A Bird Hit My Window and Now I'm a Lesbian
Directors: Carmela Murphy and AJ Dubler
United States, 2024, 8 min
Shooting Format:Digital
Festival Year:2025
Category:Animation
Genres:Comedy, Drama, Romance
Cast:Jordan Gantos, Cecile Lopez, Timmothy Sullivan
Crew:Writers: Carmela Murphy, AJ Dubler. Producers: Carmela Murphy, AJ Dubler.
Email:cmurph5@artic.edu
Synopsis
After a mysterious girl shows up at Gray's doorstep holding the corpse of a bird that had just cracked her window, an impromptu bird funeral changes the way Gray views herself and her lesbian identity.
Trailer
About the directors
Carmela Murphy - Carmela Murphy is a filmmaker and artist specializing in stop motion animation and screenwriting. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Spring 2024. She adores telling narrative and fantastical stories that explore the weird and the wonderful.
AJ Dubler - AJ Dubler is a filmmaker from Denver, Colorado. They graduated with distinction from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024 where they studied animation. AJ is a jack-of-all-trades writer, director, animator, and storyboard artist, specializing in stop motion animation. They hope to continue their work telling funny, dramatic, hand-crafted stories.
Filmmakers' note
"A Bird Hit My Window and Now I'm a Lesbian" is our debut short film. The ultimate message of the film is the rejection of the desire for male validation. For many women and femme people, male desire and attention acts as a social currency. Many women rely on this desire for validation as well as self and social worth. Realizing one's lesbian identity forces one to acknowledge and process this. Coming out often means a rejection and mourning of this previous life. When a bird hits a window, it is generally a male bird seeing his reflection and believing it is a rival attempting to usurp his territory or his women. He flies into the window to destroy his rival. In this case, his rival is femme queerness. In a male-dominated heteronormative world, it is the death of the bird that acts as the catalyst to the film.