Drylongso (1998)

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   Siskoid

   Am I to understand that Drylongso ran the festival circuit in 1998, won a bunch of prizes, then never found distribution until Criterion put out a restored print in 2023?! Indie cinema is a tough life, perhaps especially for a female director of color. Because Cauleen Smith's only full-length feature is too good for her not to have gotten more momentum from it. And similarly, I would have liked to see these actors in more things than what ultimately happened. Pica is a young photography student who takes pictures of black men before they disappear, though careful not to snap a pic of the boy she has feelings for, lest she tempt fate. Fate is manifest in a serial killer that's picking off youths, a kind of faceless force that's perhaps too on the nose and an attempt at giving the film a "plot" in the normal sense. It's the weakest part of what is otherwise a well-observed coming of age story, central to which is the friendship between Pica and another woman, Tobi, who starts dressing like a man to avoid lascivious stares and make the white folks get out of the way - itself commentary on, well, Drylongso, which is defined as "a sense of being that exemplifies the average African American way of being, doing, and thinking". It's a friendship at least partly based on reading Martha Washington comics together, so... I'm into it. 5 months 1 week ago

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