Movie Documentary History
![Sweet Black Film: The Birth of the Black Hero in Hollywood (2022)](/media/img/movie/poster/m/07/00b59e40402453ffe7b230eb.jpg)
In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles turned the figure of the black hero in US cinema upside down with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: the story of the making of a seminal movie that initiated the Blaxploitation movement, a short-lived but highly influential sub-genre in the years that followed.
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BaadAsssss Cinema
With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. It features interviews with some of the genre's biggest stars, like Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree. Director Melvin Van Peebles discusses the historical importance of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. For a contemporary perspective, the excitable Quentin Tarantino offers his spirited commentary and author/critic bell hooks provides some scholarly social analysis.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black male prostitute goes on the run from "the man" with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.
Black Heat
Kicks Carter is a streetwise policeman whose beat is Las Vegas. A crime gang is running guns, selling drugs, loan-sharking, and running a prostitution ring out of an upscale hotel in the city and Kicks is trying to put them out of business. But the interference of a woman reporter is making his job more difficult.
Sweet Jesus, Preacherman
A Black hit man poses as a Baptist preacher in a ghetto church. He decides to take over the local rackets.
Don't Play Us Cheap
As an African American family and friends gather in an apartment for a house party, two mischief-making devil-bats take human form in order to break up the party.
The Black Connection
Black dude fleeces the mob, goes on the run. Whadaya need, a road map?
Robert Redford: The Golden Look
More than anyone in the cynical film industry, legendary artist Robert Redford embodies the United States' brightest side: perseverance, independence, idealism, and integrity. A champion of active environmentalism and the right to openly criticize any institutional abuse, he has put his artistic work at the service of his political commitments, whether as an actor, director, producer, or founder of the Sundance Festival, a formidable forum for his struggles since 1985.
Charlton Heston: Radical to Right Wing
A look at the life and work of the iconic US actor Charlton Heston (1923-2008); the embodiment of many mythic heroes who was both a staunch defender of the Civil Rights movement during the sixties and a spokesman for the National Rifle Association in his later years. The extraordinary and controversial public and personal career of one of the greatest film personalities of all time.
Alice Guy, the First Female Filmmaker
Who, apart from moviegoers, knows Alice Guy (1873-1968) today? However, she was the first woman behind the camera and the first female director and producer of fiction films in history.
Near Myth: The Oskar Knight Story
A documentary chronicle of one of our greatest directors.
Volker Schlöndorff: The Beat of the Drum
The life and work of the brilliant German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, a cross-border artist who, by leaving Germany and making the whole world his place of work, acquired the objective perspective necessary to portray his country's society better than anyone else while providing a unique and original point of view on the troubled history of the European continent.
Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks
The fantastic story of how an ancient martial art, Chinese kung fu, conquered the world through the hundreds of films that were produced in Hong Kong over the decades, transformed Western action cinema and inspired the birth of cultural movements such as blaxploitation, hip hop music, parkour and Wakaliwood cinema.
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Black Dynamite
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Mr. Sunshine
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The Old Grey Whistle Test
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The Story of Film: An Odyssey
A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.
Black Box
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Hollywood U.K.: British Cinema in the Sixties
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Journeys Through French Cinema
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America Beyond the Color Line
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Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema
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Paul T. Goldman
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The Sophisticated Gents
The 25-year reunion of members of a black athletic-social club brings together nine of its members for the first time to honor their old coach but is marred by a murder investigation involving one of the gents.
Baadasssss!
Director Mario Van Peebles chronicles the complicated production of his father Melvin's classic 1971 film, "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." Playing his father in the film, Van Peebles offers an unapologetic account of Melvin's brash and sometimes deceptive conduct on the set of the film, including questionable antics like writing bad checks, tricking a local fire department and allowing his son, Mario, to shoot racy sex scenes at the age of 11.