I love this city. I consider myself an unofficial ambassador for the city of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. One of the ways I love to show off our city is with The Women’s Film Festival. Founded by Phuong Nguyen, the festival is 10 days of films, by, for and about women. I’m the artistic director and the director of programming, and this year we’re screening close to 100 films from across the globe. We have filmmakers attending from as far away as Taiwan and New Zealand and all across the US. We have a great lineup of LGBTQ+ films scattered throughout the programming. “Safety State” takes place in a dystopian future, as LGBTQ+ rights are being rolled back and travel bans go into effect. “Lesbophilia” is a modern dark comedy that flips limiting stereotypes on their head. It still has me giggling just thinking about it. Two of our films address communities not often heard from, trans youth and the elderly. “And You Are?” is a moving film from director Alicia Coppola about a young trans man (Zach Barack, the first openly transgender actor in a Marvel film) with Emmy and multiple Golden Globe Award winner Jane Seymour as his grandmother. Together they navigate emotions as one struggles to remember the past and one seeks to move past it. “Parker and the Green Dress,” tugs at your heartstrings as a queer teen is torn between dreams of their perfect prom and the fear of disappointing her grandmother. The film is directed by Kristen Wolf, an award-winning novelist and filmmaker and this week’s Portrait. Wolf’s short films have been screened at more than 60 festivals worldwide. “Sparkle,” her debut, won multiple awards including Paris’ La Femme International Film Festival’s Best Female Director.
Most recently, she was selected as a 2024 Emerging LGBTQ+ Voice by Lambda Literary. Her debut novel, “The Way: A Girl Who Dared to Rise,” was hailed by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of the “Titles To Pick Up Now.” Wolf also served as an executive producer on the queer breakout documentary, “Beyond the Aggressives” and as co-producer on the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Broadway hit, “A Strange Loop.” With a background as rich as her storytelling, her life experiences—from leading an all-girl rock band to operating John Deere tractors—bring an unparalleled depth and authenticity to her work.
Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Where did you make your debut?
New York, NY. I was born in St. Vincent’s hospital down in the village. It’s no longer there.
My mother was born in the village.
No way! Cool! I grew up in all different parts of NY. I grew up in the city, in the suburbs of NY. I grew up in upstate NY, and I even had some extended family in Long Island, so I really got to see a lot of the state.
What made you move around so much?
It was in different parts of our life. When we were young, my parents lived in the city but then they decided that the kids should have a good public school, so we moved to the suburbs. Then they decided to build a farm because we were all big animal lovers. We raised stray raccoons and squirrels and chickens and quail and a million cats and dogs. It was always a full house. We kind of did like a “Swiss Family Robinson” thing and built our own home and farm, which was really fun. I mean, doing that with your parents when you’re a teenager is only so much fun, but I learned a lot!
I’m assuming that you didn’t have the raccoons in the village.
No! But we did have them in the suburbs. We had a really interesting life. My dad worked in the city and we had family there so even when we moved, we spent a lot of time in the city and in the suburbs, we were the family with raccoons in the house and then we built the farm.
Who was your favorite animal?
Damn, that’s hard… Oh, I had this really ragamuffin Appaloosa horse named Joe. He was like 32 years old when we got him. Joe had been beaten by his previous owner and was very head shy. You couldn’t put a halter on him or do anything around his head at first because he’d been hit with a shovel so many times. But over time, I won his trust and we became really close. He’d let me go out on the field and jump on his back and put full gear on him. I would ride him doing Gymkhana, you know where you do barrel racing and stuff. It was a special experience.
Were your parents involved in the arts?
No, my mom was a homemaker and she taught people who were learning disabled. My dad was in advertising, but they were both very creative in their own ways. I think my dad was a frustrated poet and my mom a frustrated writer.
Any siblings?
I have a brother who’s a year-and-a-half younger. He’s also very creative.
What was your worst fight?
This is funny, so you know how you put up those electric fences around the pen or pasture where you keep the cows? I mean we built everything on the farm, so my brother and I were installing the electric fence and we got into a scrappy fight and then it became who could drag the other and push them up against the fence to get shocked! [Laughing] That was probably the worst!
I have two brothers so that sounds about right. What was a fun family memory?
Probably just living with animals in the house. My dad built this little enclave for the raccoons to sleep in and in the mornings, we’d wake up and lift the door. They’d come out and we’d feed them and they’d run around the house.
What did your friends think of your house?
I don’t know what people thought about us, but looking back, they probably thought it was a little odd. It was definitely a different life from the people I went to school with.
When I was a kid, there wasn’t a cafeteria at school, so I would have lunch at my parent’s friend’s house. The kids called it “The Hippie House” and would ask me, “Aren’t you afraid to go in there? Are they doing drugs?” Our house was dubbed the “Addams Family House” because my mother was an artist so we had things like an old sink sticking out of the wall.
That’s hilarious! I love that you put all these names on them!
What things were you interested in as a kid?
I was always a writer. I always wrote. I think it earned me praise when I was young, which we all want at that age. I remember there was a silly little phrase I came up with when I was in maybe first or second grade. Something like, “Happiness is a horse running through the fields of life.” And everyone just fell out. They thought that it was super deep! But yeah, I’ve always written, always, always. And then I pushed into — well, not pushed — directed towards sports. I was very, very coordinated and just a really good natural athlete. And again, that brought the praise and attention so I got more and more involved.
What sports did you play?
Every sport! You name it. Tennis was the big one, also soccer, basketball, I was on an all-boys little league team. I even played wide receiver in a full-contact football league for many years. We weren’t in a particularly progressive town, but because I was really fucking good, they let me play with the boys. Now you see it all the time, but it was pretty rare back then.
Did you go to college?
Yes, I got my master’s in creative writing and film at Hollins college in Virginia. A lot of famous Southern writers came out of there.
You, like me, have done a myriad of jobs. What was the most unusual?
Working for a horse veterinarian who did everything, but specialized in breed production. So I participated in the breeding of many race horses, which is fascinating and bizarre and a little disturbing all at the same time. We’d drive from farm to farm, kind of like James Herriot in “All Creatures Great and Small.”
[Laughing] Well, I hope you were old enough to know about the birds and the bees, or the stallions and the mares! Because horses are, how should I say this delicately, very well endowed. When I worked with horses and we had to clean them, I used to claim, “Hey, I’m a lesbian, I’m not going near that thing!”
I know! Fortunately, I didn’t have to do the teasing with the studs, where they would collect the sperm, though I saw that. But I did do the insemination! There would be a row of mares and we’d just go down the line. It was crazy. But I also go to see the birth of a lot of foals, which was incredible.
When did you start doing film work?
I started as a kid. I used to drag my friends over and film little commercials and skits. So I’ve always dabbled in it. In high school and college, I also did some acting and theater directing and then I was working in marketing at a high-tech company. Eventually, I gots sick of it, so I started a small production company. We mostly did promotional pieces for nonprofits and educational orgs, small businesses, etc. and that sorta satiated the film bug, but not really. I did a lot of freelance directing and acting and have been on sets off and on for ages. But around 2018, I really decided to go for it and turn my novels into films and work on my projects.
So I guess theater came first for you.
Yes, theater was my first love.
And you were a producer for a show on Broadway, not too shabby!
“A Strange Loop.” That came to me because I’ve always loved seeing shows. I saw the show when it was off Broadway and it took me apart and put me back together in a different and better way. I thought that show should be on Broadway and I found a way to support it as a co-producer.
Bravo! And going back, your first novel, “The Way: A Girl Who Dared to Rise” got a shoutout from Oprah’s mag. How exciting was that?
Well, it’s never bad to be mentioned by Oprah. It was an exciting time. I thought I had everything until I became a parent and then I was like, “OK, the book is really cool, and I’ve been gunning for it, but this little being means more to me than any of that.”
Let’s talk about something else that means a lot, the film you have in our festival, “Parker and the Green Dress.”
It’s my second short film. I consider myself a masc queer woman, and I wanted to tell a story that focused on the masculine-of-center female experience. I also read a lot of science journals and I remember reading about these memory care facilities and an innovative program to help their clients, and then I remember someone telling me about a love affair in Paris, and all these little pieces made up the story.
I love that it is intergenerational and has a positive message.
Yes, we don’t alway have to tell tales of trauma. The film does touch on aging and the LGBTQ community, the secrets we keep and the damage they can do, but it’s also about sharing knowledge from one generation to another which we don’t see very often.
What was your coming-out journey?
Oh boy, things were very different when I was young and I grew up in a very Catholic household, which complicated things. I think for anybody seeing me as a sporty little kid, there was no question. I hung out with the boys and called myself Joe. That was my pack and they were my people. I didn’t understand girls at all!
But in high school, a close friend just hauled off and kissed me one day and my whole world turned upside down. I mean I was totally clueless about anything gay, I sort of knew the word homosexual from the church and that we, well, that those people were going to burn in hell. We proceeded to have a relationship for two years that was hot, steamy, gorgeous, loving, all the things, but it was totally secret. No one knew about it. No one could know about it, but then we got caught and I won’t go into details, but it was bad.
So I went back into the closet until grad school. I was away from home and had a little bit of freedom and that was all I needed. There was never any question on my mind about it, just levels of denial because I was too scared and at home, I didn’t know anyone openly queer. But once I hit grad school, I came out like holy hell! I’ve been out and overt ever since.
OK, let’s do some random questions. What are Wonderchews?
Oh, well, as I said I love science, and music and poetry and whenever I do a project, I do a lot of research and come across a lot of interesting facts. I started posting them on my website as Wonderchews, little bites of knowledge.
I read some of them. They were cool. Have you been to Philly before?
I have! I think Philly is a gorgeous city and I love the history that it holds for our country — good, bad and ugly. I love the spirit of the people here, it’s very contagious. I mean, when you’re from New York, you tend to think that it’s the center of the universe and I’m not going to say that I don’t think that too, ‘cause I do. But Philly is maybe the only other city on the East Coast that I’d consider moving to.
Favorite toy?
G.I. Joe
What’s the highest you’ve ever jumped into the water from?
About 30 feet, in Hawaii. It was scary AF.
Wow! Who would you love to collaborate with and what would you collaborate on?
I would love to collaborate with Janelle Monáe on a feature film I’m trying to get off the ground about two queer women in the romantic era and I’d love to have her on that project. She’s a phenomenal actress and talent.
That she is. And finally, do you have a favorite motto or saying?
I do. I always joke, “Start slow and then, taper off…” ‘cause sometimes it feels like we never get up to full speed! But no, a real motto would be, “Never make yourself small, not for anyone.”