A closeted queer poet finds a love interest that can put everything at stake on the eve of her Cotillion ball. She risks everything to show them that she values her new love more than what is at risk. This is the intrigue of  Pure, directed by Natalie Jasmine Harris as a narrative thesis and is now being adapted into a feature-length film, after acquiring a licensing deal with HBO and winning multiple awards. 

Harris wrote this film about her own experiences and struggles with accepting her sexuality and going against the ‘norm’ that is expected in society. Harris explains that from a young age they have been groomed to be straight and act pure. It spans generations in Harris’ family with her mother and grandmother both having attended Cotillion. They both asked her to attend one at 17, but Harris refused, breaking the cycle. 

The elaborate social dance known as Cotillion, dates back to 18th century France. The dance is an opportunity for young girls to be shown off to the rest of the high-class families, to demonstrate their availability to be married off. White dresses, white shoes and white pearls, come together to form the cultural costume that celebrates and symbolizes purity. This is the traditional rite of passage for young girls and in the film, Celeste, a young poet, puts everything at risk when she shows her new-found love interest that she values their love more than the need for acceptance by high society. 

“I’ve realized how it can be really impactful for other people to see this story and resonate with it,” said Harris. “Just knowing that people can be touched and moved and feel seen by that has been really rewarding for me, even if at first I was nervous.” 

Harris aims to tell coming-of-age stories that showcase Black joy and coming to terms with queer identity. They hope to merge more of their own experiences with storytelling to create films that make people rethink their privilege and place in society. Being a Black, queer, trailblazer in the film industry comes with a price. Harris has had to endure homophobic reponses to her student films and navigate the world of cis-gender, white men who dominate the film world. 

“When I had free time to get off campus, I would go into D.C and make documentaries about different protests that were happening for Black Lives Matter,” said Harris. 

They filmed short documentaries of the protests and then showed them at school, making her classmates uncomfortable. Although Harris saw the importance in the documentary aspect of filmmaking, they did not want to limit themselves to documentaries and ventured into narrative filmmaking.

 In the height  of the COVID-19 pandemic, Harris entered Pure into major film festivals, eventually getting the recognition they deserved and winning multiple prestigious awards. Now, Harris is working on adapting the film from a short to a feature-length film and is also working on directing her first commercial for Hyundai. Working with Outfest and Outfest Fusion has been where Harris found community and an audience.

Harris is currently a Creative Culture Fellow with The Jacob Burns Film Center and is also participating in the Alliance of Women Directors’ 2022 Directing Lab. Through their work, they hope to empower people from marginalized communities with film and poetry.