[Source: BBC]
Pioneering filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, dubbed the “godfather of black cinema”, has died aged 89, with directors Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay and Barry Jenkins leading the tributes.
Van Peebles, famous for 1970s films including Watermelon Man and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, died at home in New York on Tuesday.
A family statement paid tribute to his “relentless innovation”.
Oscar-winner Lee said: “Damn, we have lost another giant!”
Van Peebles’ son and long-time creative collaborator, actor Mario Van Peebles, said: “Dad knew that black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth?
He made the comedy Watermelon Man in 1970 comedy, about a white, racist 60s-era insurance salesman who wakes up to find he is black.
Van Peebles’ breakthrough came with a year later with Sweetback, a Blaxploitation film about of a black man trying to escape white police officers – it was the highest grossing independent film in history at the time.
The director said all films up until then had been told through the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon majority, and the film became required viewing for members of the Black Panther political group.
