ACROSS 110TH STREET :

Birth of a Genre: The Black Hero Who Talks Back (HAL HINSON, August 11, 2002, NY Times)

In the beginning, there was "Sweetback." As Melvin Van Peebles explains in "Baadasssss Cinema," Isaac Julien's definitive new documentary about the history of blaxploitation films, the idea for "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" rose up in him out of a long-festering sense of frustration over what he was seeing on the screen.

"The cause I had," Mr. Van Peebles proclaims between puffs on a cigar just slightly smaller than a Louisville Slugger, "was giving black folks a sense of self that had been stolen from us. And that's how I made `Sweetback.' "

The film, about a pimp who stays one step ahead of a racist gang of cops, opened first in Detroit, on March 31, 1971, at the Grand Circus Theater, then two days later at the Coronet Theater in Atlanta - the only theaters in the country that would show it. At the time, there were no black-owned theater chains. Also, the Motion Picture Association of America had given the film an "X" rating, which meant that most theater chains wouldn't book it, primarily because most newspapers wouldn't sell advertising space to an X-rated film.

However, once Mr. Van Peebles discovered that the ratings committee was made up entirely of white men, he immediately began marketing the film as "Rated `X' by an All-White Jury."

Those first audiences probably didn't know that they were watching a movie that would launch countless imitations, spark a revolution in the motion-picture business, and open the floor for a cultural debate that rages to this day.

Here's our Brothers Judd Blaxploitation Guide (which I''m ashamed to admit has not been updated in several years). Posted by Orrin Judd at August 11, 2002 8:18 AM