The vitals:
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ Black Is Not a Genre presents: AARON LOVES ANGELA featuring local short film "La Hechicera" + Q&A with director Angela New

Gordon Parks Jr., son of photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, only made four films before his untimely death in 1979. For what would be his final release, the followup to 1974’s THOMASINE & BUSHROD, the SUPER FLY director shifts gears from neo-western to teen romance with an endearingly light riff on Romeo and Juliet.

Future director Kevin Hooks (son of actor Robert Hooks, who also stars in the film) and future pop star Irene Cara (FAME, SPARKLE), in her film debut, play Aaron and Angela, two Harlem high schoolers in the throes of first love. The Shakespearean rub is that Aaron is Black and Angela is Puerto Rican. As expected, no one on either side of the ethnic divide approves, so they foster their mutual crush in secret. But, ultimately the plot particulars give way to the film’s other love story: the one between Parks and Harlem itself.

Shot entirely on location, what emerges is a rare time capsule of Black adolescent innocence set against a gritty yet tender version of Black and Latin New York that, even in 1975, was rapidly disappearing. The Legrand-esque melancholy of jazz guitar great and Spanish Harlem legend José Feliciano, who makes a cameo in the film, provides the perfect soundtrack—an unheralded classic of romantic cinema. 

-Graham Cumberbatch

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