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Enjoy Your Visit
TYPE: Narrative Short
GENRE: Drama
STATUS: Production
LOGLINE
Kara starts a new job playing an enslaved maid at the historic home of America’s founding father and mother, George and Martha Washington, and uncovers some disturbing truths...
SYNOPSIS
Kara starts a new job playing an enslaved maid at the historic home of America’s founding father and mother, George and Martha Washington. As Kara interacts with visitors, co-workers, and her predecessor, she uncovers some disturbing truths about historic Mount Vernon, contemporary America, and the fate of the woman she is playing.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
The project grew out of a documentary I was directing two years ago for CNN about Martha Washington. I was especially interested in telling the story of how the Washingtons repeatedly conspired to deprive the enslaved people in their households of their freedom. It’s a story that still too few Americans know. I realized that the Washingtons as slaveholders was the origin story of the 2020 documentary I made about race in America, Impact of Hate: Charlottesville, on the ordinary citizens who stood up against hate in Charlottesville and paid a terrible price. I was then shocked by how widespread white supremacy was. Interviewing historians about the Washingtons was revelatory in understanding how white supremacy is stitched into the founding of America. When I filmed at Mount Vernon, I was surprised that the only people showing visitors how to dye wool and spin were white. I remembered that my producer had told me that there had been an African American character interpreter who’d left recently for mental health reasons. When my documentary was cancelled because of the Warner Brothers Discovery merger, I was gutted. I kept thinking about the role of the character interpreters in presenting the Washingtons to the public and how they toggle between the past and the present. Out of that came Enjoy Your Visit. With Enjoy Your Visit, we aim to expand the conversations — we’d like them to occur in all sorts of places. Film festivals. Libraries. Historic sites -- along with the help of our partners.
KEY CREW
Erin Cramer - Director/Screenwriter
Erin is an Emmy-winning screenwriter and director from New York, based in London. Recently, Erin directed two feature-length documentaries about race in America, Impact of Hate: Charlottesville and The Ballad of Botham Jean, both for October Films / Investigation Discovery. Currently, she is writing an original thriller, You Be Me, for Ridley Scott Associates. Erin wrote and directed the short, The Ring Cycle, a comedy of pain starring Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones), made with seed money from Working Title. It played in festivals internationally and has sold to STV (Sweden), Short Shorts (Japan, theatrical), NBC Universal (Italy), Condé Nast/Glamour (US), Shot TV (Russia) and Virgin Airlines and played at London’s Genesis Cinema in a program of Cinesisters’ comedy shorts. She has written dramatic musicals for Monumental Films and BBC Films—A Place For Us and Queen of the Deep, as well as scripts for Working Title, Hart Sharp and Forward Films, among others. She also wrote and directed Cokie Roberts’ ‘I is for Italy’ segment for ABC and won an Emmy. She is represented by Luke Speed at The Speed Office. She lived the first year of her life in Alexandria, Virginia—fourteen minutes away from Mount Vernon.
Merle Augustin - Creative Producer
Merle Augustin grew up in Haiti and Canada, immersed in Haitian folktales, French fables, Jules Verne, MGM musicals, American westerns and French cinema, all of which gave her an unwavering love of tall tales. She honed her knack for storytelling at film school and through producing narratives and documentaries. Her producing credits include, COUNTERBLOW directed by Bob Giraldi; THE JEROME PROJECT, directed by visual artist Titus Kaphar; TEN STORIES TALL, Best Screenplay Award winner at the Rhode Island International Film Festival; WARLORD, a Grand Jury Prize winner at SXSW Film Festival. Her films have played at festivals internationally including the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Palm Beach International Film Festival.
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