Hatboxes on DVD

We all love streaming movies, or watching them on cable or satellite.

And music? Outside of Japan, at least, the world has embraced downloading files and streaming services.

Still...there's nothing quite like having a thing in hand. Yeah, I appreciate the convenience of reading Nicola Griffith's novel Hild on a tablet, but there is just something special about having a book in hand. It's akin to going to a theater to see a movie – like for tonight's Reeling program, which will feature Con Vex, directed by Sam Smith, Hatboxes' script supervisor.

Someday we'll probably release Hatboxes via streaming; as of now, Hatboxes is available on DVD. It comes shrinkwrapped in an environmentally friendly cardstock case, and besides the film itself, the disc includes a closed-captioning option, director's commentary, storyboard highlights, the shooting script, a glossary, and cast and crew biographies.

Drop an e-mail to <hatboxesthemovie [at] gmail [dot] com> to find out how to score a copy of your own.

Susana Darwin

Hatboxes: Coming Full Circle

Full Circle 1

In the early '80s I was a bright-eyed film student at the University of Iowa. During my time there our department moved into an eye-popping state-of-the-art building, complete with floating floors in the production zone to guard against vibrations, but we were still shooting and editing on analogue stock.

Cutting 16 mm negatives remains one of the most nerve-racking tasks ever.

I made a dark, formalistic short about a woman in solitary confinement—the SHU in Orange is the New Black has nothing on its stark set design!

The shift from analogue to digital over the past couple of decades has had enormous impact on filmmaking. Shooting Hatboxes digitally in 2012 took the film far beyond its original modest parameters – plans rooted in my analogue training at Iowa – but that's a good thing.

Getting word that Hatboxes had gotten into the Landlocked Film Festival in Iowa City, my movie-making birthplace, was a particular thrill.

Hatboxes will screen on Sunday, 24 August, at 2:15 pm at the Iowa City Public Library alongside the feature One: A Story of Love and Equality. Come join us – admission is free!

Full Circle 2

Chicago itself plays a vital role in Hatboxes. The germ of the story formed years ago here, and its setting here was never in question. The entire film was shot in eleven locations in the city, ten in the North Side's Andersonville neighborhood and one in the Daley Plaza in the heart of the Loop.

So learning that Hatboxes had been accepted into the Chicago Park District's Chicago on Screen Local Film Showcase was especially gratifying. If you're not observing the Sabbath at 7:30 pm on Friday, 12 September (we tried to tell them...), come join us for an outdoor screening in Union Park at 1501 West Randolph. 

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Susana Darwin

Returning to Chicago Filmmakers

In 2011, I signed up for Chicago Filmmakers' Screenwriting II course to polish a script I’d been working on for years. The idea for a short film about chemistry sparking when an Orthodox woman crosses paths with a secular Jewish lesbian first came to me in the mid-90s at a Christmas party, believe it or not. 

I always knew the film needed to be small-scale, which before the turn of the millennium meant shooting on black-and-white 16 mm film, maybe even without synched sound. By the time I got to Chicago Filmmakers, the technologies had vastly improved: shooting on film was more expensive than shooting digitally, and black and white risked forfeiting much of the warmth and richness color can afford.

Early versions featured eleven speaking parts (including children), a meddlesome ex, and a dog named Flagstaff. Back story weighed down the first quarter of the script, and man, was it preachy! The version that went in with me at Chicago Filmmakers came out tighter and and more focused, and much is recognizable in what the viewer now sees on screen.

The script went through later refinement before Hatboxes went into production, but it’s a thrill to return to Chicago Filmmakers with Hatboxes for Dyke Delicious on Saturday, 10 May, at 7 pm at 5243 North Clark Street, and on Wednesday, 14 May, at 6:30 pm at Columbia College’s Hokin Hall, 623 S. Wabash, room 109. Get your tickets here for 10 May and here for 14 May.

We hope to see you at one of the screenings, Chicago!

Susana Darwin