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The Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Chameleon Street at Crosstown Theater.
Wendell B. Harris Jr. / 1990 / 94 minutes / Rated R
Tickets: $5 at the door
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Films begin at 7:00 p.m. (sharp!) at Crosstown Theater
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival — yet criminally under-seen for over three decades — Chameleon Street recounts the improbable but true story of Michigan con man Douglas Street, the titular “chameleon” who successfully impersonated his way up the socioeconomic ladder by posing as a magazine reporter, an Ivy League student, a respected surgeon, and a corporate lawyer. Elevated by a dexterous performance and daring direction from multi-hyphenate actor-writer-director Wendell B. Harris Jr., the film pins a lens on race, class and performance in American identity, which has lost none of its relevance. At once piercingly funny and aesthetically mischievous, Chameleon Street is a “lost masterpiece of Black American cinema” (BFI) long overdue to take its rightful place in the independent film canon.
The Crosstown Arts Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground, and documentary features.
