FOR COLORED GIRLS
Year: 2010
USA: Lionsgate
UK: Lionsgate UK
Cast: Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Michael Ealy, Kimberly Elise, Omari Hardwick, Hill Harper, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Macy Gray, Khalil Kain, Richard Lawson, Rayna Tharani, Jaycee Williams, Thomas "Deuce" Jessup, May Zayan, John Crow
Director: Tyler Perry
Country: USA
USA: 120 mins
UK: 133 mins
USA Rated: R for some disturbing violence including a rape, sexual content and language
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, violence and one scene of sexual violence
USA Release Date: 5 November 2010
UK Release Date: 10 December 2010 (Limited Release)
Synopsis
In 1974, Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf” made its stage debut, combining poetry, dance and music, and most significantly, placing the black female experience center stage. In lyrical, honest, angry, funny and tender language, Shange’s “colored girls” evoked the feelings woven into the fabric of black female life in America. Within two years, the play became a Broadway sensation, won an Obie and Tony Award, and would eventually be produced in regional theaters throughout the country. Now, thirty six years later, filmmaker Tyler Perry adapts this landmark work for the big screen, integrating the vivid language of Shange’s poems into a contemporary narrative that explores what it means to be a woman of color - and a woman of any color - in this world.
The film interlaces the stories of nine different women " Jo, Tangie, Crystal, Gilda, Kelly, Juanita, Yasmine, Nyla and Alice " as they move into and out of one another’s existences; some are well known to one another, others are as yet strangers. Crises, heartbreaks and crimes will ultimately bring these nine women fully into the same orbit where they will find commonality and understanding. Each will speak her truth as never before. And each will know that she is complete as a human being, glorious and divine in all her colors.