Filmmaker donnie l. betts first met Oscar Brown, Jr. at a workshop in Denver when betts was a young actor there.
“He inspired me to be the kind of artist I wanted to be, “an artist who has a social responsibility and a social awareness to do more than entertain but educate as well, and hopefully elevate,” said betts, now a theatre director, screen actor and documentarian.
25 years later, betts has completed the first full-length documentary ever made about the Chicago cultural icon who died May 29.
betts’ film, “Oscar Brown, Jr.: Music is My Life, Politics my Mistress,” has its Midwest premiere Aug. 13 in a tribute to Brown as part of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Black Harvest International Festival of Film and Video.
