Film Forum’s Tribute To A Baad Assssss

Pioneering black filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles will celebrate his 80th birthday with a surprise-filled tribute at New York’s Film Forum on Tuesday, August 21 at 7:30 pm. The director of many cult classics including 1971’s SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG inaugurated the Blaxploitation movie era and also gave African-Americans complete control of their finished products, something that filmmakers Spike Lee and others have greatly benefited from. Van Peebles is a kind of renaissance man, having been a novelist, painter, sculptor, pioneer rapper, twice-Tony-nominated Broadway playwright, local news commentator, Wall Street trader, provocateur, you name it. He will be interviewed on stage with clips shown from his most infamous film, to be followed by an invitation-only boogie down party that will certainly last till the wee hours. This is the hot ticket of the hot summer.

FFT Webmaster

The FFT Webmaster use displays whenever an article has multiple authors. It also pops up on articles from old versions of Film Festival Today. The original author byline might be missing! In that case, if you are the author of such an article and see this bio instead of your own, please send us an email. Some of our contributors that might be missing bylines are: Brad Balfour, Laura Blum, and Sandy Mandelberger, among others.