I had read about "Let's Stay Together," in News One for Black America where staff writer Casey Gane-McCalla called it one of the 10 Black films to see in 2012. The trailer was cool. So me and the lady made a point to see it on a cold Friday evening. WOW! The festival is about New Voices and this is a new voice with a lot of potential and a bright future to come. First of all, it's Brooklyn all day. Coming from the Bronx, I don't really go to Brooklyn that much, but the social fabric of this film represents the artistic movement that is vital and coming out of BK all day. I'm also usually not crazy about independent films where the director is all up in it acting, as Alafia chooses to do. I find it distracting, like the director is holding my hand. I told Alafia he must love Woody Allen, and he said he grew up watching him, so yeah... In the Q n A after wards, he explained he had no budget, so I guess he thought it would save costs. Well, he pulled it off, not a bad actor, but Albert Lamont as "Freddy," had the theater rolling with laughter, playing a self hating biracial character who insists that his Filipino girlfriend can't embrace her African roots. Alafia doses out a lot of hard to swallow delusions with his characters, but somehow they make sense with this strange logic that he weaves throughout the piece. Alafia's character "Parker" is a filmmaker who believes Al Green's new album will make broken Black Families come back together. He interviews the young talent, Jonan Everett, not growing up with a father, and we see Everett's character try to navigate teen pregnancy. I had seen Jonan Everett in a film called "Angel Rodriguez" by Jim McKay and was happy to see him do his thing in Let's Stay Together, I think he's great! Parker has a complicated relationship with an ex girlfriend named "Nzinga," played beautifully by Sharaka and each story supports the thesis that relationships have a fracturing by our own traumas of being in this society and fears of coming into ourselves. Jaleel Bunton of the band TV on the Radio is featured first as comic relief then gives a really beautiful scene as he tries to tie up the loose ends in his life around family. If it sounds like I'm being vague, yes I am, I want you to see this remarkable film!
