On the Fringe: Olivia Bolling’s Cinematic Renaissance
Photo by Jillian Cheney
Olivia Bolling stood under the golden lights on the cobbled streets of Via Por Santa Maria in the Italian city of Florence, glitter shining from the corners of her eyelids, and a small grin stuck to her face.
She was about halfway through filming her short film, Sticky, for a class project. It came as no surprise to her friends that this four-minute, 37-second film would go on to win the BIFF's—Brooklyn Independent Film Festival—Best Student Film Award for 2020, which had around 500 entries this year.
Bolling anticipated that the film was going to be special. What once started as a poem, some random assortments of scripts, and doodles in notebooks, became Bolling’s first award-winning piece.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The morning before I met with her, I sat down on my bed to watch Sticky for the first time.
About 35 seconds in, I started to put my notebook down. Two minutes and 30 seconds in, my jaw fell open. Some inaudible gasping noises came from my mouth. The credits started rolling.
It felt dirty like I had watched something incredibly intimate. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but let’s just say it is almost NSFW material. As her aunt put it, “He’s got a fever … and the only cure is more gum! It’s like Violet Beauregard meets Porn … but in a nice way!!” I wanted to watch it again. I wanted it to be longer. I wanted to know the reason why.
Bolling is in the middle of finishing her final year at King’s and is majoring in Media, Culture, and the Arts with a concentration in filmmaking. Her time working with the Media Lab and working with others on sets spiked her interest in film back in 2017 as a freshman at King’s. Eager to jump into her career as a filmmaker, she decided to pack her bags for a semester and head to Italy which she would later define as her “Renaissance moment.”
Stuck in the Suburbs
Ginevra Zanoni, Bolling’s roommate abroad, fellow cinematographer, and best friend, was one of the first people to hear the pitch for Sticky.
Photo by Shannon Mason
“I remember her saying that she really wanted to do something that was kind of unusual,” Zanoni said in a phone interview. Her voice was cutting through the hum of cicadas chirping in the background. “She was just telling me about this idea that she had about gum and there’s a man who is obsessed with gum that has already been chewed by others.”
Zanoni recalled meeting Bolling for the first time when they both arrived in Italy for the study abroad program, New York Film Academy in Florence. They started talking to each other and found out they were roommates for the next three months, which turned out to be a match made in heaven for the young filmmakers.
“We started talking about our influences, the kind of cinema that we like, directors and stuff, and we found out that we had a lot in common,” Zanoni said. “We both really like independent filmmaking and we like the same movies. I figured out as soon as I met her that she was just such a creative person and she is really supportive of other people's work.”
Bolling grew up in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Israel due to her father’s job in the U.S. government. When she moved back to America at the age of 10, she experienced the suburbs for the first time.
“We moved to Northern Virginia, which is like the pinnacle of white suburban America,” Bolling said in a sing-song voice. “When I got to high school, I went to a super, super, small Christian school, like a private conservative Christian school. I grew up thinking American High School was like High School Musical because that was what I had watched growing up. So I got here and my school was super strict and super conservative. Like, I had to wear skirts to my knees and I was thinking, 'This is not High School Musical.'“
Bolling came to realize that nothing is like High School Musical. She immediately dove into the imaginary world of film and creative outlets.
Bossy
But she, like many other women in the filmmaking community, realized the industry is not all fun and games. She recognized early on that when stepping onto a set for the first time, women are often treated differently. While taking occasional sips from her oat milk latte, Bolling shared an all too familiar plot:
“As a woman, there have been times where I'm on set and I realize there are things that I have to be thinking about and worrying about that normally other people, like guys, don't think about,” she said. “Being a woman in the film industry—it was never something that I was aware of like, 'I'm a girl and that makes it different.' But also, looking back, yeah there were times where either I wasn't listened to or like I had to prove my worth going onto the set when it shouldn't have been that way. You're either labeled like really bossy or labeled like you don't know what you're doing. It's never a complete balance, it's one or the other.”
Bolling remembers one time specifically where her friend and she were cut early on a set because the rest of the crew didn’t think they were strong enough to carry any equipment. She wanted to ask, “Why do you think I can’t carry this?” But she knows it was because of her gender. More subtly, she also experienced people doubting she knew what she was doing on a set, something that Zanoni also recalls happening. They both fear getting labeled as the “bossy,” director.
“Being a woman, if you're being bossy on set, you're not entitled to be bossy like men,” Zanoni said. “When they're bossy it's fine, but when a woman does it, it's wrong. But that's just because like how society was built. You unconsciously feel like you're doing something wrong when you're just doing your job. Whether you're a man or a woman, you're directing.”
Behind the scenes photo of filming for Bolling’s film | Photo by Ginevra Zanoni
Every Oscar award season, women in film are met with the same problem: there are not enough female directors represented in the film industry and not enough are receiving awards. Among these women, there is Greta Gerwig, director of Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), who received critical acclaim and multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Following the 2019 Oscar season, Gerwig fans were furious because she didn’t get Best Director for Little Women, a category that no women were nominated for. Many fans hit Twitter claiming that she was snubbed.
In an L.A. Times op-ed, Devon Proudfoot and Aaron Kay write that Gerwig was robbed because the creativity of women is judged more harshly than men.
“The same pattern can be found in other artistic domains. In ongoing experimental research we find that people characterize an audio clip of ambient instrumental music as more creative when they believe the composer is male,” they write. “Other researchers have found similar results. This research demonstrates that gender stereotypes influence who and what people deem to be creative, and that bias can creep into their evaluations in ways that they may not even realize.”
Despite the backlash the committee received, Gerwig is positive about the way the industry is moving.
“There have been great strides, and we’ve got to keep going: keep writing, keep making, keep doing,” she told the New York Times.
Gerwig’s hope for the future paves a way for young, female filmmakers like Bolling and Zanoni to keep on writing, making, and doing. Bolling realizes this is what makes her role in this story crucial.
“This might sound so weird, but I want to be a good filmmaker, be recognized for my art in a way that transcends gender roles,” Bolling said. “It’s not that I am not proud to be a woman, but I want people to respect my art for the sake of the art.”
The Girl and the Coffee Creamer
Brittany Schrader and I met at 14th street Union Square on the pavemented staircase. The steps baked in the sun.
Bolling and Schrader were roommates their first year in the city at King’s, a crucial time for making friends and meeting new people. At the beginning of the year, Bolling was texting “some guy” and it came up that she didn't have any coffee creamer.
“This guy ended up stopping at our apartment with some coffee creamer,” she said. “She lost it—in the best way. She was like, 'Oh my god, maybe I like him.' And I was thinking, ‘Well he just bought you coffee creamer, it is not anything serious.’ But it’s so perfect because that is her personality; she is excited about everything.”
Just as we were about to get into the deep stuff, a small woman approached us and said, “Wow, you remember your freshman year?”
Schrader lit up and looked speechless. Needless to say, I was lost. As Schrader burst into greetings with this woman, she stopped and told me, “This is Olivia’s aunt!”
Out of the 8.3 million people living in the city, of course, we would run into Bolling’s aunt. I am convinced that Bolling’s life is just one big movie set; it’s the only explanation for this meeting. Tamar Gross-Bolling offered to spill embarrassing details about her niece when she was a baby, but something much more tender slipped from her lips.
Photo by Shannon Mason
“Olivia is genuinely sweet and motivated, like all these things that I used to wonder, when is she gonna trip up and fall?” She said. “She can't be that good. Now, to be 21 and still so sweet to the bone. It's crazy, sometimes when Olivia is so sweet, I sit there and I'm like, 'Are you mocking me?'"
With all that kindness, Schrader notes, comes a tendency to be taken advantage of. According to Zanoni and Schrader, Bolling will put 100 percent into every project. She has been known to assist on sets and receive no monetary benefit in return. A slave to writing, making, and doing. Recently, she was asked to be the Assistant Director for a friend’s film called, Breakfast at the Bodega, by Marina Barham. Bolling said she slept a total of 15 hours that week of filming, but she thinks it was worth every moment.
“I want to be involved in bringing people’s stories to life,” she stated simply.
Vienna Waiting
A voice text was sent to me from Schrader saying, “I was thinking about the last question you asked me yesterday, and I have an answer. First of all, any song by Harry Styles reminds me of Olivia. But also ‘Vienna’ by Billy Joel reminds me of her because she sang that for the Open Mic Night and I cried.”
The Troubadour Open Mic Night occurred a few days after Bolling decided to leave New York to study abroad in Italy. She wore a sparkly mesh star top that complemented her silver eyelids. She approached the microphone in front of an audience made up of students at The King’s College. She started softly singing the first stanza while her friends eagerly sat in their chairs.
“Slow down, you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart, then tell me
Why are you still so afraid?”
Bolling admitted that she chose to sing “Vienna” because the lyrics reminded her of herself.
“In my life, I've seen times where I'm so anxious to grow up and prove myself,” Bolling said. “So, singing that was like a culmination of a really, really tough sophomore year and it was after I had just found out that I got into the program. I just think, for the time that I was in, the song meant so much to me and it was so relevant to where I was and where I was gonna go.”
Then she left and headed out to Florence, Italy for the fall semester of her junior year. Being abroad and in a film program pushed the boundaries of her creative style and helped her coin a directing style that works with her visions.
Bolling’s directing philosophy goes like this: When you feel good about yourself, you can direct and take control of a set much better. Oh and make sure to wear glitter, she advises.
Person on the Fringe
For Bolling, winning an award for Sticky is just the beginning of her successes. The night that she hosted a viewing party of Sticky, Schrader said everyone had one similar question at the end.
What was the inspiration?
What does this mean?
Bolling usually laughs when people ask her this question and then says, “I love stories about a person on the fringe,” Bolling said. “I like to write a good taboo and atypical story.” She surrounds the lead character from Sticky in dark shadows, with little leaks of light appearing when needed. Her bold colors are something that demands to be noticed, but the plot itself is something that sticks with the audience.
Coming from the words of other people, they say Sticky is represented by “a modern dating culture,” which Bolling half agreed with and half rejected. Perhaps the mystery around its meaning is the reason she won BIFF’s Best Student Film Award.
“Our program had a screening with the professors and everyone from our school and when the credits rolled, everyone was thrilled,” Zanoni said about the first time her program watched Sticky. “They didn't understand what was going on. They were all in awe because it was really good.”
Bolling said her poetry is the source of inspiration behind her films. The poem in particular that influenced Sticky was actually about a piece of gum that holds someone in place, she said.
“Actually, a lot of her [Bolling’s] poetry reminds me of a lot of her scripts,” Zanoni said. “She just takes her emotions, stuff that's happening in her life, and she just put it into words. Sometimes scripts or sometimes poetry. It's just like emotions, feelings of hers that are put on to paper.
Reading Out Loud
As Bolling’s senior year comes to a close, she is not sure if life will carry her off to film school, Italy again, or right here in New York City. She does not know if she will be the next Christopher Nolan, or her inspirations like Gaspar Noé, Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky, Francis Ford Coppola, and Stanley Kubrick (Yes, I had to look up some of those, too.) She is working on a new film, but the details about her new story will have to wait, she said.
Bolling is rarely shy. Typically, she is the girl giggling over boys bringing her creamer. Sometimes, she is the composed film director. But, then there is the vulnerable version, only revealed by a certain shift in her voice. The times I have noticed it were moments she was reading poetry out loud.
I requested she meet me at Prospect Park and read her favorite poem for me, Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Do you still remember: falling stars.”
Her inner eye sparkles kept catching my eye. It felt once again like we were on a movie set, everything coming together in the most picturesque way. The park trees hung over us while an old man sat nearby reading on a blanket. Off in the distance, someone was playing Bon Iver while people gathered to practice yoga.
She looked at me and said, “Just tell me when.”
I prompted her with a nod and a small hand gesture. Her voice grew softer, the same way it was when she sang “Vienna,” at Open Mic Night.
Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes — do you recall? …
She simply put her phone down as a small grin stuck to her face, the same way it did under the Florence street lights many months ago.