Four artist friends from the West Coast set off to paint the White House with all the colours which have been marginalised in the history of the country. The Chicano Tudee is humiliated in his dreams by a white colonialist; his misogynist cousin Abel is a man of the streets, and uses drugs, guns and vulgar speech; Freddy is of Native American origin and is trying to overcome his problems with alcohol; and finally Kaz, an intellectual African American, who wants to stay peaceful, despite the violent society. On the way to Washington, DC, they come across the aftermath of a traffic accident in the middle of Nebraska, which has claimed the life of a white man dressed as an Indian chief. He was a member of a group of "Yankees" who re-enact the "Indian Wars" of the last century. The four artists take on Evey, the occupant of the other car, who tries to keep to herself the contents of both her package and her own journey. While the five travellers are learning to cope with themselves and with each other, they find themselves being chased by another Yankee car...

Have you ever listened to the absent voices? Voices of those people driven to non-existence by European and Euro-American filmmakers? Allison Anders listened three years ago and brought to the screen the voices of the locas (Latino home-girls) in Mi vida loca – My Crazy Life, which had not been heard up to then. Peter Bratt has now created something which will hopefully not remain unique. He is the first Native American – of Peruvian origin – to make a film, Follow Me Home, not in Hollywood, of course. He raised the money with the support of the leading actors at fundraising parties; successfully, because many Native Americans are sick of being portrayed as tomahawk-wielding Indians in nostalgic romantic costume dramas, as if they no longer exist, from Dances With Wolves to Pocahontas, who was in reality a little girl when she met Captain John Smith. Even well-meant films such as Cry Feedom about apartheid in South Africa, or Mississippi Burning about racism in the southern states of the US, are told from a white viewpoint – that of the journalist, the FBI agent or the good friend – and so de-politicized. Bratt went further. He is not purely interested in "his" group, but all the "soul wounded": all those who were colonised on the American continent and those from Africa sold as slaves. Follow Me Home begins with four men, one of whom does nothing but speak pejoratively about women. But wait: it soon becomes obvious why some consider this a film for women: director Bratt uses Kaz' voice right from the start to express feminist and intercultural ideas, which can be taken from other filmmakers in the West Coast, such as writer/director Lawrence Elbert, actor/performer Mario Gardner or actor Alexis Arquette, aka the drag artist Eva Destruction. Kaz dryly answers the question of sexist biblical texts with the statement that one just has to turn to other religions which do not impinge on feminine principles. Evey, too, stands up to Abel with a brashness worthy only of Alfre Woodard, so that thereafter he has to consider every word he says. Given that this is the first time this crew has ever worked on a film – with the exception of producer Alan Renshaw – it is amazing that Follow Me Home does not seem like a $ 220,000 low budget project. It contains a message many people have waited for and many have feared, one, the world needs to start a healing process. Or, as Cyril Neville, who worked on the soundtrack, put it, "This is medicine for the world."

• Sold-out cinemas and standing ovations of the mainly non-white audiences of the festivals in Sundance, San Francisco and New York will ensure Follow Me Home will enjoy packed audiences when it is released in the USA in the spring of '97. The film is also eagerly awaited abroad. But despite its popularity, none of the big US distributors will touch it, as this time the whites are the baddies.

Queer Watchlion

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