Cane River (2020 Rerelease) is a racially-charged love story in Natchitoches Parish, a “free community of color” in Louisiana. A budding, forbidden romance lays bare the tensions between two black communities, both descended from slaves but of disparate opportunity—the light-skinned, property-owning Creoles and the darker-skinned, more disenfranchised families of the area.
This lyrical, visionary film, originally released in theaters in 1982, disappeared for decades after Jenkins died suddenly following the film’s completion, robbing generations of a talented, vibrant new voice in African American cinema. Available now for the first time in forty years in a brand-new, state-of-the-art 4k restoration created by IndieCollect in association with the archive of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
