Atlanta filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper named her production company, Coffee Bluff Pictures, after a place many people don’t know, a small enclave in Savannah, Georgia, historically settled by formerly enslaved families. The name is a reminder, Draper says, of who she is and to whom she is accountable: the communities whose stories she carries to the screen.
That accountability shapes every project she takes on as a filmmaker. It runs visibly through her new documentary, Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage, the first feature-length film ever made about the artist, which Draper screened at the Cannes Marché du Film this past May. Bearden spent his life insisting that Black people, rather than outside institutions, should be the ones documenting and telling stories of Black life.
Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage insists on the same thing.
“Romare Bearden has always been ahead of us,” Draper says. “What feels urgent now is that the culture has finally caught up to the questions he was asking — about place, identity, ritual, and what it means to construct a self from complex, multiple histories and lived experiences.”
“He was challenging who gets to interpret culture, who gets centered, and who gets written out. That is not history. That is now.”
Deborah Riley Draper
Why Romare Bearden, and why now?
Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sept. 2, 1911. His family migrated to Harlem, where their home drew artists and intellectuals. He became a painter, a collagist, a muralist, and co-founded the Cinque Gallery to support Black artists locked out of the mainstream art world. He died in 1988, yet his work has never stopped being contemporary.
“In 1969, [Bearden] led the protest against the Met for mounting an exhibition about Harlem without involving Harlem — without Black artists, without Black curators,” Draper explains. “He was challenging who gets to interpret culture, who gets centered, and who gets written out. That is not history. That is now.”
Draper crafted Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage to move the way Bearden worked — through juxtaposition, fragmentation, and accumulation. Archival footage sits alongside contemporary voices. Fragments of paintings open into memory. Rare audio of Bearden himself serves as the film’s narration, guiding viewers through his life and work.
“Meaning is accumulated, not dictated,” Draper says. “The audience is invited to participate in that construction … to make connections, to sit inside the gaps.”
Among the film’s most extraordinary assets: never-before-seen footage of Bearden in conversation with James Baldwin and Alvin Ailey.
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“What emerges is a living ecosystem of Black intellect, experience, and artistry,” Draper says. “They are challenging each other, sharpening ideas in real time. That footage shifts the scale of the film.”
What comes next for the film?
Executive producers include NBA Hall of Famer Grant Hill and veteran chief marketing officer Kimberly Evans Paige, as well as Jocelyn Moore, Robin Lyon, and Alva Greenberg. Draper is currently finalizing a festival and distribution strategy that includes a summer of screenings with museums and collectors, a limited theatrical release, and then streaming.
The film has been funded entirely through charitable contributions. Those who want to support its completion can make a tax-deductible donation through the Southern Documentary Fund.
“A lot of support for the arts is dwindling as diversity, inclusion, and equity become words that create backlash and discomfort,” Draper says. “Yet so many people still understand the importance of art and the conversations and ideas that transform us.”
Bearden understood that too. He spent a lifetime insisting on it.
