Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s feature debut, “Tendaberry,” moves you, not just on a visceral level, but a deeply human level. I felt the same way after I watched “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” directed by Raven Jackson. Noise is a powerful element in both of these films. As Raven’s film is mostly quiet, its sound embodies a place and time. In Haley’s “Tendaberry,” Brooklyn buzzes as its main character Dakota (played by Kota Johan) sings and lives passionately along with it. By the end of the film, my heart burst for this girl, and how her life became this butterfly of beauty.
When Dakota’s boyfriend Yuri goes back to Ukraine to be with his ailing father, she sets out to live on her own in New York City, only to discover that she is pregnant. I got to speak with Haley about her feature debut, the inspiration for the title of the film, and how she went about capturing the soul of Brooklyn onscreen.
“Tendaberry” had its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Our Sundance 2024 coverage is sponsored by the Gene Siskel Film Center. One of the last arthouse theaters in Chicago, they present a curated collection of international, independent, and classic cinema reflective of Chicago’s diverse community. Learn more.
I thought we could start with talking about the title of the film.
“Tendaberry” is taken from the title of the Laura Nyro song “New York Tendaberry.” She had an album with the same name from 1969. There’s a line in the song that says, “You look like a city / But you feel like a religion / to me.” But the whole song really consists of scenes from New York, and she sort of just lists them through poetic beats. But she said that it’s her love letter to New York, and that was the same sentiment that I wanted the film to have. It wasn’t our first title, but in the end, it seemed fitting because I would always listen to her music while writing or walking around the city.
It seems that there were a lot of components that shaped this film. You said in your directorial statement, “This story is made up of layers: layers of time and layers of moments that happened between 2014-2023 and some before. Filmmakers carry two sides of a film with them, what is on screen and what is behind the camera.” Can you talk about that journey?
I moved to New York in 2014. I went to Tisch, and I got into their NYU Grad Film Program. Then I graduated in 2019. I was planning on doing another film, and then the pandemic happened. That film would have been impossible to make during the pandemic. At the same time, I was also processing this huge life change. I had just graduated and I felt the life that I had built during my grad film school experience was fading away. I really didn’t want it to. I wanted to make a film that encapsulates the feelings that I had during my grad school experience. I started thinking these things in pre-pandemic, in late 2019, right before Sundance in 2020. I wanted to process and honor the things I came to love during that time. I really just wanted to dump a lot of feelings and things into a place and put it into a container. So the inspiration for this film was inspired by a collection of feelings and memories. It was an attempt to hold onto something, and an attempt to process something.
Can you talk about how you tried to capture the humanity of the people in New York?
From Day 1 in New York, if I have a suitcase, all I have to do is struggle with it, then I feel my suitcase get lighter because there are two people helping me with it. I’ve never thought of New York to be unwelcoming. The prices are [laughs], but the people are not unwelcoming. It was really tough to capture that narratively. Earlier on, the script was about multiple people. That’s sort of where it was leading, but it was impossible too because there is so much casting involved. With the money we had, we couldn’t do it. So the way that I captured that was in a doc style, shooting it in 200 frames per second. So we went on the boardwalk on the Fourth of July, and we went to the West Indian Day parade, filming a bunch of stuff. I really just wanted to capture Brooklyn and New York, and how it looks now, with the people that are in the streets. I really love our slowed down footage. When you look through it and you have hours and hours of it, you are getting a real picture of what the city looked like that day.
If you look through that footage and you just scroll through it, sometimes you’ll be on a street, and you’ll pass by a store, and you’ll see deep into the store, deep into the back room, and you’ll see two people talking. It is the most magical thing ever because you’ll forever have that little moment. You don’t know who those two people are, but it’s magic.
Can you talk about how you met Kota Johan, and how it was working with her on this powerhouse role?
I met Kota when I was still in grad school. I was on the train going home one night on the Q, and she came through. She just blasted through the car, and was singing a jazz song, something like, ‘I feel so alone,’ and I was like, ‘whoa.’ There was an energy there, and I just wanted to get to know her. We started following and messaging each other on Instagram. We met at Coney Island, and I took pictures of her. I remember when I met her, she had a shaved head, and I just felt that I would love to put her in one of my films, or make her one of the characters in this film. Then we just kept on meeting up, and kept in touch. She had just gotten to the city when I met her, and I had only been there for a few months. We just clicked immediately.
I asked her if I could screen test her. I just had my iPhone and a DV cam, and we met on the subway platform. I gave her a song right before we met, and asked her if she could learn it. I also asked her if she could sing the song, but sing it with the sounds of the city in mind. I told her that she didn’t have to sing it all the way through, she could pause where she felt like it. That was one of the first songs I filmed her singing, and it still blows me away. It’s just so raw. From then on, we became friends, and I feel like we’re like sisters, like she’s my younger sister. I’m so protective of her.
Kota used to go by Dakota when I first met her, and now she goes by Kota. We made the character’s name Dakota. I think the choice I made was to have her real name as the character’s name because I like filming just on the fly. She’s so incredible, she’s so raw, and puts all of her emotions in a scene. It was really interesting seeing that, while trying to direct her and really help her. You just have to make sure no one is going too far living in that space, because I feel as actors, you don’t have to method act. Kota as an actress gave so much to this role, and it was important for her to have space for that. So it was very risky to just have her name as the character’s name. I don’t want to have my actors, especially when they are first-time actors, living in the space of the character all of the time, because you need that distance. That was a difficult thing to navigate, just to have this constant communication.
What do you hope people see in your film?
I hope the people that live in Brooklyn see parts of their life captured in a very beautiful way. I hope people find it true and authentic, and familiar in a way. I hope if the film is around for a long time, I hope people look back and . . . because Brooklyn is changing so much . . . that maybe there is a building there, or a corner where people would gather at and be like, ‘I remember that spot.’ I hope people feel the emotion and feel a part of this bigger family. Because that is really what the film is about, it’s about going through life changes, and then sort of saying, noticing and realizing that everyone is going through it at the same exact time. It’s always going to be that way. When you look at it that way, you just realize you’re part of this huge wave of humanity. I hope people feel that, and feel all of the love we put into it.
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