Artistic director Hannah Cullen delves into her latest visionary project, Little Boxes, unraveling the inspiration behind the film and her unique approach to storytelling through dance and narrative.
Hannah Cullen has an artistic mindset and passion for art and dance and is proud to be the artistic director of cullen+them a nonprofit company producing work for the stage and screen. She is a director who thinks outside the box and has her works shown at The Flea Theater, 92Y, National Sawdust, and more. Lately, she has been the visionary mind behind the film Little Boxes, which had its World Premiere back in 2023 at the Bushwick Film Festival. The film tells the story of a last-ditch effort to salvage their childhood bonds that doesn’t go as planned when a group of tech-addicted 20-somethings are confronted with unexpected change. Film Fest Report was given the opportunity to connect with Cullen to go over her artistic ambition as she tells a story through dance and the unique narrative.
“I knew early on that the vision for the project was a melding of forms, and integrating moving movement and this physical language that I have developed over my career into a narrative structure.”
Kristin Ciliberto: What inspired a film like this? How did the conversation go with your creative team about creating this project?
Hannah Cullen: Well, the initial inspiration for the film really came from my own frustration with technology, my personal experience with technology that I was noticing in myself. I really relate to the character of Eli (Maggie Joy). I think, the social media component of technology and the addictiveness of that aspect was something that really like made me uncomfortable in myself, and I would often find myself getting lost in my phone, as we do getting sucked into these holes, and then snapping out of it on the other side and feeling really depleted, anxious, really dissatisfied. I also noticed it a lot within my interpersonal relationships, with my family and my friends, just like how technology was really interfering with our time that we were spending together. So that was the initial inspiration. I have a background in dance and I knew I wanted to create a film. I knew that early on the vision for the project was a melding of forms and integrating moving movement and this physical language that I have developed over my career into a narrative structure and then collaborative process that was the second.
Kristin Ciliberto: How did you come up with that?
Hannah Cullen: I do have a very rich background in collaboration and grew up doing a lot of collaboration mostly in the dance world. There was an integration of theatre and writing early on in my life, too. I really do my best to prioritize the collaborative process and film is such an amazing medium for that because it needs to be so collaborative. It started with collaboration with the cast in building the work because a lot of the movement was created in a rehearsal studio together. I was also interested as I was writing the script and liked their personal experiences of technology. I encouraged them to share them with me. The next phase was really finding my AD (Assistant Director) who with this project was super vicious in its schedule. We shot the bulk of the film in seven days essentially on a soundstage and a set. Then the interview sequences were shot separately, but it was super essential that I found both an AD who was amazing and could really keep us on track and a cinematographer that was willing to go for such an ambitious project in the sense that it was a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time.
Kristin Ciliberto: It must have been extremely tough and stressful to film on the soundstage in seven days. That must have been stressful on you and the team, correct?
Hannah Cullen: Yeah! It was interesting. It was ambitious and at the same time because it was one location and the location happened to be so nice. In the sense that it was air conditioned, we could get food, the environment was still really positive even though, you know, the days we were pushing. But to your point, I had spent so much time working with the cast by the time they were on set, they were moving quickly and they had rehearsed the scene so many times. We did a lot of prep work and you can see that from the dance sequences. We also did walkthroughs with the cinematographer and we blocked out the scenes ahead of time for the camera movement because that was so essential. Cinematographer Adam Kolodny was just an awesome collaborator. He was so willing to both offer his perspective and his vision and follow the direction that I wanted and work to achieve the overall vision. We had an amazing team and many other collaborators.
“I think movement is such a rich form of communication, because it’s so human. ”
Kristin Ciliberto: I love the fact that you brought up your background in dance because that is the biggest aspect for this film. First, I saw the trailer and I was like, ‘wow this is different’. It’s not a musical. It’s a dance performance art film. Why dance?
Hannah Cullen: It’s sort of a two part answer. The first part is, in general, I think movement is such a rich form of communication, because it’s so human. Even though dance sometimes feels very abstract and can sometimes be inaccessible, I have a lot of friends in the arts who commented on feeling like dance isn’t as accessible in terms of understanding it and making sense of it. My goal has always been to use movement with narrative so that it ideally feels accessible to an audience and it connects them to their sort of more visceral, senses and, and so I’ve always thought movement had a really unique ability to tell stories because there’s so often where we like, we can’t say things with words and obviously body languages already utilized so much in filmmaking and nonverbal communication. Dance feels like a natural extension of that. For this movie specifically, because the technology is so isolating and the physical experience of being on technology is essentially you’re hunched over looking down at your phone and completely stagnant. I thought that movement could be an interesting way to contrast and bring in a big sense of physicality into a space that is very confined and trapped. There are movement sequences when the characters are sort of in the set with a color and they’re dancing. The goal for that was to have the movement be representative of their internal experience. So even though they’re stagnant and their internal experience is very active, as is the case with our relationships with technology.
“I thought that movement could be an interesting way to contrast and bring in a big sense of physicality into a space that is very confined and trapped. ”
Kristin Ciliberto: Now, going into the casting process? Did you cast these performers based on their dancing skills? Or did you know them as friends that you knew, they could also act and bring dance?
Hannah Cullen: I found the people. I had been making work for stage and theater, so in a way I also see this piece sort of like a play, in a sense that component of it. Some of the actors I’ve been with I had been working with for years prior to making the film in previous pieces, and so I had developed friendships and work relationships with them. The actors who played Jordan (Avery-Jai Andrews) and Adrian (Ramiro Batista) I had worked with for many years. Nico (Quinn Dixon) and Eli (Maggie Joy) got hired closer to the project, but still prior to the pandemic. Before the pandemic, we were planning to do it as a stage production. In the pandemic, I decided that I thought the project would be better for film and it was an opportunity to do something that we weren’t able to do live at the time anyway. So we adapted it. Those people auditioned both as movers and actors, but they all had various experiences. Some of them have more experience with acting, some more with dancing.
Kristin Ciliberto: Interesting that you say that. The one thing that also really stands out for this film is the musical score. Can you discuss bringing on composers? Did you do a lot of extensive research to find the pieces that you wanted to use?
Hannah Cullen: Yeah, so we did. We worked with a composer who composed the entire score from scratch. One of the people I worked very collaboratively with in addition to my editor, Skyler Johnson, who’s an incredibly important collaborator on the film, she did such amazing work and so much work in the editing process.
Kristin Ciliberto: I’m just going to comment, the editor did a really great job. The way that it bounces off well with the score, it really does a unique way of tying those two together.
Hannah Cullen: Yeah, I’m glad that that came across because I think that was something we’ve worked extensively in the cut of the film, and the score and the sound design really working together. The composer, Alvaro Buendia, we connected through the audio company 1000 Words, that’s what I worked with for all audio, post audio, for the score, and for sound design and mixing. A lot of back and forth on the score that took a long time to get it. We knew that the film needed to be driven by the music because of how essential movement was to the film. We knew that sound was going to be important. The sound designer was really key because they were able to like to emphasize the technology in ways that were super important to the film as well and making the technology really feel like an additional character.
Kristin Ciliberto: Is there also a chance that you eventually do want to bring this project to a stage?
Hannah Cullen: I have considered it. It could be adapted in that way. I think it would need to be probably recast because of where all these actors live and their availability. I have questioned whether I should. I have other things that I’m working on currently. I will continue to think about it and it also depends on where the film goes. I’m waiting to hear back from the few more festivals we want to get in, we want to have distribution for it and have it more accessible online. It depends I may decide in the next year or something that I would like to bring it back to stage and sort of adapt it once more.
Kristin Ciliberto: We love film festivals and you had a chance to show the film at the Bushwick Film Festival. Can you discuss what it’s like going to Bushwick and seeing Little Boxes premiere at the festival?
Hannah Cullen: I was really thrilled to have a New York premiere! I grew up in New York and the film was shot in New York. That felt so important to me. It was meaningful to be able to have so many people get to see the film and because so much of our community is based in New York that was a huge pleasure. The Bushwick Film Festival, knowing that it specializes in or is focused on up-and-coming emergent indie filmmakers, felt like a huge honor to be included in the programming this year. It’s interesting to be submitting a feature to film festivals because the feature category is more competitive and that there are way fewer slots because of the short programming and because there are those short blocks. There are more opportunities for shorts to be shown. I think Bushwick had something like 10 features or around that give or take. It was amazing to be included. As a feature film that is in such a fantastic festival because I know that the competition is fierce, especially for the feature category given that there are fewer available slots. The last thing I’ll say about Bushwick is it was cool. I went to NYU (New York University), and there were so many NYU people there too. It was cool to go to some of their opening night programming and connect with some people and then also go to some other screenings and see other people’s work.
Kristin Ciliberto: That’s amazing! My final question for you is, it sounds like you are just constantly working and doing some creative projects. What is next for you that we could see from you in the next five years or so?
Hannah Cullen: I have a short film concept currently in the works after doing a feature. I’m excited about doing a smaller scale project that can be the features and they have a long life and they take a long time to edit and put together. I really would like to bring a short to some festivals soon. So that is coming up soon and is about codependency and relationships. I have a series concept that I’m working on and then I have a live show that I’m producing at Performance Space New York which is a theater in the East Village in April.
