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VISION PORTRAITS is a deeply personal documentary by award-winning, gay filmmaker Rodney Evans (BROTHER TO BROTHER, THE HAPPY SAD) as he explores how his loss of vision may impact his creative future, and what it means to be a blind or visually impaired creative artist. It's a celebration of the possibilities of art created by a Manhattan photographer (John Dugdale) who lost his vision during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, a resilient Bronx-based dancer (Kayla Hamilton), a Canadian writer & storyteller (Ryan Knighton) and the filmmaker himself, who each experience varying degrees of visual impairment. Using archival material alongside new illuminating interviews and observational footage of the artists at work, Evans has created a tantalizing meditation on blindness and creativity, a sensual work that opens our minds to new possibilities.

Rodney Evans is the writer/director/producer of the feature film Brother To Brother which won the Special Jury Prize in Drama at the Sundance Film Festival. The film had its European premiere at The Berlin International Film Festival and garnered four Independent Spirit Award nominations including Best First Film, Best First Screenplay, Best Debut Performance for Anthony Mackie and Best Supporting Male Performance for Roger Robinson. Evans has received funding from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Program, The Creative Capital Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The NY State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Black Public Media (BPM). His second narrative feature, The Happy Sad, has played at over thirty film festivals throughout the world and had its U.S. theatrical premiere in August 2013 at the IFC Center in NYC and the Sundance Sunset Cinema in Los Angeles. Evans has taught at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton and Swarthmore. His recent documentary short Persistence of Vision screened at BAMcinemaFest and Frameline: The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival in June 2016. It recently won the Jury Prize at the Ann Arbor International Film Festival in 2017. His latest feature, Vision Portraits, will have its World Premiere at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival in the Documentary Feature Competition.

* Screenings of the film are left to the individual, a Q & A forum with the guest(s) will be the event taking place.

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https://montclair.zoom.us/j/95357056829?pwd=bDB6ZUtWNC9TQ3QvS2NFTFA1Smh5dz09