MY BROTHER'S WEDDING 4K Restoration to Open at Film Forum

A new 4K restoration of Charles Burnett's MY BROTHER'S WEDDING is set to run at Film Forum in New York City. The screening marks a fresh presentation of the filmmaker's work, previously praised by the Chicago Tribune as coming from one of America's very best filmmakers.

A new 4K restoration of MY BROTHER'S WEDDING (1983), the second feature by American independent master Charles Burnett, who served as the director, producer, director of photography, and screenwriter, will run at Film Forum from Friday, September 18 to Thursday, September 24.

In this tragicomic work of realism, Pierce Mundy (Everett Silas) is employed at his parents' South Central Los Angeles dry cleaners with no prospects for the future — his childhood buddies are all in prison or dead. Pierce's best friend Soldier (Ronnie Bell) is just getting out of jail. Pierce's brother Wendell (Monte Easter), an up-and-coming lawyer, is busy planning his wedding to a snobbish upper-middle-class black woman named Sonia (Gaye Shannon-Burnett, who co-produced the film). Pierce's pious, Bible-touting mother (Jessie Holmes) provides occasional comic relief but also a heartfelt moral backbone to the film, as she urges Pierce to accept his responsibility to his family. When Soldier is killed in a car accident, Pierce's conflicting obligations to family and friends become manifest in the choice between his brother's wedding and his best friend's funeral— both falling on the same day. The film's climax has Pierce desperately trying to be two places at once and ending up nowhere.

Burnett, fresh off winning the Critics Prize at the Berlinale for KILLER OF SHEEP, secured funding from the German broadcast network Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen to make the film, assembling a crew that included several future luminaries early in their careers: Julie Dash (DAUGHTERS OF DUST) served as first assistant director, and Arthur Jafa (LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH) worked as first assistant camera on his first-ever film set.

Excessive delays in shooting and post-production led Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen to grow impatient and demand a finished cut. Burnett rushed through a rough cut and submitted it, and the network, against his wishes, accepted it as the final cut. The unfinished film was shown in 1984 at the New Directors/New Films festival in New York to mixed reviews, discouraging distributors and tragically relegating the film to relative obscurity, until Milestone Films bought the rights several decades later, allowing Burnett to finally finish editing in 2007. MY BROTHER'S WEDDING proves to be funny, heartbreaking, and timeless.

Credits

Written and directed by Charles Burnett

Produced by Charles Burnett, Gaye Shannon-Burnett

1st Assistant Directors: Julie Dash, Ronald Hairston

Director of Photography: Charles Burnett

1st Assistant Camera: Omar El Aide, Arthur Jafa

Editor: Thomas M. Penick

Starring Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett

1983 | Approx. 81 min. | USA

A Milestone Films / Kino Lorber Release

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