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The MUSE

The Story, Short Films, Feature Screenplay, and now The Release...

Muse-poster-details_edited.jpg
Zero To Fierce
(02F) festival
Arcata Playhouse
1251 9th St., Arcata, CA
Mar. 4, 2025 | 7pm | $10.

www.PlayhouseArts.Org/ZeroToFierce
The Summitt
Digital Art & Film Gallery
All folx welcome | 21+
1507 G Street, Rooftop
Feb. 28, 2025 | 6-8pm | free

www.The SummittSportsBook.com

The Muse:

Tawny spent more than two decades making film and video work around her early muse, a woman she calls “Samantha,” whom she fell in love with when she was twenty-three and danced, with two Brits, in a review show in “hostess clubs” in Japan. In March of 2025 she premiered the short film, Natasha & Sam, based on the feature screenplay of the same name, along with several other media pieces about her efforts to tell this story. She had come to realize, just as her graduate professor claimed, that even though the feature film did not get made, that with these collected media pieces and films about the film- she actually has made the movie.

Why This, Why Now?

Because of two primary factors:

First, I realized it was time to celebrate and honor my most recently completed film, Natasha & Sam, which was also my graduate thesis film from 2019.  Five years onwards from finishing it I am ready to add it to my repertoire on YouTube where I’ve put up my other work.  This film was fully completed in 2020… it was a film made in the background of a lot of emotional storms in my life, but a piece of work about my earlier life- and a time that was and still remains very important to me.  I shot this film in February 2018 in Montreal. Very shortly after this my marriage fell apart. Six-months later I relocated back to Northern California. Soon after this I fell in love with Bunny; then we had the Pandemic, Bunny got cancer, and then she died and my world upended… 

Also, as I was brainstorming the right way for this work to be honored, the real-life “Samantha” reached out to me in November 2024- for the first time in 19 years!  In discussing this reconnection with my friend, Char, she said, “it sounds like she is your Muse” -and that inspired me to wrap all the media pieces together into this package (as I had also concluded some months ago to let go of the idea of producing the feature script, and put it out there to the world, as an offering.)  Additionally, I’ve realized that it wasn’t obvious (to anyone but me!) that my 2005 film, Lost Almost, was also about this same story, same event in my life.  So here we go: I now get to honor all elements of this story, my past, and the work I’ve done around it- and I so look forward to sharing it with you.

pre Festival Artist Interview:

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