Photo Credit: Focus Features (l-r.) Aasha Davis as Bina and Adepero Oduye as Alike in writer/director Dee Rees’ Pariah, a Focus Features release.
I recently sat down and had a talk with the amazing filmmaker Dee Rees, about her coming-of-age movie Pariah. Set in a black community in the US, it is the tale of a young lesbian’s struggle growing up under the shade of her family. The movie was screened at Cape Town’s Out in Africa Film Festival, stunning audiences (including myself) to tears. The film’s main protagonist Alike (pronounced Ah-lee-kay) is played by Nigerian Brooklyn-based actress Adepero Oduye.
AfriPOP!: Are any of the characters in the film drawn from your own experiences?
Dee Rees: It’s a semi-autobiographical story and Alike, in the film, is a bit like me at that age, when I was finding myself. Except she’s much younger and I came out when I was 27 years old. Really late. Finding yourself is easy, choosing is the hard part. Alike is a bit like a chameleon where she has to shed those costumes, not check the boxes, of who people want her to be. People are flawed, but are well-intentioned. They’re not actively trying to hurt you.
But where did it actually start? In the film Alike is a budding writer. You say it’s a semi-autobiographical story, but you were not that teenager finding yourself, your coming out took place when you were much older.
Yes, it did. When I did come out there was this big intervention with my family. My mom and my grandmother flew out one weekend: “Are you okay? Did anybody touch you?” “No, I wasn’t touched, I promise nobody touched me.”
Then my dad flew out the weekend after that: “Is it because of the divorce?” “No it’s not because of the divorce.” So yes, a lot of initial trauma like something was wrong.
What’s strange is that my parents used to censor what I watched on TV, but I could read anything. I was reading crazy stuff I wouldn’t have been allowed to watch if it was on TV, but I could read it as long as it was in a book. So writing the story was a cathartic experience. The impetus was reading lots of Audre Lorde. All the poetry in the film is my own original poetry. I also read Alice Walker.
Take us through the process of getting the film made, how long has it taken you from conception to screen?
This started as something I wrote in 2005, from being a thesis I needed to graduate, to making a short film for the graduation (from NYU’s Tisch School of Visual Arts) After that, it was a process of meeting the right people, and having it workshopped through the Sundance Institute, their screenwriter’s lab, then onto the director’s lab. We finally shot it in 2009 in just a few weeks.
The editing process was what took a lot longer, we had to be so thorough, and it was all in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, on my old laptop. We also had to find a distributor. It was a lot harder than it seems, almost no-one wanted to take it on. “It’s what? Black? Black female? Teenagers? Coming of age…what? Lesbian? Hell no!”
I heard you say you fell into this career. Tell me more about how you got to this point?
This is my second life. I figured that with writing you couldn’t have a life. So I got my MBA, it was the degree to have, back then. I started working in marketing, selling panty liners. We were basically selling insecurity. I was spending long hours there, and I thought – you can spend your life doing something you don’t like, or make a change. Then I got laid off. I eventually got another job on the East Coast, selling Dr Scholl’s bunion liners. After that, it wasn’t long until I was selling toothpaste at Colgate-Palmolive.
But then I met the producer of the film, Nekisa Cooper. I had seen an ad being made for the company, and I was very interested in the process, the creative side of bringing an ad to life. I decided to go to film school, and got in despite some saying I wouldn’t be able to do it. I wasn’t even the best in class. It was an uphill learning curve. So yes, I took the cubicle route. From panty liners to here. It wasn’t easy. Film school wasn’t easy, I had to learn everything from the beginning. But, even struggling in that environment was better than being mediocre at something you hate.
The film Pariah is about identity. What other themes do you want explore in your future projects?
I will always come back to the theme of identity because that is what interests me most. Even the new project I am working on, Bolo, which is currently at the script phase, is about identity.
Can you tell us about this new project you’re working on?
[Laughs excitedly] No, I can’t tell you much about it except to say it’s an HBO series and stars Viola Davis. She plays the headmaster at a San Francisco private school.
Would you consider making an African-based or Africa-centred movie with similar themes to Pariah? Don’t know if you know much about the lives of black lesbians in South Africa, but it is a dire situation safety-wise.
Yes, I was actually recently introduced to the amazing photography of Zanele Muholi by a colleague and am also familiar with some of the struggles of black lesbians in South Africa. I would consider making a story set in South Africa with similar themes about identity and family, but I think that there are probably other black South African filmmakers who would have more of a “right” to tell their own story. I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you don’t tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you and that having control of one’s own image and story is an important and empowering cultural necessity. I’d have to think very deeply, and be passionate and confident about the characters and communities that I’d be representing, before coming in as an “American” filmmaker and risking the potential of getting it wrong.
How was the movie received at the various festivals you attended? What are your feelings on that and hopes for the movie once it opens in the US?
The movie has been very positively received at film festivals both domestically and internationally, which proves the universality of its theme. If you strip away the layers of race and sexuality, Pariah at its core is about identity. Identity is a struggle that everyone at some point in their lives has had to deal with. My hope for Pariah’s US theatrical release is simply that it inspires audiences to view the world around them in a different way and sparks much-needed dialogue around LGBT identity across all communities.
Director: Dee Rees
Cast: Adepero Oduye, Pernell Walker, Kim Wayans, Charles Parnell and Aasha Davis.
Pariah has won the Sundance Award for Excellence in Cinematography (Bradford Young is the cinematographer) and opens in selected theatres in the US on December 28 2011.
