Once, Michael Brewer was a fourth-grade student in a segregated elementary school in Hamlet. Staying with his grandparents for a year’s sojourn from New York City, he saw how blacks and whites experienced their worlds differently.
More than 50 years later, Brewer, 64, has used his experiences — and his reactions to them — to inform the film “The Last Revolutionary,” which will be shown next month at the National Black Theater and Film Festival in Winston-Salem. Brewer directed the film.
“The reason that we produced the film and (the reason that the story) resonated with me (was) growing up in that era,” Brewer said Tuesday. “I wanted to present it to a broader audience of progressive thinkers” than just those who had seen the play on which the film is based.
The film depicts two black men who came together as revolutionaries in the 1970s but who have taken much different paths since. Set during the Obama administration, the stage play-turned-movie asks whether violence is the way to answer threats from those who would seek to derail black progress.
Playwright Levy “Lee” Simon plays the revolutionary holdout Mac Perkins, who hoards guns and harbors violent sentiments he feels are needed to combat racial injustice. When old buddy Jack Armstrong — played by John Marshall Jones — finds Perkins after a yearslong separation, the two debate the most effective ways to fight for their cause.
Their back-and-forth is both funny and politically charged, recalling debates over the recent shootings of a number of unarmed black men by police, Brewer said, as well as the racially charged atmosphere surrounding the Obama administration.
Before making the film, Brewer had shot documentaries. He had the connections and know-how, but not the money. So he raised it by holding barbecues, and by using a web-based Kickstarter campaign — $35,000 to cover seven days of shooting, plus editing and one day of retakes.
On the film’s website, Simon calls Brewer “one of those cats who’s labored in the business for a long time … a true professional (who) has a special gift when it comes to knowing and using cameras.”
The film has the intimacy of the stage — it has one setting, a small apartment set built into Brewer’s larger Los Angeles loft — and the camera work to provide the nuanced facial expressions a stage audience might not see.
“We wanted to stay true to the essence of (the play),” Brewer said, but “still use cinematic techniques for texture.”
Brewer has invited police departments, the NAACP and members of the Ku Klux Klan to the screening in hopes of beginning a dialogue.
“Who do we want in the seats?” Brewer said. “Anyone who is progressive and sees the need for change. It touches on many issues that are happening in the country (and asks): How have things really changed?”
The film made its debut in February, at the Pan African Film Festival 2017 in Los Angeles, the largest festival in the United States dedicated to premiering films “from and about the African diaspora.”
A Huffington Post reviewer said then that “The Last Revolutionary” was “a powerful film, whose lasting effect sneaks up on you like a hand grenade loaded with vision. It starts out light and humorous … and ends with a sucker punch to the stomach.”
Marla Gibbs, known for playing sassy maid Florence Johnson on ’70s sitcom “The Jeffersons,” plays a cameo role.
The film’s musical score is one of the last works of jazz pianist and composer Geri Allen, twice nominated for the Grammy Award.
The film will be screened at 10 a.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 3 and 4, at the Aperture Theater, 411 Fourth St., Winston-Salem. Brewer and producer Madeleine Liebert will be available for a question-and-answer session after each screening.
The film also will be screened at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, during the fall semester. And it will be shown at the 2017 BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta on Aug. 23-27.
For information on the film festival, visit www.visitwinstonsalem.com/special-events/view/NBTF. To inquire about tickets, call 336-723-7907.
Reach Christine Carroll at 910-817-2673.
John Marshall Jones and playwright Levy "Lee" Simon act out a scene in "The Last Revolutionary," directed by Michael Brewer.
Director Michael Brewer on the set of "Promises Made."