Sidewalk Stories

Special Screenings

Special Screening Premiere

USA | 97 MINUTES | English | English subtitles

SIDEWALK STORIES

Comedy
The low-budget, New York-in-the-’80s movie that proves that silence is not all that golden, Charles Lane’s magnetic feature debut is long overdue for rediscovery. With an overlap to a more recent attempt to update silent film for a modern movie audience, Lane plays The Artist, a Chaplin-esque street portraitist whose hapless efforts at fitting into the odd world of sidewalk performance are made all the more troublesome when he finds himself caring for an abandoned toddler, played by Lane’s adorable daughter Nicole Alaysia. The Artist’s efforts to find the girl’s mother are quickly and continually confounded by the many oddball characters he meets.

Shot and released in the same year as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Sidewalk Stories is a similarly vivid encapsulation of the race and class divisions that inform life on New York City’s streets. Lane’s version centers on the homeless perspective, made all the more visceral for being shot in black-and-white and silent apart from Marc Marder’s wide-ranging score and a brief moment spent listening to panhandlers. The result is an ingenious, spellbinding effort by a black artist to give a voice to those who have none.

—Arthur Ryel-Lindsey

CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Charles Lane

CHARLES LANE was born in 1953 and grew up in the public housing projects of New York City's South Bronx. While attending SUNY Purchase, his short A Place in Time won him a Student Academy Award. He later earned a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, NAACP Award and multiple festival honors for Sidewalk Stories.
Director
Charles Lane
Screenwriter
Charles Lane
Producer
Charles Lane
Editor
Anne Stein, Charles Lane
Cinematographer
Bill Dill
Executive Producer
Howard M. Brickner, Vicki Lebenbaum, Chris Blackwell
Composer
Marc Marder
Cast
Nicole Alysia, Sandye Wilson, Darnell Williams, Trula Hoosier, Michael Baskin, Charles Lane

CONTACTS

Print Source
VINCENT PAUL-BONCOUR
Carlotta Films
PARIS,Phone: +33 1 42 24 10 86
vincentpb@aol.com
US Sales Contact
VINCENT PAUL-BONCOUR
Carlotta Films
PARIS,Phone: +33 1 42 24 10 86
vincentpb@aol.com
International Sales Contact
VINCENT PAUL-BONCOUR
Carlotta Films
PARIS,Phone: +33 1 42 24 10 86
vincentpb@aol.com
Press Contact
Céline Cléris
Carlotta Films
Paris, 75012
Phone: +33 1 42 24 53 54
celine@carlottafilms.com