‘Fell in Love’ Explores Obsession, Blindness

“You are beginning to lose your sight. You know that what you see now will be the last of what you will ever see. How do you feel? What do you do?”

Student filmmaker Isidore M.T. Bethel ’11 asked Megan E. Popkin ’11 these kinds of questions in order to prepare her for her role in his most recent film, “Fell in Love with a Dead Boy.” The film, which will be screened this Saturday in the Carpenter Center, focuses on the experience of a young woman who loses her vision as she develops an obsession with John F. Kennedy ’40.

Seeking to explore the boundaries between biography and fiction, Bethel created a fictional character comprised of elements of Popkin’s own life. The girl in “Fell in Love with a Dead Boy” is suffering from a blindness-inducing cancer; as a freshman in high school, Popkin was also diagnosed with a form of cancer.

“I’m playing around with what gets defined as biography and what doesn’t,” Bethel says. “The movie’s prefaced by a line that says ‘Based on a true story,’ and I’m working into the question of what gets considered a true story and what doesn’t. I’m thinking of a movie like ‘Citizen Kane’ that’s become a true story… it was loosely based on the life of somebody, but then got fictionalized. Now it’s become part of the American psyche and has become a different sort of true story. That’s the recycling that I’m interested in.”

“Fell in Love with a Dead Boy” is a compilation of audio recorded by Popkin, images filmed by Bethel, and a soundtrack produced by Hampshire College sophomore David Nyman. The script was a collaborative effort between Bethel and Popkin that involved Bethel presenting Popkin with scenarios and asking her to describe what she would think and feel in those situations. Approaching the film in this manner made it more real, according to Popkin, who felt that the filmmaking process allowed her to learn more about herself.

“If someone says, ‘Perform it this way. Do it that way,’ it’s a lot easier in a sense... [Bethel] just, like, read it: what do you think? How would you feel in this situation? It’s a lot more personal,” Popkin says.

“It shows a lot more about yourself. It’s revealing about your character, how you would act in that situation. I thought it ended it up being more real to have someone totally thrust into a situation just like this person was in the piece. It turned out to be real life.”

As Bethel explores the relationship between biography and fiction, he also seeks a way to unite his passion for making movies with his desire to make a concrete change in the world around him.

“For the past couple years my work has revolved around the question: what impact does anything that I do have? The way that I’ve started addressing it recently is: what if I can affect the lives of the people who are working on the video with me and then preserve those effects in the final project? This project was a gift from me to Megan, from Meg to me, and also David. I think that what other people get from the film is important but not under my control.”

—Staff writer Melanie E. Long can be reached at long2@fas.harvard.edu.