MAD / WOMAN
Film Screening & Ticket Information
When & Where to See this Film!
In Person Date, Time & Location:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND • 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
QUEENS THEATRE • 14 United Nations Avenue South • Flushing Meadows Corona Park • Queens, NY 11368
SCREENING BLOCK:
Remarkable Women: Six films about women just being who they are.
Films:
Join us as we gather around four cultural leaders who lead us through the pandemic: Taryn Sacramone, Sade Lythcott, Lucy Sexton and Helen Kodadek.
Synopsis
A woman beaten unconscious by her husband searches her mindscape for a way out.
Inspired by the songs of genre-fluid indie rocker Storm Large and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic feminist short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” this musical phantasmagoria continues in the surrealist tradition of Queer Cinema pioneers Jean Cocteau and Derek Jarman.
Filmed by an all-female crew.
Credits
Marc Acito, Director, Writer
Storm Large, Writer
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Writer
Halle Mandel Sadel, Producer
Rick Sadle, Producer
Storm Large, Key Cast, “She”
Dan Kyle, Key Cast, “Him”
Gwendi Blanton, Key Cast, “Her”
Barbara Lima, Supporting Cast
Rick Sadle, Supporting Cast
Stacy Blanton, Supporting Cast
Lauren Mueller, Director of Photography
Barbara Lima, Choreographer
Ivana Horvat, Assistant Director
Katelan Braymer, Gaffer
Jordan Battiste, Editor
Varshini Naveen Kumar, Compositor
Marika Litz, Colorist
Peter Gassett, Associate Producer
Angela Lares Benitez, Production Assistant
Makayla Caldwell, Production Assistant
Elizabeth Barnett, Color Admin
Jason P. Baruch, Esq., Legal Services
Kohel Haver, Esq., Legal Services
James Beaton, Music Supervisor
Brigid Blackburn, Design Consultant
Stacy Blanton, Producer of Gwendi Blanton
Jeff Blanton, Producer of Gwendi Blanton
Amy Engelhardt, Synchronicity
Flatworld Solutions, Rotoscoping
Carol Hickman, Baker
Metroeast Community Media, Equipment Supplier
Joan Peters, Prop Development
Mark Peters, Prop Development
Julian Roca-Chow, Consulting Producer
Jackie Weismann, Consulting Producer
Linda Smith, Sewing Services
Dave Yakimi, Construction Coordinator
Digital One, Audio Post-Production
Jason Sotomayor, Audio Post Producer
Tristan Schmunk, Audio Mixer
Director Statement
Storm Large mostly writes about two subjects: female empowerment and mental illness. Applying her songs to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist classic “The Yellow Wallpaper” felt as if they were written for the material. Storm and I bonded in 2007 over the shared experiences of being just commercial enough for everyone to wonder why we weren’t more successful and just alternative enough to sabotage ourselves. Perhaps not coincidentally, we both survived mentally ill mothers. At least twice mine woke up in a pool of her own blood after being beaten senseless by a raging boyfriend.
Because I wanted to create a subjective experience as liberated from the male gaze as possible, hiring an all-female crew proved essential. Their and Storm’s input influenced innumerable decisions I never would have had the insight nor courage to make. I’ll be forever grateful to them as well as the diverse group of post-production artists who essentially served as my film school for my filmmaking debut.
Director Biography
Homeless teens. Oppressed queers. Political prisoners. Abused women. These are the people I return to again and again in my work. I tell these stories as musicals because musicals give voice to our interior lives.
I’ve made theater on Broadway (ALLEGIANCE); Off-Bway (adapting Lerner & Loewe’s PAINT YOUR WAGON for City Center Encores! and THE DAY BEFORE SPRING at the York); regionally (CHASING RAINBOWS at Goodspeed Musicals & Papermill Playhouse; A ROOM WITH A VIEW at the Old Globe & 5th Ave. Thtr.) and internationally (THE SECRET for Broadway Asia; SOUND OF THE SILK ROAD for Nederlander Worldwide).
My favorite was directing BASTARD JONES, a kooky rock adaptation of Henry Fielding’s TOM JONES Off-Off Bway at the cell. I want to bring more off-off-beat musicals to life and I believe the best chance esoteric material has of reaching its audience is online. I made MAD / WOMAN in part to show how–as in the highly theatrical films of Queer Cinema pioneer Derek Jarman–limited production values are needed to capture psychological subjectivity, a surrealist mindscape where musicals live. So I am looking for a diverse, inclusive group of New York-based artists to collaborate on low-budget art-house film musicals.
