As someone who was born four decades ago, any fragments of home movie footage that exist from my childhood—most of which was recorded on a cumbersome camcorder borrowed from my aunt—are priceless. Thanks to the new millennium’s technological advancements, people born within the past quarter century can have the entirety of their evolution from child to adult preserved on camera.
Few films I’ve seen take advantage of this as masterfully as Amy Jenkins’ “Adam’s Apple,” which immerses us in the first 21 years of her titular son’s life. Adam Sieswerda’s identity as a transgender man is only one aspect of his journey, though it is what his father John has trouble accepting. What is never in question is the love that exists between these family members, as they attempt to reach a deeper understanding of one another’s journeys. The poetry, disarming humor and vividly etched humanity of this picture had me utterly captivated from its first frame to its last.
It was a great pleasure for me to speak with both Amy and Adam via Zoom for Cinema Femme last week, prior to the premiere of their film at SXSW on March 13th.
“Adam’s Apple” is sure to rank among my top films of the year. Anyone who has been an adolescent or has raised one will find it relatable. To what extent would you say this project sprang organically from your own relationship?
Amy Jenkins (AJ): Well, at heart, I am an archivist. I started in photography as a little kid, carrying a camera around with me all the time, so the act of documenting my life and my family has always been there. Adam and his younger brother, Elias, grew up pretty comfortable with me filming the family, and it was really, honestly, for myself. I didn’t set out to be a filmmaker—that happened more recently—but the ease that everybody in the family has with me documenting certainly comes through in the film. Our collaboration stemmed from both of us wanting to tell our story, but it didn’t start out that way, obviously. It started out with me being a mom filming and building an archive of memories.
Adam Sieswerda (AS): Yeah, I felt totally used to this urge to capture life, both from my mom and also from myself. I grew up in a creative household where all of us wanted to film and photograph. I also write and so am very interested in capturing my experiences of life on the page. Growing up trans, I was in need of a story where someone was like me, and that was difficult to find at times. I particularly wanted a story that just showed someone who happened to be trans growing up. They have the struggles and joys and rites of passage that every child experiences growing up in a family and leaving home. We had all of this footage and I felt strongly that I wanted to contribute to that narrative so that other trans kids like myself could have a story like that.
What was your collaboration like with editor Kristina Motwani in how you went about intertwining the footage you had both shot over the years?
AJ: Kristina was fabulous to work with. We had a very collaborative editing relationship, and we did it remotely. I’m in New Hampshire, Kristina’s in San Francisco, and I was worried about that at first. But honestly, it was amazing and we were online on Zoom sending assemblies and rough cuts back and forth on a daily basis. But I will also say that the edit on this was perhaps unusual because as we got closer with a rough cut, we were essentially editing by committee. Adam, myself, Kristina, our producer Brit Fryer, and sometimes our story consultant Carter Sickels would all get on a zoom and literally talk through every single scene in the entire film once a week. These were ten-hour zooms—I’m not kidding [laughs]—and then the next Monday, we’d start working on a new rough cut. It went through many, many drafts because obviously, we started with hundreds of hours of footage, but it was a super-positive experience and very collaborative.
AS: I remember watching one of the first rough cuts, and it was like four hours long. Those zoom sessions were long, but I am so happy that we did it that way. This is obviously the first film that I’m doing, so it’s not like I have much experience in other styles of editing films. I just felt incredibly grateful that we all were okay with editing the film in this way because it is such a personal story. Allowing all of our voices to have a contribution in the edit made it extremely strong and much more genuine to actual life.
AJ: Having the support of Brit and Carter, who are also both trans men, enabled us to understand the material from multiple perspectives. Adam and I are very subjective, and we needed to be able to step back and hear from other people as well.
The film beautifully expresses how cinema can serve a therapeutic purpose in both capturing time and letting go.
AJ: Thank you. Well honestly, that’s a philosophy of mine that I’ve had going back to childhood. Filming helps me hold onto something while also letting it go. I come from a visual art background, so to a certain extent, the time lapses spring from my experience in video installation, sculpture and photography. As an archivist, there’s this compulsion to see time unfold, and all of those time lapses in the film were done in our yard. They’re capturing the passage of time, seasons, nature, but in a way, I kind of conceptualized the whole film as a time lapse. You’re watching essentially 21 years of a person’s life go by in an hour and a half, which results in a condensing of time from a single perspective, just like a time lapse. So the short time lapses within the film are sort of a metaphor for the film at large.
AS: My most direct involvement with the film over the past few years was in the writing process, so I didn’t always see the time lapses. I’m very interested in nature and in how I perceive myself in nature. I grew up in a very natural area with a lot of woods and not very much urban environment at all. Watching the time lapses in the film alongside myself growing and transitioning sends a message, which is that this is all just natural. My identity is as natural as the passage of time, the seasons and the blooming of flowers. I am a part of the world in the way that I am, in my gender identity, and we all unfold together.
I found the involvement of John—Amy’s husband and Adam’s father—extraordinary in how his perspective is given space and empathy despite his lack of understanding.
AS: For me, in making this film, I had some profound realizations of greater empathy, patience and understanding for my parents’ processes in my transition and in the way that I changed as a person. They have their own memories of myself that I can’t even remember, and their attachments are usually built from the world rather than from themselves. Having the space to understand my dad not being immediately onboard with my transition was important for me to show in an empathetic way. My transition comes from me, but the whole family is transitioning together. As long as it is rooted in care and love for each other, everyone’s process is important to make space for, and it’s not so simple of a thing. The dynamic one has with their family is very nuanced. I didn’t want my perspective to control how people should be and what their timeline should be, because that’s not life.
AJ: From a parenting perspective, the story is universal to being a parent in general. All parents are reckoning with change, learning how to let go of their expectations, and embracing their child for who they are as an individual, as opposed to who you think you want them to be. Those are all things that we learn as we do them. There’s no school for how to be a parent, you’re just in it. The beauty of John is that his actions are ultimately rooted in love. The film is about unconditional love, and within that, there are many nuances and reckonings and adjustments. You don’t always get that perfect family picture that you envision when you’re pregnant. You get what you’re given and you love it no matter what.
I became obsessed with the evolving posters on Adam’s bedroom walls, which included many of my favorite films. Tell me about the illustration entitled, “Anatomy of a Racist,” that is placed at the head of your bed and features the caricature of a certain high-ranking politician.
AS: As soon as we began watching versions of the film, I saw that poster and was like, “I bet people are going to notice that.” And I was totally fine with it. I will just say that I am a young adult growing up in a world where there is a lot of hatred. It makes me really upset and I want to be direct in how upset our current administrative world makes me. Having that poster in my bedroom was very much a part of me being direct about my feelings. I didn’t draw it myself, but it was close to my heart. [laughs]
I’m right there with you. I feel equally violated by the dehumanizing efforts of the author who created Harry Potter, a character whom you enjoyed dressing up as in your youth.
AS: There’s been a lot of dialogue about how ironic J.K. Rowling’s views are in comparison to Harry Potter. When I was young, I very much grew up reading Harry Potter and I loved the books in part because they took place in a magical world where anything was possible. You could be exactly who you felt you were. As I grew older, I loved how the books portrayed, through Rowling’s writing, that people have to find themselves and that has to be accepted. That was what really stood out to me in the stories themselves, and I feel like there are many other people like me who also noticed it. So I still love that message, and it’s just what I choose to pay attention to.
Would you say the experience of making this film both deepened your relationship with one another, and may have influenced each of your career paths moving forward?
AJ: I did make a feature film prior to this called “Instructions on Parting,” which was also a personal film about my family. That one was about mortality, and it also came from my archives of filming my mother and brother and sister. The film premiered at the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnite in 2018, and was my initial introduction to filmmaking. I do think I’ve gotten the filmmaking bug, but “Adam’s Apple” did take eight years for us to make, so I imagine that I will now pivot to some short form for a little bit. As everybody knows who makes documentary films, the absolute dedication that it takes to your entire life and time is intense. So I think I’d like to focus next on a project that I can make and show within a year. But the love of visual archiving is in my heart, and that’s not going away. I’ll also say it’s rare for a teenager to be willing to work with their mom [laughs], and I’ve been very lucky to have Adam be onboard with me in this project. I feel like we’ve really learned a lot from each other, and I don’t take it for granted. He was away at college, and if nothing else, the film would give us something to talk about.
AS: We had all these transcripts of conversations between me and my family from when I was a teenager, and I went through all of those in the writing process while I was at college. It allowed me to think a lot about myself and questions I still had about myself, about memory and perception and gender and just growing in general. The transcripts also allowed me to actually sit with my parents’ perspectives more because at the time, when those conversations were happening, I was very much just trying to express myself. There’s not a lot of space to kind of sit and consider the other perspective when you’re 16 and you want to get out of the house. Looking back at these moments when I was 22 allowed me to actually think about this stuff. It definitely brought me closer to you, mom, and to family in general and to the home that I had left for college. It really required me to reflect on my past life.
Did your family enjoy watching films together?
AJ: Oh definitely. We have a lot of memories of us all piling on the couch and watching films together, and some of those posters on Adam’s wall come directly out of our family’s favorite films. Adam and I love watching Wes Anderson movies together.
AS: Film was also a place for me to find representation to a degree, as a younger person living in a very small town. Before I had come out as trans, I was labeled as a tomboy, so I would imitate many of the male figures that I watched in movies and on TV. Then as I grew and figured out more of myself, I was like, “Okay, I need different role models that represent me better.”
Which films would you currently cite as being your favorites?
AS: That’s a good question! As soon as anyone asks me that, I forget every movie I’ve ever watched. [laughs] I love “Paris, Texas” by Wim Wenders. I think that’s just a really beautiful film. I also love “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and “Sentimental Value,” which I just saw. Off the top of my head, I would say those are my top three.
Were there certain favorite films in your mind as you were approaching this project?
AS: I was actually thinking about this recently. As I was figuring out the way that the voice-over would work in our film, I watched two documentaries. One was “Milisuthando,” a personal documentary by a South African filmmaker, Milisuthando Bongela. The film has a very poetic voice-over and is just beautiful in general as well as very relevant. “Orlando: My Political Biography” was also a really great film for me to watch, both for its voice-over and for the fun and joy that it had. I felt strongly that I wanted to exude joy in the story that we told.
AJ: We really set out to tell a story full of love and joy as a counterpoint to some of the hostility that trans kids are facing today.
AS: Seeing other people who are like you—whether that means they look like you or have a similar identity—live in joy, even alongside struggle and tension, is a privilege that everyone should have. It shows that your personhood, especially if it’s a political personhood, is not defined by that kind of strife. You deserve to have beauty and fun alongside whatever struggle that you have to go through. Those two can exist in one, and that is really what I want audiences to notice as a result of seeing this film.
“Adam’s Apple” premieres on Friday, March 13th, at SXSW (for tickets and showtimes, click here). For more information, visit the film’s official site.
