Romare Bearden: A Life in CollageRomare Bearden: A Life in Collage

A documentary portrait of artist Romare Bearden, whose collages drew on memory and Black life and whose work crossed art, music and activism.

Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage is a documentary portrait of the American artist Romare Bearden (1911–1988). Through interviews with artists, museum curators and writers close to him, and with Bearden himself, it follows a man described as an athlete, artist and activist who defied boundaries placed on Black men of his generation. His memories of North Carolina, New York and Pittsburgh feed a collective memory, and the film alternates conversations with work from different periods. It shows how collage entered his practice and marked his breakthrough in the sixties, allowing social and current themes, and looks at music, especially jazz, in clubs and in his approach to composition. After the Second World War he met artists such as Picasso and Matisse in Europe. Romare Bearden, Denzel Washington, Usher, Grant Hill, Mary Schmidt Campbell and Elizabeth Alexander appear as themselves.

Story written by Evenitto from TMDB and the cinemas' notes