February 16, 2007

Tonight: A Documentary on Melvin Van Peebles

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How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) is premiering on The Independent Film Channel at 9 p.m. tonight. It’s a biographical documentary on Melvin Van Peebles, who grandfathered blaxspoitation cinema with Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song in 1971, and has created 11 other films and seven plays in his career.

“I wanted a movie that black people could walk out of standing tall,” Van Peebles explains. “I didn’t see the type of movie I wanted to see so I made it myself.” How he has done so again and again, despite all odds, is what this documentary shows best.

Read the rest of this post on The Riff.

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With just hours left, we need a huge surge in reader support to get to our $400,000 year-end goal. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters. All gifts are 3X matched and tax-deductible.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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