FILM SCREENINGS

Pariah

2011. USA. Directed by Dee Rees. Executive produced by Spike Lee, Rees’ debut feature Pariah is a character study of a seventeen year-old New Yorker (played by Adepero Oduye) whose efforts to explore her lesbian desires are squarely at odd with her middle-class Brooklyn family—and more specifically, her church-going mother (played by Kim Wayans). The film draws an affectionate portrait of a community, one so close everyone knows everyone else’s ‘business’, and dramatizes the longings, disappointments and achievements of a teenager whose ideas of femininity are less traditional than most. A Focus Features release. 86 min.