"MAKING SWEET TEA" MEETS WITH
CRITICAL SUCCESS ON FILM CIRCUIT
CRITICAL SUCCESS ON FILM CIRCUIT
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"Making Sweet Tea," a feature length documentary about the lives and loves of southern gay black men, has met with critical success on film circuits throughout the United States, winning an Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Out on Film: Atlanta LGBTQ Film Festival 2019, an AARP SIlver Image Award at the Reeling 2019: 37th Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, winning Best LGBTQ Film at the San Diego Black Film Festival 2020, Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Kansas City FilmFest International 2020, and Judges Choice for Documentary Film at Longleaf 2020.
Directed by John L Jackson Jr. (the Dean of Annenberg School of Communication, as well as the co-director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography) and Nora Gross (CAMRA Director) the documentary follows the personal and scholarly trajectory of researcher and activist E. Patrick Johnson. Johnson (the first Black man from his small town of Hickory, North Carolina, to earn a PhD). As someone who has documented his own coming-out story, Johnson also seeks to understand the many different experiences of Black gay men from the Southern United States and to share their stories with audiences through both scholarly and artistic means. Most recently, Johnson has transformed his extensive ethnographic life history interviews with gay Black Southerners into a one-man theatrical show, Sweet Tea. |
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The film combines footage from the rehearsal and production of that show with documentary moments from the lives of both Johnson and his interview participants, depicting both his research process and the complexities of his relationships with the men in his study. Much like Johnson’s work itself, the film attempts to transcend conventional assumptions about what counts as “scholarship”—and to reimagine how such scholarship can/should be shared. How do we represent portions of other people’s life stories? How do those stories impact us as researchers and viewers? What does it even mean to blur the boundaries between art and science, scholarship and activism, and what’s to be gained from doing so? Making Sweet Tea, the film, attempts to place these interconnected themes and questions in critical and creative conversation.
Learn more about the film and follow its successes by checking out the Making Sweet Tea website, or take a look at the press kit here.
Learn more about the film and follow its successes by checking out the Making Sweet Tea website, or take a look at the press kit here.
john L. jackson jr.
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nora gross
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e. patrick johnson
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Executive Producer/Director
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Producer/Director/Cinematographer
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Executive Producer
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Sweat Tea Teaser: So What's the Tea?
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