Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

30th Anniversary Special Edition

"All the films about black people up to now," director Melvin Van Peebles told Newsweek in 1971, "have been told through the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon majority-in their rhythms and speech and pace. In my film, the black audience finally gets a chance to see some of their own fantasies acted out...rising out of the mud and kicking a**."

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is the story of a young hustler (Van Peebles) whose aimless pleasure-seeking turns to radicalism after witnessing the beating of a black revolutionary by two white cops. Sweetback, driven to a state of blind rage, takes brutal revenge on the cops, forcing him into a desperate life on the run.

Despite a humble opening at only two theaters followed by a torrent of negative reviews, Sweetback mushroomed to $10,000,000 at the box office, landing it on Daily Variety's list of top-grossing independent films. It has also been widely credited as the film that kicked off the so-called "Blaxploitation" film movement.