Comment on this story Also Screening... In addition to the Baadasssss! opening at Regal West Town, the Knoxville African American Film Festival will screen six adult features and four youth-oriented films at Knoxville Museum of Art on Aug. 20, 21 and 22. Scheduled adult films include: Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius Hook Mitchell: Some consider Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell to be The Greatest Never—the greatest basketball player who never made it to the NBA, that is. An Oakland street-hoops legend and childhood peer of current National Basketball Association stars Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, and J.R. Rider, Mitchell made bad choices, winding up behind bars while his friends went on to earn millions in pro ball. This documentary tells his story. Soldiers of the Rock: Set underground, Soldiers depicts the life of poor South African blacks who do the brutal work of manning the country’s famed, fabulously abundant gold mines. Action-filled and claustrophobic, the drama serves as a window to the souls of lonely, oppressed men. Allergic to Nuts: A half-hour short about a divorcee who throws a dinner party for her eccentric best friends—her first social event as a single woman in a new home. The Pen: Like The Red Violin before it, Pen follows an inanimate object—in this instance, a strange antique fountain pen—as it passes through the lives of an alcoholic businesswoman, a former gang member gone straight, and a young mother in the throes of post-partum depression. A Place of Our Own: In the 1940s and ’50s, Martha’s Vineyard was a haven for a select group of upwardly mobile African Americans. This movie explores their lot, and the conflicts inherent to “staying true to the race” while becoming ever more connected to the mainstream of a predominantly white society. Stone Mansion: A black doctor and his wife face an agonizing choice during Florida’s catastrophic Tulsa Race Riots of 1921—flee with their lives, or weather the violence and defend their beautiful home. Youth films: Gettin’ Grown: Eric, an inner-city kid in Milwaukee, walks to a local pharmacy for his mother on the eve of his 12th birthday. His seemingly simple errand evolves into a series of trials and temptations that expedite his journey into manhood. Dreadlocks and the Three Bears: The classic tale of Goldilocks is recast as an essay on cultural identity in this 13-minute short, which employs the work of several African-American collage artists to relate the narrative. Rappin’ Granny: A prize-winning short parody by filmmaker Tim Greene, also known as Ya Grandma’s a Gangsta. The Other Side: Two little girls in the Deep South of the 1950s, one black and one white, become close friends in spite of class differences and segregation.

The inaugural Knoxville African American Film Festival kicks off with a tribute to classic blaxploitation

by Mike Gibson

In 1970, neophyte director Melvin Van Peebles set out to make a movie with African Americans cast as principles rather than servants and second bananas; a movie that wrought all kinds of havoc with cartoonish racial stereotypes of the day; a movie that stuck it to The Man. Unable to find financial backing, he scrounged, borrowed, and wheedled; he worked on the fringes of legality and good taste; he went deeply in debt and nearly lost his eyesight in completing Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a gritty, funky fable about a pimp who goes on the lam after killing two bad cops. SSBS would go on to become the top-grossing independent film of 1971, and is now recognized as the first blaxploitation flick, beating the better-known Shaft by several months.

Local fitness trainer and Fitness Focus proprietor Mike Moore found out how Van Peebles must have felt when he tried to organize Knoxville’s first African American Film Festival. Unable to find backers, Moore scrounged, borrowed, and wheedled; and he pushed the limits of the city’s chaste cultural inclinations. And though his eyesight is just fine, thank you, he took as his own the final burden of making the festival happen by underwriting it himself.

It’s only fitting, then, that the anchor of the inaugural Knoxville African American Film Festival (KAAFF) will be the East Tennessee premiere of Baadasssss!, actor/director Mario Van Peebles’ depiction of the trials his father endured in making the ’71 movie. The KAAFF runs August 19 through 22, with Baadasssss! premiering on Thursday the 19th at Regal West Town Theatre, and 10 more films screening at Knoxville Museum of Art; Mario Van Peebles will appear and speak at the Thursday showing.

“Melvin Van Peebles gambled tremendously in making his movie, and I feel kind of the same, in a way,” says Moore. “It took some humongous balls to do what he did. People like Spike Lee and John Singleton wouldn’t be where they are today if it wasn’t for Melvin.”

A self-professed film buff, Moore was a fan of classic black cinema from decades past, of brilliant black performers like Harry Bellafonte and Sidney Poitier. “There was so much talent and professionalism that went into some of that work,” Moore says.

“I really wanted my daughter to experience those kinds of role models on screen,” he continues. “Today it seems like every film with black actors is some kind of comedy, something with a lot of stereotypes, something that’s not very enlightening.”

Moore searched the internet and happened upon a website for the San Francisco Black Film Festival. Founded by Bay-area events planner Ave Montague, the SFBFF has grown in stature over the six years since its inception to the point that some are now touting it as the “Black Sundance.”

“Initially, I actually had to defend why we needed a black film festival here,” Montague says. “You could find a film festival every week in San Francisco, for every ethnicity, but nothing for African Americans. Now that we’re here, and we’ve given those filmmakers a voice, a few of them have gone on to do some very significant things.”

At the urgings of Montague and a former fitness client who worked for the Knox-based Regal Cinemas, Moore sought to bring the recently released Baadasssss! to town for the weekend of the festival. Mario Van Peebles, who produced the film in addition to directing and starring in it, was happy to oblige, and delayed the film’s previously scheduled Knoxville debut in order to align the premiere with KAAFF.

Less agreeable were potential sponsors who initially supported Moore’s efforts, but balked at the prospect of making the Van Peebles film with its racy title the festival’s headlining feature. A local church-affiliated non-profit even elected not to be the charitable recipient of KAAFF profits, on the grounds that it “didn’t align with church values.”

“This community can be very conservative,” Moore says. “There were people who decided they wanted to drop out. Some people think it’s better to not make any waves than to make something good happen. But I held on to the belief that some would see this in a progressive light, as an opportunity.”

What the doubters fail to recognize, says Moore, is the larger significance of Baadasssss!—as the story of one man’s struggle to give African Americans a hand in shaping their own cultural identity. (Melvin Van Peebles reportedly turned down a movie deal with Columbia prior to shooting Baadasssss! because he didn’t want to dilute the potency of his filmmaking and serve as the major studio’s “token niggerologist.”)

“I think the ‘70s were a time where African Americans were looking to be themselves by any means necessary—the afros, the clothes, whatever,” Moore says. “Characters like Shaft or Sweetback seem like stereotypes now, but back then they were almost revolutionary for blacks on film. They weren’t in these subservient roles. They weren’t getting beaten up all the time. They represented images blacks wanted to see of themselves.”

Along with Regal, the Knoxville Museum of Art (which will host the whole of the festival outside of the Baadasssss! premiere), and a handful of supporters, Moore, just like Melvin Van Peebles before him, finally won out in bringing a black film festival to Knoxville. But it wasn’t until he accepted financial responsibility for any shortfalls that KAAFF was assured. “When I decided to underwrite the thing myself, that’s when we got the go-ahead,” Moore says.

If the festival finishes in the black, Moore says KAAFF will become an annual affair; any proceeds from this year’s event will go toward next year’s festival, and toward founding a local film society.

“Actually seeing Baadasssss! is what ultimately helped me decide to make this thing happen,” Moore says. “It made me think, ‘This guy almost lost his eyesight, his money, his kids. He put it all on the line. I can at least do this much.’”

August 19, 2004 Vol. 14, No. 34 © 2004 Metro Pulse