Documentary About Newton

[Astryd Boschee]

Severalblocks from where he was murdered in 1989, the bust was revealed on a rainy day in October 2021, created by sculptor and former KPIX journalist Dana King at the request of Huey's widow and president of the Huey P. Newton Foundation, Fredrika Newton.

"It had just given me heartache that nothing had been placed in the place where Huey took his [last] breath," Fredrika said. When Fredrika began thinking of how to best honor Huey, she also found that there were a number of people in Oakland who didn't know who Huey or the Black Panther Party was.

King is the artist behind San Francisco's Monumental Reckoning and Guided by Justice in Montgomery, Alabama to name a few. She explains the use of materials is important in retelling and shaping of history. "I create Black bodies in bronze. That's what I do," said Dana King. "It's my mission. I've been granted this gift from God and I intend to use it on behalf of us."

The process of making the bust of Dr. Huey P. Newton was documented by A.K Sandhu as part of Re-Take Oakland, a two-year education and filmmaker mentoring program, beginning mid-2020. Sandhu said that following the process of the bust's creation was perfect for a documentary given its historic nature. The documentary "For Love and Legacy," directed by AK Sandhu, follows King and Fredrika in the busts' creation and the bond shared between the two women during the process.

At one point, King even asked Fredrika for pictures of Huey naked from the waist up. Fredrika recalls laughing "Wait! Hold up? What are you doing with my husband? What is going on over here? And so we laughed a little bit about it. It's actually in the film."

There would be many moments filmed of the stories shared between Fredrika and King that would make Sandhu want to laugh out loud but she had to remain quiet to capture the audio. It was also in those talks about Huey that King and Fredrika were able to build a bond that Sandhu was able to capture on film. "The relationship that we were able to develop was built on trust." King said. "She [Fredrika] was very giving of herself and of her relationship with Huey [and the] life that they shared together."

Growing up in the Bay Area, Sandhu followed and admired Dana King's career as a journalist for KPIX. Over the course of filming beginning August of 2020 and ending October 2021 when the bust was installed on the boulder, Sandhu knew that she was witnessing something special.

When she first saw the documentary Fredrika says she wasn't aware of how prominently she was featured. Her attention has been to elevate the work of the BPP. The bust is the first public works sculpture dedicated to a member of the Black Panther Party, but there is more to come. Currently, the foundation is working with the National Park Service and National Park Conservation Association to create a Black Panther Party monument in Oakland. Fredrika describes it as "an urban park that will be comprised of sites that were significant in the history of the Black Panther Party."

"We're working on films of Black Panther Party women. Women who were just not visible in the party to the media. But over 75% of the membership of the party were women and women in leadership," Fredrika said "Very few people know that."

A similar sentiment was expressed about the process of creating the documentary, watching the bond of Fredrika and King and the stories she wants to tell as a filmmaker. "As an Asian American immigrant filmmaker, one of my things is [to focus on] women of color, whose stories don't really get told," Sandhu said. She adds that the stories of these women of color have yet to be given the space they truly deserve.

With a run time of 20 minutes, "For Love and Legacy" is Sandhu's first documentary to make it to the festival circuit. Sandhu one day hopes to make a larger film from the 80-100 hours of footage she collected in the process, explaining there are so many stories that can be told. There will be two screenings of the 20-minute documentary. Two screenings of "For Love and Legacy" will take place on Friday, April 22nd and Saturday, April 23rd at the Cinemark for Pan African Film Festival in L.A. "For Love and Legacy" director A.K. Sandhu and Fredrika Newton will attend the showing on April 23rd.

The Newton MessagePad range began to huge fanfare in August 1993, and quite some criticism, too. But as well as being a harbinger of all that was to come with the iPhone and iPad, the Newton also earned itself an army of fans who adore it to this day.

Produced as a result of a crowdfunding campaign, it was released for sale over Vimeo. Five years later, and to celebrate three decades since the Newton launched, the whole documentary is now available to watch for free on YouTube.

I well remember back in the day, about 2 years after Newton was introduced. My employer at the time, an Apple SMB VAR, did a recycling event, where we invited our clients to have their outdated and out of use equipment responsibly recycled, instead of going to landfills. One medical practice brought in about 25 Newtons. Others brought in more. By the end of the day, we had about 50 of them or so, along with dozens of expansion cards. We also took in LaserWriters, displays, assorted Macs, and a complete NextCube, with screen, all manuals and discs. Needless to say, we didn't give that one to the recyclers! We sold it on eBay for about $2,500 if memory serves. We also got an Anniversary Mac, which the owner kept for his collection.

I was a first gen adopter too. There was an actual Newton Store in Westwood, California near UCLA where I bought mine, along with a game or two. Their sign was a neon version of the Newton lightbulb logo. This was long before Apple Stores, bu I had the impression that it was official nonetheless. Was fun to play with, but ahead of its time, so ended up in a drawer after a few months. Found it a few years ago. Had neglected to take the battery out so leakage had caused some damage. But careful cleaning and a recharge brought it back to life. Sold it at a garage sale.

Oh I'm feeling so old I remember when the Newton came out and was very interested in them and wanted one. Lucky for me money was tight at the time and like most things Apple expensive. I was getting ready to be relocated across the country for a new job with a couple others from where I worked. After the relo' one of the people took his bonus and got a Newton and developer kit so I got to checkout it out. I quickly lost interest it was way bigger than I thought it would be not that handy size of a Palm Pilot that it was supposed to be a competitor of. It did have a really interesting kind of card based app, but luckily Apple after sales of Newton were bad it ported the app to the Mac. The Newton died pretty fast and my friend now had a quite a bit of money and programming time invested in the Newton so he was really upset. One of the others we worked with at the new location had become quite a Palm Pilot programmer and was making good money on the side writing games and later on bigger app's for the Palm.

So yes I remember the Newton all too well.

I had a local agent for such things, and had worked as an extra on several TV movies and other theatrical releases that filmed in and around Austin since 1993. Fourteen years in Hollywood, and never once set foot on location or on a soundstage there!

His film crew would be shooting, during the summer of 1997, on privately-owned and noticeably rural farm land that had a railroad track running through, or near, the property. The production company had contracted for a 1920s-period train to come up from Galveston to be used in the shoot.

Their main claim to fame (besides purloining millions from over 80 banks and six trains) was their ability to have done all this robbing without ever killing anyone, at least to hear them tell it. Or, at least to hear Joe Newton (the youngest, played by Skeet Ulrich in the film) tell it in this short clip compilation featuring his 1980 appearance with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, and interview clips from a 1975 documentary:

The film stars McConaughey, Austin native Ethan Hawke, Ulrich, Vincent D'Onofrio, and occasional country singer, Dwight Yoakam. It was filmed throughout central Texas, including the towns of Bertram, Bartlett, New Braunfels, San Antonio, and of course, the Austin area.

One night prior to filming, I was sent to the make-up trailer. I had to wait my turn, as the make-up gal was busy with one of the principles. Ethan Hawke (Boyhood, Reality Bites, Dead Poets Society) was about three feet away from me in a foldable, canvas-backed chair seen often on film sets. I joined him in mine, acknowledging him with a pleasant nod.

Of the eight, I was the only mailman given a gun, a rather large, silver, to-period handgun. What happened next was fascinating to me even then, but especially now, considering the recent, sad news from the set of Rust, and a certain acting Baldwin.

Meanwhile the Willis character (McConaughey) was yelling at us to come out of the train car, dropping any weapons as we did so. At this point, the camera angle, then, switched to outside the car, and slightly elevated, to photograph the mailmen jumping down about six feet from the bottom step onto the sharply sloping ground littered with small stones on either side of the elevated track.

My brother once did a temp job dealing with bank robbery data for the Boston, MA area. He said most bank robbers are never caught, and this was maybe around 2000. Ben Affleck co-wrote and directed and acted in his modern-day bank robber movie The Town, set in Boston. Still a popular profession!

I was getting fitted for a 1920s-era train car mailman\u2019s costume for the 20th Century Fox motion picture, The Newton Boys, at exactly the same time the small town of Jarrell, Texas (42 miles away) was getting summarily wiped off the map by an F-5 tornado. The highest wind gust was measured at greater than 260 mph.

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