Having its world premiere at the Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam, Georden West’s directorial debut “Playland” is an interdisciplinary film about the titular establishment, Boston’s oldest gay bar. “I…
’s directorial debut “Playland” is an interdisciplinary film about the titular establishment, Boston’s oldest gay bar. “I was volunteering at an MIT event, like an archive hackathon, and I learned about People Before Highways, which was a grassroots movement against urban renewal and the construction of a highway through the middle of Boston, and they were successful,” says West of how they first came across the bones for the film.
Commenting on the ensemble-based format of the film, West says they were “interested in something that was polyphonic. Following a single protagonist through an overarching conflict didn’t really apply to this reality. I thought a lot about Emily Dickinson saying, ‘tell all the truth but tell it slant,’ thinking about what’s real or what’s not real in regards to who gets preserved and who doesn’t.”. “I think we had the opportunity to cast a pretty wide net because we weren’t looking for actors.
“What’s really wild is I didn’t really think about it,” said West when asked if they thought of how Lady Bunny would draw attention to their film. “I was just really excited to work with this icon. And, you know, she shared with me that she grew up in the theater performing. So that was the most exciting part for me, getting to work with a seasoned performer and be up to the challenge and really having to adapt and push myself to keep up with Bunny.
Mixing music, dance, archival footage, opera and more, “Playland” is a sensorial experience that greatly benefits from its inventive work of costume and production design. Edwin Mohney, a costume designer who has worked with the likes of Beyoncé and Mary J. Blige, was the first name West attached to the project. “By looking at the work of Derek Jarman, loving Sally Potter and being enamoured with Peter Greenaway, [I know that] costume says so much.
It is clear how much weight West places on faithfully capturing a community that has often been marginalized. Queerness is at the center of the director’s possible next project, too — the filmmaker and “Playland” producer Russell Sheaffer have already optioned the rights to Sassafras Lowrey’s “Lost Boi,” labeled as a “queer punk reimagining of the classic Peter Pan story.
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