Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore

During her last months at high school, Jane works extra at the trendiest art-cinema in town. Through her eccentric older colleagues, she learns most everything about life and love, including how to masturbate, and the best tricks for having a great sex life with another partner.
There aren't many young filmmakers who are more open about sex than Sarah Jacobson. The screenplay for ”Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore” is based on a novel she wrote while attending college, which was all about what it's like growing up and working at the art cinema Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. She felt, however, that the novel lacked a certain depth and so added its most important ingredient ; the curiosity of the protagonist, Mary Jane, to learn as much as possible about sex, tired as Sarah was of the fact that virtually all other films approach sexuality from the male perspective.
''It irritated me that women were only portrayed as passive sex objects. When they have sex in films, they just lie on their backs and get fucked for two minutes, and then have amazing orgasms, fall in love with the guy and then can't stay away from him,'' says Sarah. ''That's not how it works in reality.''
Sarah Jacobson wanted to make a film in which a young teenage girl learns to take control of her sex life, thereby gaining control of her own life. At the start of the film, Mary Jane has sex with a casual acquaintance on a blanket in a cemetery, but she is bored by the guy's incessant pumping so she breaks it off. It is her thoroughly boring sexual experiences that act as the catalyst that sends her on a journey of discovery in a hitherto unknown world.
The first contribution to the making of ”Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore” was a production grant of about 25,000 crowns from the Film Arts Foundation - Sarah Jacobson's films don't cost much more than that to make. She does most things herself, and otherwise gets help from her mother Ruth, among others, who has co-produced the film. Despite it's small budget the film has attracted a lot of attention - first as the opening film at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and later at film festivals in the US and Europe. Sarah Jacobson now also receives invitations to give lectures on independent film at colleges and symposiums all over the US. She also writes on those topics in several papers and web-sites.
Lotta Svedberg

Premiärstatus
Skandinavisk premiär: Medverkande
Lisa Gerstein, Beth Allen, Greg Cruikshank: Producent
Sarah Jacobson, Sunny Andersen, Ruth Jacobson: Manus
Sarah Jacobson: Foto
Sarah Jacobson: Musik
Jennifer Ware: Talat språk
English