CHAMELEON STREET (USA/1991)

This unique film was part of the resurgence of American independent filmmaking of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival and was released commercially in 1991. Chameleon Street was hailed by critics and ignored by audiences. Wendell B. Harris, Jr., the writer, editor, director, and star of the film hasn't directed since then. Chameleon Street is based on the real-life exploits of William Douglas Street, a middle-class black man who impersonated a Yale graduate student, a civil rights lawyer, a Harvard-trained surgeon, and a Time magazine journalist. What we have here is a Black indie movie that doesn't take the point of view of youth from the ghetto. A literate, adult, African-American film that mentions the Sex Pistols, includes clips from Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture, and makes brilliant use of voice-over narration. A serious-minded but very funny comedy about a black Zelig that confronts issues of race and class head on. A movie that broaches the existential concerns found in seminal Black novels like Richard Wright's "Native Son" and, especially, Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man". Like Abbas Kiarostami's Close Up, Chameleon Street features some of the impersonator's actual victims (including Detroit major Coleman Young and BKB star Paula McGee). Finally, one of best films released in 1991 is available on dvd.