Literature | Soundview Media Partners LLC

A southern-born, black gay man goes back home to reconnect with black gay men he has performed on stage for a decade.

“Making Sweet Tea” chronicles the journey of southern-born, black gay researcher and performer E. Patrick Johnson as he travels home to North Carolina to come to terms with his past, and to Georgia, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. to reconnect with several black gay men he interviewed for his book, Sweet Tea. Johnson transformed that book into several staged plays over the course of a decade, and the film combines footage from his past performances of the men with documentary moments from their lives a decade after the book’s publication.

The film also focuses on Johnson’s life in the south while showing how the men have changed since – and been changed by – their depictions in his book and plays.

The film covers the subtle complexities of Johnson’s relationships with these men, with his family, and with his hometown in North Carolina. The film also restages Johnson’s performances of the men’s narrative in their homes, in their churches, and on their jobs, sometimes with them directing him or even participating in the scene.

Blurring the line between art and life, the film offers a rare glimpse into the lives of people rarely given a platform to speak and demonstrates how research, artistry, and life converge.

A festival favotite with numerous wins including:

Winner: Best Documentary, Out On Film Atlanta LGBTQ Film Festival
Winner: AARP Silver Image Award, Chicago LGBTQ International Film Festival
Winner: Best LGBTQ Film, San Diego Black Film Festival
Winner: Audience Choice Award, Kansas City FilmFest International
Winner: Judges’ Choice Documentary Film, Longleaf North Carolina Museum of History

Documentary / 2020 / 89 Minutes / Color / English / A film by John L. Jackson Jr.

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WATCH THE TRAILER

Monumental writer in the age of transcendentalism, groundbreaking feminist, critic and parlor conversationalist, Margaret Fuller was the foremost female intellectual of the mid-Victorian Age.

As the first American front-line international war correspondent, she covered the Italian Risorgimento and she herself tilted towards a global utopian revolution.

Margaret Fuller is brought to life through the intimate revelations of award-winning biographers and is animated with a rich period tapestry and an authentic musical score.

The film brings Margaret Fuller out of historical obscurity, exposes her inner life, bridges the gap between her time and ours, and illuminates the gender divisions she challenged in an effort to highlight her achievements.

Margaret Fuller became a member of the elusive Cambridge, Massachusetts intellectuals; the Harvard student’s boy’s club that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Freemen Clark to name just two.

Ralph Waldo Emerson called Fuller “The Greatest Conversationalist that America had”.

Family circumstances had her move to Boston where she became an influential leader and teacher of women’s group.

This film has huge potential in Women’s Studies, History, Sociology, Journalism and Philosophy American Studies and English.

What’s truly fascinating is the growing number of Fuller enthusiasts emerging from affinity groups not usually drawn to the humanities, but who identify with Fuller’s struggles as a woman who overcame economic odds and gender discrimination to create work of true importance.

With her brilliant, socially awkward demeanor, she has a potential following among women who self-reference as nerds, first and second-generation female immigrants who are facing obstacles and limitations in their culture’s patriarchal societies.