Ashes and Embers

Probably the most energetic and extended speech Vietnam vet Ned Charles (John Anderson) makes in the film, confronting the philosophical and/or political friends of his girlfriend (Kathy Flewellen) about the war, in writer-director Haile Gerima’s Ashes And Embers, 1982.

Couch-surfing and dissolute Vietnam vet Ned (John Anderson) provokes an unexpected tirade from his girlfriend Liza Jane (Kathy Flewellen) and gets kicked out, then visits the TV repair shop where he sometimes works, angering the boss Jim (Norman Blalock) in Haile Gerima’s acclaimed independent feature Ashes And Embers, 1982.

Killing time at his grandmother’s rural home, flashing back on Vietnam, and having listened to her gripe about people trying to “uproot” her, Ned (John Anderson) receives two real estate men (Benjamin F. Lehman, Lawrence Everette), in writer-director Haile Gerima’s Ashes And Embers, 1982.

Leaping back in time from the arrest of Ned Charles (John Anderson) in Los Angeles, he remembers earlier times in his return from Vietnam, and his first encounter with Grandma (Evelyn A. Blackwell), the exact location of her rural home not revealed, early in Haile Gerima’s Ashes And Embers, 1982.

Opening writer-director-producer Haile Gerima’s award-winning, low-budget underground feature, actors John Anderson as Ned and Barry Wiggins as “Randolph,” cruising Sunset Blvd. in late 1980, with radio ads and soon the police, in Ashes And Embers, 1982.