// Excerpt from Phantomythography:
Introductory Paragraph (for context):
"Phantomythography: A Young Ghost Comes of Age", is a multi-projection video installation piece, exploring the fiction of memory and identity through the lens of a queer Southern space. A haunted forrest is constructed through fragmented screens, upon which the distorted, disjointed narrative of two girls caught in a never ending game of chase unfolds. The title draws a great deal of influence from Audre Lorde’s genre called “biomythography,” which is described as a mix of “myth, history and biography in epic narrative form.” Like Lorde, “Phantomythography” blends together several of my own influences, Southern ghost stories, autobiographical fiction, and the process of recording history. The motivation for this piece is to challenge to the mainstream media’s assimilation of queer youth narratives into a singular formulaic “coming out” saga. The goal is to investigate and deconstruct the various elements of the “coming of age” narrative, through a queer lens, not only in terms of topic but also in terms of aesthetics. As someone focused more on the technical craft side of storytelling, the notion of telling my own story was daunting. Therefore, rather than approaching this project as telling my story, it was about taking my story back. Ultimately, Phantomythography is concerned with this question of agency: who can tell thehow of one’s experience?
Heart of my essay (in my opinion):
So I continue to return to this question of who can tell the how of one’s experience? The personal is political echoes throughout the history of feminist and queer theory. But the personal is also painful and comes at a cost to those who share. Therefore, I knew in approaching the telling of this story, creating a safe space was necessary. As a medium, film has a long, convoluted history of sexism, racism, homophobia, and number of other prejudices. And while Hollywood has made recent moves to be more “inclusive” on screen of certain marginalized groups, there has been little to no change in the behind-the-scene labor practices. According to 2014 Report of the “The Celluloid Ceiling,” a comprehensive statistical revue of women in behind-the-scene positions for the top 250 films, only 5% of cinematographers were women, one of the lowest ranking departments in terms of female representation. Thus, every role on this project from pre-to-post production was filled by women. The reason was two fold, one was obviously to create opportunities for my fellow female media makers, but also necessary for creating a safe environment for the actors to explore these complex and traumatic events in the story.
GAR: Though we were on a high school campus, sometimes it felt like we were the only people in the world in the woods. There was a privacy to it all. I do think that’s part of the story too – these monumental conversations, feelings, discoveries, happening in very private spaces. I know that helped me. Exploring what it’s like to feel like that with someone – like the only two people in the world – but inversely, isolation when you’re apart or emotionally distanced.
The creation of a safe space was essential to the production process. Everyone’s ghosts needed to a space to play, and we as the cast and crew needed the time to explore. As we looped around the woods, setting up the scene, letting the girls and the camera run, the story slowly started to shape. Rhythms and patterns in the images were found. A certain aesthetic began to emerge, the essence of a hidden camera entering some of the shots. I don’t wish to delve too deeply into my subconscious, but a lot of the camerawork does seem more evocative of the kind of handheld work that was used to document me against my will as a teenager. In some ways, I think it was cathartic to use that style to recapture my own story on my own terms.
As a part of my critical practice as a cinematographer, my ethics are linked to my aesthetics. As a personal motto, the story always dictates the style and the style never suffocates the story. For this reason, a great deal of my work looks markedly different from piece to piece. However, Phantomythography was the first time I ever became fully aware that I shoot from scene to scene, allowing the emotional beats and physical blocking to move the camera. With Phantomythography, the beats are irregular and off kilter, and so the aesthetics fluctuate from smooth, pans of trees to frantic handheld footage of running feet. As a result, the style develops a type queer aesthetics that interrupts and disrupts any sense of cohesion with simultaneously creating a fluidity from sequence to sequence. And yet there are holes throughout the narrative, and it is this absence in the story, both fictional and factual, which produces the the affect of a ghost.