Jamaa Fanaka
Directing
Biography
Jamaa Fanaka was an American filmmaker. He is best known for his 1979 film, Penitentiary, and is one of the leading directors of the L.A. Rebellion film movement. The L.A. Rebellion film movement, sometimes referred to as the "Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers", or the UCLA Rebellion, refers to the new generation of young African and African-American filmmakers who studied at the UCLA Film School in the late-1960s to the late-1980s and have created a quality Black Cinema that provides an alternative to classical Hollywood cinema. Fanaka died on April 1, 2012.
Known For
A man is framed for murder and sent to prison. He is beaten and tortured, then forced to fight the prison's worst killer, a martial-arts fighting midget called Thud.
Penitentiary III
An ex-con, on parole and trying to straighten his life out, decides to resume his boxing career when one of his prison enemies escapes and kills his girlfriend.
Penitentiary II
A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.
Penitentiary
Written, directed, and produced by David Walker, MACKED, HAMMERED, SLAUGHTERED, & SHAFTED is an insightful examination of the blaxploitation film movement of the 1970s. Featuring interviews with key actors and filmmakers, the documentary explores the origins of blaxploitation, and the controversial history of Hollywood's most misunderstood genre.
Macked, Hammered, Slaughtered and Shafted
A naive young woman moves from the South to stay with her aunt and uncle in Compton. As an outsider, she struggles at first to find her footing, but soon falls into the middle of a community of rebellious youth. She soon becomes more and more aware of the social injustices of the big city.
Emma Mae
A young man takes over as the head of a crack dealing outfit after his brother, the gang's leader, is murdered.
Street Wars
After wrongly doing time in prison for murder, a man seeks revenge on a racist law enforcement system and the detective who framed him.
Welcome Home Brother Charles
Jamaa Fanaka’s first project plays off the Blaxploitation’s genre conventions, an adaption of Goethe’s “Faust” presented with a non-synchronous soundtrack and superimposed over a remake of Super Fly (1972). Often out of focus with an overactive camera, the film immediately exudes nervous energy, but unlike Priest’s elegant cocaine consumption in Super Fly, Willie’s arm gushes blood as he injects heroin. A morality tale in two reels. —Jan-Christopher Horak