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PMA Films: Cane River (FREE, in person screening)

  • Portland Museum of Art 7 Congress Square Portland, ME, 04101 United States (map)

SCREENING IN THE BERNARD OSHER FOUNDATION AUDITORIUM

In partnership with Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies and Africana at Bates College, PMA Films is excited to announce a new annual film series, “Connection and Collaboration.” The series, which is free and open to the public, will group films that examine and celebrate the ways African Americans collaborate across their differences for their survival. The films are presented in conjunction with a series of local events commemorating Juneteenth.


In its modest, forthright warmth, ‘Cane River’ is a work of visionary artistry and progressive imagination.
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker

105 minutes. Not Rated. Directed by Horace B. Jenkins.

Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, Cane River is a racially-charged love story in Natchitoches Parish, a “free community of color” in Louisiana. A budding, forbidden romance lays bare the tensions between two black communities, both descended from slaves but of disparate opportunity—the light-skinned, property-owning Creoles and the darker-skinned, more disenfranchised families of the area.

This lyrical, visionary film disappeared for decades after Jenkins died suddenly following the film’s completion, robbing generations of a talented, vibrant new voice in African American cinema. Available now for the first time in forty years in a brand-new, state-of-the-art 4k restoration.

Official Website


Additional screenings: