Experiencing Interruptions?

Bye and Bye

Bye and Bye offers an offbeat take on grief and letting go.

  • Dana Teen Lomax
    Director
    Kindergarde (2014), +Care (2023), Un-Dressed (2024)
  • Catherine Marie McNair
    Key Cast
    "Unnamed Woman"
    Dream (NYU 1995)
  • Dana Teen Rachellé Lomax
    Writer
    Kindergarde (2014), +Care (2023), Un-Dressed (2024)
  • Dana Teen Lomax
    Producer
    Kindergarde (2014), +Care (2023), Un-Dressed (2024)
  • Julián Tlaxcuapan
    Director of Photography
  • Catherine McNair
    Director of Photography
  • Mathew Harwich
    Director of Photography
  • Dana Teen Lomax
    Director of Photography
  • Diamaya Avila
    Sound
  • Dana Teen Lomax
    Writer
    +Care
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    8 minutes 15 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 1, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    1,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Ventura College Film Screening
    Ventura
    United States
    May 8, 2024
    May 8, 2024
  • Santa Paula Film Festival
    Santa Paula
    United States
    July 25, 2024
  • Valparaiso Amatuer FilmFestival Screening
    Valparaiso
    Chile
    September 14, 2024
    BEST NARRATIVE SHORT
Director Biography - Dana Teen Lomax

Dana Teen Lomax is a multi-genre artist and an activist. She is a filmmaker and the author of several poetry books and numerous chapbooks.

Dana's current documentary, Un-Dressed, is in production and examines the question: "After saying 'YES' to the dress and the marriage is a 'NO,' what happens to the gown?"

About her last editorial project, THE BEAUTIFUL: Poets Reimagine a Nation, Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera writes, “Each author here, each photograph here, each moment here can change your life. Another of Dana’s editorial works Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children (Black Radish Books), was awarded a San Francisco Creative Work Fund Grant and won the 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press Lion and Unicorn Prize for Excellence in North American Poetry. With Jennifer Firestone, she edited Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia), which Cornel West called a “courageous and visionary book.”

Dana's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, published and reviewed internationally, named among the Guerilla Girls’ favorite poetry books, and received grants and awards from Intersection for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Foundation, the Marin Arts Council, Banff Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and others. Lomax collaborates with artists from all over the country, has taught writing in libraries, schools, prisons, and universities, has served as the Human Rights and Equity Chair for her teachers’ union, and lives in northern California.

Dana’s writing, editorial work, and short films can be found at danateenlomax.com.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Grief is a private experience and simultaneously one we collectively share. With this in mind, _Bye and Bye_ follows an unnamed woman and her journey to ditch her wedding dress and the memories attached to it. The film quietly works to subvert the "happily ever after" myth of marriage that is still pervasive.

The particulars of this woman's story are her own, but audiences watch her navigate the fallout—the bargaining, anger, denial, depression, and finally, acceptance—a truncated, linear portrayal of the stages of grief.

Part comedy, _Bye and Bye_ offers offbeat examples of all too familiar emotions, ones we have all experienced when trying to let go of part of our pasts.

The longer people live, the more we come to realize life's complexities and the many feelings that often co-exist. The set design of _Bye and Bye_ reflects this hard-won wisdom. Entirely white, the starkness of the environment stands in for and challenges the virginity trope, a social perception of the sterility and emptiness of a marriage "gone wrong," and the blank slate of a fresh start.

Shot as a silent film, _Bye and Bye_ leaves image, humor, music, and moments of vivid color to tell the story of one woman's loss—as well as her eventual comeback.