Baadasssss! depicts the initial screening there as having been nearly empty, with the owners of the Grand Circus Theatre (now the Detroit Opera House) ready to deem the film a failure and clear it from the marquee, eliminating a scheduled second screening. Melvin’s son Mario told the story behind the making of Sweet Sweetback entertainingly in his 2003 film Baadasssss! Indebted and strapped for cash by the time of the film’s release, the elder Van Peebles depended on only two screenings, one in Detroit and the other in Atlanta, to generate enough word-of-mouth about Sweet Sweetback to find it distribution. The Black Power movement turned out to be the groundswell he needed. He’d had his influences, such as the French New Wave, which he’d picked up during his time writing and filmmaking in France in the early 60s but he clearly understood that forging a path for radical Black cinema in the United States presented challenges way beyond those the French New Wave confronted. Sweet Sweetback was Van Peebles’ determined attempt to make a film free from the US studio system, which was embedded in the financial streams, and subject to the ideological influence, of the US imperialist power structure as a whole. The practice of criticism is every bit as essential as the creation of art, because the critic helps to breathe new life into a given work of art and facilitates conversations about it with the spectator. Art in its many forms–literature and poetry, painting and sculpting, music and theatre and cinema–is an indispensable part of any conscious creation of a new and independent culture. In this perspective it behooves the liberation movement to define clearly the objectives of cultural resistance as an integral and determining part of the struggle.”Ĭabral considered cultural resistance “indestructible” and capable of transforming into other forms of resistance–“political, economic, armed”–at any moment. This is without doubt for the people the prime recompense for the efforts and sacrifices which war demands. When we consider these features, we see that the armed liberation struggle is not only a product of culture but also a determinant of culture. “ Consider these features inherent in an armed liberation struggle: the practice of democracy, of criticism and self criticism, the’ increasing responsibility of populations for the direction of their lives, literacy work, creation of schools and health services, training of cadres from peasant and worker backgrounds-and many other achievements. The role of culture in revolution has always been crucial to the development of oppositional thought, a point Amilcar Cabral made repeatedly, referring time and again to the importance of “ cultural resistance“: The analysis stands as a supreme example of Newton’s extensive reach as a writer and intellectual, and of the Black Panther Party’s serious dedication to cultural production and criticism. Newton’s analysis of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, written for the The Black Panther newspaper in June of 1971. To honor the late Melvin Van Peebles after his death last week at the age of 89, I am reprinting here Huey P.
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