Screening

About Personal Problems

Rating:

Not rated Not rated

Year Released:

2017

Format:

2K DCP

Genres:

Drama

Metadata:

Directed by Bill Gunn

Originally intended to air on public television in 1980, Personal Problems went unseen for many years. The ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration between pioneering Black artists, writer Ishmael Reed and director Bill Gunn. Operating in defiance of the racially exclusive Hollywood studio system, Reed and Gunn banded together with a group of renegade artists to film a “meta soap opera” about the struggles of a working class African American couple in New York City. The original tapes have been carefully restored by Kino Lorber, and the film is now available in its full-length version for the first time in decades. Gunn also wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess and crafted the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s The Landlord.