“Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage” is a cinematic excavation of one of the most influential yet underacknowledged American artists of the 20th century. Through his mastery of collage, Bearden authored a visual canon of Black life in America—confronting cultural erasure, reclaiming narrative space, and redefining the value of Black art within systems built to deny it. The film constructs a layered. narrative—like his work itself—assembled from fragments of biography, resistance, artistry, and imagination to examine how cultural power is built, contested, and transformed.