Jenni Olson

Sierra Waller: I’ll just start with a basic question: What sparked your interest in film? Did anything in particular really resonate with you?

Jenni Olson: When I was little, like 7 or 8, I loved watching old movies, like classic Hollywood movies on television, and I loved escaping into that world. Even though my actual filmmaking is very different, that was what really captivated me. In college, I was in film studies, and there were two things that really stood out to me: One was The Celluloid Closet, by Vito Russo, which had the history of homosexuality on screen. That was how I came out; that was how I was like, oh, I have a connection to this that is beyond just academic, and that really changed my life, maybe even saved my life in a lot of ways. And then I started a film series on campus, an LGBT films series, and that began my career as a queer programmer and historian. And then the following year I saw a film called Sherman’s March, I think this was in 1986, which is an experimental film that’s mostly this guy who’s pining over these women and looking for a girlfriend. He has a lot of direct to camera stuff, and all these landscapes of the South, and it’s just an amazing film, because it’s completely different than any kind of conventional film. And I thought, okay, that means I could make a film that’s different; I didn’t want to make a conventional film. So that was the inspiration for my desire to make film. It took me many years before I actually made films.

SW: That’s really cool, I’m never heard of someone coming out...or realizing [that they’re gay] through film.

JO: When I was little, I always knew I was queer, but just couldn’t deal with it. I imagine that it’s somewhat easier now, because we can talk about, and there’s so much representation in culture that maybe it’s not quite as big of a deal, but I can imagine that it’s still not...simple. I really was very tortured for a long time, throughout my childhood and into my early twenties. But there was something about being able to connect to this cultural thing that helped me with coming out.

SW: That’s a really great backstory. So, in terms of your landscape films, you mentioned Sherman’s March. Was that part of your inspiration?

JO: Yeah, so Sherman’s March was inspiring because of its innovative form; it's not so much of a landscape film as an experimental or hybrid personal documentary. In 1991 I saw a film called Massillon— as in Massillon, Ohio—by William E. Jones, and that was the film that made me want to make landscape films. He studied at CalArts with James Benning, who’s considered the most significant landscape filmmaker, so I consider myself kind of influenced by James Benning even though I’ve never seen any of his films. But my favorite filmmaker and a huge inspiration is Chantal Akerman. She passed away a couple of years ago, but she was a Belgian lesbian filmmaker who made the most pioneering duration films that were very feminist. She made a film called Jeanne Dielman, which was probably the first feminist film that I saw. I watched it in college and in a film studies class. Have you seen any of her work in film studies class? You should run out and watch Jeanne Dielman, or really any of her work, but Jeanne Dielman is such a quintessential feminist film. Delphine Seyrig plays a housewife, it’s like really long, like three hours long. It consists of these really long takes, durational real time sequences of her doing things like doing the dishes. It’s so radical because all she’s doing is doing the dishes, and we’re just watching her, and it’s beautiful, but has this inherent feminism too. What could be more about a woman and her situation? The plot, I feel like I don’t want to spoil it for you, but she does sex work. She just seems like this random house wife, but we’re following her situation. It’s cinematically radical because of the durational shots. Chantal Akerman is so amazing. She has this other film called News From Home, a 16 mm New York City landscape film that is very much in the ethos of my work. It’s also from the 1970s and has these amazing shots of New York City and a voiceover. So, just a shoutout for Chantal Akerman in the feminist film archive.

SW: What inspired you to film landscapes in particular?

JO: When I saw Massillon and what was possible in landscape filmmaking, in terms of what it does to the viewer, I was just so blown away and thought, I can do that, and I want to do that. It’s such a simple format in a way, and yet to actually achieve those effects of finding the right landscapes and compositions and shot durations, and what's going on and how it contributes to the film and what it’s trying to say, there's a lot of craftsmanship there. It’s just amazing to me that you can create such an emotional impact on the viewer with such a simple form.

SW: I felt like, watching your films, that they had the same emotional weight as reading a book, which is ironic because I’m a film major, but I feel like the feelings that I get from books are stronger than what I get from watching films.

JO: Well that’s a really interesting point, because there is something very unique about it that is radically different from a conventional film— you’re being sent into yourself. There’s something about experimental film in general, and landscape films especially, that demand something of you that’s completely different from a conventional film. It’s making space for you, and you’re projecting your own emotional feelings, your own personal history. It causes you to remember experiences from your own life, it just causes you to have your own feelings that are yours, which is what happens in a book, where you are allowed to have your own reaction. Whereas a conventional film, it’s like, okay! Here are the violins, you’re supposed to cry, everyone else is supposed to cry, and you all have a very direct relationship to this narrative thing that happened. There's something really different about the space that’s there for you.

SW: I feel like it kind of plays with the format of film itself. But I feel like, although experimental films often have interesting images or do something outside of the conventional narrative, I feel like they don’t break the form as much as your films do.

JO: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I like to think that they are unconventional even from conventional form because even experimental film can be very conventional. But I also love that there is this other level of meaning in my work that’s kind of this meta thing about film itself. I feel like I’m always aware of watching a film, and a film that’s made on film, and there’s kind of this joy in it being a film.

SW: You’ve definitely mentioned a lot of old films you’ve enjoyed [in your work].

JO: Right, and then the meta references to Hollywood film history.

I was part of the original dot-com boom in the mid-nineties; I was one of the co-founders of PlanetOut.com. It was the first big gay website, which ceased to exist in the early 2000s, and now, unless you were alive and queer at the time, nobody remembers it; but it was huge at the time. It was at a time when a lot of development was beginning and we thought oh my god the landscape is changing, I want to shoot some of this stuff before it all disappears. Of course, it was nothing compared to the level of development and gentrification and [laughs] craziness of now. Anyways, that was just a short, but all of that footage I’ve hung on to and used in my subsequent films. I do little bursts of shooting for each film, but use little flashbacks of older footage as well. There’s a shot that I wanted to use in The Royal Road (2015) of a Chevron station at 16th and VanNess, but I couldn’t use it because the gas prices were like $1.50 a gallon and I thought [laughs] people were going to be like, What?! This is anachronistic.

SW: This question is kind of related: like you just said, you’ve used several years worth of film in films like The Joy of Life and The Royal Road. Were you filming right up until about the time you made the film?

You didn’t ask this yet but I’ll just say: my method is that I write a script so I know that it has a trajectory of beginning, middle and an end, from here to there. So with The Royal Road, the script was 25 pages long. The Joy of Life was about 18 pages. And then I record the voiceover so that I have the audio track. Then I go into picture edit and add the things on top of it and spread things out so I have a sense of how it's going to flow.

SW: The butch identity is a major theme of both of your feature length films. Is there any part of the butch experience that you wish you could depict more in your films?

I love having screenings, particularly screenings at queer films festivals, where butches and the women who love them will come up to me and be like, oh my god, that was so amazing and so meaningful and that I’ve expressed things that other people couldn’t express or that I feel that, but I’ve never be able to say that. And that is what art can do for us: say things that make us respond with oh my god, yes yes yes, I couldn’t put my finger on it, or I couldn’t say it but that’s exactly it, now I know myself better, or I feel some relief, or I feel some joy. Having that experience is the best thing.

But then there is the context of showing at straight festivals, just a general audience. Sometimes I have straight men come up to me and say they totally identify with this character, and they’re like, [laughs] they feel that I’ve expressed things that they feel, particularly around women and navigating vulnerability. And that is super interesting. I think it’s one of the things around identity based filmmaking, if you will, because there’s this idea that it’s just a queer film and that’s all it is and it’s the only thing that it speaks too. But when we’re in the specificity of our experience with our identity, whatever that identity is, and we’re speaking authentically as people, as humans, what happens is that we connect with other people who are different than us, because we’re all human. And so it’s very powerful to have that experience.

SW: I kind of had a question related to that, well not super related to straight men, I don’t have any questions related to straight men [laughs]. In both of your feature-length films, the narrators are very frank about their attraction and love for women, which is something that is not usually seen in film. Usually I feel, at least in my experience, in mainstream films it seems very watered down or very “outside looking in,” and I thought that it was very interesting to see something very frank, if that makes sense?

JO: Yep. I’ve always wanted to write in this first person monologue. Some of it is diaristic, as though I’m reading from my diary, or sometimes it’s epistolary, which is like in the form of a letter. There’s a couple moments where I switch to a format where I’m addressing someone as though I’m writing a letter or I am speaking to the objects of my affections. The way that I originally wrote The Joy of Life, I actually thought of it as a fictional story, but a lot of it is drawn from my experience. It helped that I had my friend Harry do the voiceover so that it was more mediated. It was easier to be like, oh, that’s not actually me, so it’s not as vulnerable, it’s just a fictional character I wrote. With The Royal Road, I realized that I had to do my own voiceover, because when I asked Harry to do it he was like, “Well I can’t do it, because now I’ve transitioned and my voice is too deep.” His performance on The Joy of Life was so amazing, but with this film I had to do my own voiceover, which may have ultimately been a good thing. It makes it a more interesting film than it would have been, knowing that it’s me speaking. But even with The Royal Road, I start out with saying this thing about pretending to be a fictional character in the voiceover, so then I still can feel like I can say what I want after that, because it still is slightly made up. I’m pretending to be a fictional character myself. But in so much of it, I am speaking from this vulnerable position, and that is very powerful to people. I have had people who have responded and said that they feel like I’m saying things where they can’t believe I said that. Particularly in The Joy of Life there is a scene that still makes me think, wow. It’s amazing that after all these years it still takes your breath away, because it’s just so intense. It’s like the sex scene, if you will, with something about wanting to be fucked. And then there’s also the sequence about running into the butch outside of the bar and talking about how she fucks guys up the ass for $100 an hour. And like, it still makes me think, wow, that is really impactful, which is kind of an achievement—to get that sexy in a landscape film and have people be like, “what?”

SW: Is she based on a real person?

JO: Yes, [laughs] that actually happened.

SW: [laughs] I had a feeling… It was very specific, so I was like, this has to be a real person.

You’ve mentioned a lot about your role as a queer film programmer and historian; do you find that there aren’t many butch people represented even in queer film in general?

JO: Yeah, and I think that’s why it also feels that much more important to me. It’s such a rare thing! My favorite film I think in that way is By Hook or By Crook by Harry Dodge, who did my voiceover, and Silas Howard, who did the voiceover for Blue Diary in 1997, both of whom have transitioned now. When they made By Hook or By Crook in 2001, it was such a pioneering film and this moment in San Francisco queer culture. In the film, they were essentially butch, but referred to each other with male pronouns throughout the whole thing in this way that isn’t commented upon. There’s nothing about it that’s like, our identities are a problem, or something that we struggled with, it’s just we’re thrown into their world, and they are who they are, and they’re just awesome! They’re these amazing guys, and they have their little adventure in San Francisco and we’re like, wow, they’re amazing! In my personal life of being in San Francisco, they were always like these heroes to me where I thought, wow, they seem so cool, and they’re so comfortable with themselves, whether they actually were or not, just doing stuff, being in the world. And maybe that means I can be okay and kind of be a hero of my own life and feel less alone. It’s such a radical film for that reason. There are just so few films, I’m hard pressed to even think of films I can name.

SW: I also wanted to ask you some questions related to feminist film. As a queer film historian, have you seen any prominent intersections between feminist film and queer film?

JO: Yeah, I mean a lot of pioneering feminist filmmakers also happen to be queer filmmakers, and coicideindetally are also experimental filmmakers, like Su Friedrich and Barbara Hammer. So I think there for sure is that intersection. I would make the case that in experimental filmmaking itself, there is something feminist about disrupting the conventions of dominant film forms. There is something to be said about disrupting the dominant, especially since it's so patriarchal.

SW: In both of your films, you have described a fondness for history and nostalgia. What sparked your interest in the past? Or what continues to spark your interest?

We spend so much time not aware of that and not paying attention to that, mainly because [of] these devices and this ridiculous technology, which takes us away from our present, lived reality. Which, y’know, is kind of a problem, [laughs] in so many ways. So anyways, I just had this wave of physical awareness and even a little bit of sadness. There’s a little bit of sadness there and in my philosophical reflections I think about how we are supposed to be sad. It’s sad. Life is sad.

Anyways, so I have kind of this elaborate philosophy about that, which also connects to my desire to shoot on 16 mm film, which also has this nostalgia to it as a format. Which is interesting in terms of contemporary audiences because my generation does have all this nostalgia and associations with what film is, like literally remembering the experience of seeing a film projected. I know that it’s like, a thing, that certain venues are saying “we’re showing a 35 mm print of this,” and it’s an event. I think it’s important to me I make my work on 16 mm because that in itself physically exists in a way that digital doesn’t. I think that’s meaningful because of that.

SW: It’s really cool to hear all of that, because on a personal level I have an interest in history and was excited to discover that was a big part of your work.

JO: In my storytelling, I like engaging with historical topics, whether it’s just historical facts or exploring some kind of arcane or obscure historical topic. I also like to find a historical topic that has some sort of social justice component to it, but ideally not in a completely obvious way. I’m not going to make a completely obvious social justice impact film, but more like, oh this is just one little thread where you think, well this is fucked up.

SW: What is your process of figuring out how to connect the past and present? Like for example in Royal Road you had this concept of I’m following the El Camino Real to this girl; what inspires you to make those kinds of connections in your work?

JO: I had some moment in the writing of The Royal Road where I realized that it’s hard to write a feature length film, especially in this format of a landscape film, and have it have a narrative arc, to have it have a beginning, middle, and an end. In conventional storytelling, you have this three act structure, and there’s a conflict, and there are obstacles and now here’s another obstacle, and the denouement, and the catarthsis, and then this bad thing happens… but I’m not interested in a story like that. But, you have to have some kind of why am I watching this? and what’s happening? and how it is connecting and building, and why do I care? And how is it going to end in a way that feels like an ending? There was some point where I realized, for this convergence of things, I want it to be where there’s this woman in LA that I’m pining over. And I can use El Camino Real as this plot–this very wisp of a plot. That propels it to where I’m in San Francisco, and now I’m in LA, and now I’m back in San Francisco, and the road is this anchor. There’s this great thing that Virginia Woolf famously said about how she put the lighthouse as the focus of her story To The Lighthouse, just as a thing to construct everything around. I love that idea of having something to make your composition around, or make your story around. She seemed to be saying something like, everyone was like, well what does the lighthouse mean? To the lighthouse? And she was just like, it’s just a lighthouse. I just put it in there to be able to tell the story. And so the Road is sort of like that, but it does become about the Road. So then I thought, okay, so what is the story of the Road? And [I] read about it and thought, wow, that’s quite a story.

I had The Royal Road screened at the Napa Valley Film Festival when it came out in 2015 and the first screening was in this big theater, like 300 people, and I could tell when I looked at the audience and there’s a lot of very clearly old straight men, and I thought, huh, that’s interesting. And sure enough, about 20 minutes into it, half the audience walked out. And I was like ohhh okay, they read the catalogue, saw the picture, and they thought, this is a documentary about the El Camino Real. And so then they’re like, what the fuck is this? This butch dyke talking about women? This is not what I was expecting. And so at the second screening, which was also full of older straight men, when I did the intro I said, “I’m imagining that some of you have come to this thinking that this is a straightforward doc, but I want to tell you, it’s not. It’s unconventional. But, I’ll bet if you sit here for 65 minutes, you’ll eventually… well some of it you probably will think what’s this, but if you stick with it, I think you’ll enjoy it.” And so then they all stayed, and they all enjoyed it.

SW: Switching gears a bit, I have a question that we like to ask of everyone interviewed for the FemExFilm Archive: Do you consider yourself—well you did mention that you consider yourself an experimental filmmaker—but do you consider yourself a feminist experimental filmmaker?

JO: Yeah, I would say so. That’s such an interesting question. I’m doing historical research for a documentary about the 50th anniversary of the first pride parade, which was called Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day in June of 1970. Two months later, in August of 1970, was the first huge Women’s Liberation Parade in New York City. Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, all the folks of that time. I mean, it was huge. I had come across some footage of that parade and it just blows my mind that that was the era of women’s liberation. On one hand it made this enormous difference in the lives of women, and we stand on their shoulders. And then here we are today with so much either progress lost or progress that was never made, things that were never changed. And…how can that be? Part of it is I have kids who...well my younger kid is nonbinary now, but they are female-born, so I have a 21-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old nonbinary female-born kid. Having watched them grow up in this world wanting the best for them... They’re amazing, and they are making the world a better place for everyone, but it just...I mean, yeah. I consider myself a very strong feminist, and kind of constantly am trying to bring forward that awareness and those politics and ethos to make the world a better place for women, and a better place for everyone. But it is just such a fight. I mean, it’s just crazy what a battle that is, in a time when we’re aware of so many kinds of identity-based movements and social justice, how so much of the time feminism or women’s rights get a little lost. And I guess that is the nature of the patriarchy, inherently. It’s baked into the patriarchy, for there to be any invisibility of that as an issue. Anyways...so yes.

SW: That’s really insightful about the way things have changed and not changed. Do you have any personal experience and stories around feminist activism?

JO: In college I was involved in—it’s funny to think of it—it was the UYW, as in University Young Woman. Anyways, it was the campus women’s student group, which was of course run by lesbians [laughs]. We did a lot of actions and ran the Take Back the Night annual events. Does Take Back the Night Still Exist?

SW: Yeah, it does, we still have that at my school.

JO: Yeah, that’s great. So we did all these things that were kind of consciousness raising experiences.There was Take Back the Night, Roe v. Wade Stuff...I remember when I first moved here there were Roe v. Wade marches. I mean, the first thing that came to mind when you said that were reproductive rights. I’m working on a book project right now where I have a chapter that I’m kind of grappling with: so, my mom never talked about this to me in person, it was after she died that my stepfather talked to me and told me that she had had an abortion in the 1940s, an illegal abortion. When we were kids she was very active in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Minnesota and was this very passionate member of Planned Parenthood. She talked about it a lot, and how important reproductive rights were, and she subscribed to Ms. Magazine. She was a political science professor before we were born and just a really strong feminist. And so I just think of her, and I struggle with how I’m going to talk about it in this book. I was reading Cynthia Nixon, the actress—she’s very involved in reproductive rights and had talked about her mom who had passed away, and told her mom’s story. There was kind of this concept of is it your story to tell? She grappled with that but said, “it’s my story to tell because my mom fought for this and she would want me to, I’m standing on her shoulders and continuing her fight.” And my mom fought for...that. And it’s just intense, to think she could have died. It meant so much to her, and now we’re at this moment where it’s so under threat, because we could be sent back to that. It’s just unimaginable. So anyways, I associate that with feminism because it has such a direct correlation with women’s bodies and women’s choices and how under threat reproductive rights are right now. I think it’s all the more intense because I would not be in that position, it wouldn’t happen by accident to me. It’s a fight for my kids and it’s a fight for women. And for everyone, and for society as a whole. It’s interesting, because I don’t actually think about it that much, identifying as a feminist, but how important it is to actually identify as a feminist and name that as a politics and as a way of engaging in the world: I do do that.

SW: I definitely feel that these conversations aren’t being had as much in the general political landscape. Thank you for sharing your really personal connection to feminism. I agree that reproductive rights are a very pressing issue right now, and I think it’s really a time to say that you are a feminist and fight for these things, and not just expect them to be baked into everything else that comes with the territory of activism.

JO: Thanks for asking that question...it’s very meaningful.

SW: Regarding your college experience with how all members of the women’s group were [laughs] lesbians...I feel that a lot of wider reaching feminism is not very lesbian based, like there’s not a lot of discussion around butch people or lesbians or anything...What do you think about that?

JO: It’s interesting that there are limits to identity-based politics and identity-based moments where you run up against the messy reality of people’s lives. I mean, that there’s both intersectionality of okay, I’m a woman, I’m a lesbian, I’m whatever other identities. I think historically the Women’s Movement, if you will, has had complex and not completely successful experiences of processing all of those differences, whether that's the kind of white feminism that didn’t incorporate racial justice or, in fact, how there was an explicit whole thing in the early seventies where they kicked out the lesbians and they were like, we don’t want lesbians in the Women’s Movement.

There’s a whole thing specifically with Kate Millett, who was, [laughs] my mom’s college roommate...do you know who Kate Millett is? This is so sad: Kate Millett, she was literally on the cover of Time Magazine, in August of 1970, right after the Women’s Lib March, and she was bisexual, and she came out. She had written a book called Sexual Politics, which is considered to be one of the main texts that really launched that modern Women’s Liberation Movement, and they basically kicked her out. There are these limitations where, unless you can have a movement that is truly intersectional and recognizes, yes we have these different identities, that we all need to be fighting an overall fight that is for racial justice and economic justice and gender justice and queer justice... There’s so much opportunity for coming up against other people’s ability to incorporate difference in a movement. So there’s that specific history of the Women’s Lib Movement in the seventies literally being homophobic. My understanding of it is that they got through that period of time and reincorporated the lesbians and saw that that was a problem, but the fact that it happened was still an issue. But it is interesting that there is so much lesbian leadership in women’s movements and interest in that specific social justice.

SW: I feel like there’s a lot of reasoning behind it that really hasn’t been explored.

JO: Hopefully we’re not just only fighting for ourselves and our own rights, but we’re also fighting for justice for all or trying to see and understand. Or, I mean, it doesn’t all have to be a fight [laughs]. But to connect with humanity.

SW: I think that might be a good place to end it. I really appreciate your insight on your films and all these different topics.

JO: You’re very welcome. I appreciate these thoughtful questions and the ability to talk about my work, it’s meaningful to me as well. I’m proud to be a part of the FemExFilm Archive.

This interview was conducted at the People’s Cafe in Berkeley, California on February 13th, 2020. Keep up to date with Jenni on her Twitter and Facebook and watch her films via Vimeo.

About the Interviewer: Sierra Waller is an artist from San Diego, CA. As a film student at UC Santa Cruz her focuses have been LGBT Media and animation.

Thank you to Jenni Olson for her time and for the opportunity to share her story and wisdom!