Nefertite Nguvu brings normalcy to black cinema

When director/screenwriter Nefertite Nguvu appears at International House on Tuesday to screen and discuss her debut feature, In the Morning, she'll talk about sadness, laughter, love, and all the other everyday emotions portrayed in her visually and poetically arresting look at relationships among a group of black Brooklyn friends.

That kind of normalcy, she contends, is missing from African American cinema. "In this increasingly vulgar climate of violence against us," Hollywood's penchant is to present black lives in the context of heroism, crime, or racial adversity, says the 38-year-old Nguvu. "There aren't enough stories about just regular lives, about our feelings."

To both Michael Dennis, founder of the production company Reelblack, and Maori Holmes, artistic director of the BlackStar Film Festival, In the Morning felt so intensely personal that they conspired to bring it and Nguvu to Philadelphia for its premiere screening here. It will be the first joint project for the two local black film organizations.

"It's a delight in these troubling times," Holmes says, "to have a moment of leisure to soak up gorgeous black and brown bodies as they navigate love and regular life; not superheroes, magical denizens, or criminals, but just beautiful hipsters."

In the Morning looks and sounds like The Big Chill - if written by Zora Neale Hurston. The film is framed by 24 hours in the lives of nine longtime friends in the throes of passion, infidelity, missed opportunities, forward motion, and reminiscence. Their conversations are smart, poetic, subtly electric, giving In the Morning an improvisatory feel. In fact, Nguvu and cinematographer Arthur Jafa (Spike Lee's 1994 Crooklyn) shot their film in eight days in 2012 - crowdfunded with little more than $27,000.

Nguvu got to the intimate and convivial vibe of In the Morning through her first love: poetry.

"My parents took me to see poets such as Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez," says Nguvu, who grew up in Newark, N.J. ". . . I still think about those poems, where a turn of phrase or a haiku rearranged your whole world."

Her parents also instilled a love of art and culture and led Nefertite to film, the most memorable experience being Gordon Parks' 1969 The Learning Tree, about a black teen at the start of the 20th century. "It shook me. That's the first time I thought about wanting to be a filmmaker."

For almost 10 years after she graduated from New York's School of Visual Arts in 1997, "I tucked my dreams away and held dependable 9-to-5s" to pay the rent, she says. But as lower-priced digital technology emerged, Nguvu found she could afford to make shorts.

"I'm fascinated by the endless intricacies of the human heart and mind, so I gravitated toward short stories about relationships," Nguvu says of the black-and-white romancer I Want You (2007) and The End of Winter (2009).

The latter film, a small but complex story about love in the presence of loss, was based on a specific day in the filmmaker's life. "My father was dying, and my sister and I had to go to his apartment and clean in preparation for his passing," she recalls. "It was a difficult day, cathartic and spiritual."

The End of Winter crystallized for Nguvu the desire to focus on intimacy, vulnerability, and what lies beneath the surface.

In the Morning

7 p.m. Tuesday at International House, 3701 Chestnut St. A Q&A with filmmaker Nefertite Nguvu and cast members Kim Hill, Alzo Slade, Hoji Fortuna, and C.J. Lindsey will follow.

Tickets: $10; $8 for students and seniors.

Information: www.reelblack.com.EndText