Quest: An American Family Portrait

Quest: An American Family Portrait has been a movie that I've taken about two weeks to ruminate on my approach to reviewing this documentary. This is not because the documentary was poorly done, but more, because I live in Baltimore, the parallels to life in North Philly and Baltimore have been racing through my mind. I, at times, was at a loss for words.


Quest, a documentary filmed over an 8 year span, focuses on Christopher "Quest" Rainey, and his wife, Christine'a "Ma Quest", as they struggle to raise their family in a North Philly home. Their neighborhood has lost much of the funding for localized Boys and Girls Clubs/YMCA type community centers. As they work, and raise their family, the documentary pursues their challenges as they also work with young hip hop artists in their home studio. Through this home studio, the Rainey family creates Freesyle Fridays, and afternoon programming for the neighborhood kids, in hopes to provide options to things other than dealing drugs on the street. I see so much of Baltimore in this idea, of lower income neighborhoods loosing the community support from the city in order to make the neighborhood a more enjoyable existence.

Part of the Rainey family struggle begins when they start helping a son as he commences and progresses through a vigorous brain cancer chemo treatment. The hardships of life seems to be soothed while working with artists. Also, as a direct result of some of these community events, and the lack of funding for good programming, their youngest daughter becomes a victim of gun violence. The documentary follows the healing process and learning to balance the challenges of overcoming the heartbreak and not always understanding ultimately why certain things happen. Again, the paralles with Baltimore rang true here, as there are people that get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the struggle with city violence as a result of struggling communities with minimal options.


The documentary takes a fly on the wall approach to many of the small moments of the Rainey's life. It was a good mix of daily life, and how a strong family deals with a series of unpredictable tragedies. Having lived in Baltimore, I could appreciate the correlation to how the family struggled in the neighborhood. I appreciated the broader view what they did to reduce violence in the area, as well as the struggles. There was a lot of meat to the movie, but not in a heavy handed matter. I was able to screen Quest at the Parkway.

One of the screening sessions on opening weekend, also had a q&a session with Chris Rainey and the director. It was followed by some music demos in the lobby. While at the screening, I had bumped into Theo Anthony, the director of The Rat Film, and we got into a pretty solid discussion on the correlations to his film, as well as the city of Baltimore. I enjoyed the film, as it was an unpretentious approach to family life without being thought pushing.