Walker Zupp
Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975) was the first film by Jamaa Fanaka (1942-2012). Fanaka was a film undergraduate at UCLA when he made the film, and it was an attempt to make use of the equipment he had access to. “They’d have these assignments called a Project 1 then a Project 2, which were usually five or ten minutes without sound,” Fanaka recalled in an interview with Jeff Brummett*. Although turning one’s “Project 2” into a movie was unheard of, Fanaka decided to “take advantage of this blessing” and started production on his first feature-length film*.
1975 was a watershed year for the United States. It saw the evacuation of American soldiers from Saigon and the takeover of Cambodia by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The American merchant vessel, Mayaguez, was also rescued after being seized by Cambodian forces. Lastly, Americans and Soviets launched their respective spacecraft—Apollo and the Soyuz—into space for a U.S.-Soviet link-up, which led to new developments in space travel. In the United States things were equally tumultuous. John N. Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were found guilty of covering up the Watergate Scandal and were sentenced to up to eight years in jail. Then Gerald Ford—who had only recently been sworn-in as president—survived two assassination attempts within seventeen days†. (Both attempts were carried out by female shooters, one of whom was a member of Charles Manson’s cult.) In short, it was the right time for Fanaka to make a film about an ex-con’s murderous genitalia. As of June 2023, however, Welcome Home Brother Charles has 4.8 out of 10 on IMDB, is generally classed as a Blaxploitation movie and is about as obscure as the pioneers of Soviet animation, the epic Polish science fiction movie, On the Silver Globe (1988), and the experimental novels of Ann Quin.
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