our love is real to me
a trilogy of short films by a. r. havel
This didn’t begin as a trilogy. Each script was written a year apart, all while I was forced to lay sick in bed—hence why they may have a fever-dream quality. As soon as I completed the third, I realized I had written a triptych of queer desire, longing, trauma, and abandonment; more precisely, a very personal document of fleeting love and sexual connection of my tumultuous twenties. They trace a subtle philosophy of connection in our time of political, ecological, and social breakdown; and because I have been a hopeless romantic, so too do my characters believe in the purity of their love and the possibility that it may save them from their circumstances.
Each film has a vastly different visual style, all imagined with their different U.S. geographic locations specifically in mind.
Calle Cola
written in 2019
The winner of the 2020 BlueCat Screenplay Competition for Best Short Screenplay, “Calle Cola” is a mockumentary-style piece site-specific to San Antonio, Texas. Told through vignettes of a mini-DV camcorder, the main protagonist, Jose, remains faceless behind the lens. He is filming the activism within his neighborhood colloquially called “Calle Cola,” where a predatory soda company has lobbied all the water rights away from its residents. Yet, he cannot help but be side-tracked by a boy he’s falling in love with, a young activist with the privilege to go beyond the water-wall. “Calle Cola” is a celebration of queer desire in the face of corporate-sponsored apocalypse.
image of mosaic of san antonio riverwalk by Oscar Alvarado
Heavenly
written in 2020
In this New Orleans based piece, Oli is a punk and amateur rentboy whose values are challenged when he becomes infatuated with his newest client, Atom, a cyber-security specialist, a devout Catholic, and a hopeless flirt. In the midst of the city’s strippers organizing a protest for unionization, Oli wonders if he’s put himself and his community in political jeopardy in exchange for a fleeting romance. Drawing on the work of Cuarón and Lubezki, the visual style emphasizes wide-shots to contextualize a personal story within the wildness of the french quarter.
image of Bourbon St. protest organized by strippers in February of 2018.
Damsel
written in 2021
Mina knows she’s magical as she casts a web to catch her romantic prey and lucrative clients; is it a survival mechanism, a trauma response, or just all she knows how to do? Oli is hopelessly caught and ready to do anything to be her knight in shining armor. When a suburban housewife with an incriminating and disturbing VHS tape enters their dynamic, everyone questions who it is that needs saving. With an emphasis on close-ups, modern interiors, and emotional tidiness, this film is set in Seattle, Washington and inspired by the early cinematography of Michael Spiller.
image of Capitol Hill neighborhood.