Dee Rees is the First Black American Woman With a Film in The Criterion Collection
On June 29, Dee Rees became the first Black American woman to have a film included in the Criterion Collection. The 44-year-old writer and director received the feature in the prestigious collection for her 2011 film Pariah.
love, Love, LOVE some #DeeRees 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 https://t.co/YEBNI6IwpZ
— Nother Brother Ent. (@NotherBrother) July 2, 2021
When Dee Rees was younger and attending film school, she used to buy Criterion films to study them. Now there are multiple sections dedicated to Dee Rees’ debut film Pariah on the Criterion Collection website.
PARIAH (2011)
— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) March 15, 2021
The path to living as one’s authentic self is paved with trials and tribulations in this revelatory, assured feature debut by Dee Rees—the all-too-rare coming-of-age tale to honestly represent the experiences of queer Black women. https://t.co/BKjsmekk1k pic.twitter.com/QtfwTMklGn
In an interview with Variety, Rees stated, “it’s important to be included for future generations of filmmakers, if [Criterion] is the thing that’s being taught in schools.”
As an LGBTQ+ Black writer and director, Rees spoke out in the same interview about how important she believes representation is for the younger generation aspiring to be filmmakers. The writer-director explained that if there is no representation, negative assumptions can be formed such as, “There’s no Black filmmakers here, so there must not be any worthy of being here. I don’t see any queer women here, so there must not be any.”
Congrats to Dee Rees! 🤘
— Destry Lee Arender (@DLA_91) July 2, 2021
She is incredible.
It is still sad to me that it takes this long to recognize artists equally. https://t.co/E9yIi1EEI3
Rees continued the conversation into the importance of acknowledging Black directors in the Criterion Collection. The 44-year-old Pariah filmmaker has seen directors like herself pushed aside, but she can confidently say those same people created “really special films that speak to our existence.” The talented filmmaker explained, “When you give them the Criterion stamp, you are telling the film world that our voices matter.”
In Dee Rees’s ambitious and lyrical debut, the inner life of a queer Black teenager and poet is summoned in all its nuances and contradictions.
— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) June 29, 2021
Read Cassie da Costa (@tooearnest) on PARIAH (2011): https://t.co/yOZxKWeRdx
Pariah is a coming-of-age story about a young Black teen struggling to express and embrace her sexuality. If you want to support Dee Rees and her career, you can buy the film Pariah on the official Criterion Collection website.
Writer | Find me on Twitter @Fontalvokayla
