Brown Bread (DVD)

In the green rolling wine country north of San Francisco, an unusual group gathers. They will spend a week together in the hills, the first family reunion since they all left home over twenty years ago. At the dinner table they look like the American dream of integration: a colorful mix of races joining hands to celebrate their parents’ golden wedding anniversary. It all started with a vision. Integrating children of poverty and children of privilege, black and white under one roof, made this family what it is today. Scenes from the family reunion are interwoven with images from their home lives: a professor at Stanford, a manual laborer, an entrepreneur in debt. How do they bridge the differences of race and class which divide them? Their ability to laugh and to love across boundaries of social and racial division made this family possible. But their differences still drive them apart. Even today at the ranch, overcoming distance is the central struggle.