After being beaten to the punch by major film studios, Black Harlem ex-nun, affectionately known as Queen Mother, Dr Delois Blakely, is now telling her own story in a dramedy short she produced herself. Delois was just a 14-year-old African American youth when she realized that Jesus Christ was the man she wanted to marry, Black News reports.
At age 16, she left high school for the convent. Her new name would become Sister Noelita Marie. Ten years later, she left the convent at age 26 to work 24-7 serving her target community - drug addicts, prostitutes, and gangsters. She also worked with children and youth.
Major film companies negotiated to tell her story, but nothing ever came of it. After a year of negotiations with Columbia Tri-star in the late 1980’s, the only Black nun story that left that studio was Sister Act - and it was picked-up by Disney.
“She looks like me, and acts like me, and even has names that sound like mine. But Disney says their Black nun is not me.” Disney made over $400 million off their film.
Their nun is Sister Mary. Blakely’s name was Sister Marie. Their nun’s secular name is Deloris. Blakely’s secular name is Delois. The list of similarities goes on.
Now at age 67, a single-mom raising her profoundly handicapped daughter, and fighting foreclosure in her home of over 20 years, Delois Blakely is on a mission to tell her story in her own film: Sister Nun.
“It’s now or never,” says Blakely.
Sister Nun was shot July 2009, throughout Harlem, New York. It stars Yolonda Ross (Stranger Inside, Whatever Works, Antwone Fisher), and is co-written and directed by Sundance filmmaker Rene Alberta.
“I want to share the real stories I’ve dealt with as a Harlem street nun and as Community Mayor of Harlem. Some moments are funny, some are tragic. But all of it is based on the truth,” said Blakely.
“We are taking the film to major festivals around the world and are prepared to sell the real Black nun story to a major studio,” said Deadria Farmer-Paellmann of Dry Bones Production, co-writer and executive producer of the film.
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