Interview with Filmmaker Elina Street
Even before co-directing the Emmy-award-winning docuseries “The Lesbian Bar Project” Elina Street held a fervent desire to showcase queer stories. As a queer woman herself, growing up consuming the underground queer media that existed at the time, Street realizes the intense communal impact of representation in film and television. For her recent short film “My Best Friend,” which had its North American premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival as part of the LGBTQIA+ “It’s Complicated” block of shorts, Street penned the script by exploring a heartfelt personal story. Following two best friends who unexpectedly sleep together, the film illustrates the beauty and complexity of queer female friendship. At its core, the film works to subvert glamorized and conventional depictions of queer love and instead portray something unapologetically real.
Street and her cast and crew, which was made up of over 90% women film workers, worked diligently to outline the parameters of intimacy during the film, cultivating a safe and expressive environment for all who were involved. The film’s intimacy coordinator, Amy Northup, was especially committed to ensuring the comfortability of the cast, and helped establish the natural development of chemistry between lead actresses Marie Zabukovec and Lana Boy. This allowed Street to capture a realistic and loving depiction of sex. These small, special details accentuate the magnitude of our main characters’ friendship and taps into an intricate part of the queer experience that so many can identify with.
Writer/Director of “My Best Friend” Elina Street
Q. This film and your work serve as more proof of the necessity and intersectionality of queer art and queer rights. Talk about the trajectory of your Emmy award-winning docuseries, “The Lesbian Bar Project”, co-directed with Erica Rose. How does it feel to have assisted in the installation of more lesbian bars across the USA?
A. It feels amazing. The success of “The Lesbian Bar Project” is due to our community rallying together in wanting to keep our safe spaces alive. We started this project in 2020, and the list of lesbian bars in the U.S. went from 16 to 32. When Erica and I started the project, we had no idea the numbers were so low. COVID-19 had just shut down all the bars and could bring that number down to zero. We were out of work, as the film industry had shut down, so Erica and I conceptualized the project, to raise awareness and funds for the bars. At first, we created a PSA, then a short film, then a series. It was the gift that kept on giving. We raised nearly 300K for the bars as well. As soon as the project began, people were as shocked as we were about the low numbers of bars, so they wanted to participate and spread the word. Our list got bigger as we stayed more connected, and bar owners reached out to us wanting to be added to our list. Erica and I are both filmmakers and storytellers, so we always wanted to tell the stories of the bars. In 2020, and 2021, they were in dire need of financing so we blended our filmmaking with a philanthropic effort.
After that, we wanted to go back and do what we do best, which is expanding on the storytelling. This project was brand-sponsored by Jagermeister. It’s important to say this, because as filmmakers we do depend on brands sometimes, and JM believed in us since day one. They had started a campaign called Save The Night, which was helping nightlife from disappearing due to COVID-19, and our mission with “The Lesbian Bar Project” was very much aligned with theirs. When we launched the PSA, the demand from the community grew, they wanted to hear and see more queer voices depicted on the screen, so we pitched a short film that got greenlit, then we pitched a series which was also greenlit on the Roku Channel. We just completed our international episode which is available on Youtube. It’s difficult these days to stay optimistic with everything that is happening in the world, but the evolution of LBP really showed that there was a real thirst for community and a will to gather together in our spaces where we can be ourselves.
Q. Did the desire to explore female queer love and friendship narratively come from your extensive documentary work? How do you think “My Best Friend” will contribute to the conversation about queer representation and feminine connection?
A. That’s a great question. I think after documenting the queer community for the past 4 years, there is definitely some inspiration that was gleaned from that experience for “My Best Friend”. I really missed working with actors and workshopping a script actually. I think “The Lesbian Bar Project” was created at a time when I had to shift my mission as a filmmaker and use my tools to tell a story that had to be told during a specific time. It was very personal to me because lesbian bars are where I came to be who I am today, but “My Best Friend offered” a deeper intimate look into friendship and sex that I couldn’t quite obtain in “The Lesbian Bar Project” docu-series. I will say that working in the doc world did help me for “My Best Friend,” because I have always been a fan of trying to achieve authentic and realistic performances on screen, and I worked a lot on that with my actresses Marie Zabukovec and Lana Boy. I was so lucky to get to work with them because we had worked together in the past, and that really did help to keep rehearsing and set feel more like a playground where we could really explore and be ourselves.
We did a lot of improvisational rehearsing in order to see what came more naturally in the scenes and storytelling. But overall, “My Best Friend” is really autobiographical, and it was so important to me to explore this connection that happens between two friends, who know each other SO well, and who are in total synchronicity one night, and totally let go and make love. The next day, it’s a whole different story, but it’s about that moment in time, where you totally let your guard down with someone you are so comfortable with. In terms of the conversation about queer representation, it was really important for me to represent queer intimacy with respect and beauty, and concentrate on the in-between moments in sex, [like] when you laugh. When you are friends with someone, I find that the intimacy is different so I wanted to merge those ideas into one. I really hope that people are inspired by “My Best Friend”, and can identify with the story.
Q. It’s so refreshing to see an intimacy coordinator appearing very early on and on its own page in the credits of a film. Talk about working with your intimacy coordinator Amy Northup and how important intimacy coordination is in filmmaking.
A. Yes! This was SO important for us. This was my first time working with an intimacy coordinator and I would say, even if you don’t have intimacy scenes, get an intimacy coordinator on your set ASAP! It’s so interesting because my lead Marie Zabukovec, has shot many intimate scenes in the past, in mostly French TV shows and films and Lana Boy also does some incredible activism work that involves her body on the screen, and we ALMOST decided that against working with one, because we thought, we go this! I’m so glad my amazing producer Maxwell Gately and EP Amy Fruchtman convinced me because you just NEVER know what can happen. Sex scenes are hard. When you have two characters that need to be so involved with each other, even just through friendship, you never know, someone could be triggered at any time, reminded of something, and it’s really for the crew as well to know that everyone has each other’s back. Yes, it can slow down production but who cares? Amy Northup is trained in crisis management, and I had her come in to do aftercare as well, because the day after filming the sex scene, we all needed it.
Marie admitted that she never had been asked how she truly felt on set during her intimate scenes she was shooting, and she felt extremely liberated when she could talk about it. When we wrapped, she told me this experience changed her life, and that she will speak up on every other set from now on. As for Lana, she was also very grateful for the experience. We learned so much with Amy, she brought amazing tools on set to make nudity feel more comfortable. She had activities to distract the cast if we had a long setup, and they needed to stay focused. The cast could always talk to her if they felt uncomfortable. We also had an in-depth conversation about what was OK to show on camera and what was not. This was something I felt so grateful for Amy to have my back for when you’re in the throws of directing, you have so many things to think about, and you need someone to have your back and remind you “Hey, your actress doesn’t feel great about her left breasts here, or she would like to see this shot.” It’s terrific. This is how sex scenes should always have been conducted. It’s an action sequence after all, and we have been working with stunt coordinators our whole life.
Marie Zabukovec in “My Best Friend”
Q. How did your production collaborations with Gately Production Services and GO Magazine help with actualizing your vision for the film?
A. I felt so grateful to have Gately Production Services by my side at all times since the pre-production of the film and the development. This was their first short film, and they have been supportive of my work since day one. As a director, these collaborations will change your life and it did. They always wanted the best for me, but as described above, also for my cast and my crew. All those elements combined are what make for a positive work environment. It can be rare in the industry, there are horror stories out there, but I am now very selective about who I work for and with and I have found the perfect match! Thank you, Maxwell Gately and Amy Fruchtman! As for GOMAG, the founder Amy Lesser is one of my lesbian mentors. GOMAG is the only still-in-print lesbian magazine out there, and Amy works tirelessly to keep the magazine alive!
On top of this, she also helps young artists like me to elevate their vision. We need people like this in our industry and I am so very grateful because she is one of them 100%! I would read GOMAG when I was a baby gay, and since there was and still is a big lack of queer lesbian content, that was the only thing I had access to, that and the L Word, and I still read it today because everything is so relevant and important. I just love it and I’m so grateful that GOMAG recognizes short films like MBF because it’s just as important to tell authentic queer fiction stories through film as it is through print! GOMAG was also one of the first EPs on “The Lesbian Bar Project” short film.
Q. What was it like working with lead actresses Marie Zabukovec and Lana Boy? What approaches did you all take to create a fun, safe, and collaborative set?
A. I touched upon this above but it was incredible. Marie Zabukovec is a fearless French actress. I essentially wanted her to play a French expat living in NY and she did the best job ever. Marie shoots a lot in France, and she’s based there and this was her first job in the US. Lana Boy is equally talented, she was trained in France and the U.S., and she, like me, is truly bilingual and is fluent in both languages and cultures. Marie and Lana knew each other, and I think that’s important for the chemistry and the believable friendship. I sent them to get mani-pedis together without me, and they got to know each other that way.
I also had extensive conversations about their characters separately and both did an amazing amount of work bringing more to the characters than what I had initially written. This is the magic of amazing actors, they just bring so much, and I think it’s so important as a director to collaborate [with] and elevate your actors. I remember when I was fresh out of film school, I was very stubborn about who my characters were and who they wanted to be. Now, as my confidence and my experience [have grown], I really think it’s so important to trust your actors or at least meet halfway with them, this will also affect the energy on set, and how safe they feel on set. Marie and Lana were so brave and they put up with a much longer shooting time for the intimate scene than I ended up using, but they understood that I really needed to go through that in order to get those in between “real” moments. They were incredible to work with and I really think the acting in MBF was so convincing and real, thanks to them and their trust.
Q. What does it mean for you to be featured in this year’s Tribeca catalog, a festival that fosters and promotes a grave commitment to women in film and their stories?
A. It’s really exciting! Tribeca has always been a dream goal of mine and I’m so honored to be a part of it, and for my cast and crew as well. It was really a labor of love, and I love that a story about queer friendship, and female intimacy is being celebrated like this! My inner child is very proud and I just want to keep telling those stories. I still noticed that there is a shortage of female directors, and I will work diligently to mentor more aspiring female, trans, and non-binary directors as my career evolves because this is still very much needed.