The Brother from Another Planet. 1984. Written and directed by John Sayles

Film

No upcoming events

The Brother from Another Planet. 1984. USA. Written and directed by John Sayles. Courtesy of Photofest

The Brother from Another Planet. 1984. USA. Written and directed by John Sayles. With Joe Morton, Daryl Edwards, David Strathairn. 35mm preservation print from UCLA Film & Television Archive; courtesy of IFC Films. 108 min.

Writer-director John Sayles plays with gentle irony on conventions of the American slave narrative in chronicling the adventures of “The Brother,” a mute alien who comes to Harlem by way of Ellis Island (and outer space). The Brother’s seriocomic encounters with barflies and junkies, racist cops and street preachers—as well as ordinary folks just trying to get by—offer a timeless tale of two cities, segregated as always by race and class yet pulsating with immigrant life.

This film accompanies Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction.

Past events

Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T1, Theater 1

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1
Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:00 p.m.

Introduced by writer-director John Sayles, producers Maggie Renzi and Peggy Rajski, and actors Daryl Edwards and Fisher Stevens

MoMA, Floor T1, Theater 1

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].