Independent Lens
Camp Widow
At Camp Widow, every attendee, volunteer, speaker, and staff member has lost their partner; together they find camaraderie and unexpected joy.
Brigidy Bram: The Life and Mind of Kendal Hanna
Prolific painter Kendal Hanna pieces together the truth of his life story, pinpointing the forces threatening to erase his memory, his work, and his name from history.
- Length
- 90 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Open Call
Producer/Director
Kareem Mortimer
Kareem's works include: Cargo, Children of God, Hip-Hop Nation: Notes from the Underground, This Is Paradise, and Extraordinary Cuisine. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab. He is the founder and executive chairman of Best Ever Film and the chief creative of Best Yet Entertainment.
Producer/Director
Laura Gamse
Laura Gamse is a 2021 Sundance Film Festival Sandbox Fellow and a Fulbright recipient. Her debut documentary, The Creators, was named Best Documentary at the National Geographic Film Festival. Her work has been featured on NPR, Disney+, National Geographic, and Netflix. She is a graduate of Stanford’s Documentary MFA program.
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The Film
Born in 1936 in Nassau, Bahamas, Kendal Hanna is a painter known as the Bahamas’ most prolific living artist. As a young man, Hanna’s abstract art is described as an expression of his subconscious mind. He moves to New York City where he becomes immersed in the Pan-Africanist activism of the 1950s. Fate takes an unexpected turn when his canvases are stolen, leading to a harrowing series of events: panic attacks, imprisonment, and deportation from the United States. In Nassau, Hanna is committed to a psychiatric facility, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and told that his family has signed over the rights to his care—for life. He undergoes weekly sessions of electroshock treatment for an undocumented number of years. Finally, his memory in fragments, Hanna is released from the institution.
Decades later, Hanna lives alone in an industrial building, sleeping on his canvases. An art dealer stumbles upon his work and declares it a gold mine. At age 75, Hanna’s career takes off. Soon a startling revelation comes to light: he was misdiagnosed. After a lifetime of stigma, the film shows that the society that dismissed Hanna’s art dismissed the man as well. Hanna now lives by the sea, painting.
Over a decade in the making, Brigidy Bram provides unprecedented access into Kendal Hanna’s life and genius. His trajectory reveals the delicate relationship between creativity and memory, as well as the gulf between artistic expression and societal perception. The film celebrates resilience while highlighting the urgent plight of healthcare patients marginalized by diagnostic bias.
