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BaadAsssss Cinema is a 2002 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary film describes a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, directed
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and crew in the making of a film. They control a film's artistic and dramatic aspects, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien is an installation artist and filmmaker.-Biography:Julien graduated from St Martin's School of Art in 1985, where he studied painting and fine art film...
. Julien looks at the Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1971. These exploitation films were made specifically for an urban, black audience. The word itself is a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation," and was coined in the early 1970s by the Los Angeles NAACP head, and...
era of the 1970s in this hour long documentary.
Plot
With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking
Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, shooting, editing, directing and distribution to an audience...
acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. Features interviews with some of the genre's biggest stars, like Fred Williamson
Fred Williamson
Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is an American actor, architect, and former professional American football defensive back who played mainly in the American Football League during the 1960s.-Football career:...
, Pam Grier
Pam Grier
Pamela Suzette "Pam" Grier is an American actress. She became famous in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison and blaxploitation films such as 1974's Foxy Brown. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino's film...
, and Richard Roundtree
Richard Roundtree
Richard Roundtree is an American actor and former fashion model. He is best known for his portrayal of private detective John Shaft in the 1971 film Shaft and in its two sequels, Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa .-Personal life:Born in Crenshaw, Mississippi,Richard Roundtree graduated from...
. Director Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin "Block" Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer.He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African American focused films...
discusses the historical importance of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American independent drama film, written, produced, scored, directed by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles, father of actor Mario Van Peebles . It tells the picaresque story of a poor African American man on his flight from the white authority...
. For a contemporary perspective, the excitable Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and occasional actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
offers his spirited commentary and author/critic bell hooks
Bell hooks
Gloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing has focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination...
provides some scholarly social analysis.
The music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
of Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1971. These exploitation films were made specifically for an urban, black audience. The word itself is a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation," and was coined in the early 1970s by the Los Angeles NAACP head, and...
films is discussed, focusing on Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Lee Mayfield was an American soul, R&B, and funk singer, songwriter, and record producer best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions and for composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Super Fly. For these works and others, he is highly regarded as a pioneer of funk and...
's Super Fly and Isaac Hayes
Isaac Hayes
Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer, and occasionally an actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter...
' Shaft
Shaft (1971 film)
Shaft is a 1971 American blaxploitation film directed by Gordon Parks, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. An action film with elements of film noir, Shaft tells the story of a black private detective, John Shaft, who travels through Harlem and to the Italian mob neighborhoods in order to find the...
. Interviews with writer/director Larry Cohen
Larry Cohen
Lawrence G. "Larry" Cohen is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter. He is best known as a B-Movie auteur of horror and science fiction films - often containing a police procedural element - during 1970s and 1980s...
and film historian Armond White
Armond White
Armond White is a New York-based film and music critic. He is known for his provocative and idiosyncratic film criticism, which has often been described as contrarian. He is currently the lead film critic for the alternative weekly New York Press...
are also featured. BaadAsssss Cinema was originally shown on the Independent Film Channel
Independent Film Channel
The Independent Film Channel is an American cable TV network that airs independent film and related programming. IFC programming includes feature-length films, original documentaries, shorts, animated series, original series, and content exclusively for the web...
in August 2002 as part of a week-long Blaxploitation film festival.
Contributors
Larry Cohen
Larry Cohen
Lawrence G. "Larry" Cohen is an American film producer, director, and screenwriter. He is best known as a B-Movie auteur of horror and science fiction films - often containing a police procedural element - during 1970s and 1980s...
Ron Finley
Ron Finley
Ron Finley is a Los Angeles-based fashion designer to professional athletes, and a collector of original blaxploitation posters. His poster collection was featured in Miramax¡¯s book on the era, What It Is, What It Was....
Pam Grier
Pam Grier
Pamela Suzette "Pam" Grier is an American actress. She became famous in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison and blaxploitation films such as 1974's Foxy Brown. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino's film...
Ed Guerrero
Ed Guerrero
Ed Guerrero is an African-American film historian and professor of film and African-American studies at New York University. Professor Guerrero's influential books explore black cinema, its movies, culture and critical discourse. Ed Guerrero's books are: Framing Blackness: The African American...
Gloria Hendry
Gloria Hendry
Gloria Hendry is an American actress. She is sometimes credited as "Gloria Henry."-Career:Hendry began her acting career in the 1968 Sidney Poitier film For Love of Ivy....
bell hooks
Bell hooks
Gloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing has focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination...
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After Jackson became involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas, before meeting his...
Elvis Mitchell
Elvis Mitchell
Elvis Mitchell is an American film critic, host of the public radio show The Treatment, and visiting lecturer at Harvard University. He has served as a film critic for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the LA Weekly, The Detroit Free Press, and The New York Times.-Life and career:Mitchell was born in...
Afeni Shakur
Afeni Shakur
Afeni Shakur Davis is an American music businesswoman, philanthropist, former political activist and ex-Black Panther. She is the mother of the late Tupac Shakur...
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and occasional actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin "Block" Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer.He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African American focused films...
Armond White
Armond White
Armond White is a New York-based film and music critic. He is known for his provocative and idiosyncratic film criticism, which has often been described as contrarian. He is currently the lead film critic for the alternative weekly New York Press...
Fred Williamson
Fred Williamson
Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is an American actor, architect, and former professional American football defensive back who played mainly in the American Football League during the 1960s.-Football career:...
Isaac Hayes
Isaac Hayes
Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer, and occasionally an actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter...
¡ª archive footage
Roy Innis
Roy Innis
Roy Emile Alfredo Innis is an African American civil rights activist. He has been National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality since his election to the position in 1968....
¡ª archive footage
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to form...
¡ª archive footage
Ron O'Neal
Ron O'Neal
Ron O'Neal was an American actor, director and screenwriter...
¡ª archive footage
Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director...
¡ª archive footage
External links
BaadAsssss Cinema at the Independent Film Channel
Independent Film Channel
The Independent Film Channel is an American cable TV network that airs independent film and related programming. IFC programming includes feature-length films, original documentaries, shorts, animated series, original series, and content exclusively for the web...
