Directed by Rodney Evans US, 2003, video, 90 min. East Coast Premiere

Brother To Brother, Rodney Evan's first narrative feature, took two years to research and six years to complete, and was a deserving winner of the Special Jury Prize for "passion in filmmaking" at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Evan's forays into the history of the Harlem Renaissance, move beyond Issac Julien's Looking For Langston, to resurrect gay and lesbian writers, poets, and activists including Wallace Thurman, Bruce Nugent, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

The heart of this captivating drama rests on the chance meeting between a modern-day young New York gay artist and literary scholar Perry Williams and former Harlem Renaissance poet and painter Bruce Nugent, now living out his elderly years in a homeless shelter. Perry is struggling with the double whammy of racism and homophobia - his father has rejected him for being gay, his black classmates are homophobic and his white boyfriend adores him for his skin color. Through Bruce's memories and stories, Perry is taken on a journey to the 1930s, back to the house known as the "Niggeratti Manor" - the fertile creative home of an earlier generation who were proud, black, gay and unashamed. With growing respect and love for the older man, Perry learns that his struggles are not new, and that the story of the Harlem Renaissance and the figures that moved within it are part of his history too.

With a smoky jazz score, vivid re-creation of 1930s Harlem, and rich interwoven storytelling with meticulous attention to historical accuracy, Evans brings black gay significant artists, hidden-within-history, into our present-day consciousness. Brother To Brother is a film that is long overdue in the pantheon of gay & lesbian cinema.

Total running time: 90 min.
$12 non-members / $10 members
Presented by AVIS RENT-A-CAR

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