Today, @SFFILM hosted a Q&A with #Ammonite director Francis Lee, geologist Paddy Howe & micropaleontologist Dr. Lisa White.

To prepare for their interdisciplinary chat, I will tweet my way through the film! What wonders will we uncover on this cinephilic excavation?

#Thread

Scientific labor occurs in the overwhelming grey of the day or in the milky darkness of night in #Ammonite - discovery is, at times, solitary and rough. It can also be tranquil.

There are gestures to miscarriage in #Ammonite - a fertilized egg is discovered at breakfast. A disgusted mother leaves her her unwed daughter alone at the table.

A husband whispers about a loss of a child. His wife, laying beside him in bed, goes untouched.

Motherhood haunts.

"Look very carefully, you can see tiny fish bones."

In #Ammonite, scientists peer at rocks.

Experienced mentor reveals that her wealthy pupil has uncovered fossilized feces. I suddenly realize how untrained my eyes are. Can I distinguish between rare mineral & animal waste?

In #Ammonite, a neglected wife lies alone in bed. Her hand crosses the boundary line of the mattress' center. It rests on her husband's side.

While her husband is away on his travels, what other lines will the wife cross?

The queer love stories of @neonrated offer two contrasting walks on the shore.

Distance in #Ammonite. The figures stand on two sides of the frame, breaking away from each other.

Closeness in #PortraitOfALadyOnFire. Faces and gazes merge together.

Shots of legs feature prominently in the first excavation between the women of #Ammonite.

One frames a stream of urine falling on pebbles. Another frames a crab scuttling near a hem of a dress.

Does the space of the dig ground the body in its calls and closeness to nature?

A woman in #Ammonite, new to the sea, steps out of her mobile changing room.

Staged as a transition from darkness to light, the roaring ocean seems like an illuminating force.

Yet the woman remains in silhouette.

Does she resist its pull?

In #Ammonite, a woman falls sick with fever.

A scientist, who has only sketched the contours of fossils thus far, sketches the contours of the ill woman's body.

After her pencil hits the page, her accidental model stirs.

The scientist's caring eye is life-giving.

In #Ammonite, a ladybug scurries across scientific renderings of flowers.

The insect's dance suggests that the stillness of such images belie animal energies.

The image is near the bed of a once-sickly but now rejuvenated woman. Will she too scurry out of her still life?

#Ammonite captures a woman's psychic change through shots of her feet at the beach.

Initially, they are booted. Finally, they rest naked on a rock.

She peels off layers as her affection for another grows, letting her body ever closer to nature and to its natural desires.

A love blossoms between two women in #Ammonite.

One sees the other through a window of a grocer. She observes how the younger woman smiles at the sight of a newborn baby.

Is the window pane like the ideals of femininity that separate them? Thin yet terribly solid like glass?

As a woman falls to her knees in #Ammonite, sobbing with grief, the camera also falls away.

It moves to her clenched hands before finally settling on the hem of her dress.

Her sobs can be heard yet all we see are the dress' floral patterns. Pretty surfaces mask such deep pains.

"We should share the bed."

This simple, seemingly chaste proposition in #Ammonite is then punctuated by the sounds of ocean waves.

The women adjust themselves in bed. They turn away from each other - eyes open, unable to sleep.

The sea continues to roar.

Hands in #Ammonite.

Prior to a recital, a woman puts dabs of perfume on her friend's wrists. We've seen these hands in the mud of an excavation. Arriving at the gala, the younger grabs the other's hand.

As she squeezes back, we hear horses gallop. A nod to a quickening pulse?

A scene of rising jealousy in #Ammonite features a 19th century projector.

Notably, the scientist's gaze never moves from the object of her envy.

The projections of a machine fail to impress her. A body draws in the palaeontologist.

Life, in its cruel beauty, is her focus.

A discovery on the beach in #Ammonite prompts a woman to take off her wedding ring before she thrusts her hands in the mud.

Does scientific discovery mean freeing oneself from the bounds of society? To dig, with unhindered glee, into the earth?

#Ammonite presents a 2nd scene where a female scientist discusses a fossil. Her pupil is not a patronizing man but a curious woman.

The camera hangs close to the find, sensing the organic's impressions in the stone.

A charged lesson. Sexual & intellectual intimacy intertwine.

A scientist in #Ammonite states, "My father would turn in grave if he saw I had gone to bed without cleaning his tools."

A woman's kiss pulls her from the washing.

Audre Lorde wrote: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Will these women find new tools?

#Ammonite returns to shots of the hems of dresses & clenched hands just prior to cunnilingus between women.

We saw similar images when one cried out in grief. The floral dress was once shot alone. Now, it presses against another.

Transgressive sexuality is an end to solitude.

"Let us not forget the knowledge and years of skill Miss Anning brings to her tasks. Without this, to the untrained or ill-formed eye, these would simply be uninvestigated lumps of stone."

#Ammonite's scientist squirms—men can see her deeds only when detailed by a woman in lace

Metaphoric montage in #Ammonite.

1st sequence: an old woman coughs blood. She gets a letter that a husband has written to his wife who has begun an affair with a woman.

2nd: wet, yonic rocks on beach.

Is heternormative masculinity a sickness, drying out a natural femininity?

A final night together in #Ammonite.

Whereas once the women slept back to back, now they are turned to each other.

An open mouth kiss presages a hungry intercourse where each tastes the other. It is if they long to savor a fleeting flavor, one that may soon vanish.

A carriage has come to deliver a wife back to her husband in #Ammonite.

The film cuts from horseshoes to blinkers to a man's gloved hand with a bridle. We see a wide shot of the horse against the wife.

In returning home, is the wife reduced to being but a domesticated animal?

A death of a mother in #Ammonite. The camera lingers upon the black folds of clothing drawn over the body.

Suddenly, tenderness. A daughter squeezes the bare foot of her mother.

It is the first time they've touched in the film.

Death allows for a tenderness that life forbids.

Receiving a letter from one's love is a sensuous experience in #Ammonite.

Sound—the ringing of the shopkeepers bell.

Sight—the vision of a lover's handwriting.

Smell—the envelope's scent.

Taste—the letter passes over her lips.

Touch—the feel of the letter as it is unfolded.

Standing at the door in London. #Ammonite focuses on the shell-like swirl of the paleontologist's hat.

Horses clamor as they did when she & her love once stood at a door together.

Now she stands alone. Is the clamor a nod not to her quickened pulse but to her fear of rejection?

When a paleontologist from Southern England enters a London salon in #Ammonite, a ticking clock can be heard.

The city operates on the clock. It is beholden to time in a way antithetical to a scientist whose work allows her to take eons-long steps into the past.

Love is tied to time in #Ammonite. Before a young wife & lover enters her London salon, several clocks ring. It's a discordant sound.

This cacophony foreshadows the alarms raised in their meeting where a scientist who walks across time will be asked to stay only in the present.

When we spot insects in the small coastal town of Lyme Regis in #Ammonite, they are always alive - scurrying every which way.

In London, butterflies are pinned to the walls. Flies lie dead on a window sill.

The heart of high society, the City, beats a deadening pulse.

The swirled pattern on the paleontologist's hat in #Ammonite resembles a sea shell.

At the British Museum, she walks through a hall of portraits of men. The swirl is prominent.

In the institution's eyes, she will always be akin to a fossil—never an intellectual subject.

In #Ammonite's last sequence, a much-ignored paleontologist views her first relic at the British Museum.

She stares at it through the glass. Her former lover appears on the case's other side.

Separated by glass, have they become relics to each other? Fossils of a past love?

Everyone! #Ammonite has now been dug through, but we have 1 more site on our excavation - I will now tweet @SFFILM's Q&A with #Ammonite director Francis Lee ( @strawhousefilms), geologist Paddy Howe & micropaleontologist Dr. Lisa White.

What treasures will they help us uncover?

#Ammonite is being honored in the Q&A with a @SloanFoundation Science in Cinema Prize at @SFFilm. The speakers begin by speaking of art as a bridge between the science and the humanities.

#Ammonite revels in how the work of science so often involves an attuned, aesthetic eye.

After we are told the film's scientific merit, the #Ammonite trailer rolls. @SFFFilm's Rod Armstrong looks at the camera.

We confront curator & the critics: authority embraces a film about fighting against authority. I wonder: what other ironies are embedded into such staging?

Introducing our interdisciplinary quadrant for the #Ammonite chat!

Upper Left - Rod Armstrong @SFFILM

Upper Right - director Francis Lee @strawhousefilms

Lower Left - geologist Paddy Howe @FossilWorkshop

Lower Right - micropaleontologist Dr. Lisa White @lisatoafault

Francis Lee @strawhousefilms was drawn to #Ammonite's Mary Anning—a working class woman who survived & accomplished much in a "class ridden patriarchal society." Yet "she was never recognized & her voice was never heard." He aimed to make a film that "gave her a voice & a place."

On the elements in #Ammonite, Francis Lee @strawhousefilms: "I am obsessed by gender & class & landscape." Visiting Lyme Regis, he was struck by its danger. He wanted to explore "landscape's effect on a character. How that might make her & form her both emotionally & physically."

Paddy Howe @FossilWorkshop underlines that #Ammonite's setting is special: "You have a lot of soft, easily eroded rocks that allows fossils to be produced."

The cliffs' frequent landslides on the beach mean more fossils. A cocktail of minerals help to preserve such artifacts.

Dr. Lisa White @lisatoafault notes that #Ammonite and Mary Anning's legacy "shows the important role of advocational or amateur paleontologists."

White stresses: "prized collections even in today's museums were from individuals who weren't paid for their work."

Francis Lee @strawhousefilms sees parallels between Mary Anning's advocational paleontology, done without formal training, and his own filmmaking done without formal training.

The film industry "looked like a very rarefied world, very privileged world."

For #Ammonite, Francis Lee @strawhousefilms imagined a romance between real-life friends Mary Anning & Charlotte Murchison.

Why?

"I wanted to give Mary a relationship that felt equal & worthy of her. In this patriarchal society that didn't feel like it could be with a man."

Why the title #Ammonite?

Francis Lee @strawhousefilms:

"Ammonites are mollusks or types of mollusks. They're very, very fragile, very vulnerable, very soft. They build these big hard shells to protect themselves, and it felt quite apt for the character of Mary as I saw her."

In #Ammonite, Mary Anning's elderly mother, Molly, always cleans her porcelain figurines. Francis Lee @strawhousefilms on the symbolism:

The film is about "loss and loneliness." Molly lost 8 babies. The figurines were "the physical manifestation of her loss of those children."

A scientist questions the artist about #Ammonite:

Dr. Lisa White @lisatoafault asked: how did Francis Lee @strawhousefilms create Mary Anning's workshop?

Lee stressed both Anning's untidiness & the assistance of Paddy Howe @FossilWorkshop—all fossils in the film come from him.

The Q&A ends with a question about releasing #Ammonite in a pandemic.

Francis Lee @strawhousefilms, "I think, as filmmakers, we do feel blessed that we do have the technology where people can access work in their living rooms."

(As someone in a living room, I appreciate this!)

Our #Ammonite excavation has concluded!

Thank you for following along, and thanks to @strawhousefilms for creating a multi-layered film that lends itself to the chisel of a stream of consciousness!

If you have movie recommendations for future Twitter digs, do let me know! :)