Brother to Brother

Perry (Anthony Mackie) is a young gay student at Columbia University who moonlights as a worker in a homeless shelter. Feeling something is missing from his life, but unable to form the essential questions which will lead to the answers he so desperately craves, Perry unloads his existential angst onto the shoulders of his straight best friend Marcus (Larry Gilliard Jr.). Perry finds inspiration in the pages of a book on the Harlem Renaissance, and takes a journey back in time to meet some of the characters who dominated the neighborhood in the 1920s. First up is an encounter with the elderly painter and writer Richard Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson), who offers Perry a nostalgic foray into the history of black, gay culture. Bruce's stories are reenacted in black-and-white, and introduce Perry to esteemed figures such as Langston Hughes (Daniel Sunjata); Wallace Thurman (Ray Ford); Zora Neale Hurston (Aunjanue Ellis); and a younger incarnation of Nugent (played by Duane Boutte). Their words simultaneously capture the essence of the gay American experience, and provide a neat summary of a time littered with great social and political upheaval in Harlem and beyond. (jakelijan virallinen teksti)