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

if I had directed "Blue is the Warmest Color"

We've seen the criticism of Blue is the Warmest Color: 
—it's a guy directing two straight actresses portraying lesbians
—it's pornographic
—it exploits its actors
—it mystifies female sexuality/orgasm/bodies
—it runs too long
—it's too French

And we've seen the criticism of the criticism...but that's not why we're here.

If I had directed Blue is the Warmest Color, I'd have:
—shortened the first hour to 15 minutes because the sequence with Thomas doesn't need all that time to get the point across
—given Adèle and her family some modicum of table manners, though watching someone chew with her mouth open does make you focus on her eyes
—eased back on the high school classroom sequences because kids more thoughtful and erudite than most PhD students are just annoying
—lit the sex scenes less like operating theaters
—added a few dozen more positions to round out the lesbian sex catalogue (if you're gonna do it...)
—found a credible reason for Emma to decline sex
—explored Adèle's closetedness and Emma-the-artist's relationship to it, especially given the Pride sequences
—extended the break-up beyond one cataclysmic moment to balance the apparently epic sex with a parting of ways equal in dramatic power
—dropped all the talk about the weather
—made the narrative less dependent on Adèle's face (who said, "All film happens on the human face"?)
—dropped some of the voyeuristic shots
—broadened Adèle's menus beyond spaghetti bolognese, even though it's become the pan-EU dish

Some of the scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color resonate deeply, and it telegraphs passion compellingly.  Adèle and Emma each have a distinct presence, and you come to care about what's going to happen to them.  I appreciate the depiction of teen girls' bullying, predation by women, the vertigo of falling in love, the hope and the despair of seeing the lost lover again.  It's made me think some more about the meaning of hair and how intensely emotions can manifest physiologically.  The discussions of art surely cater mostly to art house audiences, and given the 20 minutes of sex, I'm still figuring out how to interpret the only onscreen shot of a vulva appearing while Emma is painting Adèle from life.  The subjectivity of Adèle's desire seemed more remotely conceived than Emma's, which is not to say that they have to match or even balance, but the intensity could go even deeper by bringing it more consciousness.

Go see it – see what you think.  What would you change?

—Susana Darwin (10 November 2013)

11 November 2013 addendum 
The movie's kind of a mess behind all the offscreen drama.  One thing the film seems to be trying to be about is how becoming someone's muse when you're young can create problems for your identity and your relationship, but ironically, the director's worshipful posture towards Adèle the actress/Adèle the character obscures the point.  A film can be complex without being messy (but maybe this is some sort of postmodern cinematic Escher interlock...?)  Anyway, in addition, I'd have:

—depicted more viscerally the chases and idealizations among Adèle the muse, Emma the artist, and Emma's art dealer

—not named the character "Adèle," the same name as the actress portraying her

reporting from Route 66

Almost 50 films in 27 hours—they sure can pack them in in Springfield, Illinois.  Hatboxes screened as part of the Saturday evening program of nine films at the Route 66 International Film Festival the first weekend of November.  

Films from as far away as Adelaide, Australia, and Bilbao, Spain, joined works from closer to home, ranging in length from just a couple of minutes to a couple of hours.

A versatile screening/performance space at the Capital City Bar and Grill was home to works about military/veteran themes, controversial topics, and family-friendly stories before Saturday evening's eclectic set of films.

Wind Up, Only Thunder, Retrovisor (Rear View), and Ella y el espejo (She and the Mirror) featured anxious themes and spooky atmospherics.  Ella edged back and forth between a black-and-white palette and muted colors where Wind Up made the most of Seattle's light to capture saturated colors.

Worth packed an entire thriller, twists and all, into 17 minutes. Comedy got its due in Broken, El lado frio de la almohada (The Cold Side of the Pillow), and You Don't Say! Besides Hatboxes (what did you expect?), the stylishness and polished timing of The Cold Side of the Pillow made it my favorite.

Many thanks to the Route 66 curators for including Hatboxes in this fine festival and for being such gracious hosts.

Susana Darwin

Meet the cast: Maya Boudreau

Maya Boudreau plays Hannah, Miriam and Aaron’s older daughter in Hatboxes. She graduated with a BFA in Theatre with honors from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts in just three years.

Maya grew up in a small town in Illinois. It was here that Maya developed a strong sense of who she was. From a young age, Maya was involved in community and school theatrical productions.  At age fourteen, Maya and her parents moved to Chicago where she went to Walter Payton College Prep High School. 

While living in Chicago, Maya took advantage of every cultural experience that she could. Chicago became her home. Maya had the honor of studying and performing with such prestigious and innovative companies as Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Lookingglass Theatre, The Second City, American Theatre Company and Piven Theatre Workshop, among others. 

Hatboxes glossary: Havdalah

Once the Saturday evening sky becomes dark enough to see three stars, the Havdalah ceremony may begin, marking the end of the Sabbath.


Celebrants recite the blessing over a cup of wine, symbolic of joy.  They pass around a container of sweet spices, like cinnamon and cloves, which symbolizes the pleasure of the Sabbath. A braided candle calls to mind the multiple but unified strands of Judaism in the world, and its extinction in the remainder of the wine evokes the sadness of the end of the Sabbath.

Miriam and Nadine observe Havdalah in Hatboxes

How do you mark the difference between workaday life and a more special time?

Hatboxes Will Screen at Reeling 2013: The 31st LGBT International Film Festival

Yahoo!

Hatboxes will screen at Reeling 2013: The 31st LGBT International Film Festival in November.

Running from Thursday, November 7, through Thursday, November 14 at venues all over the city, Reeling will feature films from Chicago-based filmmakers and from as far away as Brazil and Austria.

Reeling is sponsored by Chicago Filmmakers, which Hatboxes has a special relationship to:  not only did its script take shape with the help of a Screenwriting II session at Chicago Filmmakers, all its scenes save one were filmed within steps of the Filmmakers’ office on Clark Street in Andersonville.

Stay tuned for screening details...

Hatboxes glossary: gossip

In a tense scene in Hatboxes between Miriam and her estranged husband, Aaron expresses concern about people in their community bearing tales about Miriam.

Aaron collects the last of his things in Hatboxes

Gossiping is considered one of the gravest sins in Judaism, reflecting an understanding of the power of speech:  the world was brought into being by the spoken Word; of the 43 sins enumerated in the main confessional prayer on Yom Kippur, at least a dozen are sins of speech. Tale-bearing is considered a sin on the level of murder, idol worship, and incest/adultery, and even sharing a piece of information that is true, that is not negative, and that would not hurt the subject is considered a violation of two commandments articulated in Leviticus:  "Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people," and "ye shall not wrong one another [with speech]" (Lev. 19:16 and Lev. 25:17, respectively).

The harm that speech can do cannot be repaired in the same way that a stolen bracelet can be returned or damage to a car repaired.  In Hatboxes, Aaron worries about Miriam's well-being even if true information were to circulate among her neighbors ("Miriam and Aaron are getting a divorce" or "Miriam has made friends with a woman who wears trousers").

In The Big Chill, the Jeff Goldblum charater asserts that no one can go a week without making a rationalization.  Who can go a day without gossiping?

ANOTHER FESTIVAL

Yes. There's more good news for HATBOXES.

We've been accepted at the 12^th Annual Route 66 International Film Festival.

 

The festival will be held on November 1-2, 2013, at the screening room adjacent to The Capitol City Bar and Grill, Springfield, Illinois. 

We're not sure exact timing yet for the screening, but details will be available soon at their website.

Is anybody up for a trip to Springfield?

Hatboxes glossary: keeping kosher 2

A kosher kitchen requires separate utensils, tableware, and cookware for dairy and meat products, and some folks even use separate appliances and linens.

Rendering a kitchen kosher, called kashering, can seem intimidating:  everything must be deep-cleaned, pots and pans have to get submerged in boiling water (or hot coals get dropped into them as they boil water so the water surges over the lip), and silverware has to get boiled, too.  Things with porous surfaces may have to be disposed of altogether.

Miriam and Nadine kasher Nadine's kitchen in Hatboxes

Keeping kosher is a way of paying attention to what goes into your mouth in addition to what comes out of it and serves as a constant reminder of of a Jew's place on the spectrum of Jewish life and observance.

What food customs root you to your culture?

Hatboxes glossary: clip-on earrings

Miriam and Nadine shop together in Hatboxes

In Hatboxes, Miriam exclaims, "You never see such nice clip-ons," as she peruses a whole tree of earrings in Lena's boutique.  "I think I'll get two."

Some observant Jews do not pierce their ears because it may be considered immodest. Tzni'ut (Hebrew: צניעות) is a body of Jewish law concerned with comportment, including dress, and relations between the sexes.  Tzni'ut is rooted in concepts of of humility and modesty, articulated repeatedly across the Bible as ideal traits, and it forms the basis of an enormous body of jurisprudence.

Ear-piercing sometimes gets included among the prohibitions against mutilating the body:  "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor imprint any marks upon you: I am the LORD." (Leviticus 19:28; the Talmud identifies tattooing as an idolatrous practice, but the rabbis disagreed about whether including the name of a deity was what was prohibited or the entire act itself.  800 years ago, Maimonides concluded that tattoos are entirely prohibited.)  In Exodus 32, Aaron collecting the earrings from women, sons, and daughters, but maybe melting them down to use as the Golden Calf casts a taint on piercings still, thousands of years later.

Is modesty a part of how you choose to dress yourself?

Hatboxes glossary: driving on the sabbath

Lighting a fire is among the 39 labors forbidden on the Sabbath, according to the Talmud (Tractate Shabbat 7:2), and since automobile engines burn fuel (among other reasons), one of the activities prohibited on the Sabbath is driving a car.

Orthodox Jews cleave closely to this prohibition (with exceptions; saving a human life trumps all other considerations), but non-Orthodox Jews rarely do.  For example, Reform Jews may consider driving to synagogue on the Sabbath to participate in the religious life of their community more important that adhering to a rule that may seem to isolate them.

In Hatboxes, Miriam tries to dissuade Nadine from driving home after their sabbath dinner, but Nadine is untroubled about being non-Orthodox.

Nadine and Miriam chat after Shabbos dinner

What religious precepts govern your day-to-day life?

not dying of embarrassment

A consistent theme in writer/director Lisa Cholodenko's films is the comedy and mortification bound up in sex.  I was relieved to hear her talk frankly about her own embarrassment directing sex scenes in the director's commentary to The Kids Are All Right. Jules' sporting with Paul features the wacky directiveness of porn, of which we know Jules and her wife are consumers.

Greta falls asleep right there in her pleather pants during sex with Lucy in High Art.

And in Laurel Canyon, Jane's grip on her son becomes excruciatingly clear when Sam picks up the phone in the middle of making love with his fiancée.

We filmed the most emotionally intense scenes in Hatboxes on the last day of our shoot, and we scheduled them out of chronological sequence.  I was probably more twitchy about it than either of the actors, and it wasn't even like they were going to be getting all naked and getting it on.  The three of us sat down together to talk things through before we started shooting. I attributed the actors' relative serenity to their professionalism and resolved to emulate them.

Nadine and Miriam in Hatboxes

I had the set cleared of all but essential crew at about 10:30 that Wednesday evening, right about the time someone started reading aloud the ingredients in Cheetos (a word to the wise:  don't).

Balancing the sometimes conflicting, sometimes overlapping values of directorial precision, humanity, and manners, we captured essential and good footage, and no one died of embarrassment.

What embarrasses you?

Susana Darwin

Recognition

It's been a big couple of weeks for Hatboxes – it played at the We Like 'Em Short Festival in Baker City, Oregon, it will show at the Palm Springs Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on Friday, and...

Hatboxes won an audience choice award and the award for best director at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Festival a few days ago!

Seeing Hatboxes on a big screen in a darkened theater with stadium seating with other impressive short films was a huge thrill, of course, and it's a delight to know audiences around the country are getting to see Hatboxes.

As the blog post Festive! described, getting into festivals means navigating a bewildering array of variables, and we've seen a few rejections come through in past few days. So...perfect timing on the awards.  What a lift!

Etta Worthington

But here's the thing:  none of this would have happened without the vision and energy of the intrepid Etta Worthington.  Etta saw things she liked in the script when she saw it two years ago, and I apparently inspired enough confidence in her for her to give Hatboxes the green light!  The film would not be what it is without her organizing and negotiating skills, her ability to inspire cast and crew, and all the countless other things that a producer does. So hats off to Etta – thank you!

Now, let's get back to work, sit our fannies down and get to writing, shall we?

Susana Darwin

Hatboxes glossary: "get"

Deuteronomy 24:1 forms the legal precedent for Jewish divorce, and a rabbinic debate in the first century CE established an expansive basis for divorce:  only mutual consent is required.

© Jen Taylor Friedman, http://www.hasoferet.com/ritual/myget.shtml

While Jewish law was unique in the ancient world for enacting the option of divorce and creating the ketuba, a prenuptial contract protecting a woman's economic interests in case of divorce, women are not empowered to initiate the process of a religious divorce.  "The bill of divorcement"—the document effecting divorced, called a get—may only be issued by the husband or his representative, not the wife.  Thus, a married Orthodox Jewish woman is at the mercy of her estranged husband to issue the get; "agunah"—a "chained woman"—is the term for a woman whose husband has her confined in legal limbo.

How have you experienced institutionalized sexism in your life?

Hatboxes glossary: samovar + candles

Jews from the Pale—the area of Eastern Europe stretching from Poland  through Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine and into Russia—absorbed some of the cultural practices of the gentiles around them, including the use of samovars to brew tea.  Often made of brass, samovars might feature elaborate metalwork.

Russian samovar and Sabbath candles

Traditionally, two candles get lit just before sunset on the Sabbath, though more than just two may be lit. Usually women light the candles and recite the prayer, but men are required to do so if no woman is present.  The candles mark the beginning of the Sabbath, a joyous moment.

What practices travelled with your family when they left their ancestral homelands?

Hatboxes glossary: "Shir Ha-ma’alot" (A Song of Ascents)

hand-rendered sheet music for the beginning of Psalm 126

The tune that Nadine sings in the Sabbath dinner scene in Hatboxes is Psalm 126 ("A song of ascents:  When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream.").  It gets sung before the Grace after the Meal (Hebrew: ברכת  המזון, "Birkat ha-Mazon").  The prayers may be found in a small book called a bencher.

bencher

Do you say grace before or after your meals?

Hatboxes glossary: Shabbos

The second chapter of Genesis establishes the basis of the Sabbath (Hebrew:  שַׁבָּת, "Shabbat;" Yiddish:   שאבּעס,"Shabbos"):  after creating everything in six days, the Almighty not only rested on the seventh day but blessed it and established it as a day of rest for the whole world.

According to Jewish law, all creative, productive, or transformative action is to cease from sunset on Friday through sunset on Saturday. The Talmud defines 39 types of activities that people must not do while observing the Sabbath, including lighting fires, sewing, writing, building or demolishing anything, and driving a car has come to be prohibited.

Families gather for a special meal accompanied by singing and prayer.  Just before Friday's sunset, sabbath candles get lit, and a time different from the rest of the week in its rhythms and activity lasts for just over a full day.

Miriam, Nadine, Hannah, Sarah, and Ezer at Shabbos dinner in Hatboxes

What do you do on your day of rest?

Meet the Hatboxes Cast: Tom Hickey

Tom Hickey plays Aaron in Hatboxes. A lawyer who grew up in an orthodox Jewish community, it had been hoped that Aaron might someday be a rabbi, but suddenly he leaves his strict faith and his wife and children.

Tom Hickey is a long-time Chicagoan.  He has most recently appeared on camera in the pilot episode of “Underemployed” and online ads for Uni-Ball and Hornito’s restaurants.

He has also been a member of Strawdog Theatre Company since 2000 where he has appeared most recently in Conquest of the South Pole as well as The Master and Margarita, Uncle Vanya, St. Crispin’s Day, Cherry Orchard, Aristocrats, Marathon ‘33, and Julius Caesar.  

He has also appeared in The North Plan (Steppenwolf First Look), The Pillowman (RedTwist), Thieves Like Us  and Valentine Victorious (The House), The Mark of Zorro (Lifeline), Scenes from the Big Picture (Seanachai), The Great God Pan (Wildclaw), Book of Days (Steep) as well as three seasons performing in Michigan with Lakeside Shakespeare.

Although in Hatboxes, he left his family, in real life, Tom has recently embraced family with the birth of a son, his first child.

Hatboxes glossary: Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew: ראש השנה‎, "head of the year") commemorates the creation of Adam and Eve as recounted in the Book of Genesis.  It is the first day of the seventh month on the Jewish calendar, Tishri, and it falls in September or October on the Gregorian calendar. Rosh Hashanah was established as a holiday in Leviticus 23:24–25.

The Talmud identifies three other New Year's Days on the Jewish calendar—the ecclesiastical new year on 1 Nisan in the northern spring; the cattle tithing new year on 1 Elul, one month before Rosh Hashanah; and the northern wintertime New Year of the Trees on 1 Shevat (according to Rabbi Shammai; Rabbi Hillel called that one on 15 Shevat).

Observance of Rosh Hashanah features sharing wishes of a sweet new year to family and friends, often symbolized by apples dipped in honey.

© 2012 Kent Darwin. All rights reserved.

How many different new years have impact on your work and home life?