Shaft (1971)

Shaft is a 1971 American blaxploitation crime action thriller film directed by Gordon Parks and written by Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black. It is an adaptation of Tidyman's novel of the same name and is the first entry in the Shaft franchise. The plot revolves around a private detective named John Shaft who is hired by a Harlem mobster to rescue his daughter from the Italian mobsters who kidnapped her. The film stars Richard Roundtree as Shaft, alongside Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, and Lawrence Pressman.

The film explores themes including masculinity and sexuality, with a specific emphasis on Black Power. It was filmed in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and Times Square within the Manhattan borough of New York City. The Shaft soundtrack album, recorded by Isaac Hayes, was also a success, winning a Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a second Grammy (shared with Johnny Allen) for Best Instrumental Arrangement. The "Theme from Shaft" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making Hayes the first Black man to win the award for that category. The song has appeared on multiple Top 100 lists, including AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs.

A prime example of the blaxploitation genre, it was selected in 2000 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Shaft initially had two sequels called Shaft's Big Score! (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), though neither enjoyed the critical success of the original.