2023 Filmmaker in Residence
The 13th Percent is a personal documentary exploring filmmaker Renée Wilson’s unexpected discovery of her non-Jewish African American family’s 13% Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in a 2018 DNA report, which the report attributed to either a grandparent or a great grandparent. The revelation offered a tantalizing clue to a longstanding family mystery, the identity of Wilson’s paternal great-grandfather and his family. A source of shame for many years, Wilson’s grandfather never knew his father, but his light complexion and mother’s job working in the “big house” of a former plantation in Louisiana's German Coast hinted at a painful past. Armed with this new knowledge, Wilson embarks on a journey seeking to reveal her own family history and the complex ways that Louisiana’s Black and Jewish communities have long been intertwined.
Renée Wilson is a director, writer, performer, and made her film debut portraying Raelette Pat Lyle in the Academy Awarding-winning filmRaystarring Jamie Foxx. Wilson’s documentary,Crepe Covered Sidewalks, about her hometown of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, was the centerpiece film of the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival and received Best New Filmmaker Award at the Peachtree Village International Film Festival in Atlanta. Her recent film,Ode To Joy,won the 2022 Maui Film Festival Audience Award for Stunning Short Film. She graduated from Tulane University with a BA in Communications. She lives and works in Dallas, TX.
Project description and bios courtesy of the Resident