Film
Cinema Rediscovered: Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. + Director Q&A
- Director
- Leslie Harris
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 92 mins
Zestful, mouthy Brooklyn homegirl Chantel is a straight-A student who dreams of escaping the Projects’ poverty trap by winning a place at medical school. But things start to go dreadfully wrong for her when she gets pregnant by the school heartthrob, having been seduced by the sheer sexual magnetism of his big shiny jeep. Leslie Harris‘s confrontational, low-budget debut from 1993 – “The Film Hollywood Dared Not Do” – is the first full length feature directed by an African American woman. Where it scores is in its honest depiction of teen pregnancy, which it achieves without coming across like a public information film. Where it fails – and fails miserably – is in its monumentally unconvincing happy ending and excruciatingly clod-hopping moments of “political consciousness.” And it’s not helped by Ariyan Johnson‘s inability to carry the central role: if the incessant period rap soundtrack doesn’t give you a headache, her constant shrieking surely will.
Leslie Harris will be present for a Q&A after this screening which is part of the Women on the Periphery strand of Cinema Rediscovered.
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