The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Ivan Dixon's 1973 film adapts Sam Greenlee's 1969 novel. Dan Freeman is accepted into a token programme the CIA runs to show it is hiring Black recruits; he plays the compliant role the agency expects perfectly, completes the training and is parked at a desk. Then he resigns and uses everything he learned to build an organisation in Chicago. The film shows guerrilla training and urban insurgency directly, and doing that in 1973 cost it dearly. It was pulled from cinemas soon after opening, FBI agents were reported to have urged exhibitors to stop screening it, and nearly every print was destroyed. Because Dixon had archived the negative under a different title, the film could later be recovered. Who it's for: viewers seeking Black American political cinema and the radical films of the seventies. Who it's not for: anyone who will be troubled by a narrative that argues openly for armed resistance.