In 1967, The Story of a Three-Day Pass won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival — a notable moment for an American who had made the film entirely in France, working in French.

Melvin Van Peebles was born in Chicago in 1932 and attended Thornton Township High School before going on to Ohio Wesleyan University and, later, the University of Amsterdam. He worked across a wide range of disciplines: filmmaker, actor, writer, novelist, playwright, composer, film producer, and painter. He worked in both English and French, and that bilingual reach shaped his early career in particular. The Story of a Three-Day Pass was shot in France and adapted from his own French-language novel La Permission, meaning Van Peebles had already told the story once on the page before he brought it to the screen. The festival recognition in San Francisco followed from there.

He went on to make Watermelon Man in 1970, adding another film to a body of work that already spanned fiction, stage, music, and visual art alongside his filmmaking. Van Peebles produced films as well as directed them, and he continued to act throughout his career. The range of forms he worked in — from composing to painting to playwriting — meant his output was difficult to place in any single category. Each discipline was a genuine part of his working life rather than a sideline.

Van Peebles received the Commander of the Legion of Honour, a distinction that reflected the recognition his work earned in France. He was also inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He died in Manhattan on September 21, 2021. Those two honours — one French, one marking his standing in the history of Black American cinema — give a concrete measure of how his work was received during his lifetime.