Demetrius Wren got directing start thanks to ‘Reading Rainbow’ book
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
While in Clarksdale, Miss. (recent population: 17,900), as a child in 1993, Demetrius Wren suffered the fate of movie fans living in tiny towns.
“‘Jurassic Park’ was coming out that summer, and we weren’t going to get it until September or whatever. I was frustrated.”
So he made his own version. Inspired by a “Reading Rainbow” book, “Lights! Camera! Action! How a Movie Is Made,” Mr. Wren commandeered his grandmother’s 8-millimeter camera and shot in the backyard.
Alas, the film no longer exists. “It was recorded over by [a] wedding. My grandmother had only one tape.”
Pittsburgh has provided Mr. Wren with a much bigger backyard. In collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s “Year of Diversity” initiative and Steeltown Entertainment Project, he is shooting a feature film, “Rehabilitation of the Hill,” in the Hill District.
Mr. Wren, 33, is no stranger to the area. He helped make videos here for the first season of the Fred Rogers Company’s “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” and met Steeltown co-founder and CEO Carl Kurlander at the WQED Multimedia studios.
He still recalls how the “Reading Rainbow” book helped shape his interests.
“Each page had step-bystep information, beginning with ‘A writer has an idea,’” he said. “They had a woman producer and a black male director. That book was from the ’80s [1989, to be exact], and it was progressive.”
He arrived at Florida State University’s film program unsure of himself. “It was not where I imagined myself to be: Tallahassee, a big football college.”
At a post-orientation party on the first day, one of the seniors helped put him at ease, and they became friends. That student, Barry Jenkins, would go on to write and direct “Moonlight,” 2017’s Academy Award winner for best picture.
“I think that’s the reason why I stayed in film school, because of Barry. He was so talented and so kind. He sent me a Twitter message two days ago, wishing me luck on my movie.”
Mr. Wren made his student film about a single mother working in a sweatshop in 1980s Chinatown. It was entirely in Mandarin. Among his other projects was “Streetball,” a 2010 documentary about youth in South Africa. He co-wrote “Streetball” with the producer, Christina Ghubril; they are now married and based in Los Angeles. She uses the name Christina Wren when working as a professional actor (“Man of Steel”).
The new film is a homecoming for his wife, who grew up in Pittsburgh. Her father, Saleem Ghubril, is executive director of The Pittsburgh Promise.
After post-production on “Rehabilitation of the Hill’ is completed, Mr. Wren has an offer to rewrite a horror film that would shoot in Montana. Then there is a possible directing gig for the series his wife is writing about an Arab-American family that moves to the American South.
Nothing on the horizon has dinosaurs. After all, he has done that already.