THE SHALLOW END

Filmmaker’s Note

The Shallow End – Director’s Statement “…the past is here, you know?… We can reinvent the past.” -Agnes Varda I have been wanting to make this film since I directed it as a one-act play in 2010. As a GenX woman who was an adolescent in the mid-80’s and at the mercy of the ringleader of the popular clique, it very much struck a nerve. I was so tortured by the desire to belong that I used to go to bed at night praying to wake up shallow. It took me years, more than I care to admit, to cultivate the courage to step away from the shallow end and be fully liberated from the opinions of those that still dwell in it. I set out to make this film to reclaim the narrative of those very painful years of my life and reframe it from the point of view of the woman that I have become. What I didn’t anticipate is how much more was in store for me. During prep for last summer’s shoot, I revisited many of the films of my youth, as I also wanted to pay homage to those films that had meant so much to me during those tumultuous years of being in and out of social exile. In many cases, I was horrified to discover just what I had been nostalgic for. So many films that I thought had provided me comfort and refuge and a much-needed laugh relied heavily on the exploitation, marginalization, and sometimes the sexual assault of women to be at the center of their joke. And it wasn’t just at the hand of the male characters. The female characters were just as willing to take down another woman, either in the interest of winning the affections of a man, OR to be anointed by the most popular girl who usually functioned as a foot soldier of the Patriarchy. It became even more important to make a film I only wish my 13-year old self had seen while growing up in the 80s. While we were shooting, the Brett Kavanaugh allegations broke. Suddenly this little film about a group of girls jockeying for power around a community swimming pool felt much bigger than my own personal reckoning as I wondered WHAT IF my peers and I had seen more films like The Shallow End during our own coming-of-age? What would it have been like to have been messaged so much sooner to listen and give voice to our intuitions and amplify each other’s voices by LIFTING EACH OTHER UP rather than tearing each other down? While I am grateful many women are finally waking up, I can’t help but wonder what our world would be like today had we gotten the memo a hell of a lot sooner. So, this film is no longer just for me. Nor is it solely for the women of my generation. It’s also for the generation of women that we are now raising, with the assurance that we will never, ever, EVER go back. Cynthia Silver July, 2019 New York City