Sneak Preview of Jamal Joseph Film at Bay Street Sunday

Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater will hold a sneak preview of “Chapter & Verse,” a film by Jamal Joseph, an Oscar-nominated writer, activist, former Black Panther, and professor at Columbia University’s graduate film program, on Sunday afternoon at 2. A question-and-answer session with Mr. Joseph will follow the screening, which will benefit Impact Repertory Theatre and the Eastville Community Historical Society.

“Chapter & Verse,” which was shown at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center in June, is the story of S. Lance Ingram, who returns to a gentrifying Harlem after eight years in prison. Supervised by a tough parole officer and unable to find a job that utilizes his computer technology training from prison, he works as a deliveryman for a food pantry.

His involvement with a spirited grandmother and Ty, her 15-year-old grandson, for whom he takes responsibility, leads him into the world of a dangerous Harlem street gang with which the boy has become involved, and ultimately to a difficult choice.

Amy Taubin, a film critic and contributing editor for Film Comment and Sight and Sound magazines, called “Chapter & Verse” “a very good, intelligent, and affecting piece of film realism that has tough politics and debunks some sentimental ideas about ‘the black community.’ It is definitely going to be on my 10-best list this year.”

Tickets are $25, $10 for students 18 and under. Reserved seats for the screening and a cocktail reception at a private home with Mr. Joseph and Khadim Diop, who plays Ty in the film, can be secured for $125. 

Performers in the Impact Repertory Theatre, which is based in Harlem, use current events and their own personal experience as material to explore the issues facing young Americans. The Eastville Community Historical Society is devoted to the collection and dissemination of information about the Eastville area of Sag Harbor, one of the earliest known working-class communities inhabited mainly by African-American and Native American families.