Drylongso (film)

It was the early 1990s and Cauleen Smith was working at the Haight Asbury Free Clinic and the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco and she kept hearing about young African American men who were being murdered or going to prison at the same time she was seeing young African American girls who were dealing with teen pregnancy and bureaucratic welfare system. The young African American males were seen as victims in need of defense yet the young African American girls were “being talked about in terms of blame”. She felt that both populations just needed someone to care for them. Yet here they were suffering and she wanted to find a way to tell their story.[1]

Drylongso which comes from an old African word that means “Ordinary" is a coming of age drama which is “part love story” and “part murder mystery”. Pica is a young art student growing up in a dysfunctional household in Oakland California. In order to deal with the dysfunction, she starts photographing young African American men believing they are an "endangered species” and might one day be extinct and wants to capture them as proof of their existence. At the same time, a serial killer is claiming victims in the neighborhood with some of the victims being the young men she has photographed. Pica eventually befriends another young woman who is disguising herself as a man to escape an abusive boyfriend.[2]

• Cauleen Smith as Writer & Director
• Salim Akil as Writer
• Toby Smith as Pica Sullivan
• April Barnett as Tobi
• Will Power as Malik
• Channel Schafer as Gloria Sullivan
• Salim Akil as Mr Yamada
• Stacy Marbrey as Tiffany
• Keith Williams as Mohamed
• Sayyed Yusuf Bey as Muslim Brother[3]
• Earl Ford as Tide
• Keilan Matthews as Tyson
• Patrick Pulliam as Kev
• Timothy Braggs as Jefferson

Drylongso had its premier at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival where it was selected to be part of the American Spectrum and received an Independent Spirit Award.[4][5] The film was also screened and won awards at numerous film festivals around the United States including receiving the Silver Armadilo at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin Texas, receiving Best Picture at both the Pan-African Film Festival and Urbanworld Film Festivals[5] and the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature at the Urbanworld Film Festival.[6] The film was also selected to be the opening feature at the Film Arts Foundation Film Festival held at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.[1]

A number of props created for the film including a banner titled "In the Wake" which was created by Cauleen Smith as part of a procession for the film were displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York as part of their 2017 Whitney Biennial.[4][7]