Jamal Joseph & Daniel Beaty’s “Chapter + Verse”
September 26, 2015, the 19th Urbanworld Film Festival presented the world premier of “Chapter + Verse”, the flagship production of Harlem Films, a new movie making company straight outta Harlem. Jamal Joseph, director (Knights of the South Bronx, August Rush, Hughes’ Dream Harlem) and leading man Daniel Beaty (Emergency, Through the Night, Mr. Joy) co-wrote the screenplay drawing heavily from their personal experiences and associates. Joseph says “Chapter & Verse … is not just a movie. It’s a movement.” He should know considering how both he and Beaty remained undaunted by the odds and “flipped the script” (reversed the circumstances) of their lives.
Jamal Joseph (nee Eddie Joseph) joined the Black Panther Party when he was fifteen; was jailed the first time when he was sixteen; became an FBI fugitive and landed in prison again, Leavenworth, where he earned two college degrees and found a new calling of Activism through Art. Today, he is a film professor at Columbia University, where, as a Panther Party member, he was accused of inciting students to burn down the school. Daniel Beaty remembers his father going to jail sixty-five times when he was growing up with his stalwart mother struggling to keep the family thriving and striving. Yet Daniel survived that lion’s den and has earned a BA, with honors, from Yale University and a MFA from the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. He has performed on stage in his incomparable solo works—throughout the U.S., Europe and on Africa television—as well as singing leading roles in operas and winning Grand Slam poetry championships hands-down.
Joseph and Beaty’s collaboration is a true-to-life story about the difficulties many African-Americans face today. It redefines family by the loving ties that bind and shows how one can be delivered from evil by taking responsibility and caring for others.
Loretta Divine (Waiting to Exhale, A Different World) is precious and poignant as Miss Mandy. Omari Hardwick (Power) is an indomitable force. But Daniel Beaty is the undisputed star! Renown for his chameleon ability to instantly morph into a variety of ages, genders, and races on stage in his riveting one-man shows. Beaty proves he also works well with others in this, his film debut.
Join the Chapter & Verse movement. The revolution will not be televised, but it has been cinematized.