One of the most radical formal expressions of discontent and revolt perhaps ever? "They got your brother, don't let them get you."

A landmark of Black and American independent cinema that would send shock waves through the culture, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was Melvin Van Peebles’s second feature film, after he walked away from a contract with Columbia in order to make his next film on his own terms. Acting as producer, director, writer, composer, editor, and star, Van Peebles created the prototype for what Hollywood would eventually co-opt and make into the blaxploitation hero: a taciturn, perpetually blank-faced performer in a sex show, who, when he’s pushed too far by a pair of racist cops looking to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit, goes on the run through a lawless underground of bikers, revolutionaries, sex workers, and hippies in a kill-or-be-killed quest for liberation from white oppression.

SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG is in our Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films Collector's Set. The set arrives on September 28, 2021. To learn more or pre-order, visit Criterion.com

Wow. I am a seasoned watching of horrible, nasty shit, but this film's opening scene involving a child Mario Van Peebles fucking an adult woman made me extremely uncomfortable. Really gross. While thankfully there's no more borderline child porn after that, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song remains insane. Almost plotless, it barrels towards an anti-ending. A jarring soundtrack constantly blares over everything. Dead dogs are left in Sweetback's wake. There's shocking violence. There's stupid violence. The camerawork is Jess Franco-esque. Its place in history is undeniable. I swung from hating it to loving it, from scene to scene. This film is fucked.

Waaaaay more fractured and experimental than the typical blaxploitation run and gun action I had in mind. Time slows and loops and shatters to show the lingering impact of trauma. Sweet Sweetback feels both suspended and hurried, alive and somnambulant, intimate and mythic, angry and frightened like being trapped in a neverending nightmare that is the U.S. of A at the turn of the '70s. An arty'n'gritty distillation of urban anxiety stitched together from a variety of film stock on a shoestring budget that looks better and more distinct than most movies I've peeped in a long while.

Not at all what I expected -- at times almost incomprehensible, like some caustic, revolutionary combination of Godard and Anger in its nonstop jump cuts, superimpositions, and repetitions. How long did it take to assemble this thing??

I can't imagine trying to watch this at home.

COME ON FEET
TROUBLE AIN'T NO PLACE TO BE

Folks, this rewired me. The way Glauber rewired me. The way The Three Jacks (Demy-Rivette-Tati) rewired me. The way Akerman rewired me. This is how movies MOVE. This is how thought THINKS. Perfect Los Angeles study. Those slandering this movie due to its RePeTeTiVeNeSs are the mortal enemies of funk, process, and flux — and should be dealt with accordingly.

Q&A after the NYFF 2021 retrospective showing with Mario Van Peebles, 4 days after MVP's passing. He is the greatest interlocutor.

"Nobody reading this will ever be as cool as Melvin Van Peebles." — Miriam Bale

COME ON KNEES
COME ON RUN

"Now we can't have that." -Guy on the toilet.

- Complex Top 50 Blaxploitation Films: boxd.it/1w5pa

I don't always get art.

Melvin Van Peebles did some drugs (I'm guessing) and made a movie and it's great and weird mixed with horrible and unseemly. Some of the scenes are very much not for me and a lot of the film feels unapproachable, even as someone that enjoys avant garde films. That considered, I really enjoyed the rebellious nature of a lot of the filmmaking. Some of the humor really works and I love that this aims for white power and hits hard. I just wish I enjoyed it more.

It's famous in this sub-genre, so probably yes.