Robert Deniro and Jamaa Fanaka clubbing in 1980
Probably best known for the 1979 prison noir film, Peniteniery, director Jamaa Fanaka made 2 incredible films (Emma Mae (1975) and Welcome Home,Brother Charles (1976)) while he was still a film student at UCLA. Thankful for the Blaxploitation film boom but looking to break out of the structural and narrative confines of the genre, Fanaka’s films spoke to the universality of the human experience and the nature of myth. After interviewing him, I felt I had just scratched the surface with this underappreciated auteur. You can find the interview here: http://waxpoetics.com/issues/issue_32/
