Donna Dubrow

Sweet Black Film: The Birth of the Black Hero in Hollywood

In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles turned the figure of the black hero in US cinema upside down with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: the story of the making of a seminal movie that initiated the Blaxploitation movement, a short-lived but highly influential sub-genre in the years that followed.

Watermelon Man

A racist insurance agent lives in a typical suburban neighborhood. But his bigoted world of taunting and harassing black people on and off the job is turned upside down when his skin inexplicably turns dark overnight.