Screening: Sweet Sweetback’s Badassss Song

April 16 | 5:00 pm (Pacific)

Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song

Mario van Peebles introduces his father Melvin’s remarkable film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, recently named to the National Film Registry. MoMA restored the film photochemically from the camera negative and track negative with Melvin’s approval in 2006. The film was funded with support from The Film Foundation. The work was done by Cinetech.   In 2017, Xenon Pictures and Vinegar Syndrome were allowed access to the camera negative to 4k scan for Bluray distribution. What you are watching here is from their digital restoration.

Released 50 years ago, Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song opened the door not only for black filmmaking but for independent movies in general. Included in MoMA’s permanent collection and considered to be among the most significant features ever by an African-American filmmaker, Sweet Sweetback is a brutal and shocking story of survival and is credited as one of the first blaxploitation films.

Director/writer/producer/editor/composer Melvin Van Peebles stars as a black orphan raised in a brothel and groomed to be a sex show performer. Set up by his boss and two corrupt cops for a murder he didn’t commit, Sweetback escapes custody and is thrust into an increasingly hallucinogenic world of violence and bigotry where no one can be trusted, and the possibility of death lurks at every corner. Featuring a rousing score from a nascent Earth, Wind, & Fire, as well as surrealist visuals from stalwart genre cinematographer Robert Maxwell (THE CANDY SNATCHERS), Van Peebles creates an unforgettable study of perseverance in the face of racism.

In 2020, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was named to the National Film Registry.

Actor/director/writer/producer Mario Van Peebles, who made his acting debut  playing a younger version of his father Melvin’s character in Sweet Sweetback, is the keynote speaker on Friday and will talk about film, art, and the impact of his father’s work.

AMIA thanks Katie Trainor of MoMA , Vinegar Syndrome and Mario and Melvin van Peebles for the screening.