Hollywood needs to give props to Blaxploitation films
Shaft, Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones, Superfly. These are some of the top movies from the so-called Blaxploitation movie era. But what Hollywood and many people who poo-poo these movies and the lesser known ones of the era is that it was “Blaxploitation” that laid the groundwork for the big budget action movies we enjoy today. Let’s get into it. Melvin Van Peebles Actor, filmmaker, and writer Melvin Van Peebles was shut out by Hollywood in the late 1950s, even though he’d been involved in filmmaking and made two short films. But that didn’t discourage Van Peebles from learning his craft and making history. Of course, he had to leave the country to do it. Van Peebles went to France, learned French and wrote the novel, La Permission , which was adapted into his first feature film, The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967). This is what the movie was about: The film tells the story of Turner, a black U.S. Army G.I. stationed in France whose...
