A GOOD DAY TO BE BLACK AND SEXY World Cinema

African-American writer-director Dennis Dortch’s smart, sensuous debut explores the ever-shifting balance of power in the tug of war between the genders . Set in Los Angeles over the course of one day, the film is composed of six vignettes about the intimate territory of sexual desire as played out in bedrooms, kitchens and the back seats of cars. Dortch’s take on black sexuality b,ears no trace of the old stereotypes as defined and analyzed in Donald Bogie’s seminal Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Momies & Bucks, a critical work on the history of block stereotypes in Hollywood. Instead, Dortch’s characters are dynamic, his dialogue raw and relaxed, and his visual aesthetic seductive. Some of the scenes are hilarious, most ore familiar to romantics of any color, and Dortch elicits great performances from the strong women he has cost-Kathryn Taylor, Chante Horris, Mylika Davis and Emily Liu. As much as the filmmaking draws, in style and attitude, from wonderful sources-there ore nods to Melvin Van Peebles, Charles Burnett, Julie Dosh, Spike Lee, French and Italian auteurs and ’90s independents – Dortch has crafted on original, irreverent and fresh American independent film.