Burn Motherfucker, Burn! Trailer (2017)

Trailer for the documentary Burn Motherfucker, Burn!.

This compelling documentary explores the complicated relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and the city’s black and minority communities. The film traces from the 1962 ransacking of a Los Angeles Nation of Islam mosque (which left many injured and one man dead) to the 1965 Watts riots, examines the rise of LA street gangs in the 1970s and ’80s and focuses on the Rodney King beating in 1991. A year after that beating, on April 29, 1992, four LAPD officers were acquitted by a Simi Valley jury on charges of assault, lighting the fuse for the uprising that began that evening and continued for days. Through the backdrop of these inflection points, the conflict is seen through the lens of three generations of local residents, community organizers, artists and influencers who lived through the uprising, illustrating the root causes, and the continued struggle for social justice.