SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4 - DOUBLE FEATURE STARTS AT 10:00 PM
Double Features on the First Saturday of the Month!
Two Movies, One Price, Infinite Taboos
About SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG
A landmark of Black and American independent cinema that would send shock waves through the culture, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was Melvin Van Peebles’s second feature film, after he walked away from a contract with Columbia in order to make his next film on his own terms.
Acting as producer, director, writer, composer, editor, and star, Van Peebles created the prototype for what Hollywood would eventually co-opt and make into the blaxploitation hero: a taciturn, perpetually blank-faced performer in a sex show, who, when he’s pushed too far by a pair of racist cops looking to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit, goes on the run through a lawless underground of bikers, revolutionaries, sex workers, and hippies in a kill-or-be-killed quest for liberation from white oppression.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’s incendiary politics are matched by Van Peebles’s revolutionary style, in which jagged jump cuts, kaleidoscopic superimpositions, and psychedelic sound design come together in a sustained howl of rage and defiance.
About DOLEMITE
"I've got an all-girl army that knows what to do! They’re foxy as hell and practice kung fu!"
A lasting testament to both rap pioneer / nightclub comic par excellence Rudy Ray Moore and the sun-bleached, smog-covered vistas of ‘70s L.A., DOLEMITE remains one of blaxploitation’s greatest achievements.
When Rudy first took his Chitlin’ Circuit act to the silver screen, few outside black neighborhoods noticed at first -- but DOLEMITE was a box office smash. His films were cheap, quickly made and technically disastrous, but they have something Hollywood could never buy: a one-of-a-kind underground comedic persona. Here, Rudy plays the greatest pimp of them all; after two years in prison on trumped-up charges, Dolemite’s back on the street and ready to settle scores.
Rudy Ray Moore’s homespun poetry will ring in your head for days, and the image of his schlubby figure executing lazy karate kicks will bring smiles to your entire audience’s faces. DOLEMITE’s original success paved the way for his three subsequent trash-terpieces: THE HUMAN TORNADO, DISCO GODFATHER and PETEY WHEATSTRAW, THE DEVIL’S SON-IN-LAW.