Ashes & Embers Film Screening Fundraiser featuring Bradford Young

About the film:

Nay Charles is an African American Vietnam veteran who no longer fits in, can’t find a job and has difficulty establishing a connection with his politically committed girlfriend.  Depressed, the film’s antihero leaves his home state of Washington for a new, better life in Los Angeles where he ends up arrested by the police.

Like his protagonist, director Haile Gerima is both drawn to and skeptical of the Black nationalist ideology espoused by Charles’ girlfriend and her discussion group.  Charles’ alienation from both middle class African Americans who have accommodated themselves to the system and radicals willing to change society is rooted in the institutionalized racism of white society, which for the most part remains an invisible but powerful presence.  Like other L.A. Rebellion filmmakers, Gerima illustrates that racism, as well as Third World Liberation struggles, through photo and film montages of news film material.  Charles’ grandmother represents the tough fighting spirit of a generation that survived slavery and Jim Crow, her lush, green farm returning us metaphorically to the rural Ethiopia of Gerima’s youth.  In the end, Gerima places his faith in African American youths, who represent a future in which they will stand tall, a final vision of utopia after the grim lessons of contemporary race relations in America.

About Bradford Young: 

Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young is the first recipient of the $25,000 Eyebeam and RLab Storyteller-in-Residence Award. Young is widely respected for his signature filming style, working with single sources of available light with masterful artistry and keen sensitivity to his subjects. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Young emerged from a tradition of multi-disciplinary practice in the film school at Howard University in Washington DC under the touteledge of Haile Gerima. He explains that the film programme at Howard was such a nurturing environment for him that he considers it to be the most crucial period of his life, where he made lifelong friendships, and also met his wife, Stephanie Etienne.

Young’s feature films as director of photography include White Lies, Black Sheep (2007), Pariah (2011), Restless City (2011), Middle of Nowhere (2012), Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), and Mother of George (2013). He has won Cinematography Awards at the Sundance Film Festival twice. In 2011, he won for his work on Pariah. Two years later, he won for his work on both Mother of George and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. Young is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).