All I Wanted Was A Nice Little Quiet Spot
Weekly Directed By Women Viewing Guide
This week I am recommending a new restoration of a 90s DYI classic, a new French drama, Su Friedrich’s latest experimental doc, Michael Caine’s penultimate film, a Mongolian fable, a forgotten Netflix family drama, and an intimate documentary about one of the 20th century’s most singular writers.
One of the many great films directed by Black women in the 1990s to be neglected for decades, Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso is a testament to the power of DIY filmmaking and a treasure that has recently been restored by Janus Films. I interviewed Smith earlier this month for column ahead of the restoration’s roll out in theaters. The film follows an art student named Pica who is photographing all the Black men in her neighborhood via Polaroid as “evidence of their existence,” since so many of them have been dying all around her. But this isn’t a film just about death, rather it is about how Pica and her friend Tobi find the strength to thrive personally and artistically in a hostile world. The film is opening this week at Film at Lincoln Center in NYC and will be playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center on April 14th here in Chicago.
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