The Joy of Life
A blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voice-over to share two San Francisco stories: the history of the Golden Gate Bridge as “suicide landmark,” and the story of a butch dyke in San Francisco searching for love and self-discovery. The Joy of Life is a film about landscapes, both physical and emotional.
Jenni Olson
Director
Also Directed by Jenni Olson
A series of thirty-two trailers put together to illustrate the film industry's attitude to and packaging of African-American screen imagery.
A concise poetic summary of butch identity.
Girl, knife and doll come together in this controversial dramatization of the original early 1990s Tribe 8 queer punk band "Masochist Medley" stage act featuring San Francisco drag king Marya's legendary stage performance as Uncle Rod.
A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.
Images set to a tape recording that slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk made in November 1977 to be played in case he was killed.
Through voiceover and static San Francisco landscapes this experimental narrative short tells the melancholy story of a butch dyke pining over a one night stand with a straight girl.
Dutch doors, warehouse windows, and empty streets provide the background for a short tale about past lust and lost love. This glimpse into the drama of a lesbian relationship is revealed through stark visuals and the measured pace of the voice-over, providing a clever contrast between how we see and what we hear.
Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones. Produced by Strand Releasing and Connor Jessup.
A provocative lesbian spoof of the famous early '90s ad campaign: "What do you do in your 501s?"
A brief reflection on faith, self-loathing and Studs Lonigan.
