the streets, stealing her food.

2009 the rock documentary Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much was released May 2009 in Sweden. Continue reading →

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

“You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem,” Eldridge Cleaver is often quoted: as documentaries go, “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975″ solves a few common production problems with its origins, drawing on a splendid cache of black-and-white and color 16mm interviews, shot in the United States by Swedish journalists with a seemingly radical bent, and unearthed in 2005. (To paraphrase another figure, this potential revolution was televised, even if only in Scandinavia.) Göran Hugo Olsson’s documentary of fierce, open exchanges with Black Power Movement figures captures the moment’s intensity (and intermittent naiveté) from its subjects, including Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Cleaver and William Kunstler. (The crispness of the long-unseen footage is startling.) Earnest activism and protest meet setbacks, as the historical record already shows. Yet these curious Swedes, gaining the trust of their subjects, captured invaluable, contemporary reflections of a turbulent time, after the early days of the civil rights movement, when filling the streets was thought a way to prompt societal change. Continue reading →