Mario Van Peebles

Standing in front of the same Westwood movie theater where his 1991 film New Jack City premiered 31 years ago, filmmaker Mario Van Peebles can’t help but reflect on that night as he celebrates the restored 35mm print opening the “Perpetratin’ Realism” program, sponsored by the American Cinematheque and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.   The blistering crime thriller and gangster movie opened in theatres on March 8, 1991 – four days after the world first saw the video of LAPD officers beating Rodney King, and the premiere became the setting for brawls and gun violence in New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas, resulting in at least one death.