July 22, 2024 – Brooklyn, NY — On August 16, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), presents the world premiere of the new restoration of the legendary, long-unavailable film, The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973), directed by Ivan Dixon, based on Sam Greenlee’s novel, and produced by Dixon and Greenlee.
More than five decades since its interrupted theatrical release, this towering work of American independent filmmaking and political cinema returns to the big screen. For too long, it was only viewable on faded prints and bootleg video (and an out-of-print DVD); now, audiences can experience this crucial work in a new 4K restoration undertaken by the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
One of the most radical, revolutionary statements in film history, The Spook Who Sat by
the Door follows Dan Freeman, brilliantly portrayed by Lawrence Cook, the fictional first
Black CIA agent, from recruitment and training, through leaving the agency and
returning to Chicago to use his specialized skills to form a guerrilla army intent on
stoking a people-powered revolution. After being denied permits to film legally in then-Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago, the film was primarily shot in neighboring Gary, Indiana, with the help of then-Mayor Richard Hatcher, one of the first Black mayors of a large American city.
Greenlee and Dixon (perhaps best known for his performance as Duff Anderson in
Michael Roemer’s seminal Nothing But a Man) produced the film independently, first
raising money from Black investors and completing it with funding from a major studio,
which was secured by selectively showing execs scenes which were in keeping with the
action-adventure style of the then-popular blaxploitation genre. Evidently, no one at the studio had bothered to read Greenlee’s actual script, so executives were reportedly shocked
upon seeing the final product. So potent is the film’s call to revolution, it was pulled from theaters within weeks of opening, despite immediate box office success.
Ever since, rumors have swirled, and Greenlee has been on record citing government intervention in the suppression of the film, and the studio quickly washed their hands of it.
Once thought lost, Dixon had quietly stored the original 35mm negatives in a vault, kept
safe by the Dixon family. In 2003, actor Tim Reid released the first authorized version
on DVD, leading to a resurgence of attention. In 2012, the film was added to the Library
of Congress’s National Film Registry. The Spook Who Sat by the Door has been widely
discussed and analyzed as a landmark work, in countless articles, dissertations, essay
collections (Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door,
edited by Michael T. Martin, Davis C. Wall and Marilyn Yaquinto) and documentary film
(Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rose and Fall of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, directed
by Christine Acham and Clifford Ward). In the half century since the film was made,
nothing has blunted its power.
Restored by the Library of Congress and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by
the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, this beautiful new 4K restoration, now available
through the auspices of the Dixon and Greenlee families, with assistance from Jake
Perlin of The Film Desk, will help cement the film’s place in the canon of American
cinema.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door will premiere on the Steinberg Screen at BAM’s
Harvey Theater on August 16, in the presence of Ivan Dixon’s children Alan Kimara
Dixon and Doris Nomathandé Dixon, and Sam Greenlees’s daughter Natiki Hope
Pressley, followed by a live panel discussion with Dr. Khalid El-Hakim (co-founder of the
Black History Mobile Museum), Dr. Laurence Ralph (professor of anthropology,
Princeton University), Dr. Racquel Gates (associate professor, film and media studies,
Columbia University), and moderated by film historian Michael Gillespie (professor and
author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film).
The premiere will kick off BAM’s Cinema, Restored series at the Harvey (August 16-22),
celebrating the best recent restorations of classic works of cinema. Starting August 23,
the film will then have a two-week engagement at BAM Rose Cinemas, coinciding with
a simultaneous opening at Maysles Cinema in Harlem, where Ivan Dixon was born and
raised.
Tickets for the BAM screenings are currently on sale.
This post was curated by Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., founder & editor-in-chief of The Burton Wire. Follow Nsenga on social media @Ntellectual.
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