House of June turns reality into radical black cinema

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The avalanche of black death, perpetrated by the state and replayed on continuous loop. The nationwide protests, obscured by alleged sniper fire that left five police officers dead in Dallas. The curious case of a black man found hanged to death in Piedmont Park. And a woman named Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, armed with a camera phone and courage under fire, whose live-streamed video of her boyfriend’s fatal shooting by Minnesota police rewrote the script on black girl magic.

Five days prior, Bournett, 30, and Blanding, 31, were in another world. The only two black women chilling in an offbeat Candler Park tea shop, they talked about what drew them to pick up cameras and begin telling stories of their own under the banner House of June.

“Honestly, we started making films out of necessity,” Bournett says, recalling the period just before the Shonda Rhimes-ification of ABC on Thursday nights. “Now there’s a lot of us on television, but it was like there was no representation.”

That was three years ago. Today they’re indie filmmakers with a web-series (“The Shrink in B6”), a feature film-in-the-making (Fried Ice Cream), and several shorts (one of which was selected by the Atlanta Film Festival for last year’s New Mavericks program) to their credit.

The three shorts set to screen this week, in the first such event for House of June, all explore recurring themes of intimacy and identity.

“It’s a really dope period to be black and a woman,” Blanding says in reference to everything from the power of Black Twitter to the broadening scope of black feminist art. “It feels like something we should’ve definitely done before but the time is now. We’re proud of these films. All of them hinge on women, black sexuality, intimacy. Shit that you don’t necessarily see in the mainstream — or really the indie world, either — when it comes to black cinema.” 

In an era defined by Black Lives Matter protests, #OscarsSoWhite hashtags, and Beyonce’s Lemonade-flavored libations, a trio of local shorts centering the interior lives of women of color feels long overdue. With so much tragedy in plain view right now, House of June’s radical departure is an act of resistance rooted in the everyday.

Like the characters in their films, a conversation with Bournett and Blanding is colorful, critical, lit. They speak with a candid humor and familiarity that could only come from a creative partnership built on trust and shared experience.

“We’re both Geminis, if that matters,” Blanding adds, laughing. “That matters to me. I feel like my zodiac sign is so fucking important. I think we just have an organic understanding and appreciation for each other.”

The two met in film lighting class while attending Georgia State University. Bournett, a fine artist turned cinematographer, introduced herself to Blanding, a longtime scribe turned screenwriter. Realizing they shared birth months and a cinematic point of view, the two formed House of June. The company logo, the twin sign of the Gemini under one roof, symbolizes their collaborative art-house approach. 

As indie filmmakers in an industry where their gender and skin color are often counted as strikes, they’re unapologetic about the stories they choose to tell.
embed-1 “It’s like we’re existing in a world where we’re trying to carve out our voice,” Bournett says. “And you’ve gotta break through the stereotypes of what people think they’re going to see when they see a black production.”

Among the shorts screening Friday, Bzzz! tells the story of a young woman named June, who guilts herself into throwing out her vibrator when a male suitor fails to stimulate her through oral sex, then goes dumpster diving to retrieve her sexual self-esteem.

“It’s a love story of sorts,” Blanding says, explaining the story’s impulse. “We don’t talk enough about sexuality in a way that’s from a woman’s gaze. If we are talking about a woman’s vagina, then it’s for male consumption. This story is like, ‘no, girl, I do this because I want to feel really good.’ … It’s the woman owning her sexuality.”

In Q & A, the lead character explores her relationship hang-ups through a comical, sensual confessional aimed at answering one complicated question: “Am I a ho?”

Inspired by Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, the black-and-white short also bears the influence of Blanding’s first loved filmmaker, teen angst progenitor John Hughes. “I wanted to be in The Breakfast Club so bad,” she says. “I loved his coming-of-age stories, but black people never came of age in his films. I don’t think there was anybody black in the high school. They didn’t even have a black janitor, yo.”

It provoked in Blanding the desire to make movies beyond the traditional scope of typical black narratives. “I just wanted to see stories of, like, two black women talking — about some trivial shit,” she continues. “White people do it all the time and they get Oscars for the shit. I wanted to write stuff that was very simple but, to me, very much like everyday life. To not save the day, to not be stuck in the system, to not have all the answers, to not necessarily be poverty-stricken, either. Just fucking living.”

Blanding’s narrative realness and Bournett’s dynamic shot composition combine to create a lush visual aesthetic and voice that is distinctly House of June. But the early works they’re showcasing this week also highlight some of their beginning struggles. “We wear so many hats,” says Bournett, who also juggles editing responsibilities while co-directing and co-producing with Blanding. “I feel like the only hurdle for now is having a full budget and being able to delegate certain roles to other people. But outside of that, we make dope shit.”

That confidence is tempered by the sense of responsibility that comes with filling the void of films made by and about women of color.

“People aren’t going to expect much,” Bournett says. “And then people are gonna expect so much, because melanin is poppin’ right now. Melanin and vaginas are poppin’ right now. People either want it to be dope or they don’t expect it to be dope. So you have a responsibility as an artist. I know that’s an old saying, but you do if you take your art seriously.”

The Facebook landing page for their Unapologetically Melaninated Cinema night features a scrolling syllabus of curated links to film reviews, YouTube videos, speeches, and random quotes critiquing and celebrating everything from radical blackness to raw sexuality. It’s a virtual crash course on the history of black film iconography.

In one link, culture critic Nelson George uses the 2011 release of Pariah — director Dee Rees’ critically-acclaimed film about a teenaged lesbian — to discuss a rising wave of black indie filmmakers complicating the genre “by embracing thorny issues of identity, alienation and sexuality.” It’s a framework that House of June’s mission overlaps, but with a quirkier bent. If anything, their manifesto is less about normalizing otherness than showing the other side of normal.
embed-2 “I wanna see the black version of ‘Girls,’” Bournett says. “We sit around talking about random shit all the time, just living. It goes back to representation. We’re in these spaces in life, so why can’t we see them on film?”

Like actor Jesse Williams said in his recent BET Awards speech on race and resistance: Just because black girls are magic doesn’t mean they’re not real.

Unapologetic Melaninated Cinema. $5. 8 p.m. Fri., July 15. MURMUR, 100 Broad St. S.W.