Black Maria Film Festival - Beneath a Glass Floor Lobby
A Super 8 essay film on what two mixed-use development sites in Miami reveal about the city’s conflicted relationship to its history.
Interview with Director, Producer, Writer, Editor Lisa Danker
Watch Beneath a Glass Floor Lobby here:
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
Thank you! When living in Miami, I was saddened by lack of appreciation for and education of ancient history in South Florida, when it will always be outdone by the capital of real estate developers (both locally and globally). I lived in Miami for most of my life, and when I began thinking about making this film, it occurred to me that growing up there, most people agreed that the city had very little history. It was generally considered a young city with no character.
When the nearly incredible discoveries of Tequesta artifacts circa 2000, and later (the subject of this film), in 2012, indicated possibly the earliest organized settlement on the Eastern coast of North America (as early as 500 B.C.), the city of Miami ultimately arranged a mediation between the owner of the land (a local commercial development group) and the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board to avoid contentious litigation. The discovery of the Tequesta artifacts could have resulted in a National Historic Landmark, but the HEP Board agreed to display the artifacts around and beneath a glass floor of a mixed-use complex. Even though this story made international headlines, the voices of those who testified at the public hearing and the political complexities of the case weren’t captured by the media.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
You should watch this film to learn that the Tequestas built organized settlements in Miami long before Europeans arrived. You should watch it to reflect on how the Tequestas built their villages on the water more than two centuries ago in a city that is now threatened by coastal flooding. The film also ties this story to another local deal in which Genting, a Malaysian company, bought a valuable piece of property at a low rate to build another mixed-use development. In a broader sense, these stories describe recent trends in city development, occurring parallel and related to increasing gentrification. These stories about Miami are meant to raise questions about other similar patterns globally.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
I lived in Miami for the majority of my life, and I hope that most viewers would be able to infer this from the film’s voice (and voiceover). The edited sequence and soundtrack allude to universal themes of loss and the burying of history in current global economic development.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
This film splintered off of another film that I’m currently working on. The Super 8 footage of the half-way demolished Miami Herald building had been shot a year prior to the more recent footage of the Met Square site. While working on the other film, I realized that I already knew a great deal about recent planning and development in Miami and that it was part of a significant set of issues that warranted its own project.
“Beneath a Glass Floor Lobby” is an essay film, and I write the text of the voiceover simultaneously in editing the image sequence. Rather than reiterate verbally what is shown, I try to express related ideas that nevertheless diverge at certain points. For example, one of the stills—the ‘after-shot’ of the former Miami Herald site––is taken from a section about four minutes into the film, in which each shot reveals some branded sign or advertisement of Resorts World Miami. A shot of a Resorts World billboard adjacent to the Miami Herald property cuts to a ship advertising the brand in a completely different part of the city. Without explicitly referring to this in the voiceover, the sequence strives to express the insidiousness of branding the landscapes of a city and region.
The voiceover is literal, direct, straightforward, while the sequence of images, as well as the sound-image relationship, are based in Eisenstein’s principles of montage. The image sequence is more symbolic than the meanings of the soundtrack.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
I’ve received mostly positive feedback. The film has been selected for competitive international festivals with acceptance rates of less than 10%. The film was invited to the Minneapolis International Film Festival as well as chosen for the Black Maria traveling program with a Director’s Choice award. Viewers have asked me questions about the types of Tequesta artifacts found at the site—tools, architectural remains, and even hairpins—and have also expressed that the film invokes a dark and ominous tone, which I find interesting because Miami and the relatively bright shots of it typically elicit different associations.
On the other hand, when I showed the film at a professional conference, I was surprised that the reviewer and audience members expected interviews with experts and officials and wanted more hand-holding in terms of background information, as if the words of people speaking at a public hearing didn’t hold enough authority. It seemed that these viewers hadn’t listened carefully to the soundtrack and were not viewing the work on its own terms, instead expecting it to hew to the conventions of a more expository documentary.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
The feedback that most surprised me was that its tone is ominous and dark. I see it but thought this was more implicit than it is.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visibleon www.wearemovingstories.com?
I hope that those reading this would contact me about the film, would like to show it to audiences or students, program it in screenings, or set up discussions about it. I would also like to hear from filmmakers who are working on similar topics or in the essay film mode. I would like as many people as possible to see the film so that they can learn about what happened to Tequesta history and connect dots between this story and similar ones occurring globally as a result of economic and real estate development in cities where certain geographical sites are rising quickly in monetary value.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
Distributors, sales agents, journalists, and programmers could help amplify the film’s message.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
The film has had impact at independent and experimental film festivals internationally, and I would like it to be shown even more widely around the world.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Would it have been better for the artifacts and the discoveries of the Tequestas at the Met Square site to be preserved at the expense of the mixed-use development planned by the commercial real estate developer? In what ways would this be a better outcome, and from whose perspective?
Would you like to add anything else?
Yes! The film was shot on Super 8 reversal and was edited digitally. In order to make a print of the film for exhibition, I had to splice each of the shots from the original rolls and figure out how to sync up the soundtrack from a 24fps editing time-base to projection at 18 frames per second. This meant that I had to count each shot frame by frame when cutting the reversal and splicing it into the final edit for printing. My mode of filmmaking differs from more commercially oriented films in that I take on pretty much every creative role from beginning to end to complete the project, and this sometimes involves this type of time consuming post production work on film.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
Lisa Danker is working on another experimental documentary film that adapts two stories of foreclosure in Florida separated by almost a century. It was recently awarded a Puffin Foundation grant. The film will express the subjectivity of trauma and partial recovery in order to raise consciousness about how social inequality is perpetuated by cycles of economic booms and busts.
Interview: January 2018
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We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series and music video. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
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Beneath a Glass Floor Lobby
A Super 8 essay film on what two mixed-use development sites in Miami reveal about the city’s conflicted relationship to its history.
Length: 5:05
Director, Producer, Writer, Editor: Lisa Danker
About the writer, director and producer:
Lisa Danker makes experimental and documentary films using Super 8mm, 16mm, and digital formats. Her work has screened internationally in film festivals and programs, such as in Toronto; New York City; San Francisco; Miami; and Vieques, Puerto Rico. She holds an MFA in Film from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and is currently an Assistant Professor in Film at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Looking for distributors, film festival directors, journalists
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month?
Please contact me to view the screener or visit my Vimeo page.