The debut, and to date only film directed by Theodore Witcher won the Audience Award at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival before being released to limited box office returns later that year. Despite the financial response, Witcher’s film is a breathtakingly romantic look at the love story of two artists that has stood the test of time, receiving a Criterion release with an updated transfer in 2022.

Darius Lovehall is a young black poet in Chicago who starts dating Nina Moseley, a beautiful and talented photographer. While trying to figure out if they’ve got a “love thing” or are just “kicking it,” they hang out with their friends, talking about love and sex. Then Nina tests the strength of Darius’ feelings and sets a chain of romantic complications into motion.

“‘love jones’ cleared space for the Black romances and ensemble dramas streaming today. And it continues to show us how, in the light, we can find our own possibility, a home, the space to just be.” ~ Danielle Amir Jackson, Criterion

“While the 1990s stands as the halcyon days of Black romances—’Poetic Justice,’ ‘Love and Basketball,’ “Soul Food,’ ‘The Best Man,’ and so forth—writer/director Theodore Witcher’s ‘Love Jones’ stands out. It features portions of the city of Chicago, the West and South side, that are rarely shown in movies. Few other films have displayed the vulnerability of Black men with such depth. Few have lit Black skin to such luminescent ends. And even fewer have refused to follow the genre conventions of the romance to such a range, as this film’s rain-soaked ending.” ~ Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com

Screening 2/6 + 2/25

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