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Jamaa Fanaka (born Walter Gordon; September 6, 1942 – April 1, 2012) was an American filmmaker. He is best known for his 1979 film, Penitentiary, and was one of the leading directors of the L.A. Rebellion film movement.
Jamaa Fanaka, a filmmaker who had considerable success in 1979 with “Penitentiary,” a feature-length movie he made while still in film school, but who claimed to have been blacklisted afterward...
Apr 4, 2012 · Jamaa Fanaka, who emerged as a dynamic black filmmaker with his gritty independent 1979 film “Penitentiary” and later made headlines with his legal battles alleging widespread discrimination...
Penitentiary is a 1979 American blaxploitation drama film written, produced and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, and starring Leon Isaac Kennedy as Martel "Too Sweet" Gordone, a man who deals with his wrongful imprisonment as a black youth. The film was released on November 21, 1979.
Jamaa Fanaka was born on 6 September 1942 in Jackson, Mississippi, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975), Street Wars (1991) and Penitentiary II (1982). He died on 1 April 2012 in South Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- January 1, 1
- Jackson, Mississippi, USA
- January 1, 1
- Director, Writer, Producer
Apr 1, 2013 · Jamaa Fanaka, the eclectic and kind-hearted film director, the most commercially minded of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers and perhaps the most prolific student filmmaker of all time (all three of the features he made as a grad student found distribution), died one year ago today.
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Apr 1, 2012 · Jamaa Fanaka's Penitentiary allegorizes African-American life, seeing the prison system as an arena of violent struggle against forces both external and internal that plays out on the bodies of the inmates.
