Director, writer, composer, actor, and one-man creative revolutionary MELVIN VAN PEEBLES jolted American independent
cinema to new life with his explosive stylistic energy and unfiltered expression of Black consciousness. Though he undeniably
altered the course of film history with the anarchic Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, that pop-culture bombshell is just
one piece of a remarkably varied career that has also encompassed forays into European art cinema (The Story of a Three
Day Pass), mainstream Hollywood comedy (Watermelon Man), and Broadway musicals (Don’t Play Us Cheap). Each facet
of Van Peebles’s renegade genius is on display in this collection of four films, a tribute to a transformative artist whose
caustic social observation, radical formal innovation, and uncompromising vision established a new cinematic model for
Black creative independence. Also included in the set is Baadasssss!, a chronicle of the production of Sweet Sweetback
made by Van Peebles’s son Mario Van Peebles—and starring the younger Van Peebles as Melvin.