For the totally uninitiated, blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged towards the end of the African-American civil rights movement. These movies featured black casts, were intended for black audiences, and considered somewhat controversial. The most recognized example of blaxploitation is also one of the first: Shaft, a 1971 movie starring Richard Roundtree and blessed with an unforgettable soundtrack by Isaac Hayes.
Blaxploitation’s influence on pop culture is vastly underappreciated, though most recently the 2009 comedic film Black Dynamite brought some well-deserved attention to it again. While the movie is great and most everyone involved in its creation is an educated connoisseur of blaxploitation, a lot of people who’ve seen it are not. When you take the genre as solely light entertainment, you lose valuable context.
Here are four excellent documentaries about black cinema I’d recommend to anyone. They’re entertaining, educational, and fair. As much as I love blaxploitation, there’s no denying it can be critiqued, and I appreciate hearing the wide spectrum of opinions about it. Between YouTube, Netflix and DVD, you should be able to watch these all. Please feel free to share your own recommendations. The history of blaxploitation is just as interesting to me as the films themselves!
Black Hollywood: Blaxploitation and Advancing An Independent Black Cinema (1984)
Is there a better way to begin an educational video than with Paul Mooney doing standup comedy? Probably not.
I really loved this documentary. It cuts a wide swath into the history of black cinema, including an excerpted performance by Sidney Poitier so powerful I had to go back and watch it twice. Now that man is a real bad motherfucker.
Black Hollywood features not only contemporary (for the time) actors, but a lot of frank discussion from other people in the moviemaking business, which I found refreshing given our current climate, which is more conducive to shallow press releases and “making-of” documentaries that are actually made after the fact. Also, Grandmaster Flash is played over the opening and ending credits. Need I say more?
Baadasssss Cinema – A Bold Look at 70′s Blaxploitation Films (2003)
This is the light and fluffy documentary of the bunch. It briskly runs under an hour and features a lot of familiar faces, including director Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson. As you might imagine, there’s a lot of discussion of Jackie Brown, Tarantino’s ode to blaxploitation and perhaps his greatest movie.
In this doc you also get to hear from blaxploitation luminaries such as Pam Grier (Jackie Brown, Coffy), Fred Williamson (Black Caesar), Gloria Hendry (Black Belt Jones), and even… Melvin Van Peebles. Which brings us to the next documentary:
How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) (2005)
Meet Melvin Van Peebles.
No really, you should. He’s AWESOME.
That’s the primary thing I took away from this excellent biography, which goes over his life as well as the circumstances of his movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), the most controversial blaxploitation film ever made.
Melvin Van Peebles is an artist first and foremost, and it’s a pleasure to hear about his insane, wildly productive life. This guy is an American treasure for sure.
Continuing the Van Peebles love, we finally arrive at:
Melvin Van Peebles’ Classified X (1998)
This doc gives special focus to the cultural landscape which led to blaxploitation, seen through the eyes of Melvin Van Peebles himself, the man who would eventually become so fed up that he’d write, direct, fund and star in one of the first blaxploitation movies ever made, and the most countercultural in vision.
He also traces the emergence of independent black cinema, which occurred long before the word “blaxploitation” even existed. These aren’t historical references compiled by diligent researchers, but a history of experience, related by the person who lived it, the same person who developed such a creative fire in his belly that he birthed the film deemed required viewing by the Black Panther Party.
If Van Peeble’s Sweetback is a political manifesto, then this doc serves as the preamble, providing his perspective on life and cinema before blaxploitation hit the scene, in case you weren’t around then. Or just weren’t paying attention.
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Watched the first documentary a few days ago when you twitter it..
It pretty much changed how I view black actors and the roles they played up to 1984. I now have movies in my backlog, like Gone with the Wind, that I will view from a very different perspective.
And like someone mentioned in one of the comments, this film came out right before movies like Beverly Hills Cop became big and it makes you appreciate just how powerful of a movie it was.
Will check out the rest.
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