Dear elsa: 10 letters + 10 experiments

short experimental documentary, 2020

Producer, Director, Writer, Cinematographer, Editor

Through a series of channeling experiments and letters, filmmaker, Amanda Madden, attempts to embody and communicate with the ghost of the radical poet, model, performance artist, sculptor, and time traveler, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) about sex, art, and madness.

Director Statement: Considered the first American dadaist, Baroness Elsa was an early innovator in interdisciplinary art practices. Often blurring life and art and using her own body as material, she was a radical proto-feminist who challenged current ideas about sex, gender, and the role of womxn in public and private spaces. She transgressively and aggressively charged through her life constantly trying to claim her right to take up space as an artist, gendered human, and sexual being.
I first encountered the Baroness in 2018 on a list of experimental womxn poets. I was struck by her crossing of disciplines, her radical approach, her revolutionary vision, the way she utilized her body and performance, her feminist exploration of sexuality and gender. There was an immediate connection between Elsa and me that was not intellectual or coherent—I felt it in my body, something sharp to the gut.
As I learned more about Elsa, the connection between us, across time, intensified. At this particular moment in my life and career as a feminist womxn artist, I was grappling with issues of emotional health, financial stability, relationship, community, identity, ownership, and autonomy. I was experiencing waves of depression, mania, and panic attacks. I felt deeply isolated in my creative community. I was coming out of a series of intense romantic and sexual relationships and separations. I saw patriarchy thriving around me. I worried that the kind of art I wanted to make would not provide me with any sustainable kind of life. I didn’t know what else I would do. There was something about Elsa that seemed to speak to each broken part of me. I heard her whispering—there is a way. I followed her voice.