Melvin Van Peebles

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It) -- Part icon, part iconoclast, Melvin Van Peebles is a filmmaker with a history that's as fascinating as any of his motion pictures.

The Hebrew Hammer -- A Jewxploitation spoof in the vein of Shaft and Austin Powers, The Hebrew Hammer is the story of Mordechai, a handsome Orthodox Jew (a.k.a. the Semitic super stud!) hired by the Jewish Justice League after discovering that Santa's evil son -- who has come to run the North Pole after staging a coup with the help of a reindeer, Blitzen -- has plans to eradicate Hanukkah.

Part icon, part iconoclast, Melvin Van Peebles is a filmmaker with a history that's as fascinating as any of his motion pictures. This award winning documentary (full of rare achival footage and unforgettable backstage stories from Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles, Gil Scott-Heron and others) is a carefully-crafted tale of how a young black kid from Chicago ended up making one of the most controversial movies in American history, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the film that sparked the Blaxploitation era in Hollywood. But the story hardly ends there. Director Joe Angio playfully traces Van Peebles' path from atom-bomb-ferrying Air Force pilot to French novelist to proto-rap singer to Wall Street options trader-- a remarkable journey that helps to explain where Sweet Sweetback actually got his song.

Godfrey Cambridge stars in this outrageous comedy directed by maverick filmmaker Melvin Van Peeples (Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song). Jeff Gerber (Cambridge) seems to have it all: a successful career, a nice suburban home, a progressive-thinking wife (Academy Award®-winner Estelle Parsons, Best Supporting Actress, Bonne and Clyde, 1967) and two cute children. But he's also a loud-mouthed racist who wakes up one morning to discover he's turned into a black man. The doctor's have no explanation and no cure for his sudden change. Suddenly, Gerber is a white bigot in black skin who has todeal with a shocked family, intolerant neighbors, cold shoulders at the office and a back seat on the bus!