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home.girls
TYPE: Narrative Short
GENRE: Comedy
STATUS: Pre-Production
LOGLINE
6 sorority sisters, 5 who are of color, are passively aggressively made into roommates when they join a PWI house. Their longevity depends on whether or not they are able to get along.
SYNOPSIS
home.girls takes place at the PWI of the Upstate, New York campus of Boxwood University. home.girls tackles who gets the ownership of feminism and centers the lived in experiences of 5 girls of color, 3 whom are Black, all of medium to dark skin tones with 3 of them having tightly coiled hair. The intersections of Black and white womanhood in feminism is put to the test through the lens of a Panhellenic sorority.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
This story is personal, I went to a PWI as a Black woman and joined a white sorority because the Black sororities kept getting kicked off campus. I also dreamed of living in a mansion, having prepared meals and cleaning people too. Although my experience was filled with a lot of fun, I was the only Black person in my year which is inherently racist and lonely. My idea for 5 girls of color living in a house together due to ostracism is not as far off as it may seem. It is very likely that if more Black girls were accepted into my prestigious sorority that we would all naturally draw to one another. My storytelling is cheeky, imaginative and always grounded in the gut truth. There has never been a story about the intersections of Black women joining white sororities in the history/herstory of television, until now. Feminism has been so wrapped up in whiteness, Black women deserve to be heard, we too are representative of womanhood. I know that there will be some hard conversations and a lot of laughter, at its heart, it is about all of our yearning for community, regardless of the cost. The core value that most aligns with my project is autonomy. It is a coming home to one’s self by first literally searching outside of one’s self. home.girls is a sisterhood at its core. I want by the end of our short or TV series or both that the audience regardless of race, gender, social status and body abilities, realize that the search for value becomes a lot less arduous and more light. That we begin to know regardless of marginalization that we are already worthy, simply because we were born. Graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School and Syracuse University Drama, for the past 10 years I have been making a name for myself as an actress in LA. I star in 2 Netflix short films in collaboration with Ghetto Film School titled The Divinity Streak and Knight into Day. In 2019 I had an ABC recurring role on Grand Hotel with Executive Producer Eva Longoria as well as co-star roles on Jane The Virgin, Punky Brewster and most recently on CBS's The Neighborhood with Cedric The Entertainer. In 2022, I made my short film directorial debut on Tongue In Cheek which I am also the writer, executive producer and star of. There is power in visual necessity. Creating my entertainment company, Jan 22 Productions, was born out of Tongue In Cheek short film. I made a dedication to write and produce projects that I was not seeing in Hollywood, monoracial medium and dark skinned Black women with 4C natural hair centered on TV and in film. Spaces where we could exist as regular human beings and our existence amplified. Jan 22 Productions is already award winning, established in January, 2022. Tongue In Cheek is an Official Selection of 8 film festivals and counting, along with the Best Comedy Film Award. Starting my production company using money that I made from a holiday Google commercial is a metaphor for the gift of self investment. It started off as an opportunity to be seen as an actress and then quickly became the vessel to change the entertainment industry as a whole. Up next, is our TV series that follows the very specific PWI sorority experience of 6 young women, 5 which are of color and 3 which are Black. We are in pre-production for the short film version that will be used as a Proof of Concept for pitching.
KEY CREW
Tai Brown - Executive Producer/Director/Writer/Star/Casting Director
Tai Brown made her network television debut as Addie, a recurring role on the ABC drama Grand Hotel with executive producer Eva Longoria. Tai Brown is starring in two Netflix projects streaming now. She is an award winning multi-hyphenate Black woman filmmaker, the executive producer, director, writer and lead of Tongue in Cheek short film. Tai Brown is a Jamaican American actress. Born in the Bronx, her mother, a cosmetologist, raised her in a Caribbean New York City home. She is a conversational Italian speaker after living in Florence, Italy. A former member of the professional dance company Jr. K, performing at 3 consecutive Puerto Rican Day parades. Since a young age she has performed in both community theater and off-Broadway productions, including writing, starring and producing Borderline Bitter. Graduate of the Fame school Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and Syracuse University Drama with a Bachelor of Science and Health Minor. She has appeared in numerous national commercials. Tai began her television and movie career through the independent film circuit in Los Angeles, starring in Semblance and My Name Here, along with TV roles on Good Trouble and BET. She has also been featured on The CW critically acclaimed TV series Jane the Virgin.
imdb.me/taibrown
https://filmfreeway.com/tongueincheek
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