I have found that independent producer/ directorJane Gillooly’s film projects have interesting titles. The Not Dead Yet Club, her newest script co-written with Maribeth Edmonds is an experimental narrative film inspired by the novel “The Hearing Trumpet” by surreal artist and author Leonora Carrington. Difficult to describe, the story examines the life of a 92-year old artist who is living out her life in an old folks home in Spain. In it, Carrington debunks old legends while creating new ones, drawing upon mythology and fantasy alike to people her story with strong female characters and ancient Goddesses. Gillooly got this film title from her Mother’s best friend who wrote in an email where the two were complaining about their children, “tell them your not dead yet,” she wrote.

Artist portrayed by actress Mariam Varon. In “The Not Dead Yet Club,” Jane Gillooly explores how simple everyday tasks become overwhelming challenges for women when their youth and health begin to leave them. Photo by Jane Gillooly.

In “The Not Dead Yet Club,” washing an egg symbolizes the importance of self-determination. Photo by Jane Gillooly.

The Not Dead Yet Club explores the ways that women’s identities change as their bodies and minds become less reliable. Gillooly said she was “intrigued by the surrealism in Carrington’s book as her heroine faced the onset of dementia.”  Gillooly was eager to explore that aspect and she immediately set to it by interviewing elderly women in their 90s that had been artists. She built composite characters from the realities of these women examining what happens to their creative energy when their bodies and minds fail them.  Gillooly set out to understand those vital adjustments with both humor and honesty finding the richness of friendships, the importance of self-determination, and the capacity for growth, even as dementia and death approach.

A case in point is artist Polly Thayer, now 97 who went totally blind at the age of 90. Asked how she contends with not being able to see to paint, Thayer responded, “I still paint in my mind.” In truth, she always painted in her mind, even when she could see. It’s called imagination.

The Not Dead Yet Club is a narrative film about a spirited friendship between two women artists in their eighties, whose candid conversations and artistic collaborations have sustained and enlivened them for decades. Having defied the pressure to move into assisted living facilities, Miriam and Carlotta make a radical decision to live together on their own. The two women create a slightly dysfunctional and temporary utopia, painting, writing and holding court with a bunch of aging bohemians who regularly gather together for their Not Dead Yet Club. As their fine motor skills deteriorate, an old camcorder becomes their last resort as a medium of self-expression. They interview their friends about their changing reality and begin a chronicle of the final chapter of their friendship.

At the completion of the script, Jane Gillooly and Maribeth Edmonds arranged a script reading at the Institute of Contemporary Art with great actresses in their 70s and 80s reading the roles. The project really came alive for a lot of people.

After spending too much time trying to raise money for the project, Gillooly decided that writing grant proposals for the film was not fulfilling enough for her artistic nature, so she started shooting over that summer one of the stories thinking she could shoot a series of short stories, perhaps one per year, ultimately to string them together. She has a lot of hope for the project. Her reality is as an artist; she would shrivel up spending all her time grant writing. She must work!

During a week of extra break this winter, Jane Gillooly will go to southern Africa with co-producer Tracey Kaplan, a South African native who now lives in the Boston area. There they will begin work on a documentary now called The Gogo Film Project. The genesis of the word gogo is Swaziland; it’s a term of endearment that means “granny.” This documentary is about the gogo, a limited supply of grandmothers who in the remote villages and homesteads take care of the thousands of orphaned children left behind by all the young adults that have died of AIDS. These women are the last line of defense for the children. The Gogo Film Project is about the reality of these grandmothers’ lives. A gogo, who may carry a child for one hour to a clinic, can find no support for her own needs there or anywhere else as all the money targeted for southern Africa is earmarked for AIDS, drugs for treating AIDS and some medical care for the orphaned children, but nothing for the gogo. The crisis is if they don’t get some help in these desperate times, the situation will totally fall apart. At best, the gogo solution can only last so long.

A gogo (southern African term of endearment meaning granny) may carry a child on her back for an hour to a medical clinic, but there is no care there for the gogo. Photo by Pat Doaust of the Gogo Project.	The gogo cares for hundreds of children in the villages and homesteads of southern Africa.They are the last line of defense for the children as all the young adults have died of AIDS. Photo by Pat Doaust of the Gogo Project.

It’s interesting to note that a Boston nurse, Pat Daoust, has been going to southern Africa over the last 10 years and started a Gogo Project of her own to help with fund raising for the crisis. She is now also helping with fund raising for the The Gogo Film Project as she sees the extreme need for a documentary made for American audiences, something she can show to help further her important work. In the past and soon again she will arrange a special event in conjunction with The Boston Living Center where donors who wish to support this cause will come to a soup kitchen and pay for the meal offered there. Some donors pay some mighty hefty sums for this bountifully charitable, but regular fare served to the homeless. I call it imaginative fundraising. This is really good stuff (see ad below).

Jane Gillooly and Tracey Kaplan will be hosted by the Cabrini Mission (which has electricity) while they are in Swaziland. They will take a small, 2 person Sony camera package with them and hire a DP there who will do some shooting and a lot of translating. To prepare the nuns at the Cabrini Mission for their arrival, Gillooly and Kaplan took pictures of themselves with their gear and emailed it to them in hopes of warding off any expectations of a huge camera crew arriving to tell their critical story. 

Jane Gillooly and her husband Ken Winokur, founder of the Alloy Orchestra, started a new company.  Box Five restores silent movies so the Alloy Orchestra has a better chance of getting a movie to provide the orchestras accompaniment to in their own permanent repertoire. Access to silent cinema has become increasingly more difficult and that’s why they are buying titles and doing this important restoration work on their own. Box Five has purchased the Valentino films and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA from the Killam Collection. They have fully restored THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. They hope to do SON OF THE SHEIK next, which may take years of legal work as well as restorative work before it can be presented.

Did I mention that Jane Gillooly teaches filmmaking full time at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston? How does she manage to get so much done, to be so accomplished? I asked her. “Good partnering,” she confided.

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Carol Patton is a former GM of several TV and Radio stations around the country. She is the founder and publisher of IMAGINE, and advocates for the region’s Film, Television, and New Media production industry.