Chinonye Chukwu is having a dynamite week. She just premiered her latest film, “Clemency,” at Sundance over the weekend — where it received a standing ovation — and now word comes that she has another major project in the works. Chukwu is attached to helm “A Taste of Power,” an adaptation of former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown’s 1992 memoir. Black List scribe Alyssa Hill is penning the script. Deadline broke the news. Brown is among the project’s producers.
The “first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party from 1974-1977,” Brown “led the Panther party through turbulent times in Oakland to political success in the city, while fending off threats from local police, the FBI, and disaffected party members,” the source details.
Brown is now CEO of Oakland & the World Enterprises, Inc., a non-profit organization working towards launching and sustaining for-profit businesses for cooperative-ownership by formerly incarcerated people and those facing significant social barriers to economic survival.
Unburdened Entertainment and SB Projects are producing “A Taste of Power.”
Another prominent Black Panther member, Angela Davis, also as a biopic on the way. Julie Dash is directing.
Competing in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, “Clemency” sees Alfre Woodard (“Luke Cage”) playing a prison warden who struggles with her responsibility to carry out death penalty executions. Chukwu penned the script. She spoke about why she was drawn to the story with Women and Hollywood. “On September 21, 2011, a black man named Troy Davis was executed in a Georgia state prison. Leading up to Davis’ death, hundreds of thousands of people protested his execution and urged the Governor to grant him clemency. Among these protesters were a group of retired wardens and directors of corrections from around the country. Their appeal to the Governor spoke to the emotional and psychological consequences that killing Davis, a potentially innocent man, would have on the corrections staff physically responsible for carrying out his execution,” she explained. “The day after his execution, I was sad, frustrated, and angry, as were so many other people. And then I thought to myself, ‘If so many of us are navigating all of these feelings, what is it like for the corrections staff who have to physically kill Troy Davis? What are the emotional and psychological consequence of the death penalty on those who have to physically carry it out?'”
Chukwu, who worked on Tyra Patterson’s clemency campaign, said that she’d like audiences who see the film to think “about the ecosystem of humanities tied to not just capital punishment, but incarceration and the prison industrial complex.”
Head over to Sundance’s website to find out when you can catch “Clemency” at the fest.
