Alarmed by the rate at which the young black men around her are dying, brash Oakland art student Pica attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an abusive relationship, experiencing love and loss, and being drawn into the search for a serial killer who is terrorizing the city.
She was born in Riverside, California, in 1967, and grew up in Sacramento. From 1988 to 1991, she attended the School of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University, where she earned her BA while completing the short films ‘Wall Doc’ (1989) and ‘Daily Rains’ (1990). From 1994 to 1998, Smith attended the School of Film, Theater, and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her MFA. During that time, she began work on the feature ‘Drylongso’, which was completed in 1998. Since then, she has continued to produce short films and videos, live audiovisual performances, installations, and other creative works in various media, and featured in many group exhibitions around the world. She has received multiple awards, grants, residencies, and fellowships, and she currently teaches in the art department at UCLA.