Melvin Van Peebles – Filmmaker, actor, composer, playwright, novelist Born August 21, 1932; died September 21, 2021 Melvin Van Peebles, who has died aged 89, was a filmmaker, writer, and renaissance man, whose film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), gave voice to contemporary African American experience in a way that had been little seen previously. Despite industry resistance to it being made at all, Van Peebles wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film, as well as composing its soundtrack. His tenacity paid off, and after hustling it into cinemas, the film make around $14 million at the box office. It also kickstarted a wave of independent features made by and starring black talents who more often than not had been previously relegated to bit part status. The so-called blaxploitation era briefly changed all that, with the films produced acquiring a cult status that influenced future generations of film-makers, from Spike Lee to Quentin Tarantino. Van Peebles re
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.