Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Melvin Van Peebles, the groundbreaking filmmaker, playwright and musician whose work helped usher in the “blaxploitation” wave of the 1970s and influenced filmmakers long after, has died. He was 89.
In statement, his family said that Van Peebles, father of the actor-director Mario Van Peebles, died Tuesday evening at his home in Manhattan.
“Dad knew that Black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth?” Mario Van Peebles said in a statement Wednesday. “We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer’s mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people.”
Sometimes called the “godfather of modern Black cinema,” the multitalented Van Peebles wrote numerous books and plays, and recorded several albums ā playing multiple instruments and delivering rap-style lyrics. He later became a successful options trader on the stock market.
But he was best known for “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” one of the most influential movies of its time. The low-budget, art-house film, which he wrote, produced, directed, starred in and scored, was the frenzied, hyper-sexual and violent tale of a Black street hustler on the run from police after killing white officers who were beating a Black revolutionary.
With its hard-living, tough-talking depiction of life in the ghetto, underscored by a message of empowerment as told from a Black perspective, it set the tone for a genre that turned out dozens of films over the next few years and prompted a debate over whether Black people were being recognized or exploited.
“All the films about Black people up to now have been told through the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon majority in their rhythms and speech and pace,” Van Peebles told Newsweek in 1971, the year of the film’s release.
“I could have called it ‘The Ballad of the Indomitable Sweetback.’ But I wanted the core audience, the target audience, to know it’s for them,” he told The Associated Press in 2003. “So I said ‘Ba-ad Asssss,’ like you really say it.”
Made for around $500,000 (including $50,000 provided by Bill Cosby), it grossed $14 million at the box office despite an X-rating, limited distribution and mixed critical reviews. The New York Times, for example, accused Van Peebles of merchandizing injustice and called the film “an outrage.”
Van Peebles, who complained fiercely to the Motion Picture Association over the X-rating, gave the film the tagline: “Rated X by an all-white jury.”
But in the wake of the its success, Hollywood realized an untapped audience and began churning out such box office hits as “Shaft” and “Superfly” that were also known for bringing in such top musicians as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes to work on the soundtracks.
Many of Hollywood’s versions were exaggerated crime dramas, replete with pimps and drug dealers, which drew heavy criticism in both the white and Black press.
“What Hollywood did ā they suppressed the political message, added caricature ā and blaxploitation was born,” Van Peebles said in 2002. “The colored intelligentsia were not too happy about it.”
In fact, civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality coined the phrase “blaxploitation” and formed the Coalition Against Blaxploitation. Among the genre’s 21st century fans was Quentin Tarantino, whose Oscar-winning “Django Unchained” was openly influenced by blaxploitation films and spaghetti Westerns.
On Wednesday, a younger generation of Black filmmakers mourned Van Peebles’ death. Barry Jenkins, the “Moonlight” director, said on Twitter: “He made the most of every second, of EVERY single damn frame.”
After his initial success, Van Peebles was bombarded with directing offers, but he chose to maintain his independence.
“I’ll only work with them on my terms,” he said. “I’ve whipped the man’s ass on his own turf. I’m number one at the box office ā which is the way America measures things ā and I did it on my own. Now they want me, but I’m in no hurry.”
Van Peebles then got involved on Broadway, writing and producing several plays and musicals like the Tony-nominated “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death” and “Don’t Play Us Cheap.” He later wrote the movie “Greased Lighting” starring Richard Pryor as Wendell Scott, the first Black race car driver.
In the 1980s, Van Peebles turned to Wall Street and options trading. He wrote a financial self-help guide entitled “Bold Money: A New Way to Play the Options Market.”
Born Melvin Peebles in Chicago on August 21, 1932, he would later add “Van” to his name. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1953 and joined the Air Force, serving as a navigator for three years.
After military service, he moved to Mexico and worked as a portrait painter, followed by a move to San Francisco, where he started writing short stories and making short films.
Van Peebles soon went to Hollywood, but he was only offered a job as a studio elevator operator. Disappointed, he moved to Holland to take graduate courses in astronomy while also studying at the Dutch National Theatre.
Eventually he gave up his studies and moved to Paris, where he learned he could join the French directors’ guild if he adapted his own work written in French. He quickly taught himself the language and wrote several novels.
One he made into a feature film. “La Permission/The Story of the Three Day Pass” was the story of an affair between a Black U.S. soldier and a French woman. It won the critic’s choice award at the San Francisco film festival in 1967, and Van Peebles gained Hollywood’s attention.
The following year, he was hired to direct and write the score for “Watermelon Man,” the tale of a white bigot (played by comic Godfrey Cambridge in white face) who wakes up one day as a Black man.
With money earned from the project, Van Peebles went to work on “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.”
Van Peebles’ death came just days before the New York Film Festival is to celebrate him with a 50th anniversary of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.” Next week, the Criterion Collection is to release the box set “Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films.” A revival of his play “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death” is also planned to hit Broadway next year, with Mario Van Peebles serving as creative producer.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
HFI Hall of Fame Inductees
1999- Oscar Micheaux (1885-1951)
2000- Melvin VanĀ Peebles
2001-Gordon Parks (1912-2006)
2002 -Noble Johnson (1881-1978 )
2003-Spencer Williams (1893-1969)
2004-Ivan Dixon (1931-2009)
2005-Sidney Poitier
2006-Clarence Muse (1889-1979)
2006-Charles Burnett
2007-Kathleen Collins (1942-1988)
2007-William Greaves (1926-2014)
2008-Michael Schultz
2009-Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
2010-Spike Lee
2011-Julie Dash
2012-Robert Townsend
2013-Reggie Hudlin
2014-Steve McQueen
2015-F Gary Gray
2016-Barry Jenkins
2017-Albert Hughes
2018-Warrington Hudlin
2019-John Singleton (1968-2019)
2020-Ava DuVernay
2021-Chadwick Boseman (1977-2020)
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.
Spike Lee poses during a photo call for the film “BlacK Klansman” at the 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France on May 15, 2018.Alberto Pizzoli / AFP – Getty Images
“BlacK Klansman” director Spike Lee will lead the Cannes Film Festival’s 2020 jury, the festival announced on Tuesday.
Lee will be the first black person in the French festival’s 73-history to serve as jury president, presiding over the body of artists who choose which films will receive an award. He succeeds Alejandro G. IƱƔrritu, whose 2019 jury awarded the Palme dāOr, the highest prize awarded at the film festival, to Korean director Bong Joon-hoās āParasite.”
“In this life I have lived, my biggest blessings have been when they arrived unexpected, āØwhen they happened out of nowhere,” Lee wrote in aĀ statement. “When I got the call that I was offered the opportunity to be President of Cannes Jury for 2020, I was shocked, happy, surprised and proud all at the same time.”
Lee, 62, has a long-established history with the festival, dating back to 1986, when his first feature film “She’s Gotta Have It” won the Prix de la Jeunesse in theāØ Director’s Fortnight. Several of his subsequent films, including “Do the Right Thing” (1989), “Jungle Fever” (1991), “Summer of Sam” (1999) and “Ten Minutes Older” (2002) have also been recognized by the festival in various capacities. Lee’s latest movie, “”BlacK Klansman” (2018), won the Grand Prix at Cannes, which Lee credits with being the “launching pad” for the film’s global theatrical release and 2019 Academy Award win for best adapted screenplay.
Ava DuVernay Celebrates Black History Month with Black Cinema
By BGN Staff -January 18, 20200405
ARRAY
Premiering on Netflix February 5th is Theyāve Gotta Have Us, a dynamic chronicle of art, activism and race in Black Cinema featuring in-depth interviews with some of Hollywoodās most iconic voices.
Theyāve Gotta Have Us was conceived, produced and directed by Simon Frederick, a UK-based self-taught artist, photographer, filmmaker and broadcaster. The series features revealing interviews with many barrier-breaking filmmakers and stars, including Diahann Carroll, John Singleton, Kasi Lemmons, John Boyega, Harry Belafonte, Robert Townsend, David Oyelowo, Whoopi Goldberg, Laurence Fishburne, and Barry Jenkins.
The series also includes clips from and commentary about such seminal films as Carmen Jones, Claudine, Lilies of the Field, Do The Right Thing, Boyz in the Hood, Hollywood Shuffle, Black Panther and Moonlight.
āAs a company whose mission is to amplify the voices of people of color, Theyāve Gotta Have Us speaks directly to our highest ideas of inclusion, cultural context and community. Not only are we introducing an exciting artist like Simon Frederick to a new audience, but his project shares the stories of Black Cinemaās most influential filmmakers and actors,ā said ARRAY President Tilane Jones.
ARRAY was founded in 2010 by Ava DuVernay.
Hi I’m Melvin Best, founder and director of the Harlem Film Institute. I am an educator, avid film lover and all around nice guy.