Columbus filmmakers find their way back with ‘I Had a Really Good Day’

Mags Chamberlain and Jenna Anderson created the production company waxpoet four years ago with the aim of highlighting the perspectives and experiences of the overlooked communities the two care about, including people of color, queer individuals, the disabled and more.

“Really anything other than what is commonly seen on screen and behind the camera,” said Anderson, who joined Chamberlain for a late April interview. “And I think our goal is to do that in everything we do, but in very nuanced and interesting ways rather than just having a queer character where the whole thing is centered on their queerness.”

“I feel like we rarely get to go see films where it’s like, ‘Oh, that was just about life,’” Chamberlain said. “In a lot of films that include diverse characters, they’re either a side character or stereotype, or it’s something that feels almost educational, like it’s not actually for the population it’s about. … I always want to make films with that community in mind first, where if it’s a story about a Black woman, it’s not made for white people. It’s so Black women can see themselves first and foremost, and if a white person can take something from it, that’s great.”

Part of this desire stemmed from the reality that neither Chamberlain nor Anderson could recall a time coming up when they saw their own experiences reflected on the big screen in a way that sparked any sense of recognition. “I don’t know if I’ve ever … seen something where it was like, wow, that feels like me, or that feels like something I’ve experienced, or that maybe opened my eyes to feeling less alone,” Chamberlain said. “But that’s part of what’s exciting about making films, the idea of giving that to somebody else.”

After launching the production company, though, some of these early creative ambitions were necessarily shelved amid the economic realities of growing a new business, which meant prioritizing for a time the kind of commercial work that could sustain day-to-day operations. A couple of years back, however, the two were struck by an unshakeable sense that they had perhaps in some way lost touch with that early drive in the pursuit of stability.

“We had been doing this for two-and-a-half years and we hadn’t made anything of our own,” Chamberlain said. “We hadn’t made anything to clearly be able to say, ‘This is us, and these are the stories we want to tell.’”

“We were just kind of like, what are we doing? Our 22-year-old passion, our naivete, where did it go?” Anderson said. “Why are we not focusing on the films we want to make?”

These questions gradually led the two to their new short film, “I Had a Really Good Day,” which will make its theatrical debut at the Gateway Film Center on Sunday, May 4, screening as part of local shorts block at the Cinema Columbus Film Festival. (Click here for a full schedule of Cinema Columbus films and venues.)

The remarkable short follows a young Black woman, Summer (Kiah Butts), as she navigates her depression in the course of a normal day, her isolation reflected in everything from the framing (the camera often pulls in tight, giving a sense that Summer is alone even as she navigates crowds) to the way the handful of other characters who appear on screen remain an out-of-focus blur. At one point, Summer dances alone in her apartment in a way that plays less like a form of release than the manifestation of a looming panic attack, a feel heightened by her sharp, short breaths, which soundtrack the scene. And even when she escapes to nature, briefly sitting in the sun outside of her home, she experiences little relief, the sound of chirping crickets steadily rising to an anxiety-inducing pitch. 

“When I experience depression, it’s very high functioning, where people would never even know,” said Anderson, who expressed her desire to create a film that centered the kind of depression unique to Black women and informed by “historical, generational Black trauma and what it means to be a Black woman in the world.” “I remember in college I’d be walking around, laughing and joking with people. And it wasn’t like I was wearing a mask, not totally anyway, but more like there were two halves of me: one that was happy to be with my friends, and one underneath in this dark, depressed mood. And I wanted to depict that, and not necessarily what it feels like to be crying all over the place. I wanted to depict the kind of depression where your place isn’t completely dirty, and you put your dishes away, talk to your friends, and go out, but you’re still sad.”

Both Anderson and Chamberlain described “I Had a Really Good Day” as the first step in reconnecting with the ideals that spurred the creation of waxpoet. “As two people running a company, we’ve been on a lot of people’s narrative sets and documentary sets, which has been great, but it’s a whole other thing to see your vision come to life,” said Anderson, who expressed confidence this vision would continue to expand in the coming months and years, with the two currently developing a film that will follow two trans women on a road trip through the rural Midwest. “It almost feels now like we’re back to step one, but at 28 and 27 with better brains and more life experience.”