#cauleen smith

[folditdouble]

Women in Film Challenge 2024: [22/52] Drylongso, dir. Cauleen Smith (USA, 1998)

I’m taking pictures of Black men because they’re becoming an endangered species.

[artfilmfan]

Drylongso (Cauleen Smith, 1998)

[oldfilmsflicker]

For this month's Female Filmmakers in Focus column at RogerEbert.com I spoke to Cauleen Smith about the making of her 1998 film DRYLONGSO (recently restored by @janusfilms​), the way the craft of Black women directors goes ignored, and more. 

Cauleen talks about how her filmmaking craft, along with other Black women directors working in independent film in the 90s like Ayoka Chenzira, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Lesley Harris was often ignored, and how it's still happening today.

[READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE]

[peachviz]

Drylongso (1998)

college student photographer, Pica takes pictures of the black men living in Oakland after instances of the men around her dying. Wanting to preserve their existence, she is thrown into the path of Tobi. A friendship is born amongst the pain around them.

[thingstol00kat]

Cauleen Smith, The Wanda Coleman Playbook

Video installation at 52 Walker, NY, Feb 2024

[abwwia]

 Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, 2018, digital video, color, sound; 22:41 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.1, © 2020, Cauleen Smith

[directedbywomen]

I always appreciate listening to women directors talk about their creative processes. These days I'm making a conscious effort to take time to seek out and enjoy these kinds of conversations. Here's a wonderful dialogue between independent filmmaker Cauleen Smith and Jacqueline Stewart about Smith's film Drylongso, which has recently been restored. I hope that means more people get a chance to see the film. I'm looking forward to revisiting the film now that it is in a state closer to what Smith was aiming for in the first place.

Learn more and also watch her Vogel Lecture here: https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/watch-cauleen-smiths-amos-vogel-lecture-at-nyff60/

[modalities-of-care]

Lina Iris Viktor Photo: Artlyst In The Black Fantastic Hayward Gallery

Artists from African Diaspora (represented by large Western commercial galleries)

Curated by Ekow Eshun

Features work by artists: Nick Cave, Sedrick Chisom, Ellen Gallagher, Hew Locke, Wangechi Mutu, Rashaad Newsome, Chris Ofili, Tabita Rezaire, Cauleen Smith, Lina Iris Viktor and Kara Walker.

[fibula-rasa]

Favorite New-to-Me Films

May 2023

(in order of collage above R to L)

Os Lobos (1923) [letterboxd | imdb]

Drylongso (1998) [letterboxd | imdb]

Old Baron of Rautakylä / Rautakylän vanha parooni (1923) [letterboxd | imdb] (available w/ english subs on elonet)

Sold at Auction (1923) [letterboxd | imdb] 

Glumov’s Diary / Дневник Глумова (1923) [letterboxd | imdb]

Downfall / Der Absturz (1923) [letterboxd | imdb]

The West-Bound Limited (1923) [letterboxd | imdb] 

[kakaji]

I guess in politics and activism you're always trying to change the system -and then I thought: 'what if we just change the way we understand ourselves? the system is irrelevant.'  –Cauleen Smith

[randomrichards]

SUFFOLK:

Group of black woman

Posing by Joshua Tree

While guitar plays

[oldfilmsflicker]

Drylongso, 1998 (dir. Cauleen Smith)

[atompowers]

Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, 2018, digital video, color, sound, 22:41 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.1, © 2020, Cauleen Smith