Badasssss!
 |
Friday, September 15 @ 7 pm Ron Slaughter, professor at Alabama A&M University and founder of the AAMU African Cinema Series will lead a post-viewing discussion. |
|
THE FILM "Baadasssss!" is Mario Van Peebles's half documentary/half homage to his father Melvin's 1971 film, "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." It shows Melvin's struggles to get a dramatic film made using a crew that was 50 percent minorities. That was groundbreaking for 1971 and is noted as a landmark in the birth of African American cinema. That film also broke box office records for an independent film and ultimately paved the way for other films targeted to the African American audience like "Shaft" and "Superfly." This 2003 film is rated R for strong language and some sexual content. AWARDS 2004 Philadelphia
Film Festival -- Audience Award (Best Feature Film) REVIEWS "One of the best movies I've seen about the making of a movie." 4 out of 4 stars!! -- Roger Ebert "Baadasssss! vibrates with crazy energy and cartoon-like perfs. It's packed with Hollywood wiseguys, self-promoting hotties, craven agents, hippie stoners, porn purveyors, ghetto hotheads, and miscellaneous white weirdos." -- Village Voice. "It's a funny, plausible account of the daily disasters, financial shortfalls and hastily improvised solutions that shape most independent films. But the production also functions as a veiled yet moving account of a complicated father-and-son relationship ..." -- New York Times WEBSITE |