We are moving stories

“n 2015, the retiring Melbourne Queer Film Festival director expressed the following: Special mention here to lesbian films. In my 16 years in the job the themes have changed little; lesbians still die often, break up more and cry pretty much all the time”. It was this sentiment that inspired The Escape Hatch.”

“I hope that it gains exposure as a queer story that isn’t about the queerness––it’s a film about grieving love. I want it to gain exposure, period. We’re all really proud of the film and I want everyone to have their work seen and hopefully it gives us all more opportunities to create.”

“ I do believe that there is at least a little kernel of something in Devour that everyone can relate to. Whether you worked (and dated) in the service industry, worked as an actor, confronted an ex for closure, or hung out with someone from your past that made you both revert back to your old selves, there are themes in Devour that everyone can relate at least partially too. And if you don’t relate to ANY OF THAT, but are a lover of grilled cheese and tomato soup, you can get something out of it too.”

“At the root of it, it’s really about the emotional journey you must take after experiencing the loss of a part of your life that for so long you defined yourself by. It’s about finding yourself again, and picking up the pieces, and once you can do that, you feel a sense of freedom. In my personal work, I am always exploring the emotional effects of love on the individual: being loved, wanting love, not having love. What that does to a person, and how it changes them.”

“I made this film because, as a cinematographer, you get few opportunities in your career to make a film that is entirely from your perspective, unless you take on producing and directing your own concept. Through the Visual Essay Program at the American Film Institute, I recognized this as a unique opportunity to take a minute (or a year in this case) to look at myself and ask, “if you could tell any story right now, what would it be?” Having time in the early days of the pandemic, I did a lot of self-reflecting and wanted to focus on identity, specifically my identity as a queer person, and how fashion has become so integral to my identity and self-expression.”

“I hope people will see it for its tenderness and honesty. There are sweeping generalizations about what it means to be “butch.” That we’re supposed to be tough, that we don’t end up in relationships with each other. That we aren’t sensitive. I hope we are able to challenge that. Maybe it will aid others in finding the courage to live their truth, to come out. LGBTQ+ films did that for me and I want to pass that along.”

“I wanted to tell a story about older lesbians that had them still active and making decisions rather than just reminiscing about the past.”

“There are far too many lesbians in cinema history without electricity. Queer struggle and trauma is more often than not fetishized in movies and/or put in some far off place in time. I wanted to write a movie that rebelled against that with goofy stoner characters taking a road trip to a beach town. It’s a lot more simple than a victorian era star-crossed lovers rehash.”

“Grief is a universal subject and we all have had losses in some ways. Yet it remains to be a very taboo topic that we never talk about. I believe by confronting it and sharing these experiences will maybe help us feel a little less alone in the process and grieving is probably the loneliest experience I’ve ever personally experienced. I would say if you’d like to feel less alone then watch this film! Also if you’re a fan of films shot on 35mm celluloid!”

“This is my first feature film. And it coincided with the age when many people have a midlife crisis and a reassessment of values. In the film, I intended to reflect my thoughts about emigration from Kazakhstan and the reasons for this process. This is a mass process that the Kazakh authorities prefer not to notice. Any sane person in Kazakhstan, including myself, sometimes thinks about emigration. And it was very important for me to finally make a film in Kazakhstan (patriarchal and homophobic) with a female heroine who is also a lesbian.”

“Many of the plots and characterization comes from a very close friend of mine (in China). What she faces is common in lesbians but very unknown to the world outside of the LGBT community. Being hidden away is the hardest part as a lesbian.”

“This film tackles misunderstandings in multicultural relationships, which in my own experience, usually end up in amusing anecdotes. However, these misinterpretations are not only limited to multicultural experience - I believe anyone in any kind of relationship (romantic, friendship, family) will be able to relate to this story.”

“The three of us were excited by the prospect of exploring an often unexplored part of Cuban life. As you’re probably aware, lesbians have such a bad time in the media and have such high rates of death in TV shows (who knows why) so we wanted to redress that imbalance by looking at it from a perspective of empowerment and engagement with masculinity in Cuba.”

“The feedback so far has been incredibly heartening. People are laughing hysterically in one moment, and then moved to tears in the next. They’ve referred to it as a love story, a master class, and a Fornes play. They’re surprised at how joyful the journey is. How is it possible that they forget Irene has dementia? How can she be so brilliant? Because she is. It’s as simple as that.”

“When I made this film, I was living in San Francisco and very sensitive to transcultural issues. I am originally from Southern Brazil, a lot of my friends were from different places all over the world, or even in the other places in the US, and we constantly talked about culture shock, adaptation, individual preferences, and our feelings of “home”, family, identity, gender, and individuality, how migration affected and changed us. Houda Ben, the woman I portrayed in this film, is from Morocco, and she was going through a hard time regarding her coming out as a lesbian, at the same time she was getting settled in the US.”

“rison themes are very frequent in films. We’re used to seeing violence and forced sexual relations in men’s prisons but we don’t know anything about a very different reality: the erotic-affective relationships between women in prison, which are very often satisfactory.

I believe that it is important to learn about the reality of women inmates, who are more discriminated in comparison to men, and to highlight the different strategies and complicities that take place in order to face the harsh reality of prisons.”

“I hope people learn about the amazing women in this film who changed history through their work and I hope it inspires young queer women to go out make films about their lives.”

“We were drawn to this story because it is about courage and social change. And people making a stand for respect of difference. And I do think this group of young people changed our world.”

“hrough this emerging romance between our two strangers, we wanted to emphasize the importance of opening up to others. Sure, when you take a risk and throw yourself into the unknown, you’re vulnerable. But whenever you put yourself in a situation like that, you’re also opening yourself up to fate, chance… and sometimes love.

There’s a specific reason behind why we chose to depict a gay couple in this particular scenario: we believe that greater representation of gay couples in film leads to increased acceptance of gay people in everyday society.”

“Status Unknown brings an important message about how LGBT people have been treated, what they have been through and continue to go through and how they have fought for simple rights and justice. We may have won some legal battles but acceptance is the biggest battle and the more we can highlight that the closer we are to achieving it.”

“My Bolex camera we used was broken at the time (unbeknownst to me), so we had to heavily improvise in post-production and ended up using some footage our main actor, Tatiana Ringsby, caught on their camcorder. I also did a reshoot in LA with the main actor for one scene, so our second editor Jacqui Carriere, worked a lot of magic to incorporate all the new footage.”