Fil-Irish artist Julie Ann Earls makes a #Metoo film
Filipino-Irish actor Julie Ann Earls is doing a film inspired by the MeToo movement. It shines a light on the dating culture and asks the question whether there will come a time when men will no longer assume a woman cannot fight back.
In her maiden short “Alpha,” Julie Ann is the writer, the producer and the actor. She plays Sadie, a woman who brings home a date and in a sexually-charged flash of a moment decides to say “no.” The film, she said, is about “consent, empowerment, and the possibilities of technology.”
“When #MeToo went viral in 2017, it made me reflect on my past dating experiences in ways that I had not realized before. Dates that I had just deemed ‘weird’ or ‘bad’ and never thought about again suddenly came back to me in a darker light,” she writes in her fundraising campaign on Seed & Spark. “I thought about the times I did not communicate a resounding “YES” to the other person, verbally or physically, and how they, instead, responded with more persistence to ‘change my mind’, verbally and physically, in big and small ways. I am a BIPOC heterosexual woman so these were dates with men – seemingly ‘nice guys’ – who, I later realized, did not actually understand consent.”
Her story and similar stories of other women gave her the seed of an idea for “Alpha.”
“I believe it’s because we do not talk about these experiences enough nor do we show these experiences enough. This short film aims to continue the conversation. Many of Alpha‘s own cast and crew have had similar experiences to my script and it’s the reason why they wanted to work on this.”
Julie Ann is currently fundraising for her film in the amount of $10,000.
Born and raised in Paramus, N.J., Julie Ann is the daughter of a Filipina teacher from Hagonoy, Bulacan and an Irish American father. She has been acting professionally for nearly 10 years but “Alpha” is her first time as a screenwriter and a producer.
She remembers how the idea for the film woke her up in the middle of the night.
“I just started typing out ideas and lines stream-of-consciousness style into my notes app on my iPhone. I then developed the idea further and shared the screenplay with a couple of people,” she said when reached by The FilAm.
Wearing three hats as an actor, a writer, and a producer, she finds producing the “most challenging.”
She said, “Every film is a small miracle because the stars have to align — the availability of your cast and crew for the shoot dates, the location, the weather, the budget, etc. — there are so many variables you try to have control over and, no matter what, you are still hit by surprises.”
She would love to invite the Filipino community to see the film which is currently in post-production.
Taking a leap
Julie Ann’s mother Wenceslawa Delacruz was born and raised in Hagonoy, Bulacan, the second oldest of five children. She immigrated to the U.S. after graduating from the University of the East and working as a teacher at JASMS (Jose Abad Santos Memorial School) for eight years.
“My mom came to the U.S. to work and send money back home so that her other siblings could go to school,” said Julie Ann. One of the siblings she helped send to school is the celebrated printmaker and National Artist nominee Fil Delacruz. “My mom helped Tito Fil attend art school.”
She said “Alpha,” her first film, is important to her. “I am making my own work for the first time…[and taking a] leap as an artist.”
Shining a light on the dating culture, Julie Ann notes how “when a man goes on a date with a woman, they generally aren’t expecting the possibility of danger in the same way that a woman does with a man. Is there a way to make the power dynamic more equal? And can technology get us there?” – Cristina DC Pastor
(C) The FilAm 2022
