‘My Brother’s Wedding’ Restoration Trailer: Charles Burnett’s Nearly Lost Masterpiece Gets the Version It Deserves

To be a fan of filmmaker Charles Burnett is to know patience. One of the central figures of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, Burnett’s career is filled with big affirmations (an honorary Oscar, two films on the National Film Registry) that don’t entirely speak to the struggles he faced in simply getting his films seen the way he meant for them to be.

Following last year’s release of his 1999 feature “The Annihilation of Fish” (yes, you read those seemingly confusing dates correctly), Burnett aficionados will this year get another treat: a 4K restoration and digital re-edit by the director of his sophomore film, “My Brother’s Wedding.” The restoration premiered earlier this year at Berlin.

Per an official synopsis, in the film, “Burnett created a tragicomic masterpiece of realism — Pierce Mundy (Everett Silas) is employed at his parents’ South Central dry cleaners with no prospects for the future — his childhood buddies are all in prison or dead. Pierce’s best friend Soldier (Ronnie Bell) is just getting out of jail. Pierce’s brother Wendell (Monte Easter), an up-and-coming lawyer, is busy planning a wedding to a snooty upper-middle-class black woman named Sonia (Gaye Shannon-Burnett, who co-produced the film). Pierce’s pious, Bible-touting mother (Jessie Holmes) provides occasional comic relief but also a heartfelt moral backbone to the film, as she urges Pierce to accept his responsibility to his family. When Soldier is killed in a car accident, Pierce’s conflicting obligations to family and friends becomes manifested in the choice between his brother’s wedding and his best friend’s funeral — both falling on the same day. The film’s climax has Pierce desperately trying to be two places at once and ending up nowhere.”

In an official statement, Burnett shared, “The story focuses on a young man who hasn’t made much of his life as of yet, and at a crucial point in his life, he is unable to make the proper decision, a sober decision, a moral decision. This is a consequence of his not having developed beyond the embryonic stage, socially. He has a distinct romantic notion about life in the ghetto and yet, in spite of his naive sensitivity, he is given the task of being his brother’s keeper; he feels rather than sees, and as a consequence his capacity for judging things off in the distance is limited. This brings about circumstances that weave themselves into a set of complexities which Pierce desperately tries to avoid.”

In a deep-dive interview with IndieWire in 2023, journalist Robert Daniels unpacked the history behind the film, and why it was, for so long, nearly lost. “‘My Brother’s Wedding’ found abbreviated life when it premiered at New York City’s New Directors/New Films festival in 1983, but that version of the film that first screened was tainted after producers snatched the edit away from Burnett to disastrous results. The rough-cut wasn’t well received by festival audiences (and infamously earned a harsh review from The New York Times), causing those same producers to then shelve the picture until Milestone Films co-founders Dennis Doros and Amy Heller bought the rights several decades later,” he wrote.

While Burnett finished editing the film in 2007, this new cut is much closer to Burnett’s original vision. Of note: it snips the original 110-minute running time down to a tidy 81 minutes.

“My Brother’s Wedding” has been digitally restored and remastered by Milestone Films in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Pacific Film Archive. Funding was provided by Milestone Films, Kino Lorber, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Pacific Film Archive. Laboratory services were provided by Prasad Corp North America, Deluxe Audio. The restoration was supervised by Burnett in consultation with Jillian Borders and Maya S. Cade.

Kino Lorber and Milestone Films will release the film at New York’s Film Forum on Friday, September 18. Check out the restored film’s brand-new trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.