A documentary as breathless as its subject, RUNNIN' MAN manages to pack into 26 minutes 40 years in the life of Melvin Van Peebles, known to most as writer-director-composer-actor of SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAAADASS SONG, arguably the only Blaxploitation film worthy of the epithet 'great'; but he is truly what used to be called a Renaissance man - novelist, musician, stock trader, activist, astronomer etc. He prefers to be called a Survivor.
40 years into 26 minutes doesn't go, and the headlong rush of disparate achievement leaves us pondering one interviewer's accusation, that Van Peebles is a jack of all trades. The facts are these - one of the first black men in the US air force, he left the uncongenial political atmosphere of his home country for Europe, in particular a Paris always open to artistic bravery.
Having directed a few shoestring shorts, he discovered a French law whereby novelists could get grants for filming their work. Novels promptly written, he made an extraordinary feature about interracial love, visualising the white woman's fear of consummation as tribal cannibal rape. The film won a prestigious American award, and Van Peebles was flooded with Hollywood offers, it being assumed he was a (white) Dutch auteur. In the heated climate of the late 60s, Van Peebles became a prominent sympathiser of the Black Panthers, but turned out a few compromised Hollywood 'liberal' films.
Angry that Hollywood had earmarked him for the role of token black director, he took Columbia's money, and produced with complete independence, starring, as the credits boasted, 'The Black Community', SWEETBACK, a film, despite its flaws and contentious assumptions, still sings with savagery and beauty. It was the bomb with black audiences in America, who saw it as the first truly black film, and went on to become the highest grossing independent feature of all time.
Reactionary whites were predictable appalled at such an aggressive celebration of black experience, one that showed indifference to cosy, compromised accommodation. The happy ending didn't help either - violent rebels should be punished. Hollywood responded by blacklisting Van Peebles, banning the film from export until recently, and creating its own neutered blaxploitation movies in response. But Van Peebles kept on going, writing revolutionary Broadway shows and bestselling novels.
I said that these were the facts - the problem is that the documentary is too one-sided, or at least, one-voiced. There is little contribution from the man himself besides repeated shots of him jogging, and wonderful archive footage. There are no interviews with film or cultural critics, or other directors or politicians to put this extraordinary man in context. The metaphor of running (a motif, er, running through all his work) is overextended, suggesting flight rather than confrontation. Still, there's lots of priceless clips from his very-difficult-to-see early films, lovely Van Peebles music, often cited as an early influence on hip-hop, and a tone of deserved righteous homage.
40 years into 26 minutes doesn't go, and the headlong rush of disparate achievement leaves us pondering one interviewer's accusation, that Van Peebles is a jack of all trades. The facts are these - one of the first black men in the US air force, he left the uncongenial political atmosphere of his home country for Europe, in particular a Paris always open to artistic bravery.
Having directed a few shoestring shorts, he discovered a French law whereby novelists could get grants for filming their work. Novels promptly written, he made an extraordinary feature about interracial love, visualising the white woman's fear of consummation as tribal cannibal rape. The film won a prestigious American award, and Van Peebles was flooded with Hollywood offers, it being assumed he was a (white) Dutch auteur. In the heated climate of the late 60s, Van Peebles became a prominent sympathiser of the Black Panthers, but turned out a few compromised Hollywood 'liberal' films.
Angry that Hollywood had earmarked him for the role of token black director, he took Columbia's money, and produced with complete independence, starring, as the credits boasted, 'The Black Community', SWEETBACK, a film, despite its flaws and contentious assumptions, still sings with savagery and beauty. It was the bomb with black audiences in America, who saw it as the first truly black film, and went on to become the highest grossing independent feature of all time.
Reactionary whites were predictable appalled at such an aggressive celebration of black experience, one that showed indifference to cosy, compromised accommodation. The happy ending didn't help either - violent rebels should be punished. Hollywood responded by blacklisting Van Peebles, banning the film from export until recently, and creating its own neutered blaxploitation movies in response. But Van Peebles kept on going, writing revolutionary Broadway shows and bestselling novels.
I said that these were the facts - the problem is that the documentary is too one-sided, or at least, one-voiced. There is little contribution from the man himself besides repeated shots of him jogging, and wonderful archive footage. There are no interviews with film or cultural critics, or other directors or politicians to put this extraordinary man in context. The metaphor of running (a motif, er, running through all his work) is overextended, suggesting flight rather than confrontation. Still, there's lots of priceless clips from his very-difficult-to-see early films, lovely Van Peebles music, often cited as an early influence on hip-hop, and a tone of deserved righteous homage.