In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles turned the figure of the black hero in US cinema upside down with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: the story of the making of a seminal movie that initiated the Blaxploitation movement, a short-lived but highly influential sub-genre in the years that followed.

A racist insurance agent lives in a typical suburban neighborhood. But his bigoted world of taunting and harassing black people on and off the job is turned upside down when his skin inexplicably turns dark overnight.