Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films

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The explosive style and unfiltered expression of blackness that jolted American independent cinema to new life
Five-Blu-ray special edition box set
Director, writer, composer, actor, and one-man creative revolutionary Melvin Van Peebles jolted American independent cinema to new life with his explosive stylistic energy and unfiltered expression of Black consciousness.

Though he undeniably altered the course of film history with the anarchic Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, that pop-culture bombshell is just one piece of a remarkably varied career that has also encompassed forays into European art cinema (The Story of a Three Day Pass), mainstream Hollywood comedy (Watermelon Man), and Broadway musicals (Don’t Play Us Cheap).

Each facet of Van Peebles’s renegade genius is on display in this collection of four films, a tribute to a transformative artist whose caustic social observation, radical formal innovation, and uncompromising vision established a new cinematic model for Black creative independence.

Also included in the set is Baadasssss!, a chronicle of the production of Sweet Sweetback made by Van Peebles’s son Mario Van Peebles—and starring the younger Van Peebles as Melvin.

Special Edition Features
4K digital restorations of all four films, approved by filmmaker Mario Van Peebles
"Baadasssss!", a 2003 feature film
New interviews with Mario Van Peebles, Elvis Mitchell, Warrington Hudlin, and Nelson George
New interviews with Gerald R. Butters Jr., Novotny Lawrence, and Amy Abugo Ongiri
Audio commentaries, introductions to the films, documentaries, archival interviews and short films