How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company

A prolific and multi-talented artist, Melvin Van Peebles boasts a life story as provocative and category-defying as the best of his work. A pioneer in film, music, and beyond, Van Peebles made his name with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the controversial 1971 feature he self-produced outside of the Hollywood system, indelibly changing the face of independent cinema and launching the Blaxploitation era. Playfully chronicling Van Peebles’ astonishing and unexpected journey comprised of, among a long list of accomplishments, turns as an Air Force pilot, Broadway playwright, French novelist, Wall Street trader and civil rights activist, this award-winning documentary illuminates an artist and man whose groundbreaking impact on film, politics and pop culture remains as relevant as ever.