BROTHER TO BROTHER By Rodney Evans, 2004
Tribeca Film Festival 2003
Perry Williams est un jeune artiste talentueux qui travaille à New York. Le succès frappe à sa porte mais Perry craint de vendre son talent au plus offrant. En même temps, l'appui de sa famille est évasif tout en supportant les bavures homophobics de ses colocataires noirs, le rejet par son père, et le rapport décevant avec son amoureux. C'est alors que Perry rencontre Bruce Nugent, une légende vivante, qui fut poète et peintre de la Renaissance de Harlem, avec Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, et Wallace Thurman. Perry apprend donc que sa lutte n'est pas nouvelle... (CineMovies.fr)
An engaging drama that moves between time, race, art and selfidentity, Rodney Evans' distinct voice transcends categorization with his debut narrative feature Brother to Brother. Perry is a gay black artist and college student who is rejected by his father after being caught with another man. Perry shields his scars by seemingly moving on. He meets an elderly man at a poetry reading and sees him again at the homeless shelter where he works learning that he is Bruce Nugent, one of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance. The two forge a friendship, and Perry begins to see parallels between his life and such legends of the Renaissance as Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, and Aaron Douglas. In Brother to Brother, Evans has fashioned an adroit portrait of being caught between sexual and racial identity, merging social and political issues in a manner that reflects the artistry and storytelling of those to whom he is paying homage. The complex narrative is visualized with the gritty color of the contemporary scenes and the lavish black and white Renaissance scenes, which effectively splits the time of the stories with acute detail while connecting space, art, and history. (Tribeca)
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