3 showings at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival - YO MELVIN!!!

Thu, Apr 28 / 9:00pm
Pace Schimmel Center
$10.00

Fri, Apr 29 / 7:15pm
Regal Battery Park 8
$10.00

Sat, Apr 30 / 10:00pm
Regal Battery Park 6
$10.00

I saw this documentary at an advance screening and I must say that I had no ideas how diversified a career filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles has had. After seeing "Baadasssssss" last year (by his son Mario Van Peebles) I figured he was just another frustrated independent filmmaker. However, he had three or four entirely separate careers as a recording artist who developed his own sing-speech style (before rap), a novelist in France, a playwright on Broadway, and a Wall Street stock trader in NYC. He obviously doesn't like to blow his own horn because I hadn't heard of any of his other accomplishments as well as his influences on future generations of African-American artists. This documentary is loaded with interviews from a range of people who have been affected by his life, from friends and family members to fellow artists Gil Scott-Heron and Spike Lee. If you like biographical dictionaries then this one is a real eye-opener that shows how one man overcame the stigma of being black while eating his watermelon too! Check this one out, Melvin Van Peebles rocks!!!