Saturday Church [2018] Full HD Movie Free Download
I was like, “That seems sort of
ass-backwards.” And so they had some thoughts. I spoke with people of the
community, and then also, when the script was written, I would talk to the kids
that were cast, who are from the community and who had never acted before —
which to me was paramount. There was no way I was white-washing it or not
casting from within the community. There’s so much talent within the community
to not have people from in the community portray roles. And it’s hard enough
for people within the community to get work as it is, so then to like offer the
role to somebody else or outside the community is insane.
To tell the story, the director dove into the community and spent
time with a real-life Saturday program for LGBTQ youths, mostly trans and
gender non-conforming, at an Episcopal Church in NYC’s West Village. In recent years, the challenges facing
trans youth have garnered so much public attention, you’ve surely heard a story
like Ulysses’ before — although you’ve never heard it quite like this, as
Cardasis’ goosebump-inducing songs (composed and co-written by Nathan Larson)
elevate this otherwise familiar tale to a higher realm. For the first 15
minutes, which is the too-long wait until its first musical number drops, “Saturday Church” feels like
countless other “confused” teen movies, from “Pariah” to “Viva,” to name just
two semi-recent breakouts. St. Luke in the Fields, is a
weekly program that offers social services and food for struggling youth off
the streets. He also cast members of the community as well as trans actors
Indya Moore and MJ Rodriguez (who can also be seen in FX’s upcoming Pose).
It was first and foremost, to me, about telling a
human story and it’s a different voice than many people aren’t used to hearing.
But it’s a coming of age story, it’s a love story, it’s a story about family
and community and all of that stuff. So that’s how I tried to lead. Yes, it’s
about this community and I absolutely hope that a community that rarely gets to
see itself onscreen sees itself and feels pride and says, “That’s my story.”
Fortunately, some of the feedback that I’ve been getting so far, whether it’s
through tweets or Instagram messages or things where people said, “Oh, my God,
thank you” or “Oh, my God. Finally, I see myself on screen.” But it’s also been
really great to see the reaction from people that are not from this community
say, “Oh, my God, I realize I’ve had my eyes closed.”
Eventually, Cardasis
left food service and started planning events for Susan Sarandon's ping pong
club SPIN, all the while continuing to work hard on his side hustle. Cardasis
recalled how, in his free time, he managed to turn a small sketch into a three
month NYC theater run, and then turn that run into the web series that won him
two WGA awards. Cardasis also started the Lower East Side Film Festival during
this time. "We felt like there was no festival that really focuses on
people that make films for no money, so we put 30 fold out chairs into the
storefront and had a pulldown screen, and thus LESFF was born," he said.
Deadline sat down with Cardasis and
he went into detail about making Saturday
Church and how he set aside his ego to tell an authentic
story. In musicals, people sing when emotions are too
strong for regular speech. All of these songs are performed with an urgent need
to express, and it is that urgency I remember, not the tunes or the lyrics.
There's a rough kind of poetry to these sequences, and they're key to why "Saturday Church"
works (and why it will probably work really well with a young audience). They
come straight from the heart.
Inspired by his own experiences volunteering at St. Luke in the
Fields in the West Village, Damon captures the story of Ulysses (Luka Kain), a teenage boy
who is coping with his father’s death and struggling to fill the shoes as man
of the house — especially because it’s not man’s shoes he wants to be in.
Ulysses continues to get caught trying on women’s clothing by his mother and
his conservative aunt, until he is kicked out of the home and disconnected from
the rest of his family. Thanks to a crew of similar kids seeking refuge,
Ulysses finds himself embraced for who he truly is for the first time in his
life. Damon beautifully tells this important, coming-of-age, coming-out story
through musical numbers, choreographed dances and heart-wrenching script. Here,
he answers 5 Key Questions about his inspiration for Saturday Church.
It might have been better to start off the film
with a musical number, just to establish the genre from the jump. As it stands,
the first number in "Saturday Church"
comes almost 20 minutes in, and it features Ulysses and his four tormentors at
school transforming into a dance troupe, the boys catapulting off the
surrounding lockers, or carrying Ulysses above them, and the whole sequence is
beautiful, awkward and earnest. (Loni Landon did the expressive choreography.)
Ebony's "Conditions of Love" is an interior soliloquy which morphs
into a group number, the kids at Saturday Church dancing in a reverie of connection all around
Ulysses. There's a beautiful number in a homeless shelter when people lying on
the floor rise up out of sleep into a group dance. Amara's "Come Sun or
Come Rain" is an emotional reassurance to her troubled son that she will
always love him. The numbers that work best are those that come from a symbolic
and almost abstract place (homeless people rising into a ballet, bullies
transformed into a chorus line), where characters inhabit a dreamspace
transcending horrible circumstances.
I think there’s something universal about music and things that
can be conveyed in a melody or a lyric or song that sometimes that sort of
surpasses many other things, and I think it’s a great way to sort of
connect people. When you hear a song, you’ll instantly be pulled into a mood
whether it’s you want to dance or you’re feeling sad or whatever. I think it
has a very powerful trigger and I think that when you’re dealing with subject
material that some people may not be aware of or other people may not be able
to relate to, it’s a great unifier. You might not know what it’s like to be a
transperson of color, but you know what it’s like to feel lonely or you know
what it’s like to fall in love or you know what it’s like to be sad or be
empowered. I’d always thought of the magical realism and the fantasy being an
element of escapism in various ways. But it was going from that cafeteria to the
gymnasium and seeing them dance and perform, that the musical element became
more ingrained in my mind in the story. And then it was just figuring out how
to do it because it was my first time as writer and director.
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