Celebrity Biographies
Melvin Van Peebles
He was considered a pioneer of African-American cinema and “blaxplotation” for directing “Watermelon Man” and “Baadasssss Song by Sweet Sweetback” in the 1970s. Melvin Van Peebles, father of fellow filmmaker Mario Van Peebles, died on September 22 of 2021, at 89 years old. “He left an indelible mark on the international cultural scene through films, novels, plays and music,” a statement from his family said. “His work remains essential.”
The son of a tailor, Melvin Van Peebles was born on August 21, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1953 with a degree in Literature, before serving for nearly four years in the United States Air Force and marrying Maria Marx, a German woman with whom he had three children, the aforementioned Mario, Megan, and Max. .
He began making shorts in 1957. As he learned more about the film-making process, he discovered that “you could make a feature film for five hundred dollars. That was the cost of 90 minutes of film,” noted Melvin Van Peebles . “Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything, for example they told me that I had to develop the film and that I had to put sound on it and I raised my hands to my head, because I didn’t know if I would have the money for it.” With his work under his arm, he moved to Hollywood, looking for a company to hire him, but he had no luck.
Ultimately, Melvin Van Peebles settled with his family in Paris. There he filmed the short Les Cinq Cent Balles (500 Francs) , from 1961) and made a living as a writer. He wrote investigative reports for “France Observateur”, and was in charge of a monthly column for the humor magazine “Hara-kiri”. He published four novels and a collection of short stories.
Melvin Van Peebles made his first feature film, La Permission , in 1968. The film caught the attention of Hollywood producers who mistook him for a French auteur, after it won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival representing the country Gallic. Van Peebles’ first Hollywood job was the Columbia Pictures comedy Watermelon Man . It tells the story of a white racist who suddenly wakes up transformed into a black man.
With his own money, and a significant help from showman Bill Cosby , he made Baadasssss Song , about a young African-American orphan who takes refuge in a Los Angeles brothel in the 1940s. The Melvin Van Peebles film was highly regarded, and He was hailed by the Black Panthers for depicting the fight for equality for African-Americans. As an actor, he took part in titles such as Tiburón, la venganza .
The director and writer is considered the greatest influence on an entire generation of African-American filmmakers, including Spike Lee and John Singleton , for his films in which the African-American community was the protagonist and which were part of the film noir boom in the US. . In the 70s.