Lynn Shelton died last weekend. 

I’ve known her name for years and now she’s gone, a mere two decades older than I am now. I didn’t say much about how a film she made meant a lot to me. I didn’t tell her either and now she’s gone.

I can’t tell you much about Your Sister’s Sister except all these vagueries. 

I saw it in the theater when it was originally released in 2012, probably alone, probably at one of my haunts that screens all that indie shit I love. Like many of my solo, independent film-going experiences, I’ve not happened to find anyone else IRL who’s seen it. 

I remember thinking it was one of the more interesting, messy, interconnected stories I’ve ever seen (to this day). I loved the performances, I loved that it was filmed in the San Juan Islands, a beautiful, far-away part of this country. I loved how human and inhabited it was, that it wondered about the complicated reasons two people alone in a cabin might get drunk and sleep with each other when they probably shouldn’t, or how wistful, long-distance love might really take up a lot of space and for long amounts of time, sometimes. It had an emotional intelligence that, at that time, I had only seen in foreign films, and there was a naturalness to everything that felt very at home to me, here in the Pacific Northwest. I recall weird stuff going down in the film’s third act, but it has still stuck with me as one of the more true explorations of how life with other complex humans has actually turned out to be. 

I’m going to re-watch it and see how it feels, eight years later. I’m currently writing from a pandemic season so there’ve been no trips to the cinema. The last time I went to a movie theater was seventy-seven days ago, a little bit less than the time we’ve been sheltering in place to keep our neighbors safe (the film was Portrait of a Lady on Fire, second viewing [yes, at one of my haunts that screens all that indie shit I love]). 

And so. I can get to know Lynn Shelton’s body of work. I’ll go and find her other films I haven’t seen yet; I’ll revisit the episodes of great television that she directed. 

I’ll keep seeking films made by women and try to do more for them, for us.

I step into a vast hall, staggered with imposing, wall-sized projection screens. Each frame is filled to the brim with movement, light, and colour. Moments from Merce Cunningham’s vibrant career of modern dance choreography.

I move through the room, taking up space of my own, fully existing and breathing in my small body alongside the larger-than-life dancers. Chaotic sound fills the room as each film’s soundtrack clashes with that of its neighbor. I can’t help but want to move as they did, to allow my silhouette to make wholly new shapes. 

Angled forms, substantive breath, always moving.

Every time I learn a new yoga pose, I marvel that there are still shapes I’ve never made before. Are there countless ways to move our bodies? Infinite opportunities for form?

One year later, a different gallery, on a different part of the planet.

Cunningham is filmed in the last year of his life on earth.

He sits perfectly still in a chair in his light-filled New York studio, carefully taking a pose by placing his beautiful old hand against his face. His colleague stands next to him, counting down the time on his slim fingers so Cunningham knows when the rotation is concluded. The counting-hand reaches zero, there is a long pause, and he shifts his body to create a new, subtle figure.

He is quiet and there is a settling of his muscles and bones that have done so much for us. 

He gazes out into the bright room, reflective, as though he is finally taking rest.

Director: Anna Rose Holmer

Country: USA

Movement, color, sudden violence. 

Are your ears pierced? Did you get them done at the mall when you were twelve? Did you pick out a few pairs of earrings at Claire’s? Did you go back for more?

When I think about scenes of adolescent girls getting their ears pierced, I picture a few key elements: running the needle through a flame to sanitize it, a numbing ice cube pressed up against the lobe. It is often portrayed as a coming-of-age moment. In Moonrise Kingdom, it is a symbolic loss of virginity with a male partner, in The Parent Trap, it is a physical leveling of two twins who must be identical via the painful ritual. Since girls often get their ears pierced at a relatively young age, it is a moment of aesthetic pain and blood as they leverage themselves into teenage-hood, and everything that comes beyond it.

Toni does not take well to womanhood. She rejects it; her ears get infected and she has to remove her beautiful new earrings. They flash against her skin for a few scenes before they disappear, replaced by thick scabs.

The Fits is wonderful. An exploration of growing-up girls, it spends its brief running time in a Cincinnati community. Toni is the lone wolf, and Holmer does a masterful job of framing her movements and vantage point. She wants to join the dance troupe but her loneliness & silence surrounds her like a scaffolding. One by one, the older girls get struck by a mysterious illness: a seizure, a fainting. 

Womanhood is a magic, Holmer reminds us. The feminine is connected to spirits, to movement, to mystery, to the planets; The Fits encompasses all of this with very little dialogue needed. The film plays out like a song. The choreography of growing up can only be learned by each performing the movements for herself.