Passing Strange

Passing Strange is a musical, based on the Tony Award Winning Broadway show, that traces the story of a young black artist who travels from LA to Amsterdam and Berlin in the 1970s, rebelling against his family for the sake of his art.

In this breathtaking film, Spike Lee captures the highly-acclaimed eponymous Broadway musical show written by singer/songwriter Stew (with music cowritten by his creative partner, Heidi Rodewald). The original show, winner of the 2008 Tony Award in for Best Book of a Musical, was universally applauded for its originality, its deep emotional resonance, and its powerful, often high-octane, music. The resulting work unites revelatory theater with superb filmmaking, raising the whole to a dizzying plateau of emotional engagement. PASSING STRANGE: THE MOVIE tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young black man who leaves behind his middle-class, church-ruled upbringing in mid-1970s Los Angeles to travel to Europe in search of his artistic and personal identity, or what he calls the real. Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics, and art await him in far-out Amsterdam and hyper-militant Berlin. His eyes are opened ever wider, even revealing what he left behind. An absolutely superb cast, ably supported by sparing (but pitch-perfect) costumes, design, and stagecraft, bring to life the emotionally charged story with its astounding original music, narrated and overseen by Stew himself. Lee's multicamera coverage of the event (including backstage scenes) involves the audience in not only the text but the electricity of the ensemble's onstage adventure.

Passing Strange is a musical, based on the Tony Award Winning Broadway show, that traces the story of a young black artist who travels from LA to Amsterdam and Berlin in the 1970s, rebelling against his family for the sake of his art.

A young black musician travels on a picaresque journey to rebel against his mother and his upbringing in a church-going, middle-class, late 1970's South Central Los Angeles neighborhood in order to find 'the real'. He finds new experiences in promiscuous Amsterdam, with its easy access to drugs and sex, and in artistic, chaotic, political Berlin, where he struggles with ethics and integrity when he misrepresents his background as poor to get ahead. Along with his 'passing' from place to place and from lover to lover, the young musician moves through a number of musical styles from a background of gospel to punk, and then blues, jazz, and rock.