''Bastards of the Party'' is a 2005 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by former

Bloods The Bloods are a primarily African-American street gang founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. It is identified by the red color worn by its members and by particular gang symbols, includin ...

gang-member Cle Sloan and produced by

Antoine Fuqua Antoine Fuqua (born May 30, 1965) is an American filmmaker, known for his work in the action and thriller genres. He was originally known as a director of music videos, and made his film debut in 1998 with ''The Replacement Killers''. His critica ...

. The film explores the creation of two of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

's most notorious gangs, the

Crips The Crips is an alliance of street gangs that is based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips were initially a single alliance ...

and the Bloods, from the perspective of the Los Angeles community. The film also denounces gang violence and presents meaningful solutions from former gang members to stop this problem.

Production

During a term in jail, Cle Sloan read the book ''

City of Quartz ''City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles'' is a 1990 book by Mike Davis examining how contemporary Los Angeles has been shaped by different powerful forces in its history. The book opens with Davis visiting the ruins of the socialis ...

'' by Mike Davis and found his neighborhood of Athens Park on a map depicting

LAPD The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...

gang hot spots of 1972. The book's account fueled Sloan to ask questions of how the gangs got started, only to receive speculation and more questions from his fellow gang members. Sloan decided to research the subject himself. The title of the film comes from a passage in ''City of Quartz'' that reads: "As even ''The os AngelesTimes'' recognized, the decimation of the

Panthers Panther may refer to: Large cats *Pantherinae, the cat subfamily that contains the genera ''Panthera'' and ''Neofelis'' **''Panthera'', the cat genus that contains tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards. ***Jaguar (''Panthera onca''), found in Sout ...

led directly to a recrudescence of gangs in the early 1970s. 'Crippin,' the most extraordinary new gang phenomenon was a bastard offspring of the Panthers' former charisma, filling the void left by the LAPD SWAT teams."Mike Davis, ''City of Quartz'', London: Verso, 1990. p. 298 The documentary appeared at the 2005

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by TriBeCa Productions, Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive progra ...

and at the 2006

Hollywood Black Film Festival The Hollywood Black Film Festival (HBFF), dubbed the "Black Sundance," is an annual six-day film festival held in Los Angeles, California dedicated to enhancing the careers of new and established black filmmaking professionals by bringing their w ...

. The

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

premiere aired on February 6, 2007 on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

. Over 90 percent of the documentary was shot in 1996.

Content

''Bastards of the Party'' explores various influences on California African-American gang culture. The starting point is the crisis of black leadership that marked the end of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

, particularly the government-instigated rivalry between the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...

and the

Us Organization US Organization, or Organization Us, is a Black nationalist group in the United States founded in 1965. It was established as a community organization by Hakim Jamal together with Maulana Karenga. It was a rival to the Black Panther Party in Cali ...

. Movements based on collective action gave way to individualism inspired by heroes of

blaxploitation Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president o ...

films like '' Super Fly''. In this atmosphere,

Raymond Washington Raymond Lee Washington (August 14, 1953 – August 9, 1979) was an American gangster, known as the founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles. Washington formed the Crips as a minor street gang in the late 1960s in South Los Angeles, becoming a pr ...

created the concept of a gang of the new generation that went from "the cradle to the grave" and was joined by

Stanley "Tookie" Williams Stanley Tookie Williams III (December 29, 1953 – December 13, 2005) was an American gang member and spree killer who co-founded and led the Crips gang in Los Angeles. He and Raymond Washington formed an alliance in 1971 that established the ...

in the formation of the Crips. The collapse of domestic industry left black youth with few opportunities to escape from gang activity, which became a money-making operation based around the illegal drug trade.

Tupac Shakur Tupac Amaru Shakur ( ; born Lesane Parish Crooks, June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known as 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper. He is widely considered one of the most influential rappers of all time. Shakur is among the Li ...

's song, "So Many Tears", is played at the end portion of the documentary.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bastards Of The Party 2005 films 2005 documentary films American documentary films Bloods Crips Documentary films about African-American gangs Documentary films about Los Angeles Films produced by Antoine Fuqua 2000s English-language films 2000s American films