Career
Rees' first full-length film was a documentary, Eventual Salvation (2009), which aired on the Sundance Channel. The film follows her American-born, 80-year-old grandmother, Amma, as she returns to Monrovia, Liberia to rebuild her home and community. She had barely escaped the devastating Liberian Civil War only a decade earlier.
Rees completed development and filming of her debut feature film, Pariah , which she has described as semi-autobiographical. In graduate school Rees interned for Spike Lee, whom she got to executive produce the film. [11] It premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. [12] Lisa Schwartzman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "In her fearless, world-here-I-am! debut Pariah, writer-director Dee Rees demonstrates, with simplicity and verve, that there's no substitute for authenticity". [13] Pariah explores the complexities of religion, politics and socioeconomic class within and surrounding a Black family. [14] The short film version of Pariah was initially a thesis project done by Dee Rees in film school. [15] It was difficult to receive funding for the feature film, and the process took about five years to reach completion. [15] The format and content changed significantly from the short film to the feature film. [16] The transition from short film to feature film meant it needed to be more accessible for a wider audience in order to make money. [16] This accessibility reached new audiences and sparked new conversations that were focused on blackness and sexuality in a new way. [16]
At the time Pariah (2011) was released, the film was one of the very few films that follow the journey of a young person of color as they come to terms with their sexuality and come out to their friends and families. [14] In 2011, she won many awards for Pariah, including the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director, the Outstanding Independent Motion Picture Award at the NAACP Image Awards, and the Outstanding Film –Limited Release Award at the GLAAD Media Award in 2012. [17]
Pariah has been compared to the written work of Audre Lorde, specifically Zami: a New Spelling of My Name. [14] Both forms provide a different take on the lived experiences of young Black lesbian women in a way that gives the characters depth and power. Both stories of identity, they are not only diversifying the characters audiences enjoy in media, but also providing an authentic expression of these lives. [14]
In 2015, Rees' film Bessie premiered on HBO, starring Queen Latifah as the iconic singer Bessie Smith. [18] The film was well received by critics. [19]
It also won four Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. Rees was nominated for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special and Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special.
Together with Virgil Williams, Rees wrote Mudbound , a period drama adapted from the 2008 novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan. Rees also directed the film, starring Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, and Mary J. Blige. After being shown at Sundance in 2017, Mudbound became the highest purchase of the festival, being bought for $12.5 million by Netflix. [8] Mudbound was shot in New Orleans over 28 days in the summer of 2016. [20] The film tells the story of two families in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s. The McAllan family is white and their neighbors, the Jacksons, are black. [20] The Jacksons are sharecroppers who have a connection to the land, while the McAllans are a middle-class family that own a large plot of land in Mississippi. [21] Mudbound tells a story of racism and race relations that continue to be played out today. The movie explores whiteness and the privilege associated with it, while comparing and contrasting the experiences of white and Black people of the period. [8] This work contains many personal connections for Rees, such as her grandfather's experiences in the army and her grandmother's aspiration to be a stenographer. [8] Rees used her grandmother's journal to help guide her process. It contained family photographs of their slave ancestors, with the names of who fought in wars. Rees says that by using this it was a way of interrogating her own personal history. She used written text from the journal, a war ration book, and a photograph of her great grandmother, and each one was an inspiration for something in Mudbound. [21]
Rees and Williams were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Mudbound , which made Rees the first African-American woman ever to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as the first African-American woman to be nominated for a writing Oscar since Suzanne de Passe was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues . [22] [23] The nomination of Mary J. Blige for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Mudbound made Rees the first African-American woman to direct a film for which an actor or actress was nominated for an Academy Award. [24] [25]
A lesser-known project of Rees' is the show Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, where Rees was given the chance to engage with the many emotions looming around the election of Donald Trump, and manipulate them within a sci-fi context, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime. [26]
Rees is also attached to write and direct An Uncivil War for FilmNation. [27] In 2018, Rees was nominated for NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing. [28]
Rees directed The Last Thing He Wanted , based upon the novel of the same name by Joan Didion, which stars Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe. [29] [30] [31] The film was distributed by Netflix. [32]
Rees directed multiple episodes of the Apple TV+ war miniseries Masters of the Air . [6]
Rees is currently set to write and direct MGM's feature film adaptation of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess . [33] She will be working alongside the film's producers, Irwin Winkler [33] and Charles Winkler. [33]
In 2019, Rees began work as writer and director for her upcoming film, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies . [34] An original script, the film is a musical fantasy about a young musician in search of stardom. [34] Rees is working alongside producer Cassian Elwes, [34] with singer-songwriter Santigold [34] set to compose.
In June 2021, Dee Rees was announced as the first African-American woman to direct a Criterion film. [35] With the addition of her breakout film, Pariah (2011), Criterion has acknowledged its need for the addition of more female directors and director of color, and has vowed to bring more diversity to light. [35]
Filmmaking
Method and Themes
As with Rees's first breakout feature, Pariah (2011), Dee Rees pulls much of her directorial influence from her own life. [7] Rees also cites her own life experiences in the protagonist of her newest project, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies . [7] As a Black lesbian filmmaker, Rees's intersectional identity is a huge part of her and is also unique in Hollywood. Rees has said that her dissimilarity from much of Hollywood has only amplified the importance of translating her experience into her films. [7]
Rees's sexuality makes an appearance in her films, such as her 2011 film Pariah (2011), which tells the story of a teenage Black girl navigating the exploration of her sexuality. [10] HBO's Bessie (2015), also written and directed by Rees, explores the sexual identity of blues singer Bessie Smith. [1] Rees also described the protagonist of her latest project, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies as androgynous, [7] again connecting her own experience of sexuality to her filmmaking.
Rees's identity as a Black woman is also very prevalent in her films, as Black women are extremely central in her films, such as Pariah (2011), Mudbound (2017), Bessie (2015), and a few of her upcoming projects.
Still early in her career, Rees has shown a large array of stylistic choices in her films in her exploration for her identity as a filmmaker. However, Rees has been said to spend hours on shots that end up only being a few seconds, focusing intently on visual details. [7]
