Filmmaker Alrick Brown walked away with the Audience and Jury awards at the 2009 Langston Hughes African American Film Festival, marking yet another first as this 6-year old festival posted record attendance for opening and closing nights and an eclectic array of narrative, documentary, experimental and youth films.

Brown’s film, “US A Love Story” is an allegorical representation of the history and current state of Blacks and Whites in America. This story is told through the paradigm of a couple sharing a large house (America). A Black woman and a White man living under the torment of domestic violence.

The cycles of abuse, the struggle for power, the social, physical, spiritual, psychological torment–the confusion, the misunderstanding; the need for, and fear of separation, as well as a twisted view of love are all relevant.

America is an abusive household. This film asks the question, how can this union consecrated in blood work, much less last? It answers the question, why can’t WE just get over IT?

It is a simple tale, in a simple setting with two characters fighting for their lives.

Alrick Brown (Filmmaker) holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. A writer and teacher, he has found his calling directing and producing narrative films and documentaries often focusing on social issues affecting the world at large. It was after visiting the slave castle of Elmina, in Ghana, that he was inspired to attend film school. For over two years he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire. The interactions with the people of his village and his overall experiences in West Africa have informed his creative expression; an expression first fostered by his birth in Kingston, Jamaica and migration to, and upbringing in Plainfield, New Jersey. A fluent French speaker, he graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English and a Masters degree in Education. Since then he has devoted his energy to changing the world by giving a voice to the voiceless and telling stories that otherwise would not be told.

Alrick’s collective work has screened in over thirty film festivals, national and international, and received numerous awards. Three of his films have played Lincoln Center. Recently, he was one of four NYU students featured in the IFC Documentary series “Film School”, produced by Academy award nominee Nannette Burstein. In February 2007 he addressed the Motion Picture Association of America on C-SPAN.

http://www.usalovestory.com/