7/6/2023 0 Comments Panther melvin van peebles![]() ![]() The difference being, off screen, unlike Lee, a film school graduate and child of an accomplished session musician, Van Peebles led a remarkably large, rangy life. It plays now like a precursor to “Lovers Rock,” director Steve McQueen’s acclaimed 2020 movie about a house party in which nothing at all happens, just another Saturday night.ĭirector Melvin Van Peebles photographed in his home on 56th St. Like any good party, you feel happy, disoriented, buzzed then grateful. He lingers on faces, giving great songs (written by himself) room to wow. ![]() It’s the last word in the boxset, and though it never feels like more than a recording of a stage production - which is really what it is - it’s also a reminder of how devoted Van Peebles was to telling ordinary stories of people of color. He was onto “Don’t Play Us Cheap,” an exuberant adaptation of his own Broadway musical, about a house party. Less than 20 years later, Van Peebles had already switched gears. It offers desolate cityscapes and an attention to everyday oppression that promises a young filmmaker steeped in the neorealism of Rossellini. Most striking, the black-and-white “Three Pickup Men for Herrick” (1957), shot a decade after leaving Chicago. At one end of “Essential Films,” you meet a trio of shorts he made in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His curiosity and ready commitment to social justice - “Sweetback” was famously dedicated “to all the Black brothers and sisters who have had enough of the Man” - never did suggest someone who was in it for money. ![]()
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