Plot Summary

That Van Peebles, at 75, plays the title character from boyhood to age 47 only adds to the playful incongruity of this singular saga, which condenses half a century of Black experience-from the blind bluesmen of Chicago to the hustlers of Harlem to the diamond miners of West Africa-into a tall tale of one man's wanderlust. As handmade as filmmaking gets (Van Peebles uses digital media not as a substitute for film, but as a brand-new toy)—and with a cast of friends and family that includes his son Mario Van Peebles (as a pirate), director of photography John Threat and musical director William "Spaceman" Patterson (Van Peebles' "two right hands"), and Classical Theatre of Harlem cofounder Albert Preisser—Van Peebles' semi-musical, barely autobiographical bildungsroman celebrates the joy of storytelling in a personal film straight from the trickster soul of a Renaissance man.