Emma Mae

Jamaa Fanaka’s second feature, created while he was still a student at UCLA, tells the story of a naive young woman who moves from the Deep South to Watts. Initially finding herself at odds with her surroundings, Emma eventually gains acceptance from a local drug dealer. But when he’s arrested and jailed, she plans a daring bank robbery to bail him out. Featuring a cast of mostly non-professionals and shot entirely on location in Watts, this uniquely subversive action film is an insider’s view of Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Fanaka was part of the L.A. Rebellion film movement along side luminaries like Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Larry Clark (Passing Through). Unlike his counterparts more concerned with artistic ideology, Fanaka embraced more traditional avenues of Hollywood distribution, riding the wave of Blaxploitation into the 1980s. 

Nevertheless, UCLA film archivist Jacqueline Stewart wrote: “Emma Mae’s proficiency in kicking ass echoes traits found in super-mama heroines populating other character-named films of this Blaxploitation era (e.g., Foxy Brown, Coffy, Cleopatra Jones), not surprising given Fanaka’s successful aspiration to distribute this student film theatrically. But Emma Mae is not presented as an impossibly glamorous vixen. To the contrary, her plain looks and shy demeanor seem to necessitate her physical and emotional strength, particularly when dealing with those who mistakenly underestimate her. Fanaka reverses the formula. Emma Mae’s broken romance, and her L.A. family’s stumble from bourgeois status, forge a powerful sisterly bond virtually absent from Blaxploitation fare.”