Directed by Bill Gunn • 1980 • United States
Starring Vertamae Grosvenor, Walter Cotton, Jim Wright
Bill Gunn’s follow-up to his underground landmark GANJA & HESS was the result of an extraordinary collaboration with renowned writer Ishmael Reed, who described the project as a “meta–soap opera” and “a look at the triteness of everyday life in Black middle-class America.” Focusing on the troubled marriage of a New York City couple and the various crises that befall those around them, PERSONAL PROBLEMS was originally intended to air on public television in 1980, after which it virtually disappeared for decades. A new restoration of the film—presented here in two volumes as Gunn intended—affirms its place as one of the major achievements of American independent cinema.
Directed by Bill Gunn • 1980 • United States
Starring Vertamae Grosvenor, Walter Cotton, Jim Wright
Bill Gunn’s follow-up to his underground landmark GANJA & HESS was the result of an extraordinary collaboration with renowned writer Ishmael Reed, who described the project as a “meta–soap ope...
Directed by Kathleen Collins • 1982 • United States
Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones
One of the first feature films directed by an African American woman, Kathleen Collins’s LOSING GROUND tells the story of a marriage between two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives...
Directed by Camille Billops and James Hatch • 1982 • United States
One of the many films that Camille Billops and James Hatch made centering on Billops’s family, SUZANNE, SUZANNE presents a devastating portrait of the artist’s niece, haunted by the abuse she suffered as a child and the passivity...
