Dee Rees facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Dee Rees
Rees in 2012
Born	Diandrea Rees (1977-02-07) February 7, 1977 (age 48) Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Alma mater	New York University Florida A&M University
Occupation	Film director film producer screenwriter
Years active	2005–present
Spouse(s)	Sarah M. Broom

Diandrea Rees (born February 7, 1977) is an American filmmaker. She is known for writing and directing popular movies like Pariah (2011), Bessie (2015), and Mudbound (2017). She has also directed episodes for TV shows such as Empire and Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.

Dee Rees made history as the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on Mudbound. She has also been nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards for her writing and directing, and she won a Directors Guild of America Award for Bessie. In 2011, she received a special award called the United States Artists Fellowship.

Early Life and Education

Dee Rees was born in 1977 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her dad was a police officer, and her mom was a scientist. She went to college at Florida A&M University. After finishing business school, Dee Rees worked many different jobs. She sold things like panty-liners and bunion pads. She also worked in marketing.

While working for a company called Dr. Scholl's, she was on the set of a commercial. This is when she realized she loved making films. This led her to go to film school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. There, famous director Spike Lee was her professor and mentor. Dee Rees even worked with Spike Lee on his films Inside Man (2006) and When the Levees Broke (2006).

During this time, she started writing a script for a movie called Pariah. For her final project in graduate school, she turned the first part of her script into a short film. This short film, also called Pariah, was shown at 40 film festivals around the world in 2007. It won many awards, including the Audience Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Filmmaking Career

Dee Rees's first full-length film was a documentary called Eventual Salvation (2009). It was shown on the Sundance Channel. The film tells the story of her 80-year-old grandmother, Amma. Amma returned to Monrovia, Liberia to rebuild her home and community. She had escaped the Liberian Civil War just ten years before.

Directing Pariah

Dee Rees then finished her first feature film, Pariah. She has said that parts of the movie are based on her own life. Her former professor, Spike Lee, helped produce the film. Pariah was first shown at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Critics praised the movie for its honesty.

Pariah explores the challenges faced by a Black family. It looks at how religion, politics, and money affect their lives. It was hard to get money to make the full movie, and it took about five years to complete. The movie changed a lot from the short film version to the feature film. It needed to be easier for more people to understand so it could be successful.

In 2011 and 2012, Dee Rees won many awards for Pariah. These included the John Cassavetes Award and the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director.

Making Bessie and Mudbound

In 2015, Dee Rees's film Bessie premiered on HBO. It starred Queen Latifah as the famous singer Bessie Smith. Critics really liked the film. Bessie won four Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie. Dee Rees was nominated for her directing and writing for the film.

Next, Dee Rees co-wrote Mudbound with Virgil Williams. This movie was based on a novel by Hillary Jordan. Dee Rees also directed the film, which starred actors like Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige. After being shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, Mudbound was bought by Netflix for $12.5 million. This was the biggest purchase at the festival that year.

Mudbound was filmed in New Orleans in just 28 days. The movie tells the story of two families in Mississippi in the 1940s. One family is white, and the other is Black. The film shows how racism and relationships between different races played out during that time. Dee Rees used her own family's history to help make the movie. She used her grandmother's journal, which had old family photos and notes about ancestors who fought in wars.

Dee Rees and Virgil Williams were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Mudbound. This made Dee Rees the first African-American woman to be nominated for this award. She was also the first African-American woman nominated for any writing Oscar since 1972. When Mary J. Blige was nominated for an Academy Award for her acting in Mudbound, Dee Rees became the first African-American woman to direct a film that received an acting Oscar nomination.

Other Projects

Dee Rees also directed an episode of the TV show Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams. This show is a science fiction series on Amazon Prime. She also directed The Last Thing He Wanted (2020), which starred Anne Hathaway. This film was also distributed by Netflix.

More recently, Dee Rees directed several episodes of the Apple TV+ war miniseries Masters of the Air. She is also set to write and direct a movie version of the opera Porgy and Bess for MGM.

In 2019, Dee Rees started working on a new musical fantasy film called The Kyd's Exquisite Follies. It's about a young musician who wants to become famous.

In 2021, Dee Rees became the first African-American woman to direct a film added to The Criterion Collection. This collection includes important and classic films. Her movie Pariah (2011) was added, showing that Criterion wants to include more diverse filmmakers.

Filmmaking Style

Inspiration and Themes

Dee Rees has shared that she is inspired by the realistic directing style of John Cassavetes. She also likes the natural look of the cinematography by Bradford Young on the TV show Friday Night Lights.

Dee Rees often uses her own life experiences to inspire her films. Her identity as a Black filmmaker is very important to her work. She believes that being different from many people in Hollywood helps her share her unique experiences through her movies.

Black women are often central characters in her films. You can see this in Pariah (2011), Mudbound (2017), and Bessie (2015). Even though she is still early in her career, Dee Rees has shown many different styles in her films. She spends a lot of time on small visual details, even if they only appear for a few seconds.

Working with Others

Spike Lee was Dee Rees's teacher and guide at NYU Tisch. They worked together on films like Inside Man (2006) and When The Levees Broke (2006). Spike Lee also helped produce her movie Pariah (2011).

Cassian Elwes, who produced Mudbound (2017), has worked with Dee Rees on several projects. These include The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) and her upcoming film, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies.

Dee Rees also served as an executive producer for the 2023 documentary film Little Richard: I Am Everything, which was directed by Lisa Cortés.

Personal Life

Dee Rees is married to poet and writer Sarah M. Broom. They live in Harlem.

Dee Rees often includes her family's history in her films. For example, in her 2017 film Mudbound, she used her grandmother's experiences. This helped her show how American violence and racism affected people's lives and identities.

Filmography

Short film

Feature film

Television

Awards and Nominations

Dee Rees has won many awards for her films. Here are some of her major achievements:

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See also

• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of female film and television directors
• List of lesbian filmmakers
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women
• List of LGBT people from New York City
• NYC Pride March