DRYLONGSO INTRO + RESOURCE LIST
The following text has been adapted slightly from the intro written and read by Rógan Graham. Scroll to the bottom to find more reading recources for Drylongso.
Rógan Graham is a film curator, critic, and marketer from South London.
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.
How many of you had heard of the film before this screening? For those unfamiliar, Drylongso, the Gullah word for Ordinary, follows the friendship of two young Black women living in Oakland, California. Pica Sullivan, our protagonist, is played by first time actress Toby Smith, Pica is a working class art school student with a questionably irresponsible mother, and she is in the process of building towards her final project - a photographic archive of young Black men.
Due to the crime and violence surrounding her, Pica believes Black men could become extinct. Pica then meets Tobi, played by April Barnett, during a violent altercation with Tobi’s boyfriend.
The two women forge a friendship that is fundamentally based on an investigation into Black masculinity - Pica, as an archivist of the Black male experience and Tobi as essentially a field researcher, toying with the bounds of gender expression to preserve her own safety. In the background of all this, there is an intense tonal shift as a violent serial killer is preying on the local community.
Throughout the film, questions around gender based violence and gender presentation, intercommunal struggle and the socio-political function of art are presented to the audience.
Drylongso is Cauleen Smith’s first and only feature film. Smith was 28 when she began shooting this film in the summer of 1995, she was a film school student who was amused by the hubris of her peers. When the film was restored by Janus films last year in 2023, Smith said in an interview at the Lincoln Centre in New York City that she went to film school to learn a craft and develop a skill set, and there she was confronted by fellow students (we might assume, young white men) who declared themselves the next Scorsese and the next Spielberg. They were then of course shocked, when she, this perhaps “unambitious” Black woman, was the first of their cohort to have a film premiere at Sundance Film Festival.
On a budget of $35,000, Smith shot the film on 16mm, the vibrant set design is a result of painting parts of the set they couldn’t afford to upgrade, and Smith herself oversaw the vivid soundscape by designing the ADR (automated dialogue replacement) herself. In an interview Smith shared that while at film school a professor showed the class a clip of film with poor image and clear audio, and then clear image and poor audio and asked them which was more effective. The class were unanimous in their opinion that clear audio was the priority, there is something about sound that gets under the skin in a way that can’t be intellectualised in the way an image might be. Smith said that over the years, she has watched the film through the lens of austerity or scarcity of which it was made, the choice between either or, and of this recent restoration, Smith said that this is the best the film has ever looked.
Although the initial audience reception to the film was positive, the industry was confused by the tone and underestimated the cultural significance of the work. The overarching topic of the film, the violent and systemic extinguishing of Black men, is a heavy one. But the film is infused with the levity and boldness of any coming-of-age film, the gravity of the overarching theme is one that didn’t register with Smith until she was in the editing suite. “It wasn’t until I was editing that I realised I had filmed murders, that I had filmed someone stalking another person. It wasn’t until the editing suite, that I realised I had filmed something serious.’
In the summer of 1995, when Smith was filming, we are four years removed from the brutal beating of Rodney King by the LAPD, one year removed from the murders of Nicole Simpson Brown and Ron Goldman and the subsequent OJ Simpson car chase and, unknown at the time, only one year away from West Coast rap legend Tupac Shakur being killed. The violence inflicted upon and by Black men was at the forefront of every major news story coming out of the state of California throughout the 90s. “Living in the early 90s, that kind of jeopardy felt normal”, says Smith, “violence was, violence is, mundane”
Pica, our protagonist, surrounds herself with books and music by Black male artists and thinkers. Pica is actively looking at and studying Black men but our director is intent on looking directly and only at her. On the genesis of Drylongso, Cauleen Smith says; “ I got tired of seeing young Black women being talked about in terms of blame -- teen pregnancy, welfare -- whereas young black men were being talked about as victims in need of defence. Girls are treated with such disrespect. Pica came out of that frustration."
Pica and Tobi, are two young women who are charged with - or who charge themselves - with preserving themselves and their community. Working class children, Black children are often cursed with the unique ability to intertwine adult woes with childlike sensibilities.
When those in the film industry were confused by the tone, querying whether it should be sold as a murder mystery or a straight forward coming of age film (as though audiences aren’t smart enough to hold more than one theme in their head!) Smith said, “The thing that always confused me the most, is that it wasn’t somehow evident this film is just about two Black girls. How can you spend 80 minutes watching these two Black girls, and not understand the film is simply about them.” Smith hasn’t made a film since Drylongso and instead works as a multimedia artist with an emphasis on Afrofuturism. “It took me 7 years after I made the film to figure out, I hate the film industry”.
I hope you enjoy Drylongso, a film that is as intellectually rigorous as it is entertaining, a perfect encapsulation of the 90s and a timeless portrait on the complexities of Black girlhood.
Reviews
Interviews with Writer & Director Cauleen Smith
Other work from the artist
