Tired of racist stereotypes on film, Melvin Van Peebles dedicated his life to proving that cinema made by and for the Afro American community was possible, even if he had to make it using his own hands. With no prior experience or resources, in the 1960s he began to make short films in San Francisco, yet it was in Paris that he secured funding for his first feature-length film, La permission (1968). It would be an early example of cinema in which the Black community looked at itself closely in the mirror and laid claim to its own representation, with all its attendant doubts and anxieties.

Following a turbulent encounter with Hollywood, where he directed Watermelon Man (1970) for Columbia Studios, and still driven by an internal need to create, he returned to the industry’s margins. A man of many talents, he wrote, financed, produced, directed and composed the music for Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). He also played the part of the assertive, sexual and violent hero who, against expectations, does not die at the hands of the police. The film went on to be a big box office success, confirming Van Peebles as one of the great artist-producers of independent American cinema.

Van Peeble’s editing style — riotous, rapid-fire and full of groove — would lead to the birth of Blaxploitation and have an immense influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers. Batalha presents the first retrospective in Portugal dedicated to a director and artist forgotten by a certain canon of cinema history for many years, with a selection of his films and a documentary, the script of which he wrote.