Ashes of Roses (work-in-progress)

10 minutes | 2023 I 16mm + digital

ASHES OF ROSES braids together elements of The Thorn Birds - a disturbingly popular novel (1977) and mini-series (1983) - about a lifelong romance between a girl and her family’s priest, with the trashy coming-of-age movie St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) and original 16mm footage of wildflowers, my daughters, old yearbooks, scented candles and more.  The result?  A sui generis, 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.