An interview with India Menuez, Adinah Dancyger and Victoria Cronin on “Girl Props”

The latest project of India Menuez, Adinah Dancyger and Victoria Cronin is raising funds for “Girl Props,” a film they have written and hope to star in together with their friend Chanterelle Ribes. Using a road trip across the American West as a setting and propellant, “Girl Props” aims to examine the social bounds of women in film.

PAIGE SILVERIA – What was the process behind the conception and development of the film? Could you expound on the “tropes that dehumanize women in film,” which you hope to deconstruct? How do you hope to achieve this?

GIRL PROPS – We have felt ourselves play roles in our public lives that did not reflect our private selves. Exploring this with a camera we started to create characters to reflect this alternating sense of self-awareness. Familiar with a history of cinema that used female characters to tell the stories of male protagonists, or showed female protagonists limited by stereotypes, we hope to apply humor to reveal the absurdities of these constructs. As three writers, directors and actors, our approach is unique in showing multiple perspectives of the characters.

PAIGE SILVERIA – Are there any key scenes from films that you admire, that took a big step in the “right” direction for the role, portrayal, etc of women?

GIRL PROPS – Barbara Loden’s film “Wanda” definitely strikes a chord. She directs and is the protagonist. Made in the ’70s, Wanda is a mother and wife who deserts this duty in order to find something else. She doesn’t know what she wants, but she knows what she doesn’t. She finds herself in precarious situations ultimately ending the film on a tragic and open ended note. She’s equally flawed as she is charming. It’s a beautiful, upsetting and doesn’t make a spectacle out of her experience. We’re thinking a lot about Vera Chytilová’s “Daisies” in how she uses humor to discuss darker thematic undertones, that the surrealist aesthetic would suggest otherwise.

PAIGE SILVERIA – India, you’re increasingly visible as your career rises; how much of your public persona do you consciously craft? How does it differ from who you are privately?

GIRL PROPS – It feels ironic to try and objectively speak of my “public persona” within it’s realm, as in here: an interview. Obviously with something like Instagram or my website, there is an element of curation. What it means to be “real” is a question I ask myself regularly. To work with Adinah and Victoria, people who knew me before I was acting or in any spot light, is something special.  They are women I believe in, whose opinions I have grown to respect deeply and whose collaboration I cherish. With Girl Props specifically, we create it from a private realm, but eventual viewership is what completes a film.

 
Find out more and contribute to the Girl Props kickstarter here

Text by Paige Silveria, Ungraded test footage stills courtesy of Girl Props

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