https://vo.rs/tags/melvin-van-peebles/Latest from the Melvin Van Peebles desk at vo.rs.Hugo -- gohugo.ioenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/screen/sweet-sweetbacks-baadasssss-song-the-film-that-lit-the-fuse/<p>In 1971 a filmmaker named Melvin Van Peebles did something the American film industry had structurally arranged to be impossible. He wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored, and starred in a defiantly angry film about a Black man outrunning the police, financed it largely himself when no studio would touch it, released it through the cracks in the distribution system, and turned it into one of the highest-grossing independent films of its moment. <em>Sweet Sweetback&rsquo;s Baadasssss Song</em> is a rough, wild, uneven picture, and it is one of the most consequential films ever made in the United States, because of what it proved and what it set off.</p>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000