Midsummer Nights Film Club
What Movies Teach Us About Narrative

with the Corporeal Writing Squad

Tuesday Nights: June 24, July 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, August 5 // 4:00pm - 5:15pm Pacific - over Zoom (sign up for one, or a few, or the whole series for a discount!)
(A recording of each session will be made available to all registrants for a limited period afterwards.)

While books and reading are the lifeblood of writing, we can learn so much as artists by engaging with other art forms. Standing in front of a painting can unlock the key to a chapter where the writer is feeling stuck, or listening to a song while walking in nature can help her find new ways to tell old stories.

At Corporeal Writing, each member of our squad shares a raging case of cinephilia. WE. LOVE. MOVIES. We devour films. We watch new ones as they emerge and we watch older ones again and again, not just because we enjoy them, but because we are going to school on narrative techniques and styles. Translating what we learn from movies—a temporal or time-based art-form—to our own written narratives is its own kind of art. We want to invite you into our own processes, learn from yours, and find what we can learn from each other.

This summer, we invite you to join us for our Midsummer Nights Film Club to discover together what insights we can carry into our writing by engaging with some of our favorite films.

Midsummer Nights Film Club runs for six weeks, and you can attend all or one or some of the sessions. Each week, a different member of the Corporeal Writing squad will facilitate a discussion around a particular film they’re obsessed with, including some close reads of specific scenes/moments/motifs found in the films, and some generative writing portals to take home with you.

You’ll be responsible for watching the film on your own—or perhaps you and a friend both want to sign up, and can make movie nights together out of it! (For each film, we have included its streaming availability at the time of this class announcement; that may change. We recommend using justwatch.com to look up where any film is currently streaming online. If you’re in Portland, we can’t recommend enough that you rent physical media from legendary Movie Madness; and if you’re in another large city, there’s a good chance you still have a video rental store near you.)

June 24th
Film: Glen or Glenda (1953; dir. Ed Wood)
Nerd: Domi Shoemaker
This film—this attempt, this flailing dress rehearsal of a life—it’s not polished, it’s not proud, but it’s trying so hard not to disappear. Ed Wood cracked himself open with a butter knife and smeared it on screen like, Look. Look at my ache. It’s messy and weird and haunted by Bela Lugosi spouting god-knows-what from a fog machine dreamscape—and I love it for that. It’s a séance of self. It’s a “please” in bad lighting. It’s someone begging you to listen even though they’re whispering through a wig they bought with their last dollar and a hope that already feels broken.
Availability as of 3/18/25: Glen or Glenda streams for free on The Internet Archive! Follow this link: https://archive.org/details/glenorglenda_201305 It’s also available to rent on various streaming services such as AppleTV and Prime.

July 1st
Film: Peppermint Candy (2000; dir. Lee Chang-dong)
Nerd: Janice Lee
Perhaps one of Korea’s most memorable and lasting films, Peppermint Candy chronicles the impact of defining events in Korean history through a series of episodic flashbacks in reverse chronology. We will explore together the presence of han and haunting, the excavation of the past, the impact of trauma, and the significance of small objects and gestures. 
Availability as of 3/18/25: Peppermint Candy is available to stream for free on The Internet Archive! Follow this link. It can also be rented on Apple TV, YouTube, and more.

July 8th
Film: Petite Maman (2021; dir. Céline Sciamma)
Nerd: Daniel Isaiah Elder
This is a short, perfect French film about the things that haunt a family, and the opportunity for each generation to break from the weight of the past. We’ll use the film as a springboard for discussing how in our narratives we can break the rules of reality and memory and time while still retaining a foothold in the feeling of a grounded, real story.
Availability as of 3/18/25: Petite Maman is available to Hulu and Disney+ subscribers; it can also be rented on Apple TV, YouTube, and more.

July 15th
Film: Tuesday (2023; dir. Daina O. Pusić)
Nerd: Melissa Leto
Folx think this is a film about a mother coming to terms with her daughter's terminal illness, but I see deathstory prisming. Giving death the body of a Macaw, offering them a bath, being in conversation and laughing with death, eating death, inviting death in was all very Dickinson to me. Embodying death instead of using it as a point of finality, beginning or ending, reimagines the death story and we will look to Tuesday for ways to lengthen death scene or reimagine death conversation through shapeshifting: literally and figuratively.
Availability as of 3/18/25: Tuesday is available to Hulu and Max and Prime and YouTube subscribers; it can also be rented on Apple TV and YouTube.

July 22nd
Film: The Lost Daughter (2014; dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)
Nerd: Leigh Hopkins
In The Lost Daughter, adapted from Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, director Maggie Gyllenhaal preserves the novel’s interiority while translating it into a visually compelling film. Gyllenhaal maintains Ferrante’s signature themes of female autonomy, desire, and maternal ambivalence, showing a protagonist (played by Olivia Coleman) who is neither entirely likable nor easy to condemn. We’ll focus on the use of sweeping landscapes, sound, and flashbacks to translate the protagonist’s inner turmoil and do some experimenting with these devices in our own writing.
Availability as of 3/18/25: The Lost Daughter is available to Netflix subscribers only.

July 29th
Film: Eve’s Bayou (1997; dir. Kasi Lemmons)
Nerd: Katie Guinn
As a ten year old growing up in 1960s Louisiana, Eve is the middle child of a prominent black doctor in a community called Eve's Bayou. Eve shares the gift of sight with her aunt Mozelle, locally known as The Black Widow.  We will explore together how the ideas of fate, themes of adoration, and misinterpretations can impact memory and storytelling. 
Availability as of 3/18/25: Eve’s Bayou is available for free on Tubi. It’s available to Prime and Peacock subscribers. It can also be rented on AppleTV and YouTube.

August 5th
Film: I Saw the TV Glow (2024; dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
Nerd: Jun Maruyama
I Saw the TV Glow is a queer, trans psychological horror film by Jane Schoenbrun, where two high school students come together to watch a TV show program, the screen enshrouded in an effervescent glow. We will explore: the role of color and glow; the relationship between narrative, storytelling, and agency; time; and allure, focus, and attraction.
Availability as of 3/18/25: I Saw the TV Glow is available to Hulu and Max and Prime subscribers; it can also be rented on Apple TV, YouTube, and more.

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks.

This workshop offers a sliding scale based on your relative financial standing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world; are you expecting an inheritance); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

Individual Film Club Sessions: $20
Film Club Bundle — all seven: $100 (seven for the price of five — a $40 discount!)

Scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

Domi Shoemaker’s favorite movies are generally exercises in downward social comparison, with a nerd-spin on one of the sciences. Whether dystopian sci-fi or psychological thriller, a prominent psychiatric component is the extra juice that turns it irresistible.

Janice Lee is a fan of the long take, muppets, and the Fast and the Furious franchise. 

Melissa Leto can track their queerness growing up through the films they watched on loops: they went from Now and Then to Foxfire to High Art fast. Fully out after Gia.  They are very into scenes.

Leigh Hopkins has the dance scene from Little Miss Sunshine bookmarked on her laptop.

Katie Guinn has found comfort in films since she was a kid, starting with sucking her thumb while watching Return to Oz and The Hugga Bunch countless times. Her favorites now are dark stories through the lens of beauty, and Clay Pigeons. 

Daniel Isaiah Elder’s comfort movies when he’s down in the dumps are Gone Girl and No Country For Old Men, and he’s not quite sure what that says about him.

Jun Maruyama has a deep love for Studio Ghibli films, especially Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. They're drawn to the strange and the mystic, drawn-out scenes, and play with sound. Coraline is also a fav.