THE OBENSON REPORT

Covering Cinema From All Across The African Diaspora

Filmmaker Spotlight - Tina Mabry

DAMNED


Her first feature film,
Mississippi Damned, was just announced as a 2009 Slamdance Film Festival entry, described as a drama about three poor black kids in rural Mississippi who reap the consequences of their family's cycle of abuse, addiction, and violence. The cast includes: DB Woodside (Grey's Anatomy, 24), Malcolm David Kelly (Lost, Antwone Fisher), Malcolm Goodwin (Miracle At St Anna, American Gangster), Tessa Thompson (Grey's Anatomy, The Human Contract), and Michael Hyatt (The West Wing, The Wire).

30-year old Tina Mabry received an MFA from the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California. During her three years at USC, she completed her thesis film,
Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan, which received the Jeffrey Jones Writing Award at USC in the Fall of 2004, played at several film festivals, and aired on the Showtime cable TV network in February 2006. She also received the Edward Small Directing Award, and co-produced a film called, The Slowdown, which aired on Showtime's Black Filmmaker Showcase in February 2004.

Mississippi Damned is her first feature - a recipient of a Film Independent grant of $10,000 of Kodak film stock, shot on super 35MM (an expensive feat, although the results must be sublime), and will be making its world premiere at next month's Slamdance Film Festival, in competition.

You can read an inciteful extended interview Film Independent held with Mabry regarding
Mississippi Damned HERE.

And you can watch
Brooklyn's Bridge To Jordan online, right now, via the Logo Channel's website HERE. Mabry's 20-minute USC thesis film is about a woman carrying a buried secret, after losing her life partner in a car accident, and she must not only fight to keep the couples' estranged teenage son from her partner's intolerant brother, but also rebuild her and her son's troubled relationship.

MISSISSIPPI DAMNED

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