To the heart-pounding beat of Masauko Chipembere’s “Beautiful People,” a montage of Oakland flashes between zine-like stop-motion opening credits: the Art Deco facade of the Fox Theater, tailed dogs waving behind chain-link fences, women swaying in sync on the pier. Welcome to Cauleen Smith’s 1998 Drylongsoa film as joyful as it is sobering, a tribute both to the district of West Oakland in which it was shot and to black Americans idiom for which he was named.
Recently restored by Janus Films, Drylongso exudes the do-it-yourself charm of a low-budget first feature film (it was Smith’s MFA thesis for UCLA), while accurately portraying the complexities of racial and gender inequality. West Oakland is decidedly not a hotbed of misery and despair, but rather a home of a tight-knit working and middle-class community – a place of candy-colored houses with echoing staircases, sun-stained sidewalks and black-owned bookstores. DrylongsoThe heroine of , Pica Sullivan (Toby Smith), is a photography student who hides extra money in a chilled Sanka can and hangs her Bob Marley poster on a small trampoline that serves as a bedside table for her textbooks. academics and his landline.
A friendly (if feisty) neighborhood flanker, Pica comes to the rescue of Tobi (April Barnett), whose abusive boyfriend dumps her outside the house Pica shares with her mother. “If you want, I can call someone for you,” Pica offers, her pigtails shining under the streetlights. Reintroduced a few scenes later, Tobi’s ribbed sweater dress is replaced with an oversized hoodie and bandana that together conceal his gender. “Now when I walk down the street, white people step aside,” Tobi explains. “And I don’t miss being called a ‘bitch’ just for not talking to a boy and his friends driving by.”
The film’s feminist sympathies include compassion for the two black women enduring the violence of the patriarchy And black men whose lives are in peril under white supremacy and the prison state. “The life expectancy of black men is lower than that of most men in third world countries,” shares Pica, alongside other disturbing statistics, with his teacher, Mr. Yamada (Salim Akil, who has co-wrote the film), a kente-wearing intellectual afflicted by his poor attendance. Avoiding the 35mm methods of Yamada’s career, Pica eagerly documents the young men of Oakland – many of whom are later killed by the notorious “West Side Slasher” – with his trusty burgundy Polaroid.
Although a few twists seem forced (like Tobi’s ability to take down said Slasher with a 9mm in the dark), like an artifact of the late 1990s – a decade before Obama’s presidency, before the dramatic gentrification of Oakland and more than two decades before national protests against police brutality came to a head — Drylongso feels both bygone and terribly prescient. At the same time, part of the film’s brilliance isn’t trying too hard to be more than it is: a film about a black art student directed by a black art student.
For his latest photography exhibition, Pica goes against the standard gallery setup for a vacant corner in Magnolia and 30th, assembling his Polaroids of slain young men into multimedia “sanctuaries” comprised of everything from rusty Schwinns to hanging mint boxes. Friends and neighbors featured earlier in the film gather around a buffet of barbecue and collared greens, admiring the portraits and exchanging words. “I must be the worst student you ever had,” Pica says shyly to Mr. Yamada when he visits his show. “No”, he replies, “just the most determined”.
Drylongso screens at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center (144 W. 65th Street, Lincoln Square, Manhattan) from March 17-23, with a nationwide rollout to follow.
