The Unlocking Desire Film Project Experience
Join us for an intriguing afternoon at The War Memorial Community Room for the Unlocking Desire Film Project Experience. On Sunday, May 5, 2024, from 2-5 PM, this highly anticipated feature film will be unveiled. Discover the secrets of Unlocking Desire as writer and director Barbara Neri takes you on a dramatic and mysterious filmmaking journey.
Unlocking Desire is a drama, mystery, LGBTQ+ feature length film that at first blush seems to imagine Tennessee Williams’ tragic heroine Blanche DuBois after his play A Streetcar Named Desire. The setting is in an institution where Blanche could have been taken. There she meets a diverse group of inmates who evoke shadow characters in Williams’ play and people from his real life. Their encounters mysteriously flesh out the beliefs that led to Blanche’s downfall, beliefs still in play today. Forgiveness and Love are imminent. But the woman who convinces us she is Blanche is not. Rather she is a Blanche of today, lost in the tragic world of Williams’ play and emerging from the landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans and the cities, such as Detroit, where survivors were scattered.
Mark your calendars and join us at The War Memorial for an unforgettable experience filled with art, culture, and the power of storytelling. Reserve your spot for this free event here:
What you'll experience:
Concept trailers for the film project with score by Nate Young of Wolf Eyes.
Visual art related to the project.
Two scenes for the film recently shot in Detroit on Belle Isle and Dubois Street.
Poetry from the screenplay read by actors. Excerpts from an unpublished poem by Tennessee Williams that inspired Barbara Neri to write Unlocking Desire
The ballad “Heavenly Grass,” music by Paul Bowles and lyrics by Tennessee Williams, recorded for the film and sung by Ethan Daniel Davidson with instrumentals by Gretchen Gonzales Davidson, Warren Defever, and Jordan Schug.
Discover the social relevance of Unlocking Desire, a story about sin and forgiveness and healing trauma with the saving grace of love.
Hear about opportunities to become involved. Unlocking Desire is seeking investors and donors! Unlocking Desire is seeking diversity behind the camera as well as in front of it. Join us and learn more!
Gain exclusive access to the film project’s exclusive website with trailers, character descriptions, pitch deck, and marketing / audience information.
The Community Room is in the Fred M. Alger Center which is to the right of the historic home when you enter the War Memorial Grounds.
About Barbara Neri:
Writer, director, and co-producer Barbara Neri is a published and produced playwright. She is the author of the one woman show The Consolation of Poetry that was published in The Drama Review (2003) and had its New York premiere in 2005. She is the author of the play Unlocking Desire, produced in Detroit in 2011, and its 2017 Marfa Film Festival winning screen adaptation. Unlocking Desire was announced in Variety at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. One of the characters in Unlocking Desire is named after her father, a decorated WWII 82nd Airborne Paratrooper. Now in pre-production, Unlocking Desire is part of a trilogy of diverse love stories in development that Neri has written. The trilogy includes Sonnets from the Portuguese, a feature length screenplay that re-envisions Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett & Robert Browning's powerful love story, and The Forgotten Front, an historic WWII love story that was a 2021 Academy Nicholl quarterfinalist. Barbara Neri’s writing can be found in The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Victorian Poetry, and Performance Research, among others. She is the artistic director of Khoros, a producing arts organization she founded in 1982 that has created and performed major works, directed by Neri, in dance, video, performance art, theater, and film. Neri's work with Khoros has been funded by the Michigan Arts and Culture Council and the NEA and she was the recipient of two prestigious MACC Creative Artist grants.