Talk about a chip off the old block: 30-something years after Melvin Van Peebles shook up Hollywood with his revolutionary blaxploitation movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, his son Melvin cooks up this docudrama 'making of'. Casting himself as his director daddy, Melvin recreates Sweetback's shoestring production about a sex show worker who goes on the run after killing a couple of racist cops. The result is a unique father/son remake/biopic/tribute movie that sings the sweet song of success.

Hailed by the Black Panthers as a revolutionary masterpiece, Sweetback smashed box office records in 1971 (Van Peebles Snr, who funded it with a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby, was quids in after it scooped $10 million). But the success of this New Jack cinema outing came at a cost: Van Peebles lost the sight in one eye, caught gonorrhea during a sex scene and - according to Baadasssss! - wasn't much of a father to his son Mario.

"ONE BIG HUSTLE"

Recreating early 70s radicalism with only a few bucks in pocket change and some dodgy looking fake Afros, Baadasssss! dramatises the attempts of this "broke, pissed off nigger from Chicago down to his last cigar" to fight the power. It's filmmaking as one big hustle - and Mario plays his visionary father warts'n'all, as he turns manipulative, bullying and neglectful of his paternal duty. Undeniably rough around the edges, it deserves unlimited kudos as a love (and hate) letter from filmmaking son to filmmaking daddy. A cinematic one-off.