Ashes of Roses 

11.5 minutes | 2023 I 16mm + digital

ASHES OF ROSES braids together elements of The Thorn Birds - about a lifelong romance between a girl and her family’s priest – with the trashy coming-of-age movie St. Elmo’s Fire and original 16mm footage of wildflowers, my daughters, old yearbooks, scented candles and more.  The result is a painfully awkward, slow-burn-outrageous experimental essay film about football parties, adolescent desire, older men, and the mundane humiliations of being a teenage girl in the 1980s. With sound design by Kevin T. Allen and performance cameos by filmmakers Roger Beebe and Jason Livingston.