UNCUT Independent Film Forum: April 2007

Featuring

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)

This award-winning documentary (with rare archival footage and commentary from Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles, Gil Scott-Heron, and others) is a carefully crafted tale of how a young black kid from Chicago ended up making one of the most controversial movies in American history, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the film that sparked the Blaxploitation era in Hollywood.

The documentary playfully traces Melvin Van Peebles's path from atom-bomb–ferrying Air Force pilot to French novelist to proto-rap singer to Wall Street options trader—a remarkable, rollicking journey that helps to explain where Sweet Sweetback actually got his song.

Dir Joe Angio, USA 2006, 85 minutes