SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG
(Presented By: Julian Bond)

Director: Melvin Van Peebles

Cast: Melvin Van Peebles, Simon Chuckster, Hubert Scales, John Dullaghan, West Gale, Niva Rochelle

Country: U.S.
Year: 1971
Running Time: 97 min
Format: video

From the beginning of American movies, when African American filmmakers had to make and distribute movies on their own, until 1971, no black film had hit the marketplace with full force. 1971 was the year Melvin Van Peebles released Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, and it blew open a few doors. "In my film, the black audience finally gets a chance to see some of their own fantasies acted out...rising out of the mud and kicking ass," Van Peebles said to Newsweek. It grossed $17 million, a huge number then, and the blaxploitation genre became part of our movie history.

At a time when there is a lot of self-congratulation about Halle's and Denzel's Oscars, it is good to look back thirty years and see a movie that was made defiantly by African Americans for African Americans. Bill Cosby helped finance it. When the MPAA slapped an X on the movie, Melvin immediately put "rated X by an all white jury" on the poster.

We are projecting a VHS copy because the only good prints left are in dire need of restoration.

--Jed Dietz

Currently Chairman of the NAACP Board, Julian Bond has been active in civil rights issues since his student days. Julian was first elected to the Georgia legislature in 1965, and when he left office in 1987, he had been elected to public office more times than any other black Georgian in history. Julian narrated the great series Eyes on the Prize, and is currently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American University and is a faculty member in the history department at the University of Virginia.