Guest Post by Deb Shoval
“AWOL” was a long time coming, the kind of fabled first feature film journey that humbles, challenges, and educates — the kind of experience one hopes to encounter at least once in their career.
We premiered the short film version at Sundance in 2011, began shooting the feature in 2012, finished shooting in 2015, and here we are distributing the movie in 2017.
“AWOL” centers on Joey (Lola Kirke), a young woman who joins the Army as a way out of Pennsylvania coal country just as she falls in love with magnetic housewife Rayna (Breeda Wool).
The film was shot mainly in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where I was raised, and where the long-gone coal industry still leaves its scars. If the name rings a bell, it may be because Newsweek, CNBC, Time, and USA Today have all written pieces with titles like Why Did Trump Win? Just Visit Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
“AWOL” has been called “a splendid meditation on the boundless possibilities of first love constricted by the trials of poverty.” It has been called “a story of star-crossed female lovers whose obstacles have less to do with societal norms than with the economic realities of Pennsylvania coal country.” My point is, “AWOL” is a love story on the surface, but don’t be fooled. The film is meant to exist on multiple levels. Layered underneath a magnificent love story, I wanted to open a conversation about class. I wanted to talk about the parts of this country that have been left behind, and the choices that young people make as a result.
Now of course the question that I’m being asked as a first-time feature director is, “What next?” It is a question loaded with other questions — “Will you make another lesbian love story? Will you work with Lola Kirke again? Breeda Wool? Will you shoot again entirely on location versus in a studio? Will you adapt a novel? What will the budget be?”
“What’s next” contains all those questions, but more importantly, and more privately, it is also a question about the themes and ideas that I want to wrestle with for my upcoming projects. And the response to “what’s next” is different than it would have been six months or a year ago, because at this present moment, in this present political climate, I feel differently than I did before. Things have changed — at least for me, as a woman, as a married gay woman, and as a married gay woman raising a daughter.
On November 8, 2016 — the night of the U.S. presidential election — I found myself, at least momentarily, readjusting my vision for the progress I believed this country could achieve in my lifetime. That felt gross. And in my despair, I began to think about what the great theater director and actress Judith Malina had to say about the role of the artist.
The role of the artist … follows the need of the changing times:
In times of social stasis: to activate
In time of germination: to invent fertile new form
In time of revolution: to extend the possibilities of peace and liberty
In time of violence: to make peace
In time of despair: to give hope
In time of silence: to sing out
Now, in a time of so much despair — both my own and a collective, worldwide despair — it seems Malina has defined our work clearly: to give hope. It is challenging, but also exciting, to ask ourselves how. And to ask ourselves, “What’s next?”
“AWOL” opens in Brooklyn today, May 19. The film hits VOD and iTunes on May 23.
Deb Shoval has received grants and fellowships from The Jerome Foundation, Frameline, IFP, Film Independent, US Works in Progress Paris, Tribeca Film Institute/IWC, Columbia University Faculty Selects, and Women In Film/Tiffany’s. She has an MFA in Film from Columbia University, where she was a Women in Film Fellow. Shoval previously worked as a playwright and theater director.
