Personal Problems | Bill Gunn at Roxy!

This entirely African American-conceived and produced ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration of a pair of pioneering Black artists: writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess (1973) and wrote the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970). Originally intended to air on public television in 1980, it went unseen for many years; the original tapes have been carefully restored by Kino Lorber and the film is now available in its full-length version for the first time in decades!

“During the last decades, films about the Black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that ‘if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.’

What happens when a group of unbankable individuals tell their stories? Actors who have final say over their speaking parts? A director who was found ‘too difficult’ for Hollywood? A composer who would not submit the hack soundtracks required by the industry? A Black male lead who was not Black enough? A Black actress who was not light enough? An actor who had been retired because he belonged to another era? A cinematographer who chose art over expediency? An unmarketable co-actor who didn’t look like Clark Gable or a male version of Vanessa Williams? Two producers, having no experience, had the audacity to organize a production with the amount of money that Hollywood spends on catering? Maybe less.

The result was Personal Problems, a meta–soap opera that has held audiences at Pacific Film Archives, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Whitney, and BAM.”

—Ishmael Reed