Cousin Bobby

Jonathan Demme tracks down his cousin Robert Castle, whom he had not seen for thirty years. Castle is the priest of an Episcopal church in Harlem, a white man working with a Black congregation, speaking out against police violence, and active in the civil rights movement in the sixties. The subject is not religion but a man's decision to leave his own class and comfort. Castle had a parish in New Jersey and had to leave it over what he said there, and the film sets that past beside the present. The form is like a family album: Demme holds the camera himself, asks his questions out loud, keeps returning to family photographs. The edit does not build an orderly documentary structure; it follows a relative's curiosity. This is Demme's most personal work. He was making big-budget features in the same years, while this documentary was made with a small crew at almost home-movie scale. The family's political past opens up in the film, and the story of Castle's brother changes the course of the narration. Who it is for: viewers who like personal documentary and American civil rights history told through ordinary people. Who it is not for: anyone looking for an orderly structure; the film is deliberately scattered and jumps between subjects.