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

Hatboxes gets a frum audience

A is an Orthodox Jewish lesbian who lives in a sprawling house in Chicago with many children and animals and occasional others. She has the longest dining room table I’ve ever seen in a real person’s house.  A and I met several years ago through a mutual friend.  I follow her blog posts with interest.

Hatboxes features a frum woman (“frum,” Yiddish: פֿרום, related to the German fromm, meaning "pious" or "devout") coming to grips with major changes in her life, including – maybe – her sexuality.   It's a film I'd like Orthodox women to see, whether they are lesbian or bi or questioning or just interested in seeing Orthodox women on film.  But really, if it can make one lesbian feel a little less alone, then maybe it's done its job.  However, the likelihood of Orthodox lesbians availing themselves of a public screening of Hatboxes seems dim in the extreme.  Fear of exposure is a powerful deterrent.

Miriam (Robyn Okrant) in her millinery, Hatboxes

A had invited me to come to her house so we could talk about Hatboxes for her blog.  We talked for about 20 minutes, and then I told her that I'd brought a screener copy of Hatboxes to watch if she wanted to.  Good Chassidish woman that A is, she doesn't have a TV, so she ran it on her laptop.  She seemed to like it very much and said she appreciated its restraint and the depth of its respect for frumkeit and the research that went into the making of the film. She spotted only one small mistake, but shrugged it off as minor (and no, we’re not saying what it is!). Otherwise..."It was great!"

I underestimated how anxious I was about A seeing it, both as another artist and as an Orthodox Jew.  I worried that we’d gotten things wrong—big things, like its tone or ethos other bedrock elements.  I was relieved that A responded positively with emotions ranging from delight to curiosity to wanting to know what happens next.

We'll keep you posted on when the interview runs. 

Susana Darwin

Personal Best: going from "period piece" to dated

Robert Towne's movie Personal Best came out in 1982.  Set between 1976 and 1979, it follows the efforts of two pentathletes as they pursue berths in the 1980 Olympics.  We know what happened there...the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Games:  "All dressed up and no place to go."

The two athletes are lovers...until they are not.

from Personal Best (all the best first dates include arm wrestling)

At the time of the film's release, Coach Terry Tingloff's relationships with the women under his guidance just seemed complicated...sort of unusual, but pretty much shrug-worthy.  And his "I could've been a man's coach!" rant was just funny and true. Or at least truthy.

But then time passes and works its alchemy.  Now, Coach Tingloff taking a bowl of strawberry ice cream out of his charge's hands so he can lay down in her arms isn't compassionate, it's creepy.  Tingloff sneering, "Do you actually think that Chuck Knoll has to worry that Franco Harris is gonna cry 'cause Terry Bradshaw won't talk to him?" sounds whiny and bigoted 31 years later.

This can't be all in the ear that hears.  Taste changes, but these changes seem like something larger and more broadly cultural.

Moreover, the break-up of the women's romance has grown more inexplicable over time as their relationship moved from "necessarily" shadowy and ephemeral to something conceivably permanent.  The closetedness and evasions ring true from the era—trust me—but as a plot element, the relationship flimsiness their break-up depends on is sliding towards nonsense.

The Third-Way message that you can compete and try your best and yet be smart and strategic enough to be generous even as your killer instinct carries you to medal contention continues to resonate, but the sexism and homophobia and blithe predation seem to be going the way of the striped tube sock. A welcome extinction the day it actually happens.

Susana Darwin

Hatboxes goes international!

Hot on the heels of the hometown screening at Reeling 31 in Chicago, Hatboxes has been accepted into the 24th Melbourne Queer Film Festival!

 

...as in Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia, not Arkansas or Florida or any of the other Melbournes in the world. 

Melbourne of exceptional Italian cafés and the Queen Victoria Market and arresting graffiti...

harborside tunnel graffiti

© 2007

...and a royal botanic garden that has a catalpa tree that blossoms in November. That Melbourne.

The festival will take place 13 – 24 March 2014, so if you find yourself Down Under in March, the movies await you!

Reeling 31 screening

What a blast it was to see Hatboxes on the big screen at Chicago's beautiful Logan Theatre as part of Reeling 31:  The Chicago LGBT International Film Festival.

Hatboxes Associate Producer Amy Walsh and Writer/Director Susana Darwin

A gorgeous, auspicious snowstorm earlier in the day, black car service to—and from, if we're just just counting color—Logan Square, and a hopping party afterwards at El Cid 2 made it one fine day.

We look forward to squiring Hatboxes to more festivals...keep you posted!

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