Directed by Wendell B. Harris Jr. • 1989 • United States
Starring Wendell B. Harris Jr., Angela Leslie, Amina Fakir
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival—yet criminally underseen for over three decades—CHAMELEON STREET recounts the improbable but true story of Michigan con man Douglas Street, the titular “chameleon” who successfully impersonated his way up the socioeconomic ladder by posing as a magazine reporter, an Ivy League student, a respected surgeon, and a corporate lawyer. Distinguished by a dexterous performance and daring direction from actor-writer-director Wendell B. Harris Jr., this audacious dark comedy trains an incisive lens on the roles that race, class, and performance play in the formation of American identity. Piercingly funny and aesthetically mischievous, CHAMELEON STREET is a newly restored landmark of independent filmmaking.
Up Next in American Independents
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The Killing Floor
Directed by Bill Duke • 1984 • United States
Starring Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Moses GunnOriginally broadcast on PBS’s “American Playhouse” in 1984, the stirring first feature from actor and filmmaker Bill Duke explores the little-known story of an African American migrant’s struggle to bui...
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Fresh Kill
Directed by Shu Lea Cheang • 1994 • United States
Starring Sarita Choudhury, Erin McMurtry, Abraham LimTaiwanese-born new-media visionary Shu Lea Cheang directs this avant-anarcho ecosatire, in which a lesbian couple living on Staten Island find themselves ensnared in a vast conspiracy involvin...
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Clean, Shaven
Directed by Lodge Kerrigan • 1994 • United States
Starring Peter Greene, Robert Albert, Megan OwenLodge Kerrigan began his succession of utterly unique, visually and aurally dazzling character studies with the raw, ravaging CLEAN, SHAVEN. A compelling headfirst dive into the mindscape of a schi...
