Filmmaker Interview

Lily Tucker
directors of These Shirts Are Not Mine

Program 5 | Living Through It | Sunday, April 26 | 1:30pm

Lily Tucker is an experimental and narrative fiction filmmaker from Oklahoma City. She received her BFA in Film Production from Oklahoma City University in 2024 and is now pursuing her MFA in Film & Television Production from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She founded the Okie Women Film Festival in 2024 and serves as the Event Director. Lily will participate as a panelist in the panel on Saturday, April 25: Real Film Education.

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Gabe Wyatt, WOEFF: I think it's important to start with the process behind this film. What exactly went behind putting this together?  

Lily Tucker: I was really thinking about people and ways they've contributed to my life. Whenever I moved out [to LA], I was putting all my clothes away and unpacking. I realized that the majority of the shirts and the clothes that I have are not ones that I own. They were ones I either stole from other people, or I've just like been given. I was really stuck on that idea. I took my grandfather's film camera, then I laid out all of the shirts and clothes that were not mine. So, I just photographed them. I got back the digitals and the negatives, and I wanted to do something with the negatives. I started cutting and gluing the negatives onto leader film. That ended up not working. I went, and I took more pictures and then got a new roll. So then I used both of the digitals from both rolls. I wanted it to emulate a washing machine or a dryer cycling because I also thought that this piece was very generational, as well as communal to me. I was using a camera that was also not mine. Not all the pieces were mine. They were borrowed or taken. And so I wanted that to be the central theme of it.  

GW: With experimental film, filmmakers vary in terms of their process. But it seems like you thought of the story first of reminiscing on the past because of these shirts. And then the action of creating the piece came after.  

LT: Yeah. I feel like I kind of always end up marrying two different ideas I always have. I feel like I always have a process idea that's what happens if I do X, Y, and Z. Then I always have a story idea, and a lot of times there's like a bunch of different ones, and then it's a matter of finding which one would be best for that.  

GW: And how often do those process ideas turn out the way you expect them?  

LT: Never really. There's always something that didn't go the way you thought, which is also, I think, part of experimental film, and why I love it so much, you're experimenting. I have to combine ideas most of the time to make one piece. 

GW: Yeah, exactly. In These Shirts Are Not Mine, considering the repetition, layering of images, and the dryer cycling, was the process of making this piece emotional as you look back on the memories attached with these particular pieces of clothing? 

LT: Yeah, I think the image getting closer and further, is that time passing, and then also that blur of memories and how we can remember things a certain way. So, then that's also kind of memories. Being remembered differently in different parts of your life and how it ebbs and flows. It's also very much time and memory flashing, and blending together, even though I'm not blending the pictures together. They're not being overlapped, but they're going so fast that it feels like they're all mixing together.  

GW: You founded a film festival last year: The Okie Women Film Festival. You are also making experimental films, narrative films, and are a graduate film student. Are you seeing more and more experimental films being submitted to the festival?  

LT: We are young, only two years of submissions to go off of. I think from this year to last year, there were more experimental films, and there were a lot more dance films. For women in experimental film, I think that at least for me, I like making experimental films because I feel like those are always the most vulnerable for me, and they're always the most personal. I think with women, experimental film is a great personal outlet to explore those themes in life. It just ends up being that the experimental films I make are always so much more personal and intimate. That’s what I am really drawn to about experimental film. That is a piece that also ties women into that mix. It is a way for them to explore these more vulnerable areas. Whereas there might not be spaces in narrative film in the industry setting to necessarily do that right now.  

GW: There was definitely a wide variety of films at OWFF this year. Is it important to incorporate avant-garde into the festival for you? 

LT: We love it when the selections that we have for the year are really diverse. Having a lot of different experimental, narrative, live-action, or animated works is great. Having a big difference is good because it shows the diversity of Oklahoma women and their reach. We would love to see more experimental.  

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