Film: Dope is Death (2020)
Directed by: Mia Donovan
Run time: 78 mins (English)

Doors open: 19:00
Films starts: 19:30

Entrance based on voluntary donation.
We have various priced tickets in presale but if you have no budget available but still like to attend then send an email to ventilator(at)amsterdamalternative.nl to reserve a ticket.

Cinema Politica Amsterdam is screening DOPE IS DEATH (2020) by Mia Donovan in memory of Dr. Mutulu Shakur. Activist, healer, and community leader Dr. Mutulu Shakur was a political prisoner for over 36 years until his parole on November 10th, 2022, and passed away on July 7th last year. Donovan’s documentary chronicles his activism and fight against the heroin epidemic in the South Bronx, New York through acupuncture and community healing.

Synopsis:
In 1973, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, along with fellow Black Panthers and the Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in America. DOPE IS DEATH explores how this form of radical harm reduction was a revolutionary act toward the government programs that transfixed the lives of black and brown communities throughout the South Bronx.

DOPE IS DEATH utilizes an abundant archive while giving us insight into how the acupuncture clinic rose to prominence and, despite funding challenges, still functions to this day. Some of those who benefited from the program became acupuncturists themselves. Dr. Mutulu’s legacy is cemented within this profound story of community healing and activism. Dr. Mutulu Shakur was released in December 2022 after 36 years of incarceration and passed away in freedom on the 07.07.2023.

Mia Donovan is a filmmaker based in Montreal. She has written and directed three feature documentaries, INSIDE LARA ROXX (2011), DEPROGRAMMED (2015) and DOPE IS DEATH (2020).  Her films have been presented worldwide at film festivals, on TV broadcasts, theatrically and on digital platforms such as Netflix. In 2016 she wrote and directed her first virtual reality experience called Deprogrammed VR (2016) which won the coveted IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling that year.  Aside from working on her own projects, she worked as a story consultant on Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 and directed the music video for Rufus Wainwright’s video Trouble In Paradise.  She is currently developing her first narrative feature called THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH.