Louisa Connolly-Burnhams KULT of darkly sensual filmmaking

From the moment Isaw two sapphic Mormon wives hack up an eggplant for dinner, Iknew Louisa Connolly-Burnham was going to chart anew course for women in film. From intimacy coordinators with sex addictions to unflinching studies of consent, arousal non-concordance and female bodily autonomy, Connolly-Burnham rewrites the short film formula in araw, finger-suckingly sensual challenge to what stories can be told about (and by)women.

Debuting on the small screen in CBBC’s fantasy teen drama seriesWolfblood in 2012, Connolly-Burnham’s acting affair extends over the better part of 20years –afirst love set to defy what the bounds of adirector should be. InThe Call Centre, the filmmaker stars as Paige, alonely young woman squandering her days setting up life insurance policies.Speaking about balancing the director-actor scale’s equilibrium by means of amini, cordless monitor, Connolly-Burnham is able to stand on her mark as an actress with her cast and use the monitor to light and frame the scene with the DoP. It’s an atypical, jack-of-all-trades approach that regularly leaves the filmmaker unable to review takes as they run, oftentimes placing trust in the crew to sacrifice aplayback for more coverage. Here, her display of complete creative control from page to direction and performance results in aheat so visceral that we feel it inside our ownskin.

AsThe Call Centre descends somewhere darker in Paige’s pursuit of asexual relationship with an older customer, it is undoubtedly the filmmaker’s own distinct fingerprint on each part of the process that packs the film’s punch. While Paige suckles on the finger in her mouth, the camera refuses to rip away from its shrewd, intrusive observance of her sexuality.

It’s adarker, messier exploration of femininity that Connolly-Burnham revisits in her most recent short,The Intimacy Coordinator. Led by the filmmaker alongsideCode of Silence​’s Kieron Moore, the film centres on Kate, an intimacy coordinator with asex addiction whose boundaries blur as she fails to keep her professional life separate from her private instincts. As afeverish montage of one-night stands is held up against the bleak stillness of Kate alone in her room, it is the polarity of her addiction and loneliness that makes her all the more real. More than simple saints or evil sinners, Connolly-Burnham recognises the importance of representing the imperfection and complexity of women on screen.

InSister Wives, ashort attaining Oscar, BIFA and BAFTA longlist status, the filmmaker draws on conversations surrounding women trapped within the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) – aradical polygamist sect formerly hailing from the Mormon Church. The film unfolds as aqueer romance detailing the love affair between Kaidence (Connolly-Burnham) and Galilee (Mia McKenna Bruce), two sister wives married to the sameman.

Here, Connolly-Burnham plays with the brevity of the short form to experiment with story structure. Without the supplementary exposition and intricate world-building required for afeature, the filmmaker easily inundates her audience with life and values endemic to 19^th-century pilgrims. With phlegmatic women in pastel peasant dresses and an agricultural mise-en-scéne, we have our legs pulled in the direction of anarrative depicting an oppression of women long past. It is only by Galilee’s confession of her procurement of acontraband Nokia 3310 that we are shaken awake to understand that this is afar more modern cautionary tale. In its portrait of astill practising religious cult, the prestidigitation of the film’s true set-up fires ashot at sex equality disparities that remain atlarge.

The film is also exploratory in its use of sound – barred from ascore until the due climax of Kaidence and Galilee’s intimacy. In doing so, the function of music as an instrument of suspense is subverted, instead replaced with amonastic silence to create astiff, watchful atmosphere fitting for women under the dominion of the FLDS. But this is not the first time Connolly-Burnham has weaponised arestraint of non-diegetic sound.

In her refusal to score Louisa Sexton’sThe Ceiling, the filmmaker tests the limits of the short film by constructing the audience as athird character. The film explores the often unspoken complexities of active consent in dating contexts, following Harriet as she wakes up next to Jamie the morning following aone-night stand. As Jamie initiates sex despite her protests, the absence of asoundtrack makes for an uncomfortably voyeuristic soundscape dictated by the beat of Harriet’s breath. It’s abold choice that Connolly-Burnham doubles down on in her use of long, unbroken takes from abirds-eye perspective. Indeed, as powerless and part of the assault as Harriet herself, webecome the ceiling.

The film is amasterclass in the power of critical, potent topics when concentrated into the compact form of the short film. The time constraint backs the filmmaker into acorner where every decision must be defined by emotion, achallenge she rises to with new ways to muscle feeling into ascene. In its experimentation with an abstract, choking succession of close-ups,The Ceiling externalises onto the audience the dissociation that so often comes with arousal non-concordance – the disconnect between your bodily reaction to sexual stimuli and your desire for sex. We are placed so firmly in Harriet’s shoes that the shadow of the film looms over us long past the credits, having borne witness to an exploitation of the short form as an opportunity to make amarriage out of activism andfilm.

We see this again inFleeting. As amirror to Lisa O’Connor’s own experience (who wrote and also stars in the film), it opens amuch-needed window into the still incessant conversation surrounding female bodily autonomy and awoman’s right to choose. The film followsSaoirse, ayoung woman who has flown home to Ireland in 2018 to repeal the Eighth Amendment – the law criminalising abortion in most of all cases – as she confronts her father, who is fiercely pro-life.Forced to cut straight to Saoirse’s crunch point over apint at the pub, the filmmaker is able to laser focus her portrayal of the generational differences between father and daughter.Living in adigital age that whittles away our attention spans with agluttonous feed of short-form content, the filmmaker recognises the short form’s conciseness as atool to rinse dry the emotion from her subject, and uses it to present palatable, bite-sized chunks of reformism that can start important discussions.

And these are not simply values that Connolly-Burnham parades in front of the camera. On amission to transform traditional industry spaces, the filmmaker launchedKULTY: an inclusive community for women, non-binary and gender-queer filmmakers to share opportunities and work. Through community events, short film workshops, training opportunities and sets that typically comprise a90% female crew, she is unlocking adoor to an unsung directory of creatives and contributing to breaking down the historical gender gap in the film industry. Her prioritisation of projects unapologetically made about and by women carves anew path for more authentic, women-centric stories that not only shape social perspectives about women, but also defy what their role in film can be, both in front of and behind the camera.