“We wanted the piece to feel outside of time and space,” says Canadian filmmaker Chelsea McMullan of her breakthrough 2007 short Slip, which launches our new seasonal series Directors’ Cuts. Over the next two weeks, NOWNESS’s valued contributors will be uncovering their archives with unaired, unedited and uncensored passion projects. For McMullan, this meant re-watching all 13 takes of her complex and beguiling dance piece set in the changing rooms of a women’s public bathing facility in Toronto. Interpreting the rich history and range of clientele coming together in the most private of spaces, from homeless people to new immigrants, the director conjured a rhapsodic short that coincided with the advent of YouTube. 

“None of the takes were perfect, and looking back at it now, the mistakes are all unique in their own way,” says McMullan, who cites Fellini and Fassbinder as her cinematic heroes. The haunting experiment earned the filmmaker a fan in the shape of one of her contemporaries, Kahlil Joseph, and left us wanting more: thankfully, she is putting together the same creative team for a forthcoming male version of Slip. As for what caught the cinephile’s cultivated eye this year? “I saw Memphis, starring Willis Earl Beal, at Sundance, and couldn’t get enough. That’s the film I’m telling everyone to watch right now.” 

The philosophizing musician and star of Memphis continues Directors’ Cuts tomorrow, courtesy of Yours Truly. Chelsea McMullan is part of What Matters Most.

Modesta Dziautaite is Associate Editor at NOWNESS.