Queer Quarantine: "Lilies" Film Takes Home Awards at Short Film Festivals
When COVID lockdowns began, poet Joni Renee Whitworth instituted a daily writing practice to ward off doomscrolling. The writing habit led to a messy basket full of papers, post-it notes, and a long series of poetic missives about the intersections of class, ability, LGBTQ issues and in the time of COVID. Once they knew they had a strong piece, Whitworth reached out to a filmmaker friend, Hannah Piper Burns, to see if they could generate visuals to accompany the poetry. That collaboration resulted in "Lilies", a queer love story and short film set during 2020's COVID lockdowns, that is now winning awards at film festivals all over the United States.