African-American film history may date back to 1898, but it took a long time for films to be made that reflected their lives exclusively. Even film as a young medium relegated their characters to tropes as early as 1909. However, as soon as Chicago’s Photoplay Studio started using actors from the nearby Lafayette Players and Ethiopian Art Theatre, this course was somewhat corrected by the 1920s. While Harlem was experiencing its important Renaissance, film was making its home in Hollywood.
In 1943, Lena Horne became the first African American actor signed to a major studio. In 1944, filmmaker Charles Burnett was born in Vicksburg, MS. Three years later, his family moved to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. A 52-minute bus ride away from Hollywood, Burnett would toil away making independent films outside of the movie capital of the world until 1990. The films he made largely on his own tell his life story.
Unable to pursue his interest in the arts, Burnett attended Los Angeles City College to become an electrician. Given the chance to take a writing class, Burnett immediately developed an interest. After graduating with a degree in Writing from UCLA, Burnett was accepted to their prestigious film school. His childhood in Watts gave him so many stories to tell, film offered him the best canvas.
His second feature film, 1983’s “My Brother’s Wedding” offers a lot of insight into the private memories of Burnett’s life. While some may say the episodic nature of Burnett’s script lends to it feeling like a sitcom or even a play, the personal connection he allows you to feel for his characters can only be experienced through film.
Shot on a shoestring budget (80,000 dollars) on 35mm, “My Brother’s Wedding” regularly uses the medium itself to imply the claustrophobia in the everyday life of its protagonist, Pierce Mundy (Everett Silas.) Acted by mostly amateurs, Burnett manages to coax the best performances out of their interactions. Many scenes have a “stop/start” feeling that keeps the film grounded in reality. These short sequences find an unusual rhythm for film, but Burnett's sharp editing uses the economy to squeeze together the nuts and bolts of Pierce's world.
When Pierce’s brother Wendell (Monte Easter) brings home his future wife Sonia (Gaye Shannon-Burnett, Charles’ wife and the costume designer,) Burnett keeps most of the action on Pierce’s mother and father. This separation of their possibilities in life implies the different strata they occupy now. We briefly see Wendell distracted and talking about getting a secretary. The foreignness of this world is not necessarily lost on the doting but tough mother (Jessie Holms.) However, Burnett shows these two worlds in opposition to each other in the close confrontations between Sonia and Pierce.
Burnett is making the film mostly from Pierce’s point of view. However, he is not out to earn your sympathy for him. Pierce is still young and impressionable. Smart enough to avoid the trouble circling every young African American man around him, his dissatisfaction with the world is his insulation from succumbing to it. Pierce sees even his own family as products of - not survival as a way of life - but being too willing to accept the circumstances. When his best friend Soldier Richardson (Ronnie Bell,) writes to say he is coming back from another stint in prison, Pierce is the one who goes around to all the people he can trying to secure a straight job for him. If Pierce looks hopeless to his family of dominant personalities (and universal Generation Gap-era opinions,) he is immediately invited to work by whoever he asks for a favor.
Pierce’s life is not troubled though. In some of Burnett’s most beautiful shots, he wordlessly captures the connection between family members in the most unsympathetic ways. Fathers and mothers hold their infant children like they are the greatest prize on Earth. Pierce’s mother at the dry cleaners is celebrated as a “miracle worker” by a bloviating customer. Pierce takes the bus across town to Inglewood gets a pot back for his mother from Big Momma and helps Big Daddy take a bath.
We see Pierce running, wrestling, and having a bad attitude toward most of the people in his orbit until Soldier returns. Their bond of friendship is immediately obvious and never played to any degree of maudlin. When Pierce brings Soldier home to his parents, Burnett skillfully shoots the reunion for the drama inherent in his return not (as others might do in the formula) to introduce tension into the plot. Without spoiling the rest of the film or his canon, this is one of his most compelling shots ever.
When Burnett’s master's thesis, 1978’s “Killer of Sheep,” was released to critical acclaim interest was growing in Burnett as a filmmaker. A rough cut of “Wedding” was screened by a New York Times critic at the New Directors/New Films festival in 1983. Armond White wrote that it was “a catastrophic blow to the development of American popular culture.” Distributors quietly shied away from Burnett’s film. In 2008, Burnett finally finished editing his second film after Milestone Films acquired his early works. Burnett, an Oscar winner in 2017, is finally receiving his due for laying the groundwork for African American filmmakers like Spike Lee, John Singleton, and so many others.
