LGBTQ+ Black History Month Day 21: Dee Rees

Day 21, Dee Rees

Dee Rees

Born... I couldn't find her birthday, sorry y'all

Writer, Director, Producer

"Dee Rees is an alumna of New York University’s graduate film program and a 2008 Sundance Screenwriting & Directing Lab Fellow. She has written and directed several short films, including Orange Bow (centering on a teenage boy) and Pariah. The latter, completed in 2007, screened at over 40 festivals worldwide (including Sundance) and garnered 25 Best Short awards. 

Additionally, Pariah was a finalist for the 2009 Sundance/NHK International Award. Ms. Rees was also selected as a 2008 Tribeca Institute/Renew Media Arts Fellow for her work; was chosen as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” for 2008; and was nominated for a USA Fellowship in 2009. Pariah has now been expanded into Pariah, which world-premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was honored with the Festival’s [U.S. Dramatic Competition] Excellence in Cinematography Award (Bradford Young).

The Nashville native’s most recent short film, Colonial Gods, aired on the BBC in the fall of 2009. The short chronicles a complicated friendship between a Somali man and a Nigerian man, set against the backdrop of gentrification in the small immigrant community in Cardiff, Wales known as Tiger Bay.

Also prior to making Pariah, Ms. Rees directed a documentary feature, Eventual Salvation. The film, which she also edited, received a 2007 Sundance Documentary Fund Grant and premiered on the Sundance Channel in October 2009. It follows her grandmother’s return to Liberia on to help rebuild a community following the country’s civil war.

She previously worked as a script supervision intern on Spike Lee’s epic documentaryWhen the Levees Broke and feature Inside Man; and earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Florida A&M University."

"Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise

For even breaking is opening

And I am broken

I’m open

Broken to the new light without pushing in

Open to the possibilities within, pushing out

See the love shine in through my cracks?

See the light shine out through me?

I  am broken

I am open

I am broken open

See the love light shining through me

Shining through my cracks

Through the gaps

My spirit takes journey

My spirit takes flight

Could not have risen otherwise

And I am not running

I’m choosing

Running is not a choice from the breaking

Breaking is freeing

Broken is freedom

I am not broken

I’m free."

-Dee Rees (from the movie Pariah)

Ps. Pariah is such a good movie

Such a good movie

Watch it, seriously, you won't regret it

Info from: focus features.com