EoM Senior Interviewer Thomas Manning recently chatted with executive producer Emily Ruhl about her project Playland, a selection for the Tribeca International Film Festival. Ruhl speaks about working with director Georden West to tell a story about Boston’s oldest gay bar, and the significance of time as a concept within the narrative structure.
As Ruhl says, “Time is the one thing that we all can’t buy more of.”
If you prefer an audio version, you can listen to the full interview here:
Official Synopsis:
The ghosts of barflies’ past haunt Playland, “a transdisciplinary work of queer bricolage” by filmmaker Georden West. The film takes place inside the empty husk of the Playland Café, Boston’s oldest and most notorious gay hangout space. The cafe shut down in the late ‘90s, but West stages one last bawdy night on the town for the generations of drag queens, disco DJs, leatherdykes, and sissies who made Playland their home, creating an atemporal zone where queer ancestors can come out to play.
Featuring storylines set in 1943, 1965, 1977, and 1992, Playland takes a multimedia approach to storytelling. The film combines archival audio and home video footage with artistically realized vignettes that combine refined aesthetics and bold stylization. (There’s a floor show as well, of course.) At turns wistful, joyful, and brimming with righteous anger, Playland embraces the criminal queerness of the past, paying tribute to groundbreaking gay elders and creating a nostalgic fantasia of an era that had its beauty as well as its black eyes.–– Casey Baron
Screening during Tribeca Film Festival 2023.
For more information, head to the official Tribeca Film Festival Playland webpage.
Thomas Manning is a member of the NCFCA and SEFCA, and also the co-host of the television show and radio program Meet Me at the Movies. He has served as a production assistant and voting member on the Film Selection Committee for the Real to Reel Film Festival. Additionally, he manages his own film review and interview site, The Run-Down on Movies. Recently, Manning graduated from Gardner-Webb University with a double-major in Communications and English. His passion for cinema and storytelling is rivaled only by his love for the music of Taylor Swift.
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Categories: EoM Presents, Filmmaker Interviews, Publications, Stream
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