For her debut function “Love, Brooklyn”, director Rachael Abigail Holder knew that she “really wanted to play my own song.” But she did it with a script that she encountered which was a love letter to the city of Brooklyn – but one where all the characters were originally white.
“Their culture was not defined, so I could fill in the color that way,” Holder said Indieview studioPresented by Dropbox. “A script that was originally written for white characters needed a culture to be added, so it was not really a challenge, it was an exciting company to choose what that culture would be. We didn’t just want the characters to be a black period. Blackness is a wide range of people, and I wanted them to be specific. ”
“Love, Brooklyn” Stars André Holland, Roy Wood Jr., Dewanda Wise, Nicole Behiery and Cassandra Freeman. The story follows a love triangle between three long -term brooklynites that navigate careers, love, loss and friendship against the rapidly changing landscape in their beloved city.
Holland, which is a producer on film In addition to its star, black actors often get used to playing parts that are not necessarily written for them, from Shakespeare to Ibsen and Chekhov.
“One of the things we all have to do sometimes as color actors is imaginative characters in circumstances that may not be constructed with us in mind,” he said. “We often have to catch ourselves into these spaces. This one, I think was a wonderful opportunity to do it. And to his credit, our writer Paul Zimmerman, good! Let’s find out what this is. “
While the actors all had different reasons for being drawn to the film, a shared love for Brooklyn was the common.
“(It is) what it is like to really stick to something that you love so dear, even if it slides through your fingers, especially for nostalgia in a place like Brooklyn, it is really magical,” said Berari.
“What this movie is today will not be true ten years from now,” Freeman added. “Brooklyn, depending on which burough you are in or which street, you get a completely different character.”
Holder also said that the film was particularly personal to her, although it was not specifically written about Brooklyn she grew up in.
“I grew up in Brooklyn, not as a child, but as a young adult. I was an artist in Brooklyn, I attended the research school, so this story felt like it was really about me and my community when I read it, even about our writer, who are decades older than me, it was written about his 20s , “She said. “Brooklyn is such a special place that it can feel timeless that he can write about the 20th century and it may feel like my own.”
“Love, Brooklyn” premiered at Sundance Film Festival. The film is looking for distribution.
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