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" If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are. "

Dee Rees

Find

I Can

Three

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" I want people to get from 'Pariah' that it's okay to be you and not to check a box as a parent or child. "

" Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you. "

" I'm always choosing the hard things, the things that aren't easy. "

" New York offers people the anonymity to be themselves without judgment. "

" For me, like, obviously, I want to see myself onscreen. "

Dee Rees

Myself

" The best thing in the world is to put two characters who hate each other side by side. Or put two people who love each other far away, so they have to reach for each other with their looks. "

" History informs where we are and how we got here. "

" Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.' "

Dee Rees

Want

Hold

" I've been around many different lives, many different voices. It was amazing material for a writer. "

" People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination. "

" Shooting on film is great because it imparts discipline: What do you need to see so you're not finding it in the camera. When I'm shooting, I have the scene in mind, where I'm going to have certain lines. I learned to overlap and to shoot more than I think I need. That was the learning curve. "

" You don't have to make your life look like anybody else says it should look. "

" I had originally written 'Pariah' as a feature, and we shot the first act as a short film, and then we used the short as a marketing tool to fundraise for the feature. "

" It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are. "

Dee Rees

You

Be Yourself

" I started out at Procter & Gamble marketing panty liners, so basically selling women insecurity. I thought there must be more to life than this. Then I was on set for a Dr. Scholl's commercial, and I asked one of the execs, 'How do you get a job behind the camera?' and he said, 'Film school.' So I quit and applied to NYU. "

" I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before. "

Dee Rees

Interesting

Character

" I was going to study business administration at Florida A&M, at the height of Reaganomics. "

" Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes. "

" I think art breaks down otherness. "

" For kids who are struggling, who are of faith, just reconciling yourself to the fact that God loves you, accepts you for who you are, is a big step in the healing, especially when your biological family is unaccepting of you. "

" It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different worlds. "

" For me, 'Pariah' is very much about that inner churn. It's about this person's emotional inner life, and that's really what I wanted to bring to 'Bessie.' "

" I was interested with exploring the idea of who gets to be in possession of the land - how it's sometimes impossible to go back home, how family can be the thing that drags you down. "

" We shouldn't be discriminating against each other. The whole 'light skin versus dark skin' is an idea we need to break down. "

" I thought I'd get an MBA, and then I could be anything. And I'd write on the side. That was the idea. "

" I'm interested in telling stories about characters that are interesting and who are challenging in some way, one that will make you think about them afterwards. "

" Knowing what you want is not a shortcoming. Let people deal with their own anxieties. "

" I'm interested in characters and relationships. "

" To me, if you can do the Wicked Witch live, you can play anybody. "

Dee Rees

You

Play

" With friendship, it's hard sometimes - you don't outgrow your friends, but you do question how people are friends to you in different ways and how it's okay to cultivate other relationships outside of that. "