Experiencing Interruptions?

Making Wings

An imaginative 13-year-old girl writes and directs a 1970s melodrama about her own coming out featuring her family playing supporting roles, but when the camera also captures every moment of the perilous and gratifying creative process, a new family narrative emerges.

  • Holly Andres
    Director
  • Violet Bye
    Writer
  • Holly Andres
    Producer
  • Violet Bye
    Key Cast
    "as Self and Dawn"
  • Stella Bye
    Key Cast
    "as Self and Michelle"
  • Holly Andres
    Key Cast
    "as Self"
  • Nikki Andres-Bye
    Key Cast
    "as Self an Mom"
  • Robert Bye
    Key Cast
    "as Self and Dad"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    29 minutes 24 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 1, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 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
Director Biography - Holly Andres

Holly Andres is a celebrated photographer known for her stylized images infused with cinematic elements. Her work has appeared in galleries and museums worldwide and in commercial advertising campaigns. Andres is also a regular photo contributor to The New York Times Magazine, TIME, Vanity Fair, Wired, and The New Yorker.

Inspired by Nancy Drew novels, film noir, Fifties melodramas and Alfred Hitchcock, Andres’ photographs examine the precarious nature of female adolescence and the often fraught transition from girlhood to womanhood. In Andres’ narratively rich, symbolism-laden images innocent girls pursue forbidden knowledge; memory is a fog of truth and fiction; and inanimate objects become expressions of her characters’ inner selves.

Andres came to photography from a background in painting. Her early photographs using a 4x5 large-format camera echoed the detail, production level, and historical references of her early painting work. As she shifts her gaze toward the film medium, Andres animates and activates her painterly compositions, using the seductive, immediate appeal of cinema to expand the world of her subjects.

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Director Statement

My 13-year-old niece Violet loves to write fiction and poetry so I encouraged her to write a short story that I imagined could be used as inspiration for my own narrative photo series. I gave her two prompts: create a story about two sisters that is set in the past. When she returned the next day with a perfectly formatted screenplay, a 1970s melodrama about an adolescent girl named Dawn who comes out to her unsupportive sister Michelle, I was inspired to help her turn her vision into a film instead.

Over the course of three days last summer, with a skeleton crew and shoestring budget, we shot “WINGS” and filmed every moment in Violet’s creative journey. The film chronicles Violet’s impetus to write, direct and perform as the film’s protagonist. In one of the many meta layers in a film that echoes films-about-filmmaking like Francois Truffaut’s “Day for Night” or John Cassavetes’ friends and family dramas, Violet’s actual family performed the other key roles. In literal supporting roles, her family attempts to fully embrace (and amplify) the singular vision of this young aspiring queer artist.

I’m thrilled that this 29 minute film has a stunner of a soundtrack too, featuring the sister-fronted hard rock band, Heart; LGBTQ foremother and ‘60s teenage prodigy, Janis Ian; A.A. Williams with her haunting and beautiful piano ballad cover of the Pixies “Where Is My Mind?”; and the hit-maker Nashville songwriter, Jess Leary. Leary was so inspired by our project, she unearthed a cassette tape of a song she wrote as a teen in the late ‘70s about her own coming out story. Its title: “Wings.”