Perry (Anthony Mackie) is a would-be painter struggling to find his voice as an artist and his identity as a black gay man. When his disapproving father kicks him out, he winds up in a homeless shelter where he meets a sympathetic gay poet named Bruce (Roger Robinson). As they get to know each other, Perry learns that Bruce was at the center of the 1920s and '30s Harlem Renaissance and faced many of the same prejudices and challenges in his day that Perry faces now.
In partnership with Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies and Africana at Bates College, PMA Films is excited to announce a new annual film series, “Connection and Collaboration.” The series, which is free and open to the public, will group films that examine and celebrate the ways African Americans collaborate across their differences for their survival. The films are presented in conjunction with a series of local events commemorating Juneteenth. WATTSTAX (1973) chronicles a musical festival organized by the influential and pioneering Stax music label to commemorate the 1965 anniversary of the uprisings in Watts, an African American community in Los Angeles, California. WATTSTAX epitomizes “Connection and Collaboration” with its emphasis upon entrepreneurship, resistance to oppression, and what some now call “black joy.” CANE RIVER (1982), Horace B. Jenkins’s independent film landmark, is a romantic drama set in Natchitoches, Louisiana which has one of the oldest communities of free people of color of Afro-European descent. It, too, emphasizes “Connection and Collaboration” by exploring the developing relationship between a Black man and woman of differing origins–she is descended from enslaved African Americans, and he is from free people of color–many of whom owned enslaved African Americans. Finally, BROTHER TO BROTHER (2004) celebrates the connection of the past and present between two Black gay men. One is a celebrated, yet impoverished writer of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and the younger, a student at Columbia University. The film shows the importance of an older generation mentoring and nurturing a younger generation.
Running Time: 94 min.
MPAA Rating: NR
Language: English
Country of origin: United States
Director: Rodney Evans
Official website