Hollywood at Home: A Collection of Homespun Short Films Makes Its Cinema Society Debut 

We all had our peak pandemic projects. Some of us baked, others learned to knit, but for a group of actors, directors, and writers, filmmaking was how to scratch the creative itch. A select few (Julianne Moore and husband Bart Freundlich, Talia Balsam, Rosie Perez and Gina Gershon, Emily Mortimer and daughter May Nivola) were provided with equipment, technical guidance, and a small budget to create a collectsion of shorts entitled *With/In—*the project of producers Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray. And the final result was screened on Sunday night at the Tribeca Screening Room, hosted by Andrew Saffir’s Cinema Society.

Among the audience were some of the film’s stars and creators. They included Moore and Freundlich, who produced their submission in Montauk with their neighbor, Balsam. Also in attendance were Perez and Gershon, who could be spotted at the post-screening celebration bonding over the perils of solo productions; and Mortimer, who arrived with her co-star and daughter in tow. 

“The filmmakers who joined us were nothing short of extraordinary,” Styler, who also appears in daughter Mickey Sumner’s production, told us. “They turned in a remarkable range of scripts about pandemic living. As the times we lived in continued to change, so did the films, encapsulating the Black Lives Matter movement in stories about an interracial marriage and a therapist dealing with her own OCD.” 

For a bit of comedic relief, Styler and Rattray looked to Griffin Dunne, who quickly became an audience favorite for his hilarious depiction of a man locked in a bathroom after a one-night-stand by his germaphobe new girlfriend, played by his girlfriend, Zonia Pelensky. “In the first month of the pandemic, my girlfriend and I had very different reactions to the crisis,” he explained. “I thought she was being hysterical, and she thought I was blasé and careless. This almost broke us apart, but instead, we decided to make a comedy about it. Fortunately, a very talented production designer, Happy Massee, lived in the apartment above me, and a friend quarantining on my couch operated the camera and sound equipment. In the end, we were very grateful to have a creative mission during that crazy time.”