Breaking Baz: Malcolm Washington Summons Ghosts From His Mother’s Family To Aid Him Shooting ‘The Piano Lesson’ — Telluride Film Festival
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Malcolm Washington says that his screen adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson honors his family’s history, especially that of his mother Pauletta Pearson Washington.
Set in post-Depression era Pittsburgh, the haunting movie is about two siblings, Berniece and her younger, sharecropper brother Boy Willie, played respectively by Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington.
Both believe that they have a claim to a treasured family heirloom – an upright piano carved by their enslaved grandfather with faces of their west African ancestors sold into slavery.
The history of the Charles family and that instrument is one forged in blood and bullets. The Piano Lesson will have its world premiere screening at the Telluride Film Festival over the Labor Day weekend and Netflix will release it into select cinemas in the United States on November 8.
Read more on deadline.com
