We meet the bedridden patriarch, Percy (movingly portrayed by Tab Walton), who wavers between orneriness and a naked horror of losing his autonomy—something he expresses to his visiting Nurse (Angel Harper, warmth incarnate). Thanks to a handy baby monitor, Percy overhears the rancorous discussion among his offspring as they decide his fate. The five children are the strong-willed, angry Nita (commanding work by Nikki Crawford), the ne'er-do-well Terrance (the credibly insouciant Johnathan Floyd), the successful developer Rodney (Shawn Baker, all-too-convincing as a brittle and driven man), the fun-loving baby sister Ebonie (a snazzy turn by Sheree Smith), and the dutiful, ever-thoughtful Darryl (William L. Johnson, embodying dignity instead of smarm, and we thank him for it). No sooner than Ebonie's tardy arrival are the old resentments uncorked and given a chance to breathe.

The boys feel the girls got all the attention and the goodies growing up, so the burden should fall to them. The girls feel their father neglected the emotional needs of mother. "You can breathe every breath of your life for a man, and it's never enough," Nita remarks with asperity. All five recall the terrible night their father told them not to cling to or weep in front of their mother when she was dying. Ever the family's conscience, Daryl explains that none of them really knew their mother, either. What was her favorite color? Her favorite song? It wasn't Dad who drained her and kept her from her secret, lifelong dream of becoming a doctor, but her five children. So it comes as no surprise to anyone but his siblings that Daryl has already arranged to take in and care for his father. It seems the problem is neatly resolved and the whole airing of family laundry has been beside the point, but not really. Ebonie has stormed out, unwilling to take any more shit from her sibs. Nita is still bitter and now wistful about the person her mother really was.

The guilt and regret will set in sooner rather than later. Terrence will get no respect and seems in no hurry to clean up his own act. Go-getter Rodney remains preoccupied with his deals—you can predict how his own family life will pass him by before he's even aware of what he's missed. The family unit is intact, but still throbs with a generation's worth of aches and sorrows, and poor old Percy has heard every one of them courtesy of the baby monitor. At the end, we are treated to a gallery of family photos, which give us a fuller sense of who Percy was and is and what kind of a family man he was (he was present, he was a proud soldier handsome in his uniform, he was happily married, he clearly loved these kids). The family's strengths and weaknesses are those of any family of any color of any culture, and therein lies the genuine gift of Ponder's thoughtful film.

What kicked my butt about WHEN THE TIME COMES is how keenly it captured my college roommate's own dilemma with her aging parents. The only girl among four boys, raised "in a patriarchal household!" (as her mother proudly declared to me at her bridal shower), my roommate wound up the only child who could be bothered to take care of her mother when she slowly, but steadily declined. Three of the boys were just too damn busy to help out (even though one of them lived in the house with his mother), and the fourth son, who was genuinely concerned and helpful, had moved to another continent to marry and start his own family. So keen was my roommate's devotion to her mother that she donated a kidney to her, carried a demanding, full-time job (with a killer commute), did a second shift at her mother's home, then came home to do a third shift because her lazy-ass husband felt it was beneath him to clean the dishes. I remember thinking of her mother, "Yep, you sure did have a patriarchal household, and look who wound up nearly killing herself to take care of you."

POSSUM, directed by Jermaine Encarnation, is an affecting, low-key study in the ties between three sets of brothers. The story centers on the emotional adjustment made by Joseph (the younger incarnation played by Charles Stack), a sweet, fun-loving boy from the West Indies raised by his doting older brother, Allen (the unspeakably handsome Jason Olive) until the day that Allen has to skip town to avoid some trouble he's gotten into. He can't take Joseph with him, so Joseph moves in with Turtle (played by Ephraim Benton, who narrates the story) and his entrepreneurial, womanizing father, Toni (a complex performance by Al Robbins), who owns a local grocery store. Joseph (now young man, this older incarnation is played by director Encarnacion—sorry, I just HAD to go there) works in Toni's store and lives under Toni's roof, but somehow Toni never gets around to paying Joseph (whom Toni and Turtle call Possum) for his labor. Every once in a while, Possum is jumped and beaten up by three local hood rats, who also try unsuccessfully to rob Toni's store. Turtle, who is lame in one leg, has a more brotherly, rather than filial, relationship with Toni, so he yearns for a brotherly connection with Possum, but Possum, burned by Allen's abandonment, won't hang around with Turtle.

Possum becomes like poor Ed Crane from The Man Who Wasn't There, waiting for life to happen to him, refusing to connect meaningfully with Turtle, rolling over when Toni won't pay him, essentially playing dead. Lest you should think Toni is a completely self-centered SOB, check out the scene where he is delighted to be visited at the store by his own big brother (Herbert Rogers), but is visibly hurt when it turns out that his Big Bro has only come by to hit Toni up for money. Joseph's sole friendship is with an elderly Puerto Rican woman (Gabita Miller, a devil-may-care, dancin' fool), who makes dinner for him on Sunday nights.

One night, Joseph doesn't come by, and she dies waiting for him, and therein we find the theme of the film: the waiting can seem like forever. When Allen returns seeking rapprochement with Possum, Possum angrily rejects him. Turtle then makes a bold move to earn Possum's friendship and trust, resulting in a violent encounter with the hood rats and a change in Possum's resolve to sew up the unraveled connections in his life. Emphasizing forgiveness and a refusal to let any one of his characters be anything other than a complex figure suffused with both selfish and loving qualities, Encarnation raises this beautiful short film into a sublime character study, helped in no small part by Christopher L. Daniels' outstanding cinematography and Wayman Lamont Widgins' simple, eloquent score. All the performances are excellent, with Encarnation and Ephraim Benton both making noteworthy debuts. I hope to see both of them again, and soon. I single out Al Robbins, though, because he reminds me so keenly of my next-door neighbor of 20 years, good ol' Henry—a handsome, womanizing pot dealer who wasn't the greatest father in the world, but he carried with him a world of dignity and hurt that he bore with an essential beauty that made me love him a lot more than I was ever annoyed by him. Robbins' work resounds with such an essential truth about certain, emotionally unavailable father figures that his is the performance in POSSUM that haunts me most.

If you love Black cinema, short subjects, or just good filmmaking about issues that everyone can relate to, THE BEST OF THE ACAPULCO BLACK FILM FESTIVAL DVD should command some shelf space in your video collection.

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