Adam Banks
The bittersweet nature of living in New York City is that no neighborhood ever really stays the same; you can leave town for two weeks, only to come back to a changed landscape. In your absence, maybe some developer bribed a guy to bulldoze a building that’s been there for fifty years, and the rubble-filled corner lot you used to walk by on the way to school stares back at you like a hole in your soul. In the same vein, you can walk up to a restaurant that fed you for decades, only to find a piece of paper taped to the door that says that they’ve closed their doors forever. In a very short period of time, a neighborhood can become almost unrecognizable in a way that feels alienating and unasked for, and the longer you’re away, the starker the differences can be between a place you used to know when you were younger and a place you’re living at in 2000-and-whatever-year-it-is.
The same is true for friendships. You might think you know someone well, but the person you knew when you were younger might have changed (or vice versa), and a friendship that used to be easy can feel like pulling teeth. It’s Snowing in the Summer – directed by talented commercial director and photographer Gladmir Gelin – is about both of these issues: a neighborhood undergoing massive change (due to an influx of gentrifiers and tourists looking for an authentic “Harlem experience”) and two friends that have grown apart over the years.
Anthony Gaskins stars as Donovan one of the reunited friends in Its Snowing in the Summer
Apart from a spoken word introduction from poet Abiodun Oyewole, a slow-mo dream sequence, and a few experimental segments, the film is mostly a conversation between two old friends set entirely in the front two seats of an SUV. Donovan (Anthony Gaskins) – a politically active, socially conscious professional who criticizes those that aren’t on the same page as him – is frustrated with his friend Jackson’s (Nick Creegan) refusal to grow up and get serious about life. In Jackson’s defense, he’s been out chasing his dreams on another coast and trying to make a name for himself in the entertainment world. He has his own qualms with the way Donovan acts, who he makes fun of for his pretentious and holier-than-thou behavior, accusing him at one point of being another “monkey in a suit”. In essence, they’re living two very different lives as black men in America, and talking about the way Harlem has changed segues into a conversation about their differences that might not be solved by words alone.
Set amidst a backdrop of police violence, racial profiling, and uneasy neighborhood relations, the film features a rock solid script from writer Ra A. Hearne that’s filled with backhanded jabs, passive aggressive looks, and the slow leak of long-standing resentment. The back-and-forth of the two friends keeps the film dramatically tight, and moments of agreement – like when the two friends agree that “Harlem is still Harlem” after seeing some unhinged behavior out of the window of the car – serve to depressurize an atmosphere that’s tense and loaded. My favorite parts of the film are the comedic interjections that come through the window, the sunroof, and the back seat, and I won’t spoil any more of them for you, but they provide welcome relief from the serious subject matter while commentating on the state of the neighborhood.
At the end of the day, It’s Snowing in the Summer is a well-told story about two stubborn friends who think the other is living life the wrong way – one who thinks he’s better because he followed his dreams and another who thinks he’s better because he chose to do the things that “grown ups” do. Though the two friends spend most of the film inside a car parked on the side of a nondescript street, the film is peppered with enough references to life in Harlem that you don’t need to see the neighborhood to know what’s going on, or to learn about the ways that it has both changed and stayed the same.