Love Between the Covers
A Documentary Film
Written, Produced & Directed by: Laurie Kahn
Releasing July 12th, 2016
Distributed by: The Orchard
Love stories are universal. Love stories are powerful. And so are the women who write them.
Love Between the Covers is the fascinating
story of the vast, funny, and savvy female community that has built a
powerhouse industry sharing love stories.
Romance fiction is sold in 34 languages on six continents, and the genre
grosses more than a billion dollars a year -- outselling mystery, sci-fi, and
fantasy combined. Yet the millions of
voracious women (and sometimes men) who read, write, and love romance novels
have remained oddly invisible. Until now.
For
three years, we follow the lives of five very diverse published romance authors
and one unpublished newbie as they build their businesses, find and lose loved
ones, cope with a tsunami of change in publishing, and earn a living doing what
they love—while empowering others to do the same. Romance authors have built a
fandom unlike all others, a global sisterhood where authors know their readers
personally and help them become writers themselves. During the three years
we’ve been shooting Love Between the
Covers, we have witnessed the biggest power shift that has taken place in
the publishing industry over the last 200 years. And it’s the romance authors
who are on the front lines, pioneering new ways to survive and build
communities in this rapidly changing environment.
Watch Now
The Official Trailer
Director/Producer LAURIE KAHN’s films have won major
awards, been shown on PBS primetime, broadcast around the world, and used
widely in university classrooms and community groups. Her first film, A
Midwife’s Tale, was based on the 18th century diary of midwife Martha Ballard
and Laurel Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Midwife’s Tale. It won film
festival awards and a national Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction. Her film TUPPERWARE!
was broadcast in more than 20 countries, won the George Foster Peabody Award
and was nominated for a national Best Nonfiction Director Emmy. Kahn previously
worked on Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, The American
Experience, FRONTLINE’S Crisis in Central America, All Things Considered, and
Time Out. She’s a resident scholar at Brandeis’s Women’s Studies Research
Center.
For more information on the film, http://www.lovebetweenthecovers.com/
Please
give us your description of the film playing.
While
romance novels and their signature covers are ubiquitous around the world, the
global community of millions of women who read, write, and love them remains
oddly invisible. Love Between the Covers is the fascinating story of five very
different authors who invite us into a vast female community that’s running a
billion dollar industry on the cusp of an irreversible power shift. In Love
Between the Covers, we enter one of the few places where female characters are
always center stage, where justice prevails in every book, where women win what
they want, and the broad spectrum of desires of women from all backgrounds are
not feared, but explored unapologetically.
What
drew you to this story?
I
want to bring the lives and work of compelling women to the screen, because any
industry dominated by women is typically dismissed as trivial and “merely
domestic.” My previous films -- A
Midwife’s Tale and Tupperware! – are very different from one another, but they
were both shaped by my desire to look honestly at communities of women who
haven’t been taken seriously (but should be), who deserve to be heard without
being mocked.
What was the biggest challenge in making the
film?
Two
things really. Raising the money (isn't
that always the case?). And figuring out
how to structure the film. Love Between
the Covers is more than the story of five characters; it is the story of an
unrecognized global community. Structuring this film was even harder than
structuring a film with five characters (which is a difficult task in and of
itself!). We finally found a solution in
the editing room.
What
do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theatre?
I
want people to realize how deeply ingrained we all are in dismissing anything
that is by women, for women and about women. Many romance readers told me
stories of complete strangers looking over their shoulders on a train, or at
the beach, leaning over and asking them, "Why do you read that
trash?" I really don't think that would happen to someone reading a
mystery or a thriller! Romance novels are dismissed as simplistic. People
who've never read a romance novel tell me, "They are formulaic. They all
end happily." But all genre fiction ends with a happy ending. Mysteries
all begin with a crime and end with the case solved -- a guaranteed happy
ending. Arnold Schwarzenegger is never killed in his movies. The good guys
always win. So why are romances singled out? I think it has to do with a
devaluation of women's work and a deep-seated fear of women's desires.
What's
the biggest misconception about you and your work?
People
tend to dismiss my ideas as fluffy. When
they see the finished films, they realize the topics are not fluffy
How
did you get your film funded? (Is it a studio film, a crowdsourced film,
somewhere in between?) Share some insights into how you got the film made.
I
started out with development funding from Mass Humanities, the Romance Writers
of America, and the Nora Roberts Foundation. I then raised more than my
$50K goal in a Kickstarter campaign (I raised $58K). That allowed me to
start shooting. Most of my production funding came from the National
Endowment for the Humanities. And several foundations and dozens of
individuals came through for me at the end when I needed to pay for music
rights, do our sound mix and color correction.
Believe
it or not, Love Between the Covers and
the larger Popular Romance Project it's part of have been attacked in the US
Congress. Senator Coburn railed about the project in the US Senate, insisting
it was silly and trivial. And Rep. Salmon introduced a bill in the US
House of Representatives (H.R. 5155 - see attached), to kill this project!
Fortunately, the bill didn't pass!
**Originally
from: Indiewire – Women & Hollywood
– Interview by Laura Berger http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/hot-docs-2015-women-directors-meet-laurie-kahn-love-between-the-covers-20150424
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