NewEnglandFilm.com

Having first premiered to "indifference" at Suffolk University, "Alphabet" the super-8 short film created by local filmmaker Chelsea Spear has been gaining ground. Most recently, it screened as part of the Underground Film Revolution program and at the Persistence of Vision screening series at the Boston Film/Video Foundation. 

This month marks its New York premiere. Described as a "neo-realistic, Truffaut-inspired response to the children’s book ‘The Phantom Tollbooth,’" the film is a character sketch that follows Emily, a 12-year-old math genius who plays the French horn, on a typical morning in her life as she begins to see the connections between math and music.

DB: I understand that you wrote the script for the film. How did it come about?

Spear: I came up with the idea while I was living in New York City over the summer. At the time, I was living far away from my home and family for the longest time in my life, and having that kind of space between myself and my mom gave me greater time to reflect on my experiences growing up.

I also had an opportunity to briefly intern with a filmmaker whose films mean a lot to me, though he had to let me go because he wasn’t in the office long enough to justify having an intern. When I went out there, I fantasized that he would take me under his wing and teach me all there was to know about film, though I knew in my head that this was unrealistic (I’d worked other internships before!). When he let me go, my fantasy of having a mentor like that didn’t go away. Instead, I regularly imagined the goings-on that would become [the mentor-student relationship in] "Alphabet."

DB: I hope you wrote those things down.

Spear: Of course! I realized I would kick myself to all eternity if I didn’t write down this vision for the film before it disappeared, so I [did] and gave it to a few people. From there, I got my first grant from the Flicker organization for small-gauge filmmaking and began pre-production in earnest when I came back.

DB: Was there anything or anyone else that influenced you as a filmmaker for this film?

Spear: When I was writing the film I started to perceive parallels between physics and filmmaking. Unfortunately, I am not good at math (which is a prerequisite when studying physics), but from what little I know, I think physics and film are kissing cousins; film takes many principles of physics and applies them in a more playful and less concrete manner, to tell stories and things.

DB: Is "Alphabet" a student film?

Spear: It’s not a student film in that it was sanctioned by Suffolk University. Though I am ostensibly attending school for film, there is no film Production track at Suffolk, so I’ve had to learn everything on my own. So I guess it’s a "learning film."

DB: Are you anything like Emily, the main character of your film?

Spear: The film does have a certain amount of wish fulfillment. I wish I was as driven and as quiet as Emily. There were no adults who were consistently around for me the way she has her math teacher, Mr. Diddlebock. I lived part of my life wishing someone would take me on as an apprentice and make me feel valued and worthy of learning. In some ways, the film is my way of giving myself those things I wish I had when I was her age.