African American Film and Black Prison Politics in the 1977 Brothers Poster

Brothers Film

Broadside

Brothers is a 1977 film poster documenting African American political cinema’s engagement with prison radicalism, state violence, and the public memory of George Jackson and Angela Davis. Directed by Arthur Barron and starring Bernie Casey, Vonetta McGee, and Ron O’Neal, the film was released by Warner Bros. and closely parallels the stories of Jackson, Davis, Jonathan Jackson, and the Soledad Brothers. Its poster tagline, “He was a nobody; a black man in a white man’s prison,” places racialized incarceration at the center of the film’s appeal and connects the image to 1970s Black film, prison activism, and post civil rights political culture.

Brothers. Warner Bros. Pictures. United States: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1977. Original framed movie poster, 40" x 60". The poster advertises a drama centered on a Black prisoner whose politicization inside prison echoes George Jackson’s writings and the broader Black prison movement. The film depicts racist prison conditions, Black radical education, and the political relationship between a prisoner figure and a Black woman activist modeled on Angela Davis, translating contemporary struggles over incarceration, Black liberation, and legal repression into commercial cinema.

The poster belongs to a 1970s visual culture in which Black political history entered theatrical promotion through images of imprisonment, resistance, and racial injustice. Pinholes at all corner margins; light stain on lower white margin; framed. Overall very good. A large-format film poster linking African American cinema to the radical prison politics surrounding George Jackson, Angela Davis, and the Soledad Brothers.

Item #19954

Price: $425.00