Maiden Lane
San Francisco, California | Film Short
History, Drama
"Maiden Lane", based on the award winning book "Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute", is a proof of concept short film about labor, sex work, community, and activism in turn-of-the-20th-century America.
Maiden Lane
San Francisco, California | Film Short
History, Drama
2 Campaigns | California, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $10,181 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
68 supporters | followers
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"Maiden Lane", based on the award winning book "Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute", is a proof of concept short film about labor, sex work, community, and activism in turn-of-the-20th-century America.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
1913, "Westville": 17-year-old Adeline Hart has started a new job as a laundress after being kicked out of her family home. Broke and isolated, her situation grows desperate as she awaits payday: her hunger pains ache, her boyfriend is nowhere to be found, and her work boots are fraying at the seams.
When a chance opportunity arises with the promise of fast cash, Adeline weighs her options: is sex work really any more degrading than all the other jobs she's worked?
Could it maybe even offer salvation?
Characters
Our protagonist is Adeline Hart, A 17-year-old transplant from rural Nebraska. Though she’s been sheltered by her rural upbringing and loving caretakers, she is strong willed, adventurous, playful, and brave. A natural optimist, she moved across the country by herself to support her aging grandparents and will do what it takes to make good on her promise. She is hard-working and loyal, but also creative, independent, fiercely modern, hot headed and defiant when crossed.
Emma is Adeline’s estranged older sister. Raised in Westville by their absentee father and puritanical paternal grandmother, Emma has felt trapped by her meager circumstances for as long as she can remember. By nature she is artistic, curious, gentle, and loving—but she has been browbeaten by the responsibilities laid upon her from a very young age. She neglects herself to tend to others, cares too much about her reputation and respectability, and is jealous of Adeline’s freedom. She works to support herself and her grandmother, but looks forward to marriage and some stability in her life.
Rosie works at the laundry and takes pity on Adeline, showing her the ropes, sharing her lunches, and teaching her that smoking staves off hunger when food is scarce. She is disarmingly kind, generous, open and unashamed. She is resourceful in spite of her illiteracy, and tender in spite of her past traumas. Adeline watches her solicit a man and take him into a brothel, Adeline’s first indication that sex work may be an option. In our feature length version, we learn that Rosie is queer, and a central figure who unites the women working in Westville's brothels.
Other characters in the world of Maiden Lane include...
The Boss, who makes his wages off of the women in his employ, who he overworks, underpays, and berates at any given opportunity. He too is a working class denizen of the tenderloin, but sees himself as dwelling miles above the women (especially the women of color) he hires.
"Daddy" is running for D.A. on an anti-vice platform. We only hear of him in passing, and see his campaign posters around town; his absence reveals how little he actually cares about the welfare of women, including his own daughters.
The John is a bland, middle aged white guy, likely a businessman, likely a father. How convenient for him that he just stumbles upon a teenage girl—in a moment of need— in the tenderloin on a random weekday morning.
Setting: The Streets of Westville, 1913
Westville is a former mining town, now a bustling mid-sized city located somewhere between Spokane and San Francisco. Parts are modern and cosmopolitan, but our story is centered in the tenderloin, a dilapidated working class district representative of the rougher industrial roots of this rapidly gentrifying place.
The people who live here are multi-ethnic immigrants and people indigenous to the region, itinerant laborers, beggars, artists, bohemians, shop keepers, grocers, nurses, performers, queer youth, and importantly, sex workers. The city’s low-rent brothels are centered here, as well as its cheaper (and more discreet) bars and dance halls, attracting a mixed class clientele: the rich, the poor, and everyone in between.
The Laundry
Our laundry interior will be cramped, sweaty, steamy, dingy, full of piles of dirty linens, aluminum tubs, and simple tools. The women working here represent the racial diversity of early 20th c. western cities, and range in age from teens to elders.
Thoughtful sound design, shots, and blocking will bring the period to life convincingly on a micro budget. Choreographed labor montages and simple cheap uniforms will highlight the repetitive drudgery of these women’s work lives, while creating an immersive visual and auditory experience.
Directors Statement
We (Ivy Anderson & Devon Angus) have collaborated for over a decade as writers, historians, performers, and now filmmakers—a natural progression from our history as actors and multimedia storytellers. We co-wrote the award winning non-fiction book Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute, and have now adapted it as both a feature and a short script. “Maiden Lane” is a period drama with a surprisingly modern perspective that moves beyond sensational or stigmatized portrayals of prostitution, instead treating it like any other “bullshit job”. Our protagonist, Adeline (known as “Alice” in the underworld) is neither a victim nor a free agent; she, like everyone else, must survive in a dog-eat-dog world ruled by wealthy white men. Her choices are limited by her gender and class, and sex work is not empowering per se, but it does save her life. We see this film as a protest piece against contemporary policies that target sex workers, the poor, and women in general, and as a celebration of found family and resilient communities.
This short encompasses one sequence from our feature, which can stand alone as a short for a festival run. We aim to secure funding for a feature that is even more radical and impactful.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Production Design
Costs $900
In order to properly recreate the period, 9% of our total budget will be going towards graphic design, props, and set dressing.
Wardrobe, Hair, and Makeup
Costs $1,500
We are putting 15% of our budget towards costuming, makeup, and hair. We would like to be able to accurately style our actors to the era!
Camera Package
Costs $1,000
10% of the budget will be going towards a proper camera package, completed with a lens kit, rigging, and monitors.
Grip & Electric
Costs $750
8% of our budget will be going towards a proper G&E package from Bolt lighting Co. in Berkeley.
Locations
Costs $500
5% of the budget will go towards location fees for the Laundry as well as exterior locations!
Set Operations
Costs $3,500
We want to make sure our cast and crew are taken care of! $3,500 will go towards food, lodging and transportation reimbursements!
Post production
Costs $850
8.5% of the budget will go toward post production so we can get this film through the editing room!
Contingency
Costs $500
We would like to have 5% in contingency, just to be safe. You never know what unexpected costs may arise during production!
Film Festival fees
Costs $500
Especially with the goal of this short becoming a feature length film, we want to make sure it reaches as many audiences as possible!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Ivy Anderson & Devon Angus
Writers/Directors.
Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus are historians, writers, and filmmakers based in San Francisco. Their book, Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute, won the California Historical Society Book Award, and compiles previously unseen first-person narratives from sex workers and other working women living in San Francisco circa 1913. They are currently adapting this work into a proof of concept short for a feature-length film.
Nova Duarte Martinez
Producer
Nova Duarte Martinez is a producer, assistant director and filmmaker in the Bay Area. Born to a Brazilian immigrant and a New Jersey hitchhiker in Butte Alaska, her unusual upbringing provided her with a lot of space to foster her creative imagination as a storyteller. She enjoys the collaborative and communal aspect of filmmaking as a medium that brings various artists from all walks of life together. She has three shorts to her name. "La Lectura", "No Plan B", and "Play it Like it’s ‘54". Her work has been showcased at The ATA, The Roxie, and QWOCMAP.
Erika Schroeder
Producer
Erika Schroeder is a writer, director, and filmmaker. Hailing from Reno, Nevada, she's lived multiple lives, working at circuses, casinos, farms, national parks, and out in the fields as an anthropologist. Her love of history and storytelling led her to study film at City College of San Francisco, and since then, she has gone on to help with a number of productions for CCSF and AFI, wearing multiple hats as a production designer, editor, producer, and production coordinator. She currently rees in a little house in West Oakland.
Christiana Charalamblus
Director of Photography
Christiana was born and raised in Cyprus. She has always been drawn to dark, atmospheric stories that take their time to build tension and mood. She aspires to create authentic and emotionally impactful images that stay true to the story. She feels right at home when she works with people that have the similar sensibilities and want to create work that comes from an honest place. Christiana watches horror movies to help her sleep.
Chloe Wong
Casting Director
Chloe Wong is an emerging actor and Casting Director based in the Bay Area. Classically trained with American Conservatory and NCTC, they have a background in the theater ranging from Shakespeare and contemporary works. Additionally to stage works, they also have a hand in acting on camera in student and indie short films. When they are not acting or enjoying lengthy strolls on the coastline, they are a student and love to paint and create art in other mediums. They are hungry to learn more, and excited to work/connect/play with other actors and creatives.
Jessy Brown
Production Designer
Jessy Brown (she/they) is a queer, Californian creative producer and visual design consultant. Jessy spent their teens and twenties in theater arts, their thirties and forties in large scale event experience coordination and art installation as well as production design for commercial, film and festival. They are currently co-proprietor and operator of Lost & Found Vintage. Jessy is best known for their founding creative role in the underground game show experience Psychedelic Friendship Bingo which ran between 2009 - 2017 as well as key roles in creative directing and production design for The Peralta Junction Project in Oakland in 2012 and M.T. Pockets Traveling Midway of Curiosities & Delights which featured in Oakland, Oregon, at Maker Faire in San Mateo and at Art Outside in Texas. Jessy was Senior Creative Producer with the team at I Heart Comix who won a REGGIE Award in 2021 for the Happier Than Ever experience in Beverly Hills. Music, slow-fashion and antifascism is their passion. Jessy lives with their cat, Lucifer, in Nevada City.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
1913, "Westville": 17-year-old Adeline Hart has started a new job as a laundress after being kicked out of her family home. Broke and isolated, her situation grows desperate as she awaits payday: her hunger pains ache, her boyfriend is nowhere to be found, and her work boots are fraying at the seams.
When a chance opportunity arises with the promise of fast cash, Adeline weighs her options: is sex work really any more degrading than all the other jobs she's worked?
Could it maybe even offer salvation?
Characters
Our protagonist is Adeline Hart, A 17-year-old transplant from rural Nebraska. Though she’s been sheltered by her rural upbringing and loving caretakers, she is strong willed, adventurous, playful, and brave. A natural optimist, she moved across the country by herself to support her aging grandparents and will do what it takes to make good on her promise. She is hard-working and loyal, but also creative, independent, fiercely modern, hot headed and defiant when crossed.
Emma is Adeline’s estranged older sister. Raised in Westville by their absentee father and puritanical paternal grandmother, Emma has felt trapped by her meager circumstances for as long as she can remember. By nature she is artistic, curious, gentle, and loving—but she has been browbeaten by the responsibilities laid upon her from a very young age. She neglects herself to tend to others, cares too much about her reputation and respectability, and is jealous of Adeline’s freedom. She works to support herself and her grandmother, but looks forward to marriage and some stability in her life.
Rosie works at the laundry and takes pity on Adeline, showing her the ropes, sharing her lunches, and teaching her that smoking staves off hunger when food is scarce. She is disarmingly kind, generous, open and unashamed. She is resourceful in spite of her illiteracy, and tender in spite of her past traumas. Adeline watches her solicit a man and take him into a brothel, Adeline’s first indication that sex work may be an option. In our feature length version, we learn that Rosie is queer, and a central figure who unites the women working in Westville's brothels.
Other characters in the world of Maiden Lane include...
The Boss, who makes his wages off of the women in his employ, who he overworks, underpays, and berates at any given opportunity. He too is a working class denizen of the tenderloin, but sees himself as dwelling miles above the women (especially the women of color) he hires.
"Daddy" is running for D.A. on an anti-vice platform. We only hear of him in passing, and see his campaign posters around town; his absence reveals how little he actually cares about the welfare of women, including his own daughters.
The John is a bland, middle aged white guy, likely a businessman, likely a father. How convenient for him that he just stumbles upon a teenage girl—in a moment of need— in the tenderloin on a random weekday morning.
Setting: The Streets of Westville, 1913
Westville is a former mining town, now a bustling mid-sized city located somewhere between Spokane and San Francisco. Parts are modern and cosmopolitan, but our story is centered in the tenderloin, a dilapidated working class district representative of the rougher industrial roots of this rapidly gentrifying place.
The people who live here are multi-ethnic immigrants and people indigenous to the region, itinerant laborers, beggars, artists, bohemians, shop keepers, grocers, nurses, performers, queer youth, and importantly, sex workers. The city’s low-rent brothels are centered here, as well as its cheaper (and more discreet) bars and dance halls, attracting a mixed class clientele: the rich, the poor, and everyone in between.
The Laundry
Our laundry interior will be cramped, sweaty, steamy, dingy, full of piles of dirty linens, aluminum tubs, and simple tools. The women working here represent the racial diversity of early 20th c. western cities, and range in age from teens to elders.
Thoughtful sound design, shots, and blocking will bring the period to life convincingly on a micro budget. Choreographed labor montages and simple cheap uniforms will highlight the repetitive drudgery of these women’s work lives, while creating an immersive visual and auditory experience.
Directors Statement
We (Ivy Anderson & Devon Angus) have collaborated for over a decade as writers, historians, performers, and now filmmakers—a natural progression from our history as actors and multimedia storytellers. We co-wrote the award winning non-fiction book Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute, and have now adapted it as both a feature and a short script. “Maiden Lane” is a period drama with a surprisingly modern perspective that moves beyond sensational or stigmatized portrayals of prostitution, instead treating it like any other “bullshit job”. Our protagonist, Adeline (known as “Alice” in the underworld) is neither a victim nor a free agent; she, like everyone else, must survive in a dog-eat-dog world ruled by wealthy white men. Her choices are limited by her gender and class, and sex work is not empowering per se, but it does save her life. We see this film as a protest piece against contemporary policies that target sex workers, the poor, and women in general, and as a celebration of found family and resilient communities.
This short encompasses one sequence from our feature, which can stand alone as a short for a festival run. We aim to secure funding for a feature that is even more radical and impactful.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Production Design
Costs $900
In order to properly recreate the period, 9% of our total budget will be going towards graphic design, props, and set dressing.
Wardrobe, Hair, and Makeup
Costs $1,500
We are putting 15% of our budget towards costuming, makeup, and hair. We would like to be able to accurately style our actors to the era!
Camera Package
Costs $1,000
10% of the budget will be going towards a proper camera package, completed with a lens kit, rigging, and monitors.
Grip & Electric
Costs $750
8% of our budget will be going towards a proper G&E package from Bolt lighting Co. in Berkeley.
Locations
Costs $500
5% of the budget will go towards location fees for the Laundry as well as exterior locations!
Set Operations
Costs $3,500
We want to make sure our cast and crew are taken care of! $3,500 will go towards food, lodging and transportation reimbursements!
Post production
Costs $850
8.5% of the budget will go toward post production so we can get this film through the editing room!
Contingency
Costs $500
We would like to have 5% in contingency, just to be safe. You never know what unexpected costs may arise during production!
Film Festival fees
Costs $500
Especially with the goal of this short becoming a feature length film, we want to make sure it reaches as many audiences as possible!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Ivy Anderson & Devon Angus
Writers/Directors.
Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus are historians, writers, and filmmakers based in San Francisco. Their book, Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute, won the California Historical Society Book Award, and compiles previously unseen first-person narratives from sex workers and other working women living in San Francisco circa 1913. They are currently adapting this work into a proof of concept short for a feature-length film.
Nova Duarte Martinez
Producer
Nova Duarte Martinez is a producer, assistant director and filmmaker in the Bay Area. Born to a Brazilian immigrant and a New Jersey hitchhiker in Butte Alaska, her unusual upbringing provided her with a lot of space to foster her creative imagination as a storyteller. She enjoys the collaborative and communal aspect of filmmaking as a medium that brings various artists from all walks of life together. She has three shorts to her name. "La Lectura", "No Plan B", and "Play it Like it’s ‘54". Her work has been showcased at The ATA, The Roxie, and QWOCMAP.
Erika Schroeder
Producer
Erika Schroeder is a writer, director, and filmmaker. Hailing from Reno, Nevada, she's lived multiple lives, working at circuses, casinos, farms, national parks, and out in the fields as an anthropologist. Her love of history and storytelling led her to study film at City College of San Francisco, and since then, she has gone on to help with a number of productions for CCSF and AFI, wearing multiple hats as a production designer, editor, producer, and production coordinator. She currently rees in a little house in West Oakland.
Christiana Charalamblus
Director of Photography
Christiana was born and raised in Cyprus. She has always been drawn to dark, atmospheric stories that take their time to build tension and mood. She aspires to create authentic and emotionally impactful images that stay true to the story. She feels right at home when she works with people that have the similar sensibilities and want to create work that comes from an honest place. Christiana watches horror movies to help her sleep.
Chloe Wong
Casting Director
Chloe Wong is an emerging actor and Casting Director based in the Bay Area. Classically trained with American Conservatory and NCTC, they have a background in the theater ranging from Shakespeare and contemporary works. Additionally to stage works, they also have a hand in acting on camera in student and indie short films. When they are not acting or enjoying lengthy strolls on the coastline, they are a student and love to paint and create art in other mediums. They are hungry to learn more, and excited to work/connect/play with other actors and creatives.
Jessy Brown
Production Designer
Jessy Brown (she/they) is a queer, Californian creative producer and visual design consultant. Jessy spent their teens and twenties in theater arts, their thirties and forties in large scale event experience coordination and art installation as well as production design for commercial, film and festival. They are currently co-proprietor and operator of Lost & Found Vintage. Jessy is best known for their founding creative role in the underground game show experience Psychedelic Friendship Bingo which ran between 2009 - 2017 as well as key roles in creative directing and production design for The Peralta Junction Project in Oakland in 2012 and M.T. Pockets Traveling Midway of Curiosities & Delights which featured in Oakland, Oregon, at Maker Faire in San Mateo and at Art Outside in Texas. Jessy was Senior Creative Producer with the team at I Heart Comix who won a REGGIE Award in 2021 for the Happier Than Ever experience in Beverly Hills. Music, slow-fashion and antifascism is their passion. Jessy lives with their cat, Lucifer, in Nevada City.