Celebration of Black Cinema at Dee Brown Library

Lee’s semi-autobiographical film set in the summer of 1973 and written in collaboration with his siblings, most notably Joie Lee who also featured in Lee’s 1986 debut, She’s Gotta Have It.. Crooklyn unfolds through the eyes of Troy Carhmichael (Zelda Harris), the youngest daughter in a family with four brothers. Their father Woody (Delroy Lindo) is a jazz musician and mother Carolyn (Alfre Woodard) a school teacher. The two argue over money.  Woody is using family funds to finance his attempt at a solo career, but the family doesn’t have enough to make ends meet. 

It took Julie Dash nearly 15 years to see Daughters of the Dust completed. Taking on many forms, the final film abandons the traditional western three act structure and settles on a style more painterly impressionistic. 

Set in 1903, the Peazant family, who lives off the coast of Georgia at Ibo Landing, locatedon Datwa (St Simons) Island. They’re coming together to celebrate and have one last family dinner before Yellow Mary embarks on a journey to Nova Scotia, and many more members of the family are set to move away from the island to the mainland where they’ll embrace modernity and leave the olds ways behind. The film is narrated by the Unborn Child and the characters all speak Gullah Creole. A photographer comes to the island to document the last days of the island as it was.

“We’re the daughters of those old dusty things Nana carries in her tin can… We carry too many scars from the past. Our past owns us. We wear our scars like armor, for protection. Our mother’s scars, our daughter's scars. Thick, hard, ugly scars that no one can pass through to ever hurt us again. Let's live our lives without living in the fold of old wounds.” - Eula Peazant

Documenting three distinct acts in the life of Chiron, a young boy growing up in Liberty City, Moonlight is a coming-of-age story about a young queer black boy who navigates life in the absence of stability. At school he meets Kevin. The two drift apart and meet again at key moments in their lives. 

Barry Jenkins pulls off the neat trick of recasting Chiron and Kevin in each of the film's three acts and deftly shows their transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. He’s always displayed a knack for beautifully expressive imagry.

Jenkins adapted the film from an unpublished semi-autobiographical play by Tarell Alvin McCraney and the film went on to win Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards. Jenkins has gone on to adapt Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad for Amazon and wrote and directed this year's Lion King prequel, Mufasa.