21. Chameleon Street (1989)
Wendell B. Harris, Jr won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival with his debut independent feature "Chameleon Street", a fictional retelling of the incredible life of professional imposter William Douglas Street, a man who pretended to be lawyers, reporters, students and doctors, even performing 36 successful hysterectomies. "Chameleon Street" announced the arrival of a fully-formed cinematic auteur who had carved out a highly-specific mix of humor, drama, politics, and race relations and was seemingly presented with all the runway to fulfill the promise repped in his entirely self-funded, truly independent first feature. Instead, he never directed another film.
