A dead bird in a shoebox, a stranger, a bottle of wine, a haircut, a flood, a soaked cigarette. A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian tells an honest story of queer identity.
A few months ago I came across the trailer for a short-film titled A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian. The peculiar title and quality of the stop-motion animation drew me in immediately, and I saved it in my Letterboxd. Having forgotten about it, it was just last month that it popped up in my recommended feed on YouTube, with around 100k views already. It did not disappoint. It’s a funny but heartfelt exploration of lesbian identity, with a masterful use of the stop-motion medium alongside enchanting sound design, A Bird (for wordcount sake), shows the beauty of queer, student filmmaking.
I had the pleasure of interviewing AJ Dubler and Carmela Murphy, the filmmakers behind this project, to learn more about the work that went into the short-film, as well as their intended message for their audience.
The duo started working together on A Bird for their undergraduate film thesis, marking a change from usual standards of individual projects. “We were actually the only two people collaborating, but I loved the script idea” states AJ when asked about the beginnings of their work together, “And then I was like, this is going to be like a huge project for just one person.” This collaborative aspect of their work can be seen all throughout this project – something attributed by AJ to their “complimentary” filmmaking – as, aside from sound, all work was done by the pair.
The film follows Gray after a bird hits her window and a mysterious stranger comes into her life to mourn it. But the film also follows Gray’s acceptance of her own lesbianism, and her first experience with a woman. When asked about the importance of the symbol of this dead bird, Carmela stated that “the idea of the bird, not the bird, was sort of the antagonist of the film,” being a representation of Gray’s compulsive heterosexuality and the male gaze. A bird fact – crucial to the actual conceiving of this project – is that birds that hit windows in the daylight are usually males who think that their reflection is another male bird coming to steal their female. Carmela then explained how the bird’s reflection was then sapphic love: a place where the male gaze does not exist. That’s why there is a muddy reaction from the characters towards the bird; it’s the mixture of grief and joy that comes with realizing you are queer. A pivotal scene, that of the flood of the bathroom, was described by AJ as a person’s first lesbian experience, an all encompassing but one “you can never go back to the way it was before”.
A lot of these themes came from the filmmakers’ personal thoughts and experiences. Carmela described their shared process as “[taking] a walk and like just [talking] about queerness for three hours” to come up with the film’s message. Both AJ and Carmela emphasised the intersection between queerness and the stop-motion aspect of this film. Carmela said that “making a queer film with queer hands was really important to us” when asked about the initial stages of creating the film.
Stop-motion, stated Carmella, was a deliberate choice when discussing how this story was going to be told. When asked about challenges they encountered in the making of the film, AJ stated, was “creating intimacy with inanimate objects”, “yeah, trying to make these hard objects soft in a way” chimed in Carmela. This is such a poignant comment as, in my opinion, one of the film’s strengths is its emotional drive and how close the characters feel to the audience.
Their upcoming project, God is a Pelican, follows two queer teenage girls as they create their own religion. This film, like their first project, also finds its conception in a bird fact: if a mother pelican does not have anything to feed its offspring with, she will give them her own flesh. Fake! Carmela, among laughs, explained how when doing research for this film, they learned that it’s not a true fact, a great betrayal as Carmela stated “I was told it as fact my whole life until now!” This film is only possible due to the donations on Kickstarter. “I kind of want these two films to exist together” stated the filmmaker, when asked about their relationship with bird films and if this would be a trend they would follow. They closed the interview by saying how their next project would be one of greater scale and better quality, as they are looking at expanding their puppet collection to 12 of them.
AJ Dubler and Carmela Murphy’s work is truly astounding. Their film A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian, currently sitting at 569K on YouTube, is clearly the start of a fascinating filmmaking duo I will certainly be looking out for. Their focus on queerness, the craftsmanship behind their work, and just the honesty put into their film makes this stop-motion project an incredible piece of media. Definitely look out for their upcoming short-film God is a Pelican!
All images curtesy of AJ Dubler and Carmela Murphy
