"For roughly fifteen years Haile Gerima has been leadingthe charge for a truly independent black cinema movement....'What thecinema has not known is our voice,' he says. 'If we compromise that,there is no 'black cinema' and we might as well just call it 'cinema'.To me, black cinema means the expression of the temperament of blackpeople in visual language, and I will never compromise that"(interview by Greg Tate, Vibe, 9/94). Gerima is both a documentarist(After Winter: Sterling Brown) and creator of uniquely original features(the most recent being Sankofa). In the 1981 Ashes and Embers, thesurreal and the documentary combine to describe the private hell of ablack Vietnam War veteran (played by John Anderson). Gerima employs arhythmic montage to move between the film's shifting and contrastingworlds of past and present, reality and dream, Far East and east coast.The experience of the alienated vet, Ned Charles, becomes emblematic ofthe oppression and resilience of American blacks in a variety ofmilieus: Washington, D.C., with its inherent contradictions; ruralVirginia, deceptively peaceful, and rich in black history; and LosAngeles, where dreams are made and black reality is a nightmare.