Cane River (1982)

Written, produced, and directed by the late Emmy Award-winning Horace B. Jenkins, financed by New Orleans' Rhodes family, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew - CANE RIVER is a historically informed love story set in Louisiana's Natchitoches Parish, a "free community of color." Aspiring writer and hopeless romantic Peter - former athlete and scion of an elite Creole family - returns to his hometown and immediately falls for a breathtaking historical tour guide, Maria. Maria's disenfranchised, darker-skinned family disapprove of Peter's family and condemn their burgeoning romance while highlighting the painful legacy of colorism in their tightly-knit community. The lovers must work through Peter's contentious family legacy as privileged, former slave-owning, light-skinned Creoles if they want their romance to survive.