Cane River (film)

Cane River
Directed by Horace B. Jenkins
Produced by Horace B. Jenkins
Written by Horace B. Jenkins
Edited by Debra I. Moore
Release date
Country United States
Language English

Cane River is a 1982 American film written, produced, and directed by Horace B. Jenkins. The film features the lives of people of color in the US state of Louisiana. While the film premiered in New Orleans, Louisiana, Horace Jenkins died before the film could be released in New York City and beyond. The film was considered lost until a negative was recovered in 2014. The film was subsequently restored, and an academic paper and a documentary are in the works.

A digitally remastered version of the film will screen at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival in mid-October after having been unseen for 36 years.

Plot

The film is a "contemporary love story",[1] "of a black man returning to his native Louisiana and trying to reclaim some of his past".[2] WNYC said, "Set in Louisiana, the film is a romantic drama that examines the social and financial inequality faced by people of color in the region."[3]

Production

Horace B. Jenkins filmed Cane River in New Orleans and Natchitoches Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The film featured black actors and actresses.[2]

Release

Cane River premiered in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1982.[2] The New York Times said at the time, it was "already a rarity: a drama by an independent black filmmaker, financed by wealthy black patrons and dealing with race issues untouched by mainstream cinema".[4] Jenkins sought to have a national distribution of the film and its soundtrack, but he died on December 3, 1982 at age 42.[2] Cane River was scheduled to screen in New York City in February 1982,[5] but with his death, the film went unreleased. Richard Pryor, who saw a screening of Cane River before Jenkins's death, had offered to place the film with the studio Warner Bros., with whom he had an agreement to distribute films made by African-Americans, but its producers declined the offer. The film was not publicly available until 2014, when the film preservation organization IndieCollect uncovered a negative copy from the vaults of DuArt Film and Video.[6]

Two years after a negative resurfaced, The New York Times said, "It has attained a certain mythic quality, connecting a disparate group of people across the country: New York preservationists dedicated to restoring it; a cultural historian in Louisiana devoting an academic paper to it; an archivist in Los Angeles fascinated with it."[4] The cultural historian, Keilah Spann, watched a bootleg DVD and said the film dealt with colorism in a way no other film had before. Spann found some scenes to be too long, a detail confirmed by the still-living editor Debra I. Moore, who said it was her first film editing along with a "first" for other crew members.[4] Horace Jenkins's son, Sacha Jenkins, who was 11 years old when Cane River was released, is researching the film to create a documentary.[3]

A digitally remastered version of the film will screen at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival in mid-October after having been unseen for 36 years.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Mims, Sergio Alejandro (1990). "A New Life: Independent Black Filmmaking during the 1980's". Black Camera. 5 (1): 3–4. JSTOR 27761419.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Staff (December 6, 1982). "Horace Jenkins, 'Cane River' Maker". Chicago Tribune. Associated Press. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
  3. 1 2 Staff (December 7, 2016). "A Forgotten Black Director's Only Film Resurfaces After Three Decades". The Takeaway. WNYC. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 Anderson, John (September 23, 2016). "This Movie Was Nearly Lost. Now They're Fighting to Save It". The New York Times. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  5. ↑ Staff (December 7, 1982). "Horace B. Jenkins, 42; His Films Won Awards". The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2014.
  6. ↑ Anderson, John (August 20, 2014). "The Movie Crypt at the Top of the Stairs". The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2014.
  7. ↑ Scott, Mike (September 19, 2018). "'Green Book' named opening-night selection of 2018 New Orleans Film Festival". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.