“It’s an intimate portrait of Black love. About community, about gentrification, about art. About so many things that I hope speak to you all,” said Anaiis Cisco, Smith’s new Assistant Professor of Moving Image Production at Smith, introducing her short film “Drip Like Coffee” to an audience of Smith students and faculty on Monday, Oct. 7.
“Drip Like Coffee” seemed to resonate with the audience: the movie was met with an overwhelmingly positive reception. A lively Q&A followed the screening.
“Drip Like Coffee” centers on Kali (Hannah Larae Morris), a barista in Brooklyn, as she attempts to balance her budding relationship with her coworker Mel (Kashanie Lagrotta) and her increasingly stifling relationship with her boyfriend Lee (Kennedy Smith).
The movie packs a lot into its 17-minute runtime. It succeeds particularly at developing Kali into a fully realized character. She is generous and likeable but also dishonest and worried about how others perceive her. She must search for and claim both the physical and the mental space to navigate her competing relationships. While not quite as developed, Lee and Mel are interesting characters as well, and the film’s love triangle maintains a compelling tension.
“Drip Like Coffee” is the third short film Cisco produced while earning her MFA in cinema from San Francisco State University, following the short films “Breathless” (2017) and “Gyrl” (2018). At twice the runtime and with a far greater budget than her previous films, it is easily her most ambitious work to date. The added attention shines through in the finished product.
Cisco’s talent as a filmmaker is evident in the film’s technical aspects. For this project, she wanted “to see Black people depicted on high, industry-level, standard quality [equipment].” The attention to quality is apparent: the film is aesthetically gorgeous. Its colors are crisp and vibrant. The sets, which Cisco and her team built specifically for the movie, are detailed. (“We had to put up artwork in a gallery space the same day as shooting,” Cisco remembers. “Which is not ideal.”) Cisco even paid special attention to the actors’ hair, custom ordering two wigs for the movie. It was clearly worth it; the film’s costuming, hair and makeup work deserves a special attention.
Cisco excels at using these aesthetic choices to drive the themes of the story. Over the course of her Q&A, Cisco often referenced a desire to be intentional with her choices and to cultivate particular motifs and tones through attention to detail. The cinematography and set design help to enforce Kali’s claustrophobic state. The majority of the film’s shots are taken from eye level, and there are no exterior shots in the entire movie. “I don’t want to see her outside,” Cisco said, “because she doesn’t have that agency.” The film’s sets are also filled with work by Black women artists, who, Cisco said, it was important for her to honor. The film’s music, too, is used sparingly, played only when it specifically elevates a scene.
For all its successes, there are moments in which the film’s limitations as a student film come through, like when the actor’s lines do not quite land or there seems to be an extra beat between lines of dialogue. At times, Kali’s two relationships feel as though they are jostling for space in the film in addition to in Kali’s life.
Cisco is honest about the struggles of working as a student filmmaker. While her resources have improved considerably from her first two films, she is still working with a limited runtime and budget. For example, she admits that the limited runtime constrained her from expanding upon Mel’s boyfriend. “Even when I’m watching it now,” she said, “I’m still being very critical. Because it’s a student work. And with all works, the film is never done. The film is always going to continue to be a thought in your head.” Eventually, Cisco hopes to expand the short into a feature-length film while at Smith, in which case all of the film’s aspects will be fleshed out.
Watching the film with this in mind, it is impressive that Drip Like Coffee manages to convey as much as it does. For one thing, it manages to create a nuanced picture of a subject matter not often explored in film. Black women and their desires are often marginalized, especially in the romance genre. But “Drip Like Coffee” treats their intimacy with care and delicacy.
The film also presents a uniquely sophisticated take on sexuality. Even as LGBTQ representation increases in cinema, few pieces of media portray characters engaged in relationships with people of multiple genders at the same time. “Drip Like Coffee” forces one to wonder why not, as the tension it creates seems rife for emotional exploration.
“Drip Like Coffee” is sure to make many whose love lives have been left behind by mainstream entertainment feel seen. It is a must-see for anyone interested in thoughtful representations of queer Black women’s love stories. Cisco is clearly cognizant of the importance of the film’s representation. “I wanted all of us as the audience to see Black women seeing each other,” she said. In addition, she phrased one of the movie’s central themes in a way that should validate many: “Things aren’t fixed in our lives. We are able to change our minds. So if you date one gender for X amount of years and decide that you’re desiring another gender, allow yourself to be open to that.”
For the Film and Media Studies students of Smith, “Drip Like Coffee” is not only a film but an example of the potential of student filmmaking. Cisco closed the film’s introduction by addressing her own students: “you’ve already seen a lookbook, you’ve already seen budgets, […] now you actually see the film. And [you] will have, I hope, more insight into what it actually takes to go through the process of filmmaking.” Cisco will no doubt continue to serve as an example to Smith’s film students through her work with the college.
The students I spoke to were not just concerned with “Drip Like Coffee” as a technical example of filmmaking, but as a narrative. “It was very beautiful,” said Shira Zaid ‘23, a student from Intro to Film and Media Studies. “I really hope it gets turned into a whole screenplay and we get to see the continuation of their stories.”
“Drip Like Coffee” is currently on the festival circuit. It will next be screened at the NewFest Film Festival in New York on Oct. 24 and 27.
