Curve writer’s first film is garnering international attention.
When her college-age daughter comes out of the closet during the Thanksgiving break, August remembers the woman she loved and had to let go when she was younger. Internally tormented with the fear of what society may think in 1978, August makes the ultimate decision that will change her life forever.
August in the City is set to a theme of love and loss. August is mother of two young girls, Ana and Marie, who struggles with depression and her alcoholism. She had always looked up to her parents and the love they shared for one another. She wanted that love and stability for herself, and thought she had it with her husband, Salvatore – an old-school Italian family man set on traditional values. When Ana returns home for the Thanksgiving break from college she comes out of the closet by bringing her new love, Nicole, with her. Upon seeing that Nick is a woman, August flashes back to the night where she let her happiness slip from her life.
Clementine is a free-spirited bohemian graduate student living in Brooklyn with whom August has fallen in love. When a small house party ignites the passion between these two women, August must tell Clementine a truth that could have detrimental consequences to their already hidden love affair.
Brooklyn-based screenwriter/producer, Lisa Tedesco, who has written on film and interviewed many female filmmakers for Curve over the past several years, has now come into her own as the writer of an original script that was directed by Los Angeles-based Christie Conochalla (Once Upon a Zipper, Forever Not Maybe). The result is the latest visionary project in lesbian filmmaking, August in the City. Shot in Brooklyn and Oceanside, NY last November, the team has productively concluded its post-production efforts to be able to begin its run on the film festival circuit.
The films stars All About E lead, Mandahla Rose as Clementine – a young, vibrant and independent graduate student living in Brooklyn whom August is utterly drawn to and in love with.
This is the second time Conochalla and Rose have worked on set together. Conochalla is currently directing her series Forever Not Maybe in which Rose plays a Los Angeles based lighting director who falls in love with a touring musician. “Working with Mandahla again was great,” says Conochalla. “When she’s on set the level of professionalism is the highest possible. There is a level of creativity and trust which happens when we know how the other works.”
As for the inspiration for the story, Tedesco attributes her vision to a story her mother wrote about her when she was off at film school. “My mom had called me one night and said that she has written a little something about me,” said Tedesco. “It was about my very first love that I had in college – her name was Nick – and she was expecting to see a young man when I brought her home.”
The screenplay took that element from her mother’s original short story and combined it with her own dramatic touches to create an exciting and dramatic work of visionary art.
August in the City has already screened at the ClexaCon Film Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada with another acceptance into the New Haven International Film Festival being announced recently and acceptance into the Festival de Cannes Short Film Corner taking place in Cannes, France in late May.
Watch the teaser trailer here.
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