In order to actively encourage displays of personal and professional development throughout our degree programs, TFA frequently offers outstanding students exciting extracurricular opportunities that will further enhance their educational experience. As a reward for her performance both in and outside of class, second-year Film + Broadcast student Jacqueline Woodward was invited to attend an advance screening of the new film Pariah and interview the cast. In her article below, Jacqueline explains how the Pariah came to be, and why this film is so resonant among today's audiences.
An Official Selection at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the contemporary drama Pariah is the feature-length expansion of writer/director Dee Rees’ award-winning 2007 short film by the same name.
Adepero Oduye, who had earlier starred in the short film, portrays Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a 17-year-old African-American woman who lives with her parents Audrey and Arthur (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell) and younger sister in Brooklyn. She is a good student with a passion for poetry who is struggling to find her identity as a lesbian.
With the sometimes boisterous support of her best friend, out lesbian Laura (Pernell Walker), Alike is searching for a girlfriend. Pressed by her mother into meeting a colleague’s daughter, Bina (Aasha Davis), Alike finds Bina may be unexpectedly just what she’s been searching for. Struggling with how she feels and who she can confide in, Alike begins to embrace the woman she has become.
At its onset, writer Dee Rees, a graduate student at NYU at the time, conceived of the story of Pariah as a feature length film. However, needing to produce something as her graduate thesis, she crafted an excerpt from the first act of the feature script and made it into a short film instead.
With the help of Producer Nekisa Cooper and professor-turned Executive Producer Spike Lee, Pariah in its short form became a beautiful calling card for Rees and an award-winning piece at the 2007 Sundance Festival.
After creating a lot of buzz on the festival circuit for her short, Dee received a call from the Sundance Institute asking if she had considered it being a feature. Knowing it was meant to be a feature all along, Dee took this opportunity to fully flesh out her ideas for Pariah through the 2007 Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab and then again in the 2008 Directors’ Lab.
Soon the cast and crew, with some truly great additions like Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell as Alike’s parents, set out to shoot Pariah again, but this time as the feature film Dee had always intended it to be. Being an Indie film, financing and scheduling took some time to solidify, but in 2011, they were ready to face Sundance again, this time in a 1,200-seat theater. Adepero comments that “the experience of Sundance was overwhelming, but in a good way. Talking with people after screenings, they would tell me how the film affected them. All different kinds of people; I thought to myself, 'This is the power of film.'
Since then, the buzz around Pariah has only grown. Adepero gives a stunning performance as Alike as she struggles to discover who she really is as she grows.
Although the story focuses on a young Lesbian just coming to terms with her sexuality, both Dee and Adepero want audiences to know that “questioning and affirming your identity is a universal theme, and I definitely want gay teens to connect with the film and see that it’s OK to be them.” But the film is also full of relatable characters who do not happen to be gay who are struggling with the same issue of “being yourself”. Everyone needs to allow themselves and others to be who they are and learn to love unconditionally. “No one should have to check a box.”
Pariah is currently playing in limited release around the U.S. Click here to find showtimes at a theater near you.
About the Author: Jacqueline Woodward (Film + Broadcast, Class of 2012)
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Jacqueline Woodward is a second year Film + Broadcast student at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy. Before attending TFA, she earned her B.A. in Arts Management and Technical Theater at Creighton University and has spent the past six years working as a Producer, Director and Stage Manager for various theaters. She has recently made a career change to work on films and hopes to become an Assistant Director.