Author Archives: Thomas Pamela

 
The Museum of UnCut Funk has acquired the latest stamps from the United States Post Office Black Heritage Series, the Distinguished Soldiers stamp featuring Doris Miller and the Anna Julia Cooper stamp.

 
If you want to ease the minds of film fans about a remake you’re working on, just compare it to Ocean’s 11. That’s what Will Smith did back in 2002 when his production company bought the rights to Sidney Poitier’s Uptown Saturday Night with plans to do an all-star Black update on the 1974 classic that originally paired up Poitier and Bill Cosby.

 
Lt Uhura was the first positive Black character from a TV series to appear as that character in a Saturday morning cartoon series.

It was the little show that could. Beginning its ride as a local dance show on Chicago’s WCIU-TV, “Soul Train” chugged its way to Los Angeles and into pop culture history. The syndicated franchise’s impact is chronicled in the 40th-anniversary tribute “Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America.”

 
 
Filmmaker John Sealey began his career making short films for artists and galleries. He studied film practice at the International film school in Newport, South Wales and went on to do an M.A. in European Cinema and PhD in Film Practice at the University of Exeter, where he currently teaches film. John’s practice is grounded in cultural identity and his films interrogate areas of research within Diaspora histories – their function to challenge and create new ways of reception within the formulaic structure of classical narrative cinema.

 
A Baad Asssss Blasian Is Coming Back To Collect His Dues….

For all the brothers and sisters who dig Blaxploitation films, have seen the original Sweet Sweetback’s film, and can see the similarities between Sweetback, the sex performer and Tiger Woods, the sex addict, as the Curator of The Museum of UnCut Funk I just could not resist…

 
 
During the 1970′s, Blaxploitation moved into the horror category with a number of movies, made for Blacks, staring Blacks. One of the most important actors from this period was William Marshall. He starred as Blacula, a Black version of Dracula in two movies, Blacula and Scream, Blacula, Scream. Blacula became the Blaxploitation’s eras first prominent horror film.

The Museum of UnCut Funk celebrates the movie poster art of John Solie. John’s legendary skill for depicting “dead-on likenesses” of famous people has kept him in demand by major Hollywood movie studios, television networks, book publishers and magazine editors.

D’Urville Martin was an actor, director and producer who was considered one of the hardest working men during the Blaxploitation film era.

Roxie Roker may best be remembered for playing outspoken Helen Willis for ten years on the popular television sitcom The Jeffersons.

 
What??? Looks like champagne, pours like champagne, tastes like champagne! But it cost PENNIES more than beer! Yeah right! This ad was straight from Madison Ave…or maybe Harlem…Ad executives went further to suggest that Champale would taste better served in a stemmed glass. LOL!!! Well, actually it did if you were around during the 1970′s.

 
The new line of darker-skinned Barbie BFFs may be a vast improvement over Mattel’s notorious “Colored Francie” of the 1960′s or the inexplicable “Oreo Fun Barbie” of 1997, but they’re still not quite Michelle Obama.

 
The Museum of UnCut Funk has a warm spot in our hearts for Vintage Black Advertising Memorabilia and we now have a few HAMBONE pieces as a part of our collection. Whether it be crate labels, tins or posters we collect it all for the both the historical and artistic value of the items.

Many of you may know that the Negro League was established on February 13, 1920, at a YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri. Andrew “Rube” Foster, the man who organized the league, served as its president.

 
Thalmus Rasulala was born Jack Chowder on November 15th, 1939. One of the many Black actors from the 1970’s and beyond who never got his rightful due, Thalmus will always be at the top of my list of great performers.

From the minds of Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca, the Afrodisiac phenomena got it’s start in 2005 as short stories and anthologies. Jim Rugg, co-creator of the Afrodisiac comic series, recently stated in an interview with Comic Book Resources “ We try to capture the style and energy of the great Blaxploitation movies”.

Robert Balser began his career in 1955 as a layout artist at Norman Wright Productions. A year later he was Layout Production Supervisor on the title sequence of Michael Todd’s Around the World in Eighty Days.

The Museum of UnCut Funk salutes John E. DeCoste aka Terry Carter. Terry was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 16, 1928, the only child of William and Mercedes DeCoste. Terry’s mother was a native of the Dominican Republic. His father was American born, of Argentine and African-American descent.

So it took the election of the first Black President, a beautiful Black first lady and two Black tween girls living in the White House for Disney to make a Black princess movie.

Torchy Brown first appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier in the 1937-38 comic strip Dixie to Harlem, drawn by the first Black Female Cartoonist, Jackie Ormes. Torchy Brown was later syndicated around the country until it’s end in 1940.