Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

Melvin Van Peebles financed it himself when no studio would, shot it fast with a mostly non-union crew, rated it X by an all-white jury and put that on the poster as a boast. A Black man kills two cops who are beating a suspect and runs, and the film runs with him, angry and formally wild.

It made a fortune independently and proved the audience existed, which is the entire reason the studios chased the next two hundred films on this shelf. It is also a genuine piece of avant-garde filmmaking, dedicated to all the Black people who have had enough.

Historically the most important film here, and still confrontational.