Synopsis: At the club, the music thumps, go-go dancers twirl, shorties gyrate on the dance floor while studs play it cool, and adorably naive 17-year-old Alike takes in the scene with her jaw dropped in amazement. Meanwhile, her buddy Laura, in between macking the ladies and flexing her butch bravado, is trying to help Alike get her cherry popped. This is Alike’s first world. Her second world is calling on her cell to remind her of her curfew. On the bus ride home to Brooklyn, Alike sheds her baseball cap and polo shirt, puts her earrings back in, and tries to look like the feminine, obedient girl her conservative family expects. With a spectacular sense of atmosphere and authenticity, "Pariah" takes us deep and strong into the world of an intelligent butch teenager trying to find her way into her own. Debut director Dee Rees leads a splendid cast and crafts a pitch-perfect portrait that stands unparalleled in American cinema. [Synopsis courtesy of the Sundance Institute]
This Wednesday, September 5th, at Yale University's Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium, our own Tambay Obenson will join Terri Francis (Associate Professor of Film and African American Studies at Yale University), producer Lisa Cortés (Precious, Shadowboxer, The Woodsman, and ...
Read More »Happy almost 2012 to you! It seems studios don't expect many moviegoers at the theaters this weekend, knowing that we'll all be out partying it up with friends, rather than hitting up the multiplex with family like last week. Only a few new releases this week, so you'll be able to catch ...
Read More »Listen, we understand that sometimes in order to get some attention, indie films need glib comparisons and word out of Sundance this year was that Dee Rees' "Pariah" was this year's "Precious." However, not only is "Pariah" nothing like "Precious", it ...
Read More »Most of this review was written after screening the film at the Toronto Film Festival. It has been augmented.
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