Hannah Fidell: Forbidden Love: The Movie
This Greenpoint-based filmmaker said the most controversial thing anyone’s ever said to us: “Contrary to popular belief, the G train really isn’t that bad.” What?!
But Fidell isn’t afraid of the outrageous; her first feature-length film A Teacher, which Oscilloscope will release in theaters on September 6 (just in time for back-to-school), is about a high-school teacher in Austin, Texas, who begins an affair with one of her students. The story wasn’t based on an actual incident, but it was inspired by real life. “I was working at a restaurant, and a guy walked in who was clearly still in high school,” Fidell tells us. “I found myself attracted to him but then quicky realized I wasn’t so much attracted to him physically as I was to what he represented: youth. He didn’t have to worry about student loans yet, or getting his taxes done in time.” It’s maybe also this attraction to youth that’s kept her in North Brooklyn the last five years. “I moved there because most of my friends from college and high school were there when I moved to New York,” she says. “Although, as I get older, it seems as though more and more of my friends are moving down to more ‘adult’ parts of Brooklyn—like Fort Greene.”