NewEnglandFilm.com

You’re in a crowded, smoky bar. The atmosphere is thick with romantic possibility; the night beckons. Clutching your drink as your polyester blend club shirt hoards moisture with the tenacity of a Mojave Desert cactus, you scan the room for hotties. Suddenly, a pair of eyes meets yours. They linger, betraying no hint of bashfulness or desperation. It’s one of those people. You know — intriguing, imperturbably confident and in control, way out of your league…

The question remains: is there one among our ranks who can break the enigmatic code of silent cool? Cheryl Furjanic answers the challenge with her digital video fiction short "Bar Talk."

Slated to screen at the Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, "Bar Talk" takes a humorous look at the encrypted signals of American mating rituals. The narrative traces an exchange of glances and body language between two lesbian women (played by spoken word performer Alix Olson and actress Liz Dahmen) across a bar one evening. Hilarious intertitles inform their facial expressions and gestures in the tradition of the classic silent film, suggesting thoughts that might be going through their heads at particular moments. At one point, a lingering look from Olson is interrupted with an intertitle reading "Projected Cost of a First Date," followed by a detailed cost-benefit analysis of asking Dahmen’s character out.

"The idea for ‘Bar Talk’ came from my friends and I joking about the kind of people we’d see at bars or at clubs who looked totally unapproachable," Furjanic explains. "In reality, it may be that they are just too shy to talk to anyone, but it comes off as if they are too cool and just can’t be bothered… So I always wondered what these people were trying to communicate with their eyes, their body language, or their movements that they might never say out loud. I tried to transform these ideas into a story and ‘Bar Talk’ is the result."

The film’s unusual narrative style is reminiscent of the filmmaker’s first love and, so far, her trademark genre — documentary film. Furjanic began studying documentary as an undergraduate in the BFA film program at New York University. While in school, she organized and directed a documentary about "the traditions of American work songs through the eyes of legendary folk singer Pete Seeger," which involved recording Seeger in a string of music festival performances and finally interviewing him at the end of the production run.

Furjanic has since helped launch several other documentary projects, including "A Good Uplift," which she co-produced, a short piece documenting the American woman’s "pursuit of the perfect bra"; and "Blue Vinyl," a feature-length film by award-winning filmmakers Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold about the detrimental effects of the vinyl industry on health and the environment (featured on HBO’s America Undercover series). It was on the set of "Blue Vinyl" that Furjanic really earned her wings as a documentary filmmaker. "It was the biggest project I’d ever worked on. There were a lot of times when Judith would have to go away for a while and say ‘You’re just going to have fill in for me.’ I learned really quickly how to deal with crews and locations — right in the thick of things."

In spite of elements borrowed from documentary — specifically, the expository narration and anthropological perspective — "Bar Talk" represents a stylistic departure from the documentary trend in Furjanic’s still-burgeoning career. It is, in fact, her first real crack at fiction film. The project represents newfound publicity and critical acclaim as well: "Bar Talk" has received nothing but accolades from audiences, particularly from the gay and lesbian community, and is enjoying a healthy turn on the festival circuit. In the past year, the film has screened at festivals in London and Miami and on Fire Island, and won the "Best Lesbian Short" award at this year’s Phoenix International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

"This whole new wave of film festivals is contacting me now," Furjanic says. "It’s a little overwhelming. It is really above and beyond any expectation I had for the movie."

Furjanic attributes the film’s success in large part to the talents of her small but capable crew, including producer Alexis Fish and Director of Photography Laela Kilbourn, who, as she puts it, "was able to put those storyboards onto tape." Of co-writers Liz Dahmen and Amanda McCormick, she says, "They were great at bouncing ideas around with me and making the jokes and the dialogue punchier."

In spite of the film’s success, Furjanic has no plans to rest on her laurels. She’s already begun a collaborative project with Amanda Keropian, a former  classmate from the NYU film program, documenting the United States synchronized swimming team on their path to the Olympic Games Production for the film, entitled "Sync or Swim," began this past January with documentation of two major competitions leading up to the Olympic trials.

Just as with "Bar Talk," "Sync or Swim" finds Furjanic testing new waters (so to speak). It will be her first feature-length documentary as a director and is the first project she plans to fund independently. Furjanic sums it up in a statement that seems typical of her commendable approach to every new project: "It’s the biggest project I’ve ever done."