Screening Intimacy, Vulnerability, and Sensitivity Between Black Men: An Interview with Rodney Evans

Abstract:Rodney Evans is a black gay filmmaker who works in both narrative and documentary forms. This interview covers his two feature-length narrative films, Brother to Brother (2004), The Happy Sad (2013), and his short work Billy and Aaron (2009). The interview focuses on the images of black masculinity in his films. Evans discusses the importance of showing black men—straight and gay—in intimate situations displaying vulnerability and sensitivity to each other in their relationships. Evans discusses the need to recover historical black gay figures for film as well as films about black gay men that have influenced his own work, notably Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Shirley Clarke's A Portrait of Jason (1967). He also discusses the importance of the recent Barry Jenkins film Moonlight (2016).