Van Peebles a famous actor has died at home in New York on Tuesday 21st of September 2021. The cause of his death has not been released to the public.
Oscar-winner Lee said: “Damn, we have lost another giant!”
Short Bio
Van Peebles came out with a degree in literature and added the Van to his name after studying with the Dutch National Theatre, following a short stint with the US Air Force.
Peebles also worked as an artist, writer, director, musician, and novelist and studied astronomy.
In his first film, The Story of a Three-Day Pass, he portrays a Black US soldier who is demoted for fraternizing with a white girl in France, which helped him get noticed in Hollywood. Columbia Pictures then signed him to direct Watermelon Man.
He made the comedy Watermelon Man in 1970 comedy, about a white, racist 60s-era insurance salesman who wakes up to find he is black.
Van Peebles’ popularity came with a year later with Sweetback, Sweetback, a Blaxploitation film about a black man trying to escape white police officers – it was the highest-grossing independent film in history at the time.
Tributes
Ava DuVernay, whose films and TV shows include Selma and When They See Us, quoted Van Peebles in her tribute, which said: “You have to not let yourself believe you can’t. Do what you can do within the framework you have.”
Van Peebles’ son said: “Dad knew that black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth?
“We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer’s mentality.
“It meant appreciating the power, beauty, and interconnectivity of all people,” he added.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins the director of Moonlight also said: “He made the most of every second, of EVERY single damn frame and admittedly, while the last time I spent any time with him was MANY years ago, it was a night in which he absolutely danced his face off. The man just absolutely LIVED.”