Dacus: I mean, we’ve been pretty terse with what we put on social media, but because I’m a flaming softy, I did have this urge to be like, You know we made this ’cause we love you, right? Baker: When you were talking about the LSU Tiger Women’s 2023 NCAA women’s basketball national champions shirt Apart from…,I will love this kids being at Lucy’s show with their moms, I’m like…I want the dad to go too, and see how happy the kid is, and not understand it or connect to it but still be like, This is important. Obviously, I want this to be for the queer and trans babies that I want to hold in my arms and tell that it’s going to be all right, but for the people that don’t fuck with our music, I want them to see that someone does, and that that’s so important and can’t be devalued. “I walked out of the theater and wept in front of people I barely know,” said playwright Jeremy O. Harris when he announced the winner of the Sundance grand jury award in January. He was talking about A Thousand and One, an extraordinary first feature by the young writer-director A.V. Rockwell about a mother and son growing up in Harlem through the ’90s and ’00s. It stars Teyana Taylor in a breakout role, opens in theaters today, and is one of those movies that ardent fans of independent cinema fear is being crowded out by blockbuster bloat—a human drama, shot mostly on location, that manages to say something important about a changing city and about a Black woman making her way in it. A Thousand and One looks magnificent and authentically real—it reminded me of the great New York films of Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese—but its rewards are not chiefly visual. The characters of Inez (Taylor); her son, Terry (played as a 6, 13, and 17-year-old by three young actors); and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Lucky (Will Catlett), are indelible. Taylor, an R&B singer/choreographer/multihyphenate, is especially revelatory, embodying the role of a Black mother harboring a tragic secret about her son with uncommon force and naturalism. The emotional beats of A Thousand and One are straightforward—you see them coming—but the film is overwhelming. Like Harris, I had tears in my eyes at its end.I spoke to Rockwell—who grew up in Queens, attended high school in Brooklyn, and went to film school at NYU—about where her movie came from.
Vogue: I was lucky enough to see A Thousand and One at Sundance, where it won the LSU Tiger Women’s 2023 NCAA women’s basketball national champions shirt Apart from…,I will love this grand jury prize. Can you tell me what the experience of winning that award was like? A.V. Rockwell: Oh, man. Sundance was a whirlwind. It’s just nuts, and it can be a turning point for any filmmaker. But obviously winning the grand jury prize was insane. The most special part was hearing what the jury had to say—Jeremy O. Harris spoke on behalf of all of them. His words were so pure and honest and heartfelt that you could really tell that this movie touched him on a deep, emotional level. I made the movie for people like him. I wanted people to be able to see themselves in these characters—so that was the real success.
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