Charles Burnett will introduce today’s 4:30 screening of his Watts-set family drama MY BROTHER’S WEDDING
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, April 7, 4:30; Saturday, April 9, 2:00; Sunday, April 10, 1:30
Series continues through April 25
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1944 and raised in Watts, writer-director-producer-editor-photographer Charles Burnett has been making socially conscious independent films for more than forty years. MoMA is paying tribute to the influential African-American filmmaker with the series “The Power to Endure,” a three-week retrospective that includes all of his major works as well as his short films. Today at 4:30, Burnett will introduce the 2007 director’s cut of his 1983 color film, My Brother’s Wedding, which did not gain a theatrical release until 1991. Everett Silas stars as Pierce Mundy, a ne’er-do-well slacker who loafs around in his parents’ dry-cleaning store, waits for his best friend, the smooth-talking Soldier (Ronnie Bell), to get out of jail, and resents that his brother, Wendell (Dennis Kemper), has become a successful lawyer and is preparing to marry the snobby Sonia (Gaye Shannon-Burnett, the director’s real-life wife). As he did with Killer of Sheep, Burnett sets the film in Watts, where poor black families struggle to make a go of it in the shadow of ritzy Los Angeles. Although Pierce never seems to make the right decision, his choices are limited, but that doesn’t stop Burnett from coming up with some very droll, funny scenes. Burnett will also introduce tonight’s 8:00 screening of To Sleep with Anger (which will be followed by a discussion with Burnett and others involved in the making of the film), Friday’s 4:30 screening of The Glass Shield and 8:00 screening of The Annihilation of Fish, and Saturday’s 5:00 screening of Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation. In addition, Burnett and Robert Kapsis will be signing copies of Kapsis’s new book, Charles Burnett: Interviews, in the MoMA film lobby Friday night at 8:00.