In 1972, William Gunn, a prolific black playwright, was approached with the idea of making a "black vampire” movie. Gunn proceeded to make a stunning film decades ahead of its time and largely overlooked by cinephiles then and now, the mesmerizing: GANJA AND HESS. 1+ 
Despite being the only American film to screen at Critics Week at Cannes in 1973, Bill Gunn’s GANJA AND HESS was largely dismissed by most white American critics and lumped into the category of blaxploitation films. They didn’t get it. Couldn’t get. Didn’t want to get it.
GANJA AND HESS director Bill Gunn wrote a letter to the editor of the @NYTimes in 1973: “There are times when the white critic must sit down and listen. If he cannot listen and learn, then he must not concern himself with black creativity.
Gunn: “I’ve tried to imagine producers waiting anxiously for black reviewers’ opinions of ‘Sound of Music’ or ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ I want to say it is a terrible thing to be a black artist in this country - for reasons too private to expose to the arrogance of white criticism.”
Gunn: “If I were white, I would probably be called ‘fresh and different.’ If I were European, GANJA AND HESS might be ‘that little film you must see.’
Gunn: “I am very proud of my comrades in GANJA AND HESS. They worked hard, with a dedication to their art and race that is obviously foreign to the critics. I want to thank them and my black sisters and brothers who have expressed only gratitude and love for my effort.”
Gunn in 1973: “Your critics must realize that they are controlling black theater and film creativity with white criticism. Maybe if the black film craze continues, the white press might find it necessary to employ black criticism.”
“There is a dreadful need in man to teach. It destroys the pure instinct to learn.” This is GANJA AND HESS director Bill Gunn. He died too soon. In 1989 at the age of 54.
In an effort to make their money from the film, the producers sold Gunn’s meditative, dreamlike vision to a distributor that bastardized it with a brutal recut and released GANJA AND HESS in an inferior version.
Since then, Mr. Gunn’s director’s cut of GANJA AND HESS has amassed a cult following, received a proper restoration and is now distributed by @KinoLorber.
