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Information
- Year
- 1998
- Runtime
- 86 min.
- Director
- Cauleen Smith
- Genre
- Drama
- Rating *
- 6.7
- Votes *
- 38
- Checks
- 60
- Favs
- 1
- Dislikes
- 0
- Favs/checks
- 1.7% (1:60)
- Favs/dislikes
- 1:0
Top comments
-
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 ago
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This movie ranks #1448 in The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
1448