Film Details

Two pioneering African American artists, writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess; see 6/7 at 8:45), collaborated on this unique “experimental soap opera” that aspired to capture working-class African American life in NYC at the start of the 1980s. Funded by an NEA grant and shot on video for public television, the film ended up being broadcast only in New York and San Francisco in 1982, and faded into oblivion after that. Newly resurrected and restored, Personal Problems stars longtime radio commentator and self-described “culinary griot” Vertamae Grosvenor as a married nurse having a mid-life affair with a musician. Though the movie is raw, untidy, and shapeless, it’s also a unique cultural artifact that presents “a view of African Americans that’s messy, complicated, dramatic, and, most important, honest” (Village Voice ). Cleveland premiere. DCP. 165 min.