Film
Watermelon Man
- 7PM
Intro by Racquel Gates
Assistant Professor of Cinema & Media Studies at the College of Staten Island, CUNY
Just before unleashing the independent bombshell Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Melvin Van Peebles directed his only studio film, which surely stands as one of the most subversive statements of Black Power ever smuggled into a mainstream commercial comedy. Godfrey Cambridge stars (initially in whiteface) as a racist white insurance salesman who wakes up one morning to discover he’s become black—a Kafkaesque metamorphosis that yields both outré comic misunderstanding and serious social commentary.
Go to the movies just once a month and a BAM membership pays for itself.
Proto-rappers the Last Poets take their radical message to the streets of Harlem.
Isaac Hayes, Richard Pryor, and other legends commemorate the Watts Rebellion.
Melvin Van Peebles’ made-in-France, Nouvelle Vague-inspired feature debut.