Poster - Drylongso

A fascinating piece of 90s Black Cinema history will get the big screen treatment at the Lincoln Center this March. Drylongso, directed by Cauleen Smith, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999, won the Grand Jury Prize at Urban World Film Festival and garnered the Someone To Watch Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. 

Drylongso embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/ romance. Alarmed by the rate at which the young Black men around her are dying—indeed, “becoming extinct,” as she sees it—brash Oakland art student Pica (Toby Smith) attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an abusive relationship (April Barnett), experiencing love and loss, and being drawn into the search for a serial killer who is terrorizing the city. Capturing the vibrant community spirit of Oakland in the nineties, Smith crafts both a rare cinematic celebration of Black female creativity and a moving elegy for a generation of lost African American men.

The film will play in 4K restoration on March 17th at 6:30pm at the Lincoln Center in NYC courtesy of Janus Films, The Criterion Collection and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.