Jamaa Fanaka may have been one of the leading directors of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, but he’s probably best known for his Penitentiary films. Born Walter Gordon, he changed his name so that anyone seeing his movies would know that he was black. Working alongside one of the professors in the African Studies department at UCLA, he came up with the name Jamaa Fanaka, which means “through togetherness we will find success.”

Emma Mae is his first full-length movie, written when he was still in college. It’s the story of a young woman (Jerri Hayes) moving from the deep south to Los Angeles, where she falls in love with Jesse Amos (Ernest Williams III), who soon goes to jail along with Zeke (Charles David Brooks III) for fighting the police.

Also known as Black Sister’s Revenge, it follows Emma Mae as she tries to raise cash to get her man out of jail, starting with a car wash and ending with a bank robbery, only to learn that he never loved her. She then beats him into oblivion, a moment not often seen in film. She reclaims who he is and moves on.

Fanaka would make wilder pictures, but this is an excellent introduction to how he was trying to tell the black experience, even if it is episodic and wanders a bit.

You can watch this on YouTube.