Wednesday,
March 7
at 7pm
Reelblack
presents
How
to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company
(And
Enjoy It)
dir.
Joe Angio, USA, 2006, BetaSP, 85 mins, color
Part
icon, part iconoclast, Melvin Van Peebles is a filmmaker with
a history that's as fascinating as any of his motion pictures.
This award-winning documentary – full of rare archival footage
and unforgettable backstage stories from Spike Lee, Mario Van
Peebles, Gil Scott-Heron and others – is a carefully crafted
tale of how a young black kid from Chicago ended up making one
of the most controversial movies in American history, Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the film that sparked the
Blaxploitation era in Hollywood. But the story hardly ends there.
Director
Joe Angio playfully traces Van Peebles's path from atom-bomb-ferrying
Air Force pilot to French novelist to proto-rap singer to Wall
Street options trader... a remarkable, rollicking journey that
helps to explain where Sweet Sweetback actually got
his song.
"A
genuinely inspiring portrait of a man who has steadfastly refused
to acknowledge or respect boundaries, whether of race, nationality,
language, talent, age or anything else ..." - Andrew
O'Hehir, Salon
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