Jorge Rivas at Colorlines has a great video interview of Dee Rees, director of "Pariah" and actress Kim Wayans. The video brings out many aspects of racial injustice in the entertainment industry. I really resonated with both Dees and Wayans when they spoke about their desire for gretaer diversity in stories and storytelling. Here's an excerpt from the short article, and the video on YouTube:
It’s no secret that films that tell stories about people of color have a hard time getting made. Seasoned Oscar-nominated directors like John Singleton, Spike Lee and Gregory Nava have a hard enough time finding investors to back their films, so when Dee Rees decided she wanted to tell a coming of age story about a young, black lesbian, she couldn’t go the traditional route and went as far selling her Brooklyn apartment to raise funds.
“We knew that if we could just get the film done, that regardless of sexuality, race and identity, people would be able to see themselves in different parts of the story,” Rees told Colorlines.com last month, as she awaited the release of her feature directorial debut “Pariah.”
“We’d go to pitch meetings and the moment we said ‘black, lesbian, coming of age,’ they would turn around, validate our parking and hand us a bottle of water.”
via colorlines.com
