Best movies like Sweet Black Film: The Birth of the Black Hero in Hollywood
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Sweet Black Film: The Birth of the Black Hero in Hollywood Starring Sandra Nkake, Melvin Van Peebles, Max Van Peebles, Marguerite Van Peebles, and more. If you liked Sweet Black Film: The Birth of the Black Hero in Hollywood then you may also like: Watermelon Man, Baadasssss!, BaadAsssss Cinema, Boss Nigger, Brothers and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
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!
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.
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.
Boss Nigger
Two black bounty hunters ride into a small town out West in pursuit of an outlaw. They discover that the town has no sheriff, and soon take over that position, much against the will of the mostly white townsfolk.
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.
Disco Godfather
Retired cop and celebrity DJ Tucker Williams (aka The Disco Godfather) takes to the streets as a dangerous hallucinogenic drug called Angel Dust begins to take hold of the neighborhood.
Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde
A doctor in a Watts clinic takes his own medicine and becomes a monstrous white killer of hookers.
Dynamite Brothers
Young black man teams up with a Chinese kung-fu expert to fight a drug ring.
Darktown Strutters
When a prominent abortion clinic owner goes missing along with a string of other black community leaders, her singing daughter and her fellow female biker gang members investigate.
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.
Mean Johnny Barrows
A Vietnam veteran gets caught in a mob war with a couple of double-crossers.
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.
Death Promise
An apartment dweller goes on a search-and-destroy mission to kill the ruthless landlords who murdered his father.
Trick Baby
Two Philadelphia con men try to evade gangsters they have conned and cops who are trying to put them in jail.
Thomasine & Bushrod
A pair of thieves operate in the American South between 1911 and 1915, stealing from rich, white capitalists, and giving to Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites.
Black Lolita
A singer returns to her hometown and puts together a team of fighters to go after local gangsters.
The Black Connection
Black dude fleeces the mob, goes on the run. Whadaya need, a road map?
Kim Novak: Hollywood's Golden Age Rebel
Kim Novak never dreamed on being a star, but she became one. Most famous for her enigmatic performance in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), the Chicago-born actress never quite fitted into the Hollywood mould and wanted to do things her own way.
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.
Meryl Streep: Mystery and Metamorphosis
Meryl Streep is one of the most versatile and successful actresses of all time and is still considered a superstar after 50 years of career. She fascinates filmmakers and audiences alike with her broad range of expression.
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.
Emmanuelle: Queen of French Erotic Cinema
France, 1974. The erotic film Emmanuelle, directed by Just Jaeckin, breaks all records for cinema attendance: the story of the creation of a sensual epic that marked a turning point in the struggle for sexual emancipation.
Das Boot Revisited: An Underwater Success Story
In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.
Making the Connection: Untold Stories of 'The French Connection'
The exciting story of the making of William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971), hosted by former NYPD detective Sony Grosso, who inspired the character of Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo, played in the film by actor Roy Scheider.
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.
The Bad Bunch
A white ex-GI goes to a black ghetto to deliver a letter from his buddy, a black soldier who died in Vietnam. When he arrives there he encounters hostility and trouble from all sides.
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.
Watermelon Man
Jeff Gerber, a racist insurance agent and fitness freak, lives in a typical suburban neighborhood. But Jeff's bigoted world of taunting and harassing black people on and off the job is turned upside down when his skin inexplicably turns dark overnight. As Jeff tries to come to terms with this unexplained phenomenon that has befallen him, he soon becomes the victim himself, when all of his friends and neighbors suddenly shun and harass him.