Critically-acclaimed drama that invokes the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance. As an elderly man, poet Bruce Nugent meets a young black gay artist struggling to find his voice and together they embark on a surreal narrative journey through his inspiring past.

"Brother to Brother" packs a lot of ambition into its compact running time. Director Rodney Evans has interwoven the modern-day story of Perry, a young gay African-American artist (Anthony Mackie) living in New York, struggling to find love and a sense of identity, with nothing less than a brief film history of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement, with its seminal figures Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston and Bruce Nugent shown in black-and-white flashbacks. An aged, destitute but still witty and unbowed Nugent (Roger Robinson) befriends Perry in the present and becomes his touchstone.

"Brother to Brother" is perhaps at its best in the flashbacks, which vividly capture the excitement and sense of limitless possibility that briefly existed for Nugent and his compatriots as they founded the radical literary journal "Fire!" They make one want to know more about these people. The present-day narrative has its virtues as well, shedding light on the special problems of gay African-Americans as well as the struggle to maintain one's artistic identity and integrity. The frankness with which male/male sex is treated, without prurience or heavy guilt, is most welcome.

Curiously, as another reviewer has mentioned, however, the couplings shown almost exclusively involve black with white men, which undercuts the film's contention that black gay men should celebrate their uniqueness. Moreover, Evans' protagonist has too many issues to contend with--homophobic parents and classmates, trying to make a living as a painter, boyfriend troubles--for everything to fit comfortably within the short allotted time. Finally, it must be said that an actor with greater emotional range than Mackie may have been able to bring out more facets of Perry, who too often seems merely a handsome, glum cipher. Still, despite its flaws, "Brother to Brother" succeeds at illuminating corners of the human experience long neglected in mainstream filmmaking, and for this certainly merits praise.