Fredgy Noël’s newest short, NEW YORK DAY WOMEN, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. Based on Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat’s 1991 short story of the same name, the story follows young woman Suzette, as she unexpectedly sees her mother in Manhattan. Deciding to follow her around, Suzette learns sees her mother through a new light, and by proxy, herself. Noël’s adaptation of the story contains romanticism for the city of New York and a touching dedication to the cultural power of generational women.
I want to start off by saying that I loved NEW YORK DAY WOMEN. I thought it was fantastic. When was the first time you read Edwidge Danticat’s short story? And what called out to you to adapt it?
I read it for the first time in 2004 when I was in undergrad. It was a long time ago, and that story didn’t really stand out to me because I had no understanding of what was going on. There were others that stood out, I think because of where I was at in my life. Later, I was screening THE HOUSE OF LABEIJA at Provincetown International and the programmer was Haitian. I was like “I’m Haitian, you’re Haitian, I love Edwidge Danticat.” I kind of just said it, and she was like “I know Edwidge! I’ll put you two in touch. Would you like me to?” And I’m not good at asking for things but there was no way I wasn’t going to say yes.
She put us in touch and shared my work with her, and Edwidge wrote me back asking what I’d like to do. I told her I’d love to adapt one of her short stories. When she asked which one, I read the anthology again and said to myself “this New York Day Women… this one really stands out to me. I need to do this one” I have a background in advertising, and there were just elements of it that were really speaking to me in my time in life right now. And she said yes!
That’s amazing! Can you talk a little bit about the process of getting it from that step to actually getting the film made?
I had to adapt the story, which is something I’d never done before. And the structure is very non-linear. I love non-linear storytelling, and so I felt like I wanted to make it narrative. Narrative requires an amount of tension and when I read it, the conflict was coming from the world and how she’s existing in this story. I had to create a character that could encompass that but not make them such an antagonist. I wanted this person to be a subtle, slow burn. We know what she represents but we don’t want to make her overtly that. That storytelling element was a huge part in getting the story in a place to make it ready to shoot.
I’m in the NYU grad film program, and this was my second year film. We work with other people in our cohort, and I wanted to work with a DP who I could dance with. This isn’t a “you stand over there with your people and I’ll stand over here with my actors” situation. We’re dancing. We’re moving around the city and we have to be agile. We have to listen to each other. Sara Greenbaum was referred to me by a DP friend and getting the cast together started from Natalie Paul who plays Suzette. I knew her from another project. The mother is my friend’s mom. She’s never acted and had to take time off work to be there. But I knew she could do it. I knew she had that character in her. And my production designer, a friend of mine, Linnea Crabtree, is insanely talented. She’s the best. She’s so meticulous. She’s a white girl and she tapped into a Haitian kitchen like I have never seen. It’s all about passionate people and collaboration.
I’m so happy you mentioned production design, because I wanted to talk about that element of the film. We move from this giant metropolis of NYC to this intimate, colorful and cultural domestic space. What was important to you in crafting the home?
I just trusted her as a partner. I showed her pictures from my family kitchens and tell her about pieces that stand out in a Haitian household. I was born here but I grew up in Haiti for seven years so I know about the plastics and the florals you’d find. We were constantly in conversation and she would just send me pieces and ask me “what do you think of this?” We rented that house but she built the world. She came in a day before by herself and went into that kitchen, the bedroom, the basement, etc. and created those spaces and sat with them. When we walked in, I was like “wow” in seeing it transformed.
You mentioned growing up in Haiti, and I know you also spent some formative years in Miami and D.C. as well. Suzette notes that she’s never seen her mother in Manhattan, but it still feels like her mother is walking through her own version of it, different from Suzette’s – from the park where she goes to work to the street vendor all but her ignore. Now that you’ve been a New Yorker for quite some time, what does the city look like for you? And production-wise how did you want to capture it?
I visited New York when I was eight. My uncle used to work at a parking lot in Chinatown and they said I got down on my knees, kissed the cement, and said “this is home.” This has always been my home. I’ve never not loved it and never not wanted to figure out a way to translate that love on screen.
My great aunt lived in East Flatbush. She came here in the 70s and passed away last year. I showed her this film before she passed because I saw her in it. And I know that Brooklyn very very well. My family always wanted to go there, and I always wanted to be in Manhattan. Nobody ever wanted to go to Manhattan. It was always this switch up. Now I feel like I get to show my two worlds: the summers in Brooklyn and my 20 years in Manhattan. This is so lovely, elegant, and graceful. The mother walks around seeing people, but also looking at jewelry as if she thinks she can buy it. She owns the city. Suzette doesn’t own the city like that in the beginning. She owns it in the end, when the reflection happens. I want you to see the mother in her now. She’s thinking and she’s present. She’s checked out and also tapped in just like her mother was.
There’s so many things that change too. I think it’s wonderful to be able to capture it. In a year from now, we may look and think “they got rid of those vendors.” There was a time when Brooklyn bridge was full of vendors, but look at it now. It’s just tourists. I’m always trying to capture the moment so we don’t forget.
That voyeurism aspect is so central to this story. Filmmaking and story translation is its own kind of voyeurism as well – as a storyteller, what motivates and inspires your eye as you move through the world?
People. I was walking in Crown Heights yesterday and watching the gentrification and thinking “my god.” And then I see this little girl, she must’ve been about 12, and she had this round face and a Haitian flag bandana on her head. We just tapped in and smiled. Haiti is always under attack and to see a little girl have that on her head, walking proud… I can tell the story. I already see her character by the way she’s presenting to me. And I love buildings. I love looking at the intricacies of the artwork and the architecture. That tells a lot of story. I wonder, “who lived there? For how long?” So it’s just the people and the structures we’re surrounded by.
There’s another level of voyeurism here with Suzette’s coworker as well, who’s not in the original text. There’s the moment where she says, “I used to have one of those nannies when I was a kid,” and that word, those, lands so heavily on the ears because it contains so much cultural and classist subtext. Can you talk about writing her character into this story? Because she’s quite fleeting in the film but definitely leaves an impression.
She does. And at first she had more impact. There’s so much dialogue that got cut from that actress and I had to let her know that she did a great job, but this is the mother and daughter’s story. The character is there as a reminder. She’s not going to claim this. I’m reclaiming a story between a mother and a daughter figuring each other out. This character is here to remind us that there is a world and group of folks who see us in this way. Is she saying “I used to have one of those nannies” as a way of saying she knows that’s her mother? Or is she just saying she used to have a nanny like that? We don’t know but I don’t care. That’s her truth.
After I’ve given you all this time with this woman and her mother, that does hit. Because we now know them and we’ve sat with them for a while. We’ve had all these moments and back-and-forth, these montages, I’m building to let you see that they think she’s a servant. You can feel that moment in the audience too. And then I have that light music because yes it’s happening, but we’re gonna keep going. She now has a new truth. I needed that character. I needed that tension and conflict, but I didn’t need her to be the story.
Exactly. Family, blood and found, is such a throughline in your films and I also see a couple credits on the film that suggest you work with family in your productions as well. Can you talk about this as an element to the work you create?
Chosen family is a huge, huge part of my work. This isn’t my story with my mother. We heal from art. I’m lucky enough to have found so many people who uplift me. The love and support they give me really carries me through things. My sets have to be filled with people who I identify with, who understand the “why” for me. I’m not going to have people who don’t get it around me when I’m telling these stories and I’m definitely not going to have them around my actors who are stepping into something. The next few films are going to make it even more obvious what stories I’m telling here.
And in the context of your other work, THE HOUSE OF LABEIJA, with found family, and also at MILKING IT, where we see Josephine has these longings for surrogate motherhood, here in NEW YORK DAY WOMEN, Suzette seems to be pursuing some kind of psychic divide she feels with her mother. In chosen and found family, can you talk about how you translate that and what it means to know and be known by someone?
The House of Labeija changed my life. I thought I was just making a movie with them, but they were showing me how to have family. They made me a member. They check in on me. The movie and everything was done and they were like “how are you?” I was like “what is this?” I’ve lived in NY for however long and I’ve never had people come see my apartment and they’re asking me how I am. I started to receive it, and then reciprocate it. Not because of the film or this and that but because I realized that this is how we build community.
You say it’s psychic, and yes, I have a whole relationship with different people that I’m sure I’ll never feel. It’ll never happen. I have to heal myself in my own ways, versus a chosen family that shows up. I posted something when I got the Spike Grant, and Marcus, the father of the House of Labeija, was like “honey you’re excited right now but you misspelled something.” *laughing* I was like “Oh my god! Thank you!!” That kind of love. That kind of support. That kind of being seen, not just for what you can do for me but how we can uphold and uplift each other. It’s very new and I’m enjoying it.
The way you ended NEW YORK DAY WOMEN, with that replacement on the bus stop bench, really drives home that idea of sonder and of looking at people in new complex ways. Not writing off people around us as just the people around us, but wondering who they might be. Are there any other messages you hope people take away from NEW YORK DAY WOMEN?
I love that you received that because what I said about the little girl, that’s what I do. I want you to see people and wonder “who are you? Where are you going? What are you up to right now? What’s that smile on your face?” I can’t say what I want people to get from this film because there’s so much. I keep discovering more. I hear it with the questions I get. I don’t want to say. I want to hear how people are receiving it. It’s so nuanced. It’s so New York. Whatever catches you and activates you to do something good, that’s what matters to me.
