Collections/February 2022
Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films
Featuring hours of supplemental features from Criterion’s Blu-ray box set, as well as a new introduction to Watermelon Man by film scholar Racquel J. Gates Director, writer, composer, actor, and one-man creative revolutionary Melvin Van Peebles jolted American independent cinema to new life with his explosive stylistic energy and unfiltered expression of Black consciousness. Though he undeniably altered the course of film history with the anarchic Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song , that pop-culture bombshell is just one piece of a remarkably varied career that also encompassed forays into European art cinema ( The Story of a Three Day Pass ), mainstream Hollywood comedy ( Watermelon Man ), and Broadway musicals ( Don’t Play Us Cheap ). Each facet of Van Peebles’s renegade genius is on display in this tribute to a transformative artist whose caustic social observation, radical formal innovation, and uncompromising vision established a new cinematic model for Black creative independence.
8 films — 5 on the Channel, 3 unavailable
