Join London’s Screen Archives for a community screening of Drylongso, a lost treasure of 90’s DIY filmmaking by Cauleen Smith. This coming-of-age portrait set in Oakland, California uniquely highlights Black female friendships, creativity and community activism.

Before the screening, London’s Screen Archives will be sharing rare archive footage related to Haringey as part of their Undocumented project which seeks to address the lack of home movies from the Black community in archives.

Drylongso (the Gullah word for ‘ordinary’) follows art student Pica Sullivan (Toby Smith) as she works on her latest project – taking polaroids of young black men in her neighbourhood. Seeing Black men as an endangered species, Pica uses her photography as a medium to preserve their existence. While her friend Tobi (April Barnett) adopts a new means of presenting herself to create a layer of safety around her.

Drylongso is part of T A P E Collective’s SNAPSHOT season, a 12-month long season of films exploring cinematic snapshots of Black Girlhood in cinema. This curated collection of films spans archive work, short film, new releases and restorations – like Drylongso. The ambition of SNAPSHOT is to engage new audiences with a breadth of work by Black female directors depicting the unwieldy experience of Black female adolescence.

4K Restoration & copy supplied by Janus Films.