Cadre: Inside the Black Panther Party

Cadre: Inside the Black Panther Party is an upcoming documentary from John Mounier’s Mounier Media . It’s a personal and revealing story about the internal fight for control of the Black Panther Party during its rise and fall, as told from the inside by one of the few people who was there from the beginning — founding member and National Chief of Staff David Hilliard.

For the look I brought in a palette associated with Black Power and African-American political movements, with a muted matte black to give a nod to film posters from the 1970s, the height of the black self love era. I wanted to make an association with films of that era without sinking too much into retro kitsch. I then treated file photos and news clippings of the era to give them a historic heft visually and arranged the collage to mimic the iconic Black Panthers symbol, but a bit more jagged and fractured, to suggest the tenor of the subject matter.

I’m really excited to see the final cut of the film. So far the footage I’ve seen has been really gripping.