Presenting LOVE LAND
The worst form of oppression isn’t found behind a sword. It’s found behind a smile.
When a fiery young woman with an intellectual disability is placed in a private institution for being a “danger to herself and others,” she is forced to face the reality that comes with being considered Special: separation from mainstream society.
Narrative Feature Film | HD (RED Scarlet-X) | Drama
www.lovelandfilm.com
Table of Contents
The Inclusive Cinema Empowerment Project………………….3
Introduction to Love Land…………………..…….……..……..3
The Empowerment Labs………………………………………..4
Love Land Project Description………..………….…….…..…..5
Love Land Synopsis…………………,,,…………………….…..6
Love Land Treatment…………,,,…...………..…………….…...6
Key Personnel….…………………………….……....………….8
Appendix A : Disability Rights Contacts – Select List…….…..11
The Inclusive Cinema Empowerment Project
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
- A.J. Liebling[1]
CommunityNow, Inc. is launching The Inclusive Cinema Empowerment Project (“ICEP”) in order to promote Disability Empowerment by creating Inclusive Films and providing customized training in film production for people with disabilities using professional-standard tools. The ICEP believes that one of the most powerful steps an oppressed minority group can take toward its own empowerment is to effectively shape society’s discourse through powerful narrative fiction cinema. The ICEP’s mission is to help achieve Cultural Empowerment through Cinematic Empowerment.
THE INCLUSIVE CINEMA EMPOWERMENT PROJECT
The IECP is launching through two phases. During the first phase, the IECP will provide grant support for the development and production of films dedicated to themes of disability empowerment, community inclusion, and inclusive practices. The first of these films is Love Land, a Cicatrice production. Love Land is a narrative full-length film featuring inclusive casting and a progressive message of inclusion. In the second phase, the ICEP will team up with entertainment industry professionals to create the Empowerment Labs, a series of workshops designed to develop the storytelling and cinema production skills of men and women with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Love Land is first feature film to be awarded an ICEP grant. Through its association with Love Land, the ICEP is seeking to lead the way in the active inclusion of actors with disabilities in the arts. Indeed, Love Land’s visibility in the independent film and festival scene will provide the ICEP with unprecedented opportunities to partner with world-class institutions such as the Sundance Institute to fulfill the ICEP mission.
THE EMPOWERMENT LABS
The goal of the Empowerment Labs will be to nurture storytellers with intellectual and developmental disabilities into creators of high quality cinematic content. The Empowerment Labs will be competitive: applicants will submit the first thirty pages of a screenplay, a photographic essay, additional video materials, a personal statement, and letters of recommendation. These materials will be evaluated on cinematic potential, and the applicants will be evaluated on their commitment to storytelling and the arts and their potential for achievement. This evaluation process will be carefully conducted with the consultation of a panel of disability self-advocates and professionals.
Screenwriting Lab
The Screenwriting Lab is an eight-week engagement that guides Screenwriters with intellectual and developmental disabilities through an intensive development workshop for realizing their voice through a well-thought-out story in effective and professional-standard Screenplay format. Professional screenwriters, directors, and producers will give workshops during the course. At the end of the course, Screenwriting Fellows will have an Outline, Treatment, Pitch, First Draft, and Second Draft of a Screenplay.
Producing Lab
The Producing Lab is an eight-week engagement that guides Producers with intellectual and developmental disabilities through the development, logistical analysis, and pre-production of a completed screenplay. Producing Fellows will take courses with professional producers and will produce a five-minute Proof of Concept short film, shot on a RED Scarlet-X digital camera system, with a professional crew hired with the assistance of a budget provided by the Lab.
Directing Lab
The Directing Lab is an eight-week engagement that guides Directors with intellectual and developmental disabilities through the polish and directorial pre-production of a submitted screenplay. Directing Fellows will take courses with professional directors and will engage in pre-production workshops critical to visualizing the screenplay in Production. The final three weeks of the Lab will focus on directing a five-minute Proof of Concept short film, shot on a RED Scarlet-X digital cinema camera system, with a professional crew hired with the assistance of a budget provided by the Lab.
INTRODUCTION TO LOVE LAND
Perhaps the word that best describes the historical treatment of persons with disabilities is separation. Although in some cultures the family takes responsibility for the care of disabled persons, for the most part this has been the exception rather than the rule in the United States. More commonly, disabled persons have been isolated, institutionalized, and ignored. [2]
- Jacqueline Vaughan Switzer, Disabled Rights
Love Land is a narrative dramatic feature film that follows Ivy, a young woman with a severe traumatic brain injury that affects her motor and cognitive skills, as she faces her refusal to be identified as a person with an intellectual disability. When she is placed in an institution for being a danger to herself and others, Ivy will stop at nothing to prove to the world, and to herself, that she is “normal” enough to transcend the label of “Special.”
The film is a tragedy, documenting one community’s failure to transcend an age-old system of “segregating the Special.” Despite its ambivalent outcome, the tragedy of Love Land is offset by the hope of a better future marked by independence and self-determination for all.
Love Land is about the importance of diverse (and often risky) experiences to the fulfillment of the human condition. It's about refusing to accept the segregation of the world's largest minority, and about jump-starting a cultural discourse in America to help change perceptions of “pity and fear” to those of “equal citizenship”[3].
Love Land is a movie with nuanced, layered characters that reach beyond stereotypes, presenting characters with intellectual disabilities as complete and conflicted human beings—capable of good, evil, and grey—with far-reaching desires and vibrant, profound sexual identities; it is a movie that dares to say that social views – not individual bodies – are the real barriers for people with disabilities[4]; it says that “charitable interaction” is unacceptable, proclaiming full community inclusion as a civil right; and it puts its money where its mouth is by only casting professional actors with the actual disability labels portrayed by the characters in the film. Love Land further gains a great deal of creative integrity from its ties with the constituents of activist organizations and disability scholarship programs.
The Producers are in the process of developing an advisory committee made up of professors, activists, social workers, and icons to ensure the authenticity of the story and the alignment of our message with the aspirations of the disability rights movement.
Principal photography for Love Land is tentatively scheduled to commence May 1, 2013, with post-production starting June 15, 2013, and the finished film being submitted to the 2014 Sundance Film Festival at the end of September 2013.
LOVE LAND PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Love Land isn’t a traditional “disability film”—it’s a socially conscious independent docudrama about the importance of community inclusion and diverse experiences to the growth and self-actualization of every human being, regardless of identity or label. Set against the rich, relevant, and engrossing stage of the disability rights movement (DRM), its details and themes promise to raise questions that challenge the ideological preconceptions not only of the uninitiated, but of the seasoned disability rights activist, as well.
Approaching the topic of community integration for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities from a visceral and unpolished perspective, Love Land rejects the saccharin movie-of-the-week gloss that all too often characterizes the movies that feature uplifting—and often unchanging—characters with disability labels[5]. The film answers tropes such as the “eternal innocent,” the “evil gimp,” and the “Tiny Tim” with a cast of nuanced, morally conflicted, and empowered characters that demonstrate an eye-opening capacity for profound change.
The tone of Love Land is dark and gritty, with largely handheld camerawork. The audience will be led through Ivy’s emotional journey as a peer rather than a superior, and her desires and fears, rather than being paternalistically portrayed as “cute” or “charming” from a safe distance, will be experienced at eye level with Ivy, staying inside her head and held with the highest regard.[6]
LOVE LAND SYNOPSIS
Ivy, a young woman with a severe traumatic brain injury growing into responsible adulthood in a small Texas town, works at a tattoo parlor, where she idolizes Oscar, an apprentice tattoo artist. When, at long last, Ivy finds herself in Oscar’s arms, the tap of a police baton quickly interrupts their session, and after drugs are found in Ivy’s blood, Ivy’s aunt, genuinely concerned for her niece’s safety, places Ivy in Love Land, a private institution for people with developmental disabilities on the outskirts of town.
Desperately fearing association with the “Special Love Land Kids,” Ivy fights bitterly to return to Oscar, but after Oscar crushes her by leaving her for a mutual friend, Ivy sets her sights on escaping Love Land—and its corresponding labels—at all costs. Attempt after failed attempt nearly destroy Ivy’s spirit, but when she overhears that “clients” who are eligible to live in the community can bring their spouses with them, Ivy haphazardly sparks a relationship with Roger—Love Land’s voluntary “Poster Child”—in a shameless effort to ride him to freedom.
Ivy comes dangerously close to succeeding, but after Roger discovers the breadth of Ivy’s lies and Ivy comes face to face with the reality of her traumatic brain injury, their respective worlds finally finish unraveling, thrusting them both into separate journeys toward discovering that no one belongs in an institution, no matter how clean, and that the people who actually need a “cure” are those who believe that segregation must continue to be the way of the world.
LOVE LAND TREATMENT
IVY (25) is a young woman with a severe traumatic brain injury who sterilizes needles at a tattoo parlor in a small Texas town. She idolizes OSCAR (18), an apprentice tattoo artist, who takes her out one night after she scores him his first paying client. A night of clumsy passion in the back of Oscar’s truck is swiftly interrupted by the TAPPING of a baton on the window. Moments later, Ivy finds herself beside a police officer at the doorstep of her AUNT DOROTHY’s home.
Dorothy’s genuine concern for her niece’s safety leads her to place Ivy in Love Land, a pristine institution for people with developmental disabilities on the outskirts of town. After the resident “Poster Child,” ROGER (45), dressed in cowboy garb in preparation for the upcoming Love Land Charity Hoedown, bursts into Ivy’s room during a moment of intimacy, Ivy resolves to escape at all costs, kicking off her plan with the energetic acceptance of her roommate’s invitation to church the next day. At the local superstore after church, Ivy escapes across the street to the tattoo parlor to invite Oscar to the hoedown.
A frustrated Roger soon appears at the door, but after sensing Ivy’s longing to impress Oscar, Roger claims that Ivy is his caretaker, smuggling subtle threats behind his smile until Ivy follows him out. As Oscar waves goodbye, his playful remark horrifies Ivy:
“See you at the hoedown, Granny-Panties.”
Desperate for Oscar to want her, Ivy resolves to wear A THONG to the hoedown, but after an irritated Roger turns down her advances, she flirts with Roger’s friend, ARMEN (21), inviting him to cash in on a long-held debt he holds over Roger’s head to oblige him to use his influence to acquire a very important key. During a special Love Land showing of the high school autumn musical, Ivy sneaks out of the auditorium in a risky operation to break into the girl’s locker room and “borrow” her sacred panacea.
Oscar decimates Ivy’s hopes when he arrives at the hoedown. Not only does he ignore Ivy’s sultry hints about her thong, but when their mutual friend, JEANETTE (18), approaches them, he holds Jeanette’s hand, crushing Ivy with the realization that her friends now see her as a “Special Love Land Kid.” Later that night, Roger catches Ivy “rebounding” with Armen behind the hoedown barn. He slinks away, returning to fire off abandoned FIREWORKS in a dangerous flurry of confusion and concealed jealousy.
All three culprits sit in the superintendent’s office, where Ivy is assured that, despite her ability to play the piano, she still belongs in Love Land. Infuriated, Ivy rises to leave, overhearing the superintendent’s stern reminder to Roger that he can leave anytime he wants to.
Ivy dashes away from Love Land as fast as she can, hoisting her body through a sea of desolate ranchland until finally running out of breath and accepting that the only place she can go…is backward. At the cusp of defeat, Ivy overhears that married couples can be “bundled together” when one of the partners leaves Love Land. That night, Ivy finds herself atop a rooftop with Roger, showing him a decade-old recording of a piano recital and proposing a truce. After Roger musters the courage to ask Ivy to play a song for him, Ivy dodges the subject: “That’s something you gotta earn, buddy,” Ivy whispers.
Focused on her ultimate goal, Ivy puts on a show each day in an effort to gain the heart of a skeptical Roger, who both welcomes the new Ivy and misses the warrior he once despised. Ivy’s growing compliance reaches its climax with a Sunday morning baptism, and that night, a fake “born again” Ivy leads a deceived and smitten Roger through the fog of a dark wood to skinny dip in the nearby river, reminding him of his ability to leave, but most importantly, his ability to take her with him. Roger’s heart races as Ivy’s soft hands begin to gently disrobe him.
At his hearing, Roger insists on leaving, but his caseworker intimidates him with descriptions of the dangerous outside world, bringing Roger to withdraw his request and destroy what Ivy believes to be her last chance of escaping. At the end of her rope, Ivy looks a guilty Roger in the eye and tells him that she’s pregnant, bringing him to tears of joy.
“They’ll take our baby away if they find out,” Ivy warns Roger. “That’s why we need to leave before we tell anyone.”