Historian Mike Bunn’s This Southern Metropolis examines the antebellum history and character of Mobile, Alabama, through the eyes of its myriad visitors. It’s an intriguing dive into a unique Southern city. I reviewed it for Alabama Writers’ Forum.
November 6, 2024. One night several years ago, while in New Orleans for a conference, I was walking down Royal Street toward my hotel and heard music down the block. Two musicians were playing in a doorway on a corner. The song they were playing was Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and, even though it is a perhaps overused piece of music (apparently even Leonard Cohen thought so), it is still beautiful and haunting and splendid. On that night, I was going through some challenges back home and my dad was in the last six months of his life. The calming music stopped me in my tracks and sustained me for a while. I stayed and listened until a street parade and second line passed, the duo stopped playing, and the crowd dispersed.
The musicians were Tanya and Dorise. Dorise Blackmon, from New Orleans, was the guitarist and Tanya Huang, from Taiwan, was the violinist. They were regulars in the Quarter for fifteen years, announcing their retirement from busking in 2017. Fortunately, videos of their performances can be found online and they left some recordings that can still be purchased. I like to listen to them when I need a calming break.
The music ranges from classical to jazz to standards to pop and rock. Pachelbel, U2, Led Zeppelin, “Amazing Grace,” and “I Will Survive” are in the mix. You can find Tanya and Dorise’s performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” online; that one becomes a raucous and joyous singalong. I distinctly remember them covering “Smells Like Teen Spirit” when I was there. Whenever I watch them, I am struck by Tanya’s intense concentration, despite the boisterous chatter of passing crowds or police sirens down the block. Dorise is equally concentrated on the music, but with a clear eye on the crowd, ready to intercept any disturbance that might hinder the performance. One can see people walking down the street who suddenly stop and listen, enrapt, as I was those years ago by the unsuspected interlude and its contrast with the chaos just up the street.
I learned recently that Dorise passed away in 2023.
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This morning, I woke up thinking about Tanya and Dorise’s performance of “Hallelujah” that night on Royal Street. I needed the peace and calm I knew such thoughts would bring. And the memories. I have tried to stay calm about yesterday’s election and stay hopeful, but I am heartbroken and scared. I have seen people get passionate about this election who have mostly ignored elections in the past. I have watched friendships dissolve. I have listened in dismay as people I used to respect repeat nonsense they’ve heard from an ill-bred compulsive liar, insurrectionist, and convicted felon. Election Day is past and the trauma and the threat remain; insurrectionists gotta insurrect, I reckon. I am ashamed for my country and its amnesia. I reach for a bright spot and cling to the fact that one more Alabama congressional district was flipped by the Democrats last night. Even so, I wonder if our country will be worth saving in four years.
I mostly keep quiet and watch. As I was working toward my political theory degree way back during Watergate, my major professor urged us not to follow American politics: “It will completely distort your understanding of the theory and the process,” he smirked. But it’s hard not to rubberneck at a wreck.
I hope you will take a few quiet minutes to hear Tanya and Dorise. By the way, Dorise’s shirt says “Stop Bitchin’, Start a Revolution!” Amen and hallelujah.
My first awareness of the artist Titus Kaphar is learning about his provocative painting, “Behind the Myth of Benevolence” (2014). In it, Rembrandt Peale’s famous portrait of Thomas Jefferson is ripped back to partially reveal a woman representing Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s enslaved and assumed mistress and mother to six children the third U.S. president allegedly fathered.
Much of Kaphar’s art deals with the deconstruction and reassembly of American history, exposing secrets and lies and hypocrisies in a stunning conceptual conceit. Here in Alabama, his work may be viewed at the Birmingham Museum of Art and at Montgomery’s Legacy Museum of the Equal Justice Initiative.
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When I taught directing classes, I stressed how directing for stage and, especially film, is a visual medium. If an audience gathers to watch a show, it is the director’s job to give them something to watch and not just listen. A major part of telling the story is delivering the visual cues. So it always interests me when artists from another visual medium make a film. The films of painter Julian Schnabel are always fascinating to watch, especially for their visual intensity (Basquiat, Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Similarly, I admire films directed by fashion designer Tom Ford for their crisp visual discipline and precise characterizations (A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals). In each, the artist makes the film an extension of his visual aesthetic.
Which brings me back to Titus Kaphar and his powerful directing debut, Exhibiting Forgiveness. The film, from a script by Kaphar, is intensely personal, clearly biographical, and an offshoot of “The Jerome Project,” a documentary about Kaphar’s strained relationship with his father. Exhibiting Forgiveness tells of an artist on the rise as he is pulled back into a traumatic past that he never really left.
André Holland plays the artist, Tarrell, living an idyllic-seeming life with his musician wife, Aisha (Andra Day), and their impossibly adorable young son, Jermaine (Daniel Michael Barriere). André and Aisha take “turns” attending to their art and the scenes of their domestic life are calm and blissful. We spend time in Tarrell’s home studio and are privileged to see his art and technique take form through Holland’s sensitive and deft performance.
It is during a visit to Tarrell’s mother’s house that the artist is forced to face his recovering addict father. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as the mother, Joyce, delivers a delicate performance as a forgiving and deeply religious woman trying to forge a reconciliation with the son and the father who abused him. John Earl Jelks is La’Ron, the father who has worked tirelessly all his life, acted destructively toward his family, and been given too many second chances. Ian Foreman as Young Tarrell also merits a mention. His scenes are primarily flashbacks and few moments are as moving as the look on his face as he is forced to cut the grass after an intense injury to his foot.
Kaphar’s script gives each principal scenes in which they can shine in performances that illuminate and enhance the film. As the film goes on, it becomes clear that there are no true villains here; each reacts to victimhood in their own way.
Kaphar’s haunting and evocative large-scale paintings are featured throughout the film, illuminating the memories that haunt Tarrell. The cinematographer Lachlan Milne has captured the film in ways that emulate Kaphar’s art. The urban landscapes lend authenticity and memory to the film’s lush images. A scene at a gallery opening captures the artist’s frustration at having his privacy violated after a volatile encounter. It is a rewarding movie to watch.
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In 2018, at the height of the movement to remove Confederate statues, I heard an interview with Titus Kaphar and was impressed by his rational response to the conflict. He said:
We’re having a national conversation right now about public monuments. And in this discussion … we have this sort of binary conversation about keeping these sculptures up or taking them down. And I actually think that that binary conversation is problematic. I think there is another possibility, and I think that possibility has to do with bringing in new work that speaks in conversation with this old work. It’s about a willingness to confront a very difficult past.
In Exhibiting Forgiveness, Kaphar confronts a difficult personal past with grace and authority. It is a stunning piece of art.
Robert McCammon, a master of suspense/thriller literature, is about to release Labyrinth, the final volume of his ten-volume Matthew Corbett series. Until that release, you might whet your appetite with the stories of the penultimate Corbett book, Seven Shades of Evil. I recently reviewed Seven Shades of Evil for Alabama Writers’ Forum. Read it here:
In October 2019, my friend Anne and I headed to Florence for the final Friends of the Café dinner of the 2019 season. The chef was Tandy Wilson of Nashville. As the diners gathered, we were treated to music by Single Lock Records musician Caleb Elliott, accompanied by violinist Kimi Sampson. It was, as always, a relaxing, magical evening at the former t-shirt factory – now the headquarters of Natalie Chanin and Project Threadways, the 501(c)(3) umbrella that guides the work of the Alabama Chanin fashion brand and The School of Making (Project Threadways | Alabama Chanin).
Nobody suspected that in five months the world would stop and that would be our final trip to Florence for several years.
Now, five years later, Anne and I are once again traveling to the Shoals on a beautiful fall evening toward the end of cotton season. Cotton fields are on each side of the highway, farm vehicles head home for the night, and cotton lint dusts the shoulder of the road like the aftermath of a winter flurry. When we received word that another Friends of the Café event was in the offing, it didn’t take long to text each other Let’s go. We also wondered if it would still be as magical an experience as some of the past dinners.
This most recent dinner was helmed by Vishwesh Bhatt, James Beard Award-winner at Oxford, Mississippi’s Snackbar (citygroceryonline.com). Born in Gujarat, India, Bhaat’s culinary training began in his mother’s kitchen and was further honed in the United States, where he moved as a teenager. Indian culinary influences mesh beautifully with his adaptation of dishes and ingredients of the Southern U.S. His 2022 cookbook, I Am from Here, illustrates Bhatt’s creativity and blend of unique but related styles.
Arriving at the Factory felt like a homecoming of sorts after five years and, after over two dozen of these events, I felt like we were Friends of the Cafe “O.G.s.” We didn’t know a lot of people there but were happy to see them. When we arrived, Natalie Chanin warmly greeted people at the door as the staff handed out glasses of brut rosé. Passed hors d’oeuvres included a lamb keema shepherd’s pie, royal red shrimp salad on a cornbread cracker, and Benedictine on rye topped with paddlefish roe. These preliminary bites were a tasty enticement for the meal to come. Entering the Factory, guests encounter the showroom featuring Alabama Chanin’s latest line and other items of interest, including books, art, and dinnerware. Farther back, and behind a curtain of lights, is the inviting café area with places casually set at expansive wooden tables. We briefly discussed with Natalie the changes wrought by the pandemic and agreed that so many things had been changed by that period that will never be the same.
The guests took their seats in the café and introductions were made. All proceeds from the dinner will benefit Project Threadways and, at Chef Bhatt’s request, his chef’s fee will be donated to Giving Kitchen (thegivingkitchen.org), a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance for food service workers, including financial support and other community resources. Chef Bhatt’s charming and insightful comments evoked the textile history of his childhood home in India and the textile history of the Shoals area of Alabama. The first platters began to arrive for a family-style course – an impressive platter of sprouted lady cream pea chaat with apples, onions, chilies, sweet and spicy chutneys, and corn tortilla “sev.” It was a delicious mix of tastes with a pleasing heat that came in with subtle notes at the end. The next dish was a bowl of crab and fregula in a refreshing tomato-chile broth, brightened by fresh herbs.
Everyone at our table seemed delighted. Which brings up another highlight of the Factory dinners: I am always impressed by the range and variety of guests in attendance. We have met and dined with people from all over the country and, indeed, around the world at these events. I have met people I have stayed in touch with and some who have become friends. At the Vishwesh Bhatt event, we lucked into sharing a table with a young couple named Kristy and Ben who own a record store / bodega in downtown Florence — an “elevated bodega,” according to one report. There are always intriguing and entertaining people “at table” at the Alabama Chanin Factory and Ben and Kristy filled us in on the events and artists forthcoming at fashion designer Billy Reid’s Shindig, which was taking over the town that weekend.
The final family-style course of the dinner was a platter of ginger-peanut braised beef short ribs on a bed of Anson Mills pencil cob grits, served with a side dish of roasted okra. The fork-tender beef and the gravy from the various juices and herbs were succulent and perfect and the okra was a fresh and bright reminder of the season just past.
Chef Bhatt made some parting remarks and dessert was a chocolate-tahini tart with spiced honey. 
Need I say more? As we left, I commented to Natalie that Anne and I had worried that the experience might not be as magical as it had been in years past. “Was it?” she asked.
Oh yes. It was good to be back.
Hannah Durkin’s Survivors of the Clotilda is a recent entry in the many books about the Africans who are reputed to be the last enslaved people to be brought into U.S. waters. Through detailed research and first-hand narratives, Durkin brings life and distinct personalities to the kidnapped captives and their plight after leaving their homeland.
My mother shares a June birth date with her long-time friend Ruth in Tuscaloosa. In years past, when my parents were living in Tuscaloosa, Mom and Ruth would have a lunch to celebrate around birthday time. They renewed the tradition last year, with Ruth driving up from Tuscaloosa to meet Mother at Bessemer’s venerable Bright Star, a Birmingham-area institution since 1907 (History | Bright Star Restaurant (thebrightstar.com). They had to delay this year’s celebration, which was a landmark birthday for my mother, but they met at Bright Star not long ago.
It is my habit to drive Mother to the luncheon, send her and Ruth to a booth in the main dining room, and take a table away from them to have lunch on my own. I am not always the best company for my mother, I think, and she and Ruth always have a fine old time. So I stay away and let them celebrate as long as they like. 
As I sat in a small booth, enjoying one of Bright Star’s specialty seafood dishes, I was once again moved by the history and tradition of the place. Bessemer is a small city about fifteen minutes from downtown Birmingham and, when most of the heavy industrial plants, including a Pullman railroad car plant, left town, a good chunk of the economy left with it.
Through it all, the Bright Star has stayed strong since opening as a 12-seat bar in 1907. It is now a sprawling restaurant in the heart of downtown Bessemer which serves as a meat-and-three by day and shifts to a more fine-dining oriented menu in the evening. The Bright Star is the kind of place one goes to for special occasions – a birthday, before a wedding, after a funeral, an anniversary. It runs a brisk business before or after Alabama football games. Coach Bear Bryant’s favorite booth is in the back, close to the kitchen, and Coach Nick Saban’s booth in the 1907 Room has been added to the seating options. A friend and I were having dinner there on a Sunday night in the ’80s when it seemed like every priest in the metro was passing our table on the way to a private room in the back. Jimmy Koikos, one of the owners, on one of his passes, said, “They come most Sundays.” Actor Sandra Bullock brought her dad, who had Alabama roots, there for Father’s Day one time. 
Members of the same Greek-American family have owned the Bright Star since the beginning. It was honored with a James Beard American Classics Award in 2010. In my years going there it has mostly been run by brothers Jimmy and Nick Koikos. “Mr. Jimmy,” who greeted guests and is featured in many of the photos that line the lobby, passed away a few years ago and now the restaurant is owned by Nick, his niece manager Stacey Craig, and cousin Executive Chef Andreas Anastassakis. The Greek heritage is reflected on the menu, as are Southern staples. They serve great steaks but I usually have a Greek-style seafood entrée.
In the main dining room, landscape murals line the upper walls above the wainscotting. These were painted by itinerant German painters in 1915. I have never heard names for these painters but I have always wanted to know more about their story. For most of my life, the murals were glazed a deep golden brown. The restaurant did a restoration of the murals in the early-2000s and the transformation was startling. The brown tint was the result of decades of tobacco smoke in the earlier days before smoking restrictions were in force. The subtle shades of the restored murals cast a much lighter ambiance to the room.
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Sitting separately from my mom and Ruth, old friends with many stories to share, I would occasionally hear the pleasant sound of laughter from the back of the room. I have never been one for chitchat and don’t seem to have the ability to make my mother laugh that much, so it was good to hear her celebrating her birthday with someone who can always make her laugh.
My mother’s favorite Bright Star dessert is their decadent lemon icebox pie. I had two slices sent back to the table to top off an extended and celebratory lunch date. While they were visiting, a thunderstorm and windswept rain had come and gone and the city streets were glistening wet in sunlight when we emerged.
The two friends looked out at the wet street in surprise. “It rained?” they asked. The Bright Star had worked its magic one more time. 
“The earnest and sometimes deadpan narrative voices Garrett Ashley so ably creates make the impossible plausible, and the bizarre becomes something to be blithely accepted … The collection is a spectacular debut.”
Sometimes I open a book without any idea what I am about to read. Garrett Ashley’s Periphylla, and Other Deep Ocean Attractions, a collection of short stories, was completely new to me. Here’s my review for Alabama Writers’ Forum:
Each year, on the final August weekend before the start of college football season, Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival fills the north side of downtown with screenings, workshops, panels, and events focused on what’s happening in the world of independent filmmaking. Sidewalk has garnered many designations from film media over the years, including nonspecific adjectives like “coolest” and “fabulous.” It was also, more specifically, designated as one of the “Great Film Festivals for First-Time MovieMakers.” I’ve been present for the majority of the twenty-six iterations of Sidewalk and am delighted and proud that it became what it has become. Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema, in the basement of the Pizitz building, houses two cinemas showing movies year-round in intimate state-of-the art theaters that have become my favorite places to catch a movie in the city. The Festival even went on in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, in a drive-in theatre format at an outlet mall just outside the city. “Cool,” right?
It is my habit to book a room at the Elyton Hotel, on the southern edge of the festival, at the proverbial “Heaviest Corner on Earth,” ditch the car, and walk and walk … and walk among ten downtown venues showing about 250 titles from morning to late-night. A filmmaker friend who showed his film at Sidewalk years ago quipped that “now I understand why they call it ‘Sidewalk’.”
The 26th Annual Sidewalk opened at the Alabama Theatre on Friday night with Exhibiting Forgiveness, the debut film by visual artist Titus Kaphar starring Alabama native Andre Holland.
Easing in to a full day of movie watching on Saturday, I decided to watch “Saturday Morning Cartoons” at the Sidewalk Cinemas where sugary cereals and milk, coffee, cold pizza, Bloody Marys, and mimosas were on hand. Cleansed by cartoons and breakfast food, I walked over to the next block to catch a live organ performance by Nathan Avakian at the Alabama Theatre, Birmingham’s 1927 vintage “Showplace of the South.” Avakian provided accompaniment for a classic Harold Lloyd short and several three-minute contemporary films from the International Youth Silent Film Festival (IYSFF), all of which were directed by talented youth between the ages of thirteen and twenty.
Refreshed and awake, it was time to dive into the real business of the day and start watching movies. I am not keeping up with cinema like I used to so my selections were based largely on instinct. I am relieved to say that my instincts were good. My first full-length screening, Family Portrait (2023) at Sidewalk Cinema, was my best choice, but more about that later.
At the Birmingham Museum of Art, Chaperone (2024), directed by Zoe Eisenberg, features a compelling, sometimes painful, performance by Mitzi Akaha as an almost-thirty slacker who, despite pressures to accept responsibility, is content in her life until she accidentally gets romantically involved with a much younger guy.
Rushing back down to the Lyric Theatre, the night was closed out with My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock (2022), a high-concept documentary caper by Mark Cousins. The film is narrated in a voice, purported to be Hitchcock’s, about the various elements of Hitch’s filmography. It’s an entertaining ruse and a relaxing opportunity to revisit snippets of Hitchcock’s films and reexamine his mastery of suspense.
Sunday morning was the time for Sleep (South Korea, 2024), directed by Jason Yu. Yu’s suspenseful film, about a young couple suddenly beset with sleepwalking that quickly becomes a nightmare, is a deftly handled debut by Yu with strong and affecting performances by Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-kyun as the besieged couple.
My Sunday schedule is often heavy with documentaries and Resynator, directed by Alison Tavel, explores Tavel’s search for information about a father she never knew. Her father, Don Tavel, invented a synthesizer in the 1970s. In discovering the history of the Resynator synthesizer, Alison also forges a connection with her father.
Turning to more locally-focused fare – which is a Sidewalk standard, A Symphony Celebration: The Blind Boys of Alabama with Dr. Henry Panion III (2024), directed by Michael Edwards and Henry Panion, played at the recently-renovated Carver Theatre. My fandom of the Blind Boys took hold in the ‘80s when I was fortunate enough to attend The Gospel at Colonus, Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s brilliant stage adaptation of the ancient Greek play, Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles. The production featured Morgan Freeman as the Messenger and the Blind Boys of Alabama, collectively, as Oedipus. A Symphony Celebration chronicles a Birmingham performance by the Blind Boys with full orchestra and chorus. A centerpiece of the performance is the Blind Boys’ signature rendition of “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun,” a controversial choice that has become the Blind Boys’ most enduring hit.
The Almost Lost Story of Tuxedo Junction (2024), directed by Katie Rogers, is about a spot in the Ensley neighborhood of west Birmingham that is both mythologized and forgotten. My dad grew up on Avenue D in Ensley and I have known the humble building that stands at what was once a streetcar junction for as long as I can remember. Also, I cannot help tapping my toes whenever I hear the Erskine Hawkins-composed jazz standard, “Tuxedo Junction,” a piece inspired by that now-neglected place. It was heartening to see the large crowd that filled the Carver to watch the documentary; maybe more people remember than we realize.
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Now, if I’m lucky, I will see at least one movie each year at Sidewalk that I won’t forget. Most of what I saw in this 2024 edition was of fine quality and merit. However, the film that I can’t stop pondering is Family Portrait (2023), directed by Lucy Kerr.
A large family is gathered at an idyllic riverside home on a warm summery day. It is the appointed day to take the annual family photo for the Christmas card before the gathered begin to disperse. The news of the mysterious death of a distant relative begins to spread through the house. The family matriarch, who meticulously plans the annual card, walks away and seems to disappear. As the rest of the family goes blithely through their carefree day, daughter Katy (Deragh Campbell) becomes increasingly anxious – to take the picture, to find her mother. The mood of this quiet film becomes increasingly frantic, desperate, foreboding.
Family Portrait is a beautiful film – beautiful cinematography by Lidia Nikonova, beautifully edited by Karlis Bergs, brilliant sound design by Nikolay Antonov and Andrew Siedenburg. In a dreamlike prologue, the family aimlessly gathers at the river and the camera follows first one and then another, moving carefully back and forth and among the family members. Santa Claus hats are being handed out on a bright warm day; a man is given a hat, places it on a passing child’s head, and, when the child discards it, the man reluctantly picks it up and walks toward the others as the camera glides to another point of interest. Sound begins to bleed in, subconsciously at first – faint childish chatter, adult banter, nature sounds … and then the opening titles appear.
Exposition is casual and dialogue overlaps. We learn that the family are Texan. Katy is not married to her Polish partner, Oleg (Chris Galust); he has been designated the photographer for the portrait since he’s not “family.” A relative’s iconic World War II photograph was appropriated for Vietnam War propaganda of some sort. There is a brief sequence in which Katy and Oleg read an excerpt from a Barbara Bush memoir they have pulled from a shelf (I recognized the book cover from my mother’s bookshelves). A couple of hired workers go about their business inside and outside the house. Something is amiss and the specter of Covid is clearly looming here, but has not yet become a conscious issue for the family. A lyrical underwater swim late in the movie raises many questions as Katy emerges, soaking wet, and walks back toward the house. A slice of life story becomes surreal, off-balance. It seems that nobody remembers that Katy and Oleg are late for a ride to the airport.
Movies like Family Portrait are the reason I go to film festivals.
Pete Candler’s A Deeper South is an intriguing deep dive into the American South — its history, legacy, attractions, and complexities. In his search, Candler also discovers things he never knew about his prominent Georgia family. It’s a wild read. Here’s my review for Alabama Writers’ Forum:
Professional Southerner 