The Esquire Theatre today begins the second week of showing The Fits, the latest Cincinnati-shot movie to get a national release.
For those who have been following Cincinnati’s presence in the movies over the past few years, as both a filming location (Carol, Miles Ahead) and as a scripted setting for the action (the animated Anomalisa), there’s much to be excited about as The Fits builds an audience. It was shot on a very tight budget in the West End, primarily at Cincinnati Recreation Commission’s Lincoln Center on Linn Street using members of the celebrated Q-Kidz Dance Team, especially 9-year-old (when cast) Royalty Hightower.
For a short (72-minute) indie film with a small budget, it’s showing promise. Last weekend, it played on four screens in three cities (New York, Cincinnati and two Los Angeles theaters) and had a per-screen average of $3,613.
This weekend, it opens in San Francisco, San Jose, Irvine and North Hollywood in California and at Sag Harbor in New York. And next weekend, it’s set to expand to 14 more cities,ncluding Columbus.
Its fictional story is, as director/co-writer Anna Rose Holmer has described it in press materials, “a meditation on movement as seen from the perspective of adolescent girls.”
The Brooklyn-based Holmer (with writers Lisa Kjerulff and Saela Davis) has chosen to explore two parallel types of movement – the precise and artful practices of a youth dance team as well as the mysterious “fits” that contagiously spread among the girls and could be mass hysteria.
The film is being distributed by the indie company Oscilloscope Laboratories. Holmer, whose background is in documentaries, developed the story for the Venice Biennale Cinema College. After a long search for a suitable dance team, she discovered Q-Kidz and arranged to shoot here. The main character, Hightower’s Toni, also boxes.
The film premiered last year at the Venice International Film Festival, and this year played the Sundance Film Festival and New York’s New Directors/New Films before opening two weekends ago in New York.
The New York Times gave it a positive review on the front page of its Weekend Arts I section. In the June 8 CityBeat, contributing film editor tt stern-enzi gave the movie an A-.
“We could not have made this film without the support of the West End community in Cincinnati,” Holmer said in the film’s press notes. “We shot most of the film in a single location, adapting the script when necessary to fit in that world.
“The staff at the community center where we filmed was incredibly generous. The local community didn’t just embrace our film; they shaped it. We spent a lot of time listening and observing and weaved that reality into our vision of the film.
“In documentary filmmaking, the concept of shared authorship is generally accepted. We wanted to apply that collaborative nature to a narrative structure.”
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This article appears in Jun 15-22, 2016.