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Ttitle is an African American term from the US South meaning “ordinary” or “ordinary” – but there’s nothing ordinary about this 1998 indie film from artist-director Kaolin Smith, re-released for its 25th anniversary. Smith shot it in his 20s while still in graduate school at UCLA, and perhaps the film does have a distinct film school feel to it with its DIY aesthetic. But there’s a compelling kind of innocence to his fast-paced storytelling, his indifference to the irony and self-awareness that was fashionable in independent cinema at the time, and the unaffected charm and guilelessness of his performances.
Toby Smith plays Pika, a girl who lives with her mother and grandmother in a chaotic house nearby Oakland, California, where she is enrolled in a photography class; instead of creating artistically sophisticated studies on 35mm film cameras, as her professor requires, Pica takes Polaroids of young black men because she believes it’s a kind of record of an endangered species, since so many of these men will end up in prison or they will die. It’s a radically simple street art reportage that of course makes the professorial fancy compositions look dull and bloodless; the film itself perhaps supports the Polaroid aesthetic.
Pica must befriend Toby (April Barnett), who was abused by her partner and now dresses as a street boy to intimidate white people and avoid sexist harassment from everyone; Pika also has a tender romance with a local artist, which fatefully connects her with a serial killer who is terrorizing the neighborhood.
Drylongso’s charm and distinction lies in its defiance of genre: it’s not exactly a social realist drama, not exactly a thriller, and not exactly a romance. Its strange serial killer plot, while involving murder and horror, is perhaps not to be taken entirely seriously. It’s actually closer to being an urban pastoral, a midsummer night’s dream in Oakland. This is a testament to a unique talent.
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