NYFF Shorts: “RW-LO” and “A Woman’s Place is Everywhere”
A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere
Courtesy of NYFF
Is a house a home? What’s the difference between the two? How does a house become a home? Fanny Texier’s short film, A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere, is a small but mighty film that manages to address these questions, the rate of eviction in New York City, and the sisterhood that ties it all together.
Emilija and Ona Rygelis are identical twins who were raised in a renovated loft space in Williamsburg. The two explain that the Williamsburg they grew up in is a far cry from the hipster neighborhood it eventually became. The loft was renovated by their adoptive mother in the 1970s after she gave up her art career to care for the sisters. A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere chronicles three years in the lives of the twins as they face eviction, motherhood, and a loss of home.
The film opens with a skyline shot of one of the most famous cities in the world and a staggering statistic about New York City evictions. Since the eviction moratorium was lifted in 2021, cases rose from 33,000 to 177,000, and the Rygelis sisters are one such case. The twins are overwhelmed by the new responsibility of caring for the loft. Things are on the verge of breaking down and a toilet overflows during an important conversation, but there’s something that keeps the sisters connected to this space. How do you grieve the loss of a mother while also fighting to keep a roof over your head? A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere is an empathetic look at a battle unfolding in every neighborhood in New York City and beyond, while also showing the humans at the center of the eviction process.
RW-LO
Courtesy of NYFF
The modern genre of reality television can be traced back to The Real World. The series ran from 1992 to 2017 on MTV and was created as a modern version of the PBS series, An American Family. Where the PBS show followed a California family in the 1970s, The Real World moved to a new city each season and focused on strangers. Any MTV kid will remember the famous introduction: “This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.”
In a way, Martine Syms’ has both everything and nothing to do with The Real World. The short film is a hybrid documentary of home-video footage and contemporarily-shot reenactment scenes. Before Brent David Freaney collaborated with Charli XCX and Imogene Strauss on the brat album visuals, they were a kid growing up in the South obsessed with The Real World. As luck would have it, the newest season was shooting in New Orleans and Brent was instantly drawn to Melissa Howard, a castmate on the show. Blending real videos of Brent’s teenage saga to get Melissa’s attention with staged fill-in-the-blank scenes, Syms captures the early days of fandom fueled by the internet.
Brent has shared the actual footage of their quest to be noticed outside of this short film. Without spoiling RW-LO, this is not a story that ends in 2000 with the airing of The Real World: New Orleans. It’s something that ripples through Brent’s life, even today. More than that, it’s a glimpse of the early roots of reality TV that led us down the path to where we are now. It’s hard to believe reality juggernauts like Love Island or Love Is Blind would exist were it not for those seven strangers who started getting real. RW-LO shows the fervor of fandom and the lasting impact of a formative reality television series.
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