Pariah - In Person: Producer Nekisa Cooper

African-American History Month film series
In Person: Producer Nekisa COOPER
Saturday, February 18 at 7:30pm
Members $9 / Public $13 (includes reception)
Seventeen-year-old Alike (pronounced A-leekay and perfectly played by Adepero Oduye) is a young woman
who exists in two worlds. In one, she lives harmoniously in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighbourhood
with her middle-class, conservative parents, Audrey (Kim Wayans) and Arthur (Charles Parnell). She is
a traditionally feminine, obedient daughter who… Show more does well in school. The other side of Alike's life is spent with
her out-of-the-closet best friend Laura (Pernell Walker), dancing in gay clubs, embracing her nascent identity
as a lesbian and seeking her first serious girlfriend. It's inevitable that these worlds will collide. Gaining
confidence and fervently wishing to live openly without shame, Alike is impatient to disclose the truth but
ultimately unsure about fully revealing herself to her family until circumstances force her hand. Pariah is
about much more than deciding whether to come out to the world. There isn't a parent alive who won't identify with
Audrey's anxieties or world-weary Arthur's soft spot for his daughter. And who among us has not deeply feared the revelation of a secret? It is the
specificity of the story and characters in Pariah that results in the film's universal appeal and its wide-ranging emotional power. USA, 2011, 86 min.

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