#blackcreativebrilliance

🕊🙏🏿🎬 #ArtIsAWeapon Peaceful transitions to the trailblazing “Godfather of #BlackCinema” #MelvinVanPeebles @originalbaadasssss. Thank you Sir for making your mark and showing us how! Condolences to his beloved son, filmmaker/actor @mariovanpeebles

📸 @clif777, @schomburgcenter, 2012.

Via @variety: Melvin Van Peebles, the influential filmmaker behind “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song,” and father of director and actor Mario Van Peebles, has died. He was 89.

“Sweet Sweetback” was a groundbreaking film a few times over. Van Peebles financed and released the film independently, paving the way for an entire ecosystem of indie cinema. Because he couldn’t afford a traditional marketing campaign, he used the film’s soundtrack album to build awareness for the movie. And most crucially, he proved that films by Black filmmakers about Black life in America could be a profitable endeavor, presaging the explosion in Blaxploitation cinema of the 1970s.

“Dad knew that Black images matter,” Mario Van Peebles said in a statement from the Criterion Collection. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth? 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.”

Read more: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/melvin-van-peebles-dead-sweet-sweetbacks-baadassss-song-1235071660/ • • Via @criterioncollection: In an unparalleled career distinguished by relentless innovation, boundless curiosity and spiritual empathy, Melvin Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape through his films, novels, plays and music. His work continues to be essential and is being celebrated at the New York Film Festival this weekend with a 50th anniversary screening of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; a Criterion Collection box set, Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films next week; and a revival of his play Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, slated for a return to Broadway next year.