Night Catches Us, Plus Meet-the-Director, Tanya Hamilton

Thanks to DIG Yoga and Nurture Spa for sponsoring this event.

Nominated for “Best First Feature” Independent Spirit Award. In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone’s beliefs, as he rediscovers his forbidden passion for Patricia. Musical score by The Roots. Starring Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie (“The Hurt Locker”). Rated R; 90 minutes; 2010

Tanya Hamilton wrote and Directed Night Catches Us which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2010. Hamilton developed the film’s script in the Sundance Filmmaker Labs in 1999 and received a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts Grant for Night Catches Us (the only screenwriter to ever receive the award), the Gordon Parks Screenwriting Award, the Urban World Film Festival Screenwriting Award, a 5-County Arts Grant of the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. Her short film, The Killers, was awarded best short film at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival and the 1997 New Line Cinema award. In the same year she also received the Director’s Guild of America Award for Best Female Director.