We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christina Hulen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Christina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is also my most recent. It’s a short film and proof of concept called EVERYTHING’S FINE, which is currently on the festival circuit. It centers around a young schoolteacher who is the sole survivor of a school shooting and her struggles with PTSD as the one year anniversary of the event approaches. It began with a conversation with the lead actress, Charlotte Rothwell, about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). She asked if I had ever written about my own struggles with it and suggested maybe I should.

While I had no interest in writing anything autobiographical, as we were in the height of the pandemic, I thought the subject was important and would resonate with audiences. After all, the entire globe was dealing with the fear and isolation of Covid. Scores of people were experiencing PTSD firsthand.

However, I also had no interest in writing a Covid story. As we were having this conversation, breaking news about a mass shooting came over my television. If you’re asking yourself which one, that’s the point and that became the focus of my story. While I’ve not been in an active shooter situation, having spent many years working in academia. I have experienced active shooter lockdown. Thankfully, that situation ended without violence, however, it forever changed the way I looked at the world.

That same week, a dear friend and amazing producer, Staci Witt, called me and said she would produce anything I wrote. It was as though the universe was aligning for this to happen.

As I was writing the script, I was reaching out to school shooting survivors and the parents of slain children because above all, I wanted to represent the emotions accurately and treat the subject matter with authenticity and sensitivity. It was another friend and producer on the project, Kim Turner, who contacted Manuel Oliver, the founder of Change the Ref, who lost his beautiful son Joaquin in the Parkland shooting. Manny selflessly and generously gave his time and insight to the project.

What we couldn’t know when we began is that we would have three more people involved in our production that had directly experienced school shootings. It speaks to what an epidemic they have become.

Christina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I blame my mother! She would take me to a play every year for my birthday. That sparked my imagination and instilled my love of story. I began my career in theatre, working mainly as a lighting and scenic designer. My film career also began in the art department but as my writing developed, I began directing my own projects.

I also have a love of history which has led me to gravitate toward unearthing and telling the stories of fascinating people that history has either forgotten or erased. Far too often the lives and accomplishments of LGBTQ+ people and women are dismissed or attributed to others. I’m passionate about trying to change that.

I invite anyone who would like to learn more about me and my work to visit my website at http://christinahulen.weebly.com or http://everythingsfinethemovie.com

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Sadly, the United States does not fund artistic works at the level other countries do. We have become reliant on studios and financiers to fund our projects. This, in my opinion, is an exceptionally bad model. They are driven by profit margins and care little about artistic integrity. The proof is in the myriad of sequels, prequels and spin offs of tiring storylines.

I believe the strikes may help push us back into a more indie filmmaker cycle. In a perfect world people would invest in filmmakers and writers the way they invest in a piece of art to adorn their home. Private investors and patrons that back artists whose work they love not only would get to see more of the work they admire, but if the model keeps shifting toward indie productions, they stand to make a good return on investment.

If you’d like to back the kind of content, I produce I invite you to our fundraising page through Film Independent. https://www.filmindependent.org/sponsored-projects/everythings-fine/

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I have a couple of goals driving my creative journey. Besides telling really good stories, I want to create more LGBTQ+ and women fronted content. I started writing LGBTQ+ because one, I wasn’t seeing myself represented, at least not in the way I wanted. Even today, many of the same tired tropes are trotted out; the gay best friend, the coming out story, the bullying story etc. If there is a character that is LGBTQ + the plot seems to revolve entirely around their sexuality. I want to get away from that. I want tell stories of fascinating humans, leading extraordinary lives that just happen to be LGBTQ +.

I also lean toward female fronted stories for similar reasons. I am tired of seeing women depicted as the girlfriend, wife or muse but seldom as the hero. For too long the majority of films and TV shows have only depicted women in terms of how they relate to the male counterpart. Filmmakers have been told by studios and financiers for years that there is no money to be made in female led projects. Thankfully, Greta Gerwig’s monumental success with BARBIE might start to change some of those minds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://christinahulen.weebly.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christinahulen/
• Facebook: @chrishulen
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/christinahulen
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/christinahulen
• Everything’s Fine Website: http://www.everythingsfinethemovie.com/
• Everything’s Fine Film Independent Donation Page: https://www.filmindependent.org/sponsored-projects/everythings-fine/

Image Credits
Connie Kurtew