Lily Iserson
Viewpoints Editor
This past Wednesday, The College of Wooster students gathered together for a special screening of AKRON, an independent film directed and written by Brian O’Donnell and co-director Sasha King, who co-produced it. The film, a story about young gay love and the impact of family history, was showcased at Freedlander Theatre. Afterwards, members of the college community met with the directors in a special talkback at The Wooster Inn.
Parts of the movie were filmed on the College’s campus — according to Melissa Chesanko, the College’s Director of Sexuality and Gender Inclusion, one of the film’s most pivotal moments was shot at the parking lot of Babcock Hall. The rest was filmed in the film’s eponymous city, Akron, O’Donnell’s hometown.
“We consider the environment to be another character in the film,” said O’Donnell, “The end of winter in Ohio, where the snow and ice thaw and the color starts to come back to the sky and the fields — these help to further enhance the themes of the film — it being set in Akron really rooted the whole project at every step.”
A Kickstarter campaign culminated financial support for O’Donnell and King’s project, where 107 backers funded the project in a total sum of $50,186. On the film and how his family experiences inspired his writing, O’Donnell wrote on Kickstarter:
“My parents recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and my five siblings and their spouses and my sixteen nieces and nephews gathered to celebrate. As we spent time together, my nieces and nephews began to ask me about myself, talking to me about their feelings and thoughts about me being a gay man. It was relaxed, positive and supportive. I never thought that a day like that would ever come, as anyone over a certain age can understand. Conversations like that didn’t happen even just a few years ago. It made me realize how profound the changes in society have been […] so the idea came for the script to use this new reality as a starting point. The characters accept the homosexuality of two of the main characters as a natural fact, with no judgment,” said O’Donnell.
Beginning in the fall of 2015, AKRON screened at a number of theatre festivals across the states, as well as Sydney, Paris and Amsterdam. The film received several awards, from Best LGBT Feature Film to Best Feature Film, Best Feature Film with a Male Lead and the Audience Award Winner for Best Film.
Hailey Malzeke ’19, before viewing the film, was enthusiastic for the movie, set near her hometown of Mayfield Heights, Oh. She is the treasurer for the Queer Student Union. “I’m sure AKRON will connect with me on a personal level, and that’s something you don’t get very often within the tropes that commonly follow queer films. It will be nice to have a representation of what being queer is without showing the negatives of what may or may not come from such an identity,” said Malzeke.
Chesanko was contacted directly about the film, as the original creators wanted to bring the film back to the place where it was filmed. She had spoken with O’Donnell personally and said of the narrative, “I think that we have had a limited amount of queer representation and storylines in film. I am excited that this film shifts the focus from a ‘coming out’ narrative, as that does not reflect everyone’s experience, and also shows openly gay identities that are supported by their families without making that the key component of the story’s drama.”