Thomas Allen Harris – MRQE

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

The film explores the role of photography, since its rudimentary beginnings in the 1840s, in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present. The dramatic arch is developed as a visual narrative that flows through the past 160 years to reveal black photography as an instrument for social change, an African American point-of-view on American history, and a particularized aesthetic vision.

Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Massachusetts State Representative and Civil Rights Movement veteran Byron Rushing takes the campaign for same sex marriage in to the Black community, with the support of progressive Black clergy and activists. They face the hostility of the church and defining the right of same sex marriage as a civil rights issue on par with the campaigns of the 1960s.

Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris focuses on the roles both his stepfather, Pule “Lee” Leinaeng, and the African National Congress played in bringing down apartheid from outside the confines of South Africa in this documentary that aims to strike a balance between intimate biography and searing social history. As the grip of apartheid was strengthening, a young group of concerned African National Congress activists exiled themselves to Botswana, Tanzania, and other “safe” locations outside of South Africa in hopes of battling oppression from the outside. By utilizing actors to create dramatic reenactments of events from that time, inter-cutting the newly shot footage with archival images, and tracing the path of his stepfather to the United States, Harris attempts to both personalize the plight of the ANC and simultaneously offer an in-depth account of the struggles the group faced while trying to abolish tyranny and restore justice to their homeland.

That’s My Face

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

In 1996, the filmmaker journeyed to the city Salvador Da Bahia – the African heart and soul of Brazil – seeking the identity of the spirits who haunt his dreams. Twenty years before, his mother made a parallel journey when she migrated with the family to Tanzania, East Africa in search of a mythic motherland. Shot entirely on silent Super 8 film by three generations of an African American family, “That’s My Face” creates a mythopoetic feast of self-discovery.

Vintage – Families of Value

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Winner of a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, “Vintage: Families of Value” is a thoughtful and sometimes painful examination of three black families through the eyes of gay and lesbian siblings including Harris and his brother Lyle Ashton Harris. The director confronts the issue by asking his mother to talk about her two sons being gay. This documentary weaves together stories from all three families with impressionistic scenes that express what some are unwilling to say.