Tina Mabry | |
---|---|
Born | Tupelo, Mississippi, United States | February 9, 1978
Occupation(s) | Film director, screenwriter |
Tina Mabry (born February 9, 1978) is an American film director and screenwriter from Tupelo, Mississippi. Following the release of her first feature film Mississippi Damned (2009), she was named one of '25 New Faces of Indie Film' by Filmmaker magazine and among the 'Top Forty Under 40' by The Advocate . [1] [2] Mabry was named a James Baldwin Fellow in Media by United States Artists.[ citation needed ]
Tina Mabry was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1978. [1] After seeing Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry and Gina Prince-Bythewood's Love & Basketball while an undergrad at the University of Mississippi, she determined she had to go into film and moved to Los Angeles. [3] She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Cinema and Television from the University of Southern California.
Mabry began her film career with her short film Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan (2005). In 2007, she wrote the film Itty Bitty Titty Committee . The film was directed by Jamie Babbit and premiered at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival.
Mabry made her feature film directing debut in 2009 with Mississippi Damned, which she also wrote and acknowledges draws from aspects of her own life. [1] [4] She received a film stock grant from Kodak, which enabled her to film it. The film was successful on the festival circuit, winning top prizes at the Chicago International Film Festival, Outfest, American Black Film Festival, and Urbanworld Film Festival. [1] It premiered on Showtime in 2011 and is currently streaming on Netflix courtesy of Ava DuVernay's ARRAY.
Mabry has written and directed two episodes of FutureStates produced by ITVS, including Ant starring Guillermo Díaz.
In 2015, Mabry was hired as a producer, writer, and director on the OWN series Queen Sugar , created by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey.
Kimberly Ane Peirce is an American filmmaker, best known for her debut feature film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), which won Hilary Swank her first Academy Award for Best Actress. Peirce's second feature, Stop-Loss, was released by Paramount Pictures in 2008. Her third film Carrie was released on October 18, 2013. In addition to directing and writing, she is a governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and a National Board member of the Directors Guild of America.
NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival put on by The New Festival, Inc., is one of the most comprehensive forums of national and international LGBT film/video in the world.
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The Watermelon Woman is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film written, directed, and edited by Cheryl Dunye. The first feature film directed by a black lesbian, it stars Dunye as Cheryl, a young black lesbian working a day job in a video store while trying to make a film about Fae Richards, a black actress from the 1930s known for playing the stereotypical "mammy" roles relegated to black actresses during the period.
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Mississippi Damned is a 2009 American drama film written and directed by Tina Mabry and starring Tessa Thompson, D. B. Woodside, Malcolm Goodwin, Malcolm David Kelley and Michael Hyatt. The film was based on Mabry's life growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi. It was filmed in and around Ahoskie, North Carolina.
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