Really Good Friends

RESEARCH STATEMENT 

In my film Really Good Friends, Mary Phillips waits. She walks down a hotel hallway, opens the door to her room, and begins to unpack her bag. The objects she removes, implements used in BDSM play, are not merely tools. They are markers of a story she is about to tell, a story both intimate and elusive. As she moves, she speaks. She tells us about Don, a man whose companionship shaped her life in ways that friendship often does but love stories do not. The camera lingers as she prepares, arranges, and anticipates.  

Two films unfold at once. In one, Mary performs the act of waiting for Don to arrive. In the other, she recounts their connection, her voice punctuating the quiet choreography of the scene. This duality, the immediacy of her present actions and the reflective distance of her narration, creates a tension as much about absence as presence. What does it mean to re-enact a memory? To revisit the moment when a bag was unpacked, when hands met, when words were spoken—or left unsaid? Mary’s performance highlights these questions. It asks us to consider memory itself, how we construct it, how we choose to tell it, and what remains in the telling.  

The film resists strict categorisation as either documentary or fiction. It exists in a hybrid form, one that acknowledges the slipperiness of memory and the impossibility of retrieving the past in its entirety. Don, the man at the story’s centre, is absent. His identity is reduced to a first name, his presence conjured only through Mary’s words and the objects of play. Yet, this absence paradoxically becomes the film’s central presence. How can memory feel more tangible when it is incomplete? How can waiting for something become as emotionally charged as its arrival?  

This approach to re-enactment is not about replication but reclamation. Through performance, Mary re-shapes her story. She asserts agency over how it is told. Re-enactment exposes gaps in experience and history, transforming them into something significant. In this sense, re-enactment becomes a method of ethical storytelling, one that complicates rather than simplifies the past. Mary does not simply tell her story; she re-performs it. By doing so, she controls its contours and reshapes its meaning. The film becomes a negotiation between past and present, between what was and what is. Waiting, as I see it, becomes its own kind of story. It is a suspended state, charged with longing and inevitability. Mary’s movements are unhurried, almost ritualistic. Each object she unpacks is imbued with meaning, a physical manifestation of the intimacy she shares with Don and the boundaries of their relationship. It is a choreography of expectation, the quiet theatre of preparing to meet someone. The objects she handles, floggers, a vibrator, and other instruments of BDSM play, may seem at odds with the tender narrative she weaves. But they are not. They symbolise trust, boundaries, and the negotiation of power that defines their connection.  

The space matters, too. The hotel room, temporary and impersonal, mirrors the transient nature of their relationship. It is a liminal space, a threshold between public and private, where intimacy unfolds against a backdrop of anonymity. The textures of waiting, spatial and emotional, are integral to the story. The room becomes a site of possibility, where boundaries are tested, where intimacy is both enacted and withheld.  

At its heart, Really Good Friends is a story not about romantic love but deep friendship. Mary and Don’s relationship is defined not by possessiveness or jealousy but by a profound understanding of each other’s needs and vulnerabilities. This was the story I wanted to tell, a connection that defies conventional romantic frameworks. Friendship can be as intimate, as transformative, and as complex as any love affair.  What draws me to this narrative is its challenge to traditional notions of intimacy. It reveals the ethical dimensions of relationality, showing how we come to care for others in ways that transcend ownership or romantic attachment. Friendship, in this context, becomes radical, a way of acknowledging the other’s irreducible subjectivity without the need for dominance or control. This idea of relational ethics, particularly as it applies to the BDSM community, is central to my larger project, The Flamingo. The feature film traces Mary’s journey of self-discovery and empowerment through BDSM, exploring the complex negotiations of pleasure, vulnerability, and identity within the community.  

In Really Good Friends, re-enactment is more than revisiting a moment. It acknowledges the unspoken, the parts of the story that remain elusive and fragmented. The objects and rituals of BDSM become tools for negotiating power, establishing trust, and asserting autonomy. Mary’s careful unpacking becomes a metaphor for how we reveal and conceal ourselves. It is a visual representation of the layered complexities of human connection.  

The film is about absence. It is about what is not seen. It is about the space between people that defines who they are to each other. It is also about forging intimacy outside traditional narratives, where love, friendship, and desire exist on their own terms. Really Good Friends meditates on memory, intimacy and connection. It invites viewers to reconsider what we think we know about human relationships.  

This film emerged while producing The Flamingo, which seeks to challenge societal norms surrounding aging, pleasure and desire. It positions these themes within BDSM not as an exoticised practice but as a profound means of self-expression, power, and connection. Through Really Good Friends, I invite viewers into a space where the boundaries between memory and reality blur, where intimacy is explored outside the conventions of romantic love. In my work, I explore how people negotiate their identities, sexual, emotional, and otherwise. I use a hybrid form of documentary and fiction that engages deeply with the personal and the intimate while acknowledging the artifice of the medium. By doing so, I aim to illuminate the complexity of human relationships and the ways we constantly reshape the narratives of our lives.  

PEER REVIEW 1 

This was a lovely, intimate work that layered spoken narrative with a quiet choreography of objects, creating an understated tension between what was told and what was shown. Mary’s verbal account was clear and representational, while the close-up framing of sex toys being gently placed on the bed introduced a visual language that added texture, complexity, and emotional depth to the relationship being described. As the author notes, Don’s absence lingers throughout, generating a profound sense of empathy not only for him, but also for Mary and the friendship they share. The careful arrangement of the BDSM toys suggests both anticipation and the intimacy of potential foreplay, while their cleaning and categorisation speak to the trust and care required when sex-play and emotional-play intertwine. The edit is well judged - initially humorous as Mary’s “bag of tricks” emerges within the impersonal hotel space, then increasingly tender as the depth of their relationship is revealed. The framing of the objects enhances the sense of intimacy and suspense, while the music gives enough space to the scene to allow for emotional moments to settle and resonate.

I found it interesting that Don’s presence, particularly his body, is absent from the work, while the toys we see are so explicitly bodily. The focus on tactile elements, including the intimacy of the sound recording with wooden spoons clacking, and the magnified text messages Mary sends him - she has “all his favourite toys” - reminds the viewer of what Don’s body will and has experienced. This is underscored by the knowledge of his prostate cancer and the fact that “things don’t work as they used to.” Don’s body is embedded in the work, yet materially missing. As the author notes, this work is “as much about absence as presence.”

I was interested to read that the author considers this work a hybrid between documentary and fiction. While this categorisation is understandable, I would argue that documentary itself is already a form shaped by subjectivity, affect and constructed narrative. As Nichols reminds us, “Documentaries are … a fiction (un)like any other” (2017, xi). They are no less crafted than fiction, simply anchored to different truth claims. From this perspective, I would consider this work to sit within the documentary tradition. I am not fully convinced by the suggestion that Mary is re-enacting her story, unless we take verbal recollection as a form of embodied re-performance. For me, her account functions more as storytelling. It is reflective and situated, just as the author’s choices in framing, sound, editing and narrative construction also function as storytelling devices. That said, I strongly agree with the observation that “Mary’s careful unpacking becomes a metaphor for how we reveal and conceal ourselves. It is a visual representation of the layered complexities of human connection.” The film’s strength lies in how these metaphorical and material gestures are held together, offering a rich example of how practice-led research can bring emotional, embodied and intellectual complexity into dialogue.

The research statement articulates an interest in the ethical dimensions of relationality, particularly in how intimacy, care and friendship can be refigured beyond ownership or romantic attachment. While this is a compelling conceptual frame, I would argue that the statement does not fully clarify how the film actively enacts or investigates these claims as research. Instead, these ideas are asserted as thematic content rather than situated within a broader methodological or theoretical inquiry. 

However, the film itself reveals rich potential as practice-led research. Its use of close framing, sound design, narrative structure and pacing contributes to a nuanced exploration of care, vulnerability, and embodied absence. These formal and affective strategies do more than simply illustrate the theme; they produce new insights into relational ethics through their execution. I would encourage the author to reflect more explicitly on how these stylistic and structural choices operate as research methodologies in their own right.

In this sense, the submission exposes practice as research more powerfully through the film than through the accompanying written statement. Future iterations or expanded writing could more directly address how these techniques expose, challenge or reimagine normative frameworks of intimacy, particularly within the context of BDSM and care practices.

PEER REVIEW 2 

Thank you for the opportunity to review this NTRO. The film Really Good Friends exists within the exciting realm of hybrid documentary filmmaking. This is not a new area – Chronique d’un été (Chronicle of a Summer) (Rouch and Morin 1961) and F for Fake (Welles 1973) are foundational films in the hybrid style, which has gained traction since The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer 2012) along with other recent contributions to the field. However, there are not many hybrid films focused on BDSM or members of the BDSM community. Really Good Friends stands out by concentrating on evocative imagery of objects and space, which feels quite innovative. 

Does the submission live up to its potential?

Yes, as an artefact, Really Good Friends is very engaging, but quantifying its impact is essential. It would be intriguing to know where the film was exhibited, how many people attended, what feedback was provided, and whether any experts in the field offered reviews in publications. Additionally, it would be helpful to understand if the exhibition venue(s) were considered prestigious and whether the film attracted local, national or international attention. 

The contributor's age is also an interesting detail that is not foregrounded in the research statement but adds a unique layer to the creative work. Non-fictional representations of older female-identifying individuals in the realm of sex remain underexplored. The closest example to the topic of aging women and sex I can recall is Morgana (Hess and Peppard 2019), a hybrid documentary that follows Morgana Muses, an Australian woman who reinvents herself as a feminist pornographer and performer after leaving a loveless marriage in her late 40s.

How does the submission expose practice as research?

While an explicit research question or problem is not clearly stated, the author mentions a desire to challenge traditional notions of intimacy and relational ethics. This suggests that there might be an issue with how society more broadly represents intimacy on screen, so it would be beneficial to connect this idea to existing literature to support the claim. Including more information about this issue upon revision could be relatively straightforward, given the wealth of discussion around this topic.

The author describes Really Good Friends as a meditation on memory, intimacy and connection, inviting viewers to reconsider our understanding of human relationships. Therefore, it would be helpful to clarify the specific techniques or approaches that exhibit this meditation. A bit more detail on any innovative elements employed – whether in form or content – would enhance the discussion of new knowledge gained, insights offered, or experiences shared. 

I do want to commend the film’s beautiful cinematography and sound design. The editing’s emphasis on slowly paced, long wide shots, with the contributor’s voice serving as narration, lends a thoughtful quality to the time and space being explored. The music has a lovely, church-like quality as well. To my mind, these are the specific techniques and approaches that allow for mediations on intimacy on screen.

RESPONSE TO PEER REVIEWS

Researcher Response

First of all, I would like to thank the reviewers for their time, and for comments I receive as genuinely constructive. I am also grateful to the Sightlines Journal Committee for the opportunity to exchange ideas in a forum that takes both emotion and rigor seriously.

There is a certain solitude to this kind of work—intimate filmmaking, made slowly, away from institutions, inside homes. To have that work seen, and not only seen but understood, is no small thing. 

Your reading of Really Good Friends as a delicate interplay between visual and verbal storytelling resonates deeply with my intentions. I am especially grateful for the observation that Don’s absence is rendered not as void but as presence: embedded in clacking wooden spoons, the choreography of packing, the choreography of care. These are the gestures I hoped would make absence tactile, emotional, embodied. I was also unaware of the film Morgana (Hess and Peppard 2019), so thank you for that reference.

In responding to both reviewers' comments, I'll address each set of questions and observations separately, as they offer distinct but complementary perspectives on the work.

Response to Reviewer 1

Your comments invite me to reframe the film not only as representation but as inquiry—as a form of thinking. You ask how formal and aesthetic strategies, such as close framing, pacing, and sound design, might operate as research methodologies. I appreciate this provocation. These stylistic choices were not merely in service of mood, but rather formed part of a deeper methodological commitment: to proximity without intrusion, to stillness as witness, to rhythm as relationship. Inspired in part by Vivian Sobchack’s (1992) work on embodied spectatorship, I hoped to craft an affective space where viewers do not simply observe Mary’s gestures—they feel them, bodily.

Similarly, the slow, durational pace of the film invites what I understand as a kind of cinematic “aftercare”, space for the viewer to metabolise what they’ve seen and heard. The fact that Mary is the film’s sole speaker is not an oversight but a proposition: voice as both power and vulnerability, as a form of agency that complicates conventional documentary hierarchies. If this work carries an ethical project, it is perhaps to ask how we care for someone through image, through listening, and through form.

You also raise the question of genre. My use of “hybridity” was intended to signal the film’s refusal to settle neatly into the documentary/fiction binary. But your insight pushes me further. Perhaps the film is better understood not as straddling categories but as slipping within them—much like memory itself. Stella Bruzzi’s (2006) assertion that performative documentary is not a betrayal of truth but a means of engaging with its complexity is instructive here. Mary’s gestures are not re-enactments in the historical sense, but rituals—evocations of what once felt true, or what needs to be expressed now through the body. The word “re-enactment” may be too clinical. “Storytelling” feels closer. A laying out of fragments, like toys on a hotel bed.

Response to Reviewer 2

You raise essential questions about how the film circulates in the world—what kind of impact it has made, and how that might be evidenced. Really Good Friends has screened on three continents and been part of more than twenty film festivals. Its reach has spanned traditional documentary circuits to programs with broader social and thematic frameworks, including one in South Korea that dealt with aging. Along the way the film has also been honoured with five jury awards. 

One of the most significant invitations came from the Cinémathèque Française, where Really Good Friends screened alongside other American films focused on the fringes of American society. That screening held particular weight for me because of the venue’s long and storied history. To see my work shown there felt like a quiet, hard-won achievement.

Mary and I travelled extensively to many of these screenings together. Her presence deepened the film’s impact. Whether through post-screening Q&As, informal conversations in lobbies or shared meals with audiences, her engagement transformed viewings into encounters. These were not one-way projections but mutual acts of vulnerability. The experience of travelling and presenting the film with Mary underscored what the film itself attempts to enact: a commitment to relational ethics, to collaboration, to care beyond the frame.

While I do not have exact audience numbers for every screening, I do have the accumulated sense that the film made something happen in the room—an attention, a stillness, laughter, a quiet kind of recognition. Not all impact is measurable, but that does not mean it is not real.

Thank you also for your careful engagement with the film's exploration of intimacy and human connection. I agree that the scarcity of honest depictions of intimacy on screen is not incidental—it points to a larger cultural discomfort, a tendency to either sentimentalise or sanitise what is, in life, far more fragile and complicated. With Really Good Friends, I wanted to lean into that complication. The film does not offer resolution so much as proximity—quiet moments, unfinished gestures, and the kind of emotional texture that resists clean narrative arcs.

The formal choices—close, lingering frames, a pacing that slows rather than propels, a sound design that allows silence to hold weight—are all ways of asking how intimacy might feel rather than what it looks like. I appreciate you pushing me to be more explicit about how these elements not only illustrate but enact the film's central concerns, offering a space where viewers might sit with the discomfort, ambiguity and beauty that intimacy so often entails.

REVISED RESEARCH STATEMENT

In my film Really Good Friends, Mary Phillips waits. She walks down a hotel hallway, opens the door to her room, and begins to unpack her bag. The objects she removes, implements used in BDSM play, are not merely tools. They are markers of a story she is about to tell, a story both intimate and elusive. As she moves, she speaks. She tells us about Don, a man whose companionship shaped her life in ways that friendship often does but love stories do not. The camera lingers as she prepares, arranges, and anticipates.  

Two films unfold at once. In one, Mary performs the act of waiting for Don to arrive. In the other, she recounts their connection, her voice punctuating the quiet choreography of the scene. This duality, the immediacy of her present actions and the reflective distance of her narration, creates a tension as much about absence as presence. What does it mean to re-enact a memory? To revisit the moment when a bag was unpacked, when hands met, when words were spoken, or left unsaid? Mary’s performance highlights these questions. It asks us to consider memory itself, how we construct it, how we choose to tell it, and what remains in the telling. These stylistic choices were not merely in service of mood, but rather part of a deeper methodological commitment: to proximity without intrusion, to stillness as witness, and to rhythm as relationship. Inspired in part by Vivian Sobchack’s (1992) work on embodied spectatorship, I aimed to craft an affective space where viewers do not simply observe Mary’s gestures, they feel them, bodily.

The film resists strict categorisation as either documentary or fiction. It exists in a hybrid form, one that acknowledges the slipperiness of memory and the impossibility of retrieving the past in its entirety. More than simply straddling categories, the film slips within them, much like memory itself. The hybridity here is not an indecision but a mode of being. As Stella Bruzzi (2006) reminds us, performative documentary is not a betrayal of truth but a means of engaging with its complexity. Don, the man at the story’s centre, is absent. His identity is reduced to a first name, his presence conjured only through Mary’s words and the objects of play. Yet, this absence paradoxically becomes the film’s central presence. How can memory feel more tangible when it is incomplete? How can waiting for something become as emotionally charged as its arrival?

This approach to re-enactment is not about replication but reclamation. Through performance, Mary re-shapes her story. She asserts agency over how it is told. Re-enactment exposes gaps in experience and history, transforming them into something significant. In this sense, re-enactment becomes a method of ethical storytelling, one that complicates rather than simplifies the past. Mary does not simply tell her story; she re-performs it. By doing so, she controls its contours and re-shapes its meaning. The film becomes a negotiation between past and present, between what was and what is. Waiting, as I see it, becomes its own kind of story. It is a suspended state, charged with longing and inevitability. Mary’s movements are unhurried, almost ritualistic. Each object she unpacks is imbued with meaning, a physical manifestation of the intimacy she shares with Don and the boundaries of their relationship. It is a choreography of expectation, the quiet theatre of preparing to meet someone. The objects she handles, floggers, a vibrator, and other instruments of BDSM play, may seem at odds with the tender narrative she weaves. But they are not. They symbolise trust, boundaries and the negotiation of power that defines their connection.  

The space matters, too. The hotel room, temporary and impersonal, mirrors the transient nature of their relationship. It is a liminal space, a threshold between public and private, where intimacy unfolds against a backdrop of anonymity. The textures of waiting, spatial and emotional, are integral to the story. The room becomes a site of possibility, where boundaries are tested, where intimacy is both enacted and withheld.  

At its heart, Really Good Friends is a story not about romantic love but deep friendship. Mary and Don’s relationship is defined not by possessiveness or jealousy but by a profound understanding of each other’s needs and vulnerabilities. This was the story I wanted to tell, a connection that defies conventional romantic frameworks. Friendship can be as intimate, as transformative, and as complex as any love affair.  What draws me to this narrative is its challenge to traditional notions of intimacy. It reveals the ethical dimensions of relationality, showing how we come to care for others in ways that transcend ownership or romantic attachment. Friendship, in this context, becomes radical, a way of acknowledging the other’s irreducible subjectivity without the need for dominance or control. This idea of relational ethics, particularly as it applies to the BDSM community, is central to my larger project, The Flamingo. The feature film traces Mary’s journey of self-discovery and empowerment through BDSM, exploring the complex negotiations of pleasure, vulnerability and identity within the community.  

The film’s slow, durational pace enacts a kind of cinematic “aftercare”, a space where viewers are given time to metabolise what they have witnessed. That Mary is the film’s sole speaker is not incidental but intentional: her voice becomes both a site of power and a gesture of vulnerability, asserting agency in a way that complicates traditional documentary hierarchies. If the film proposes an ethical project, it may be this—to ask how we offer care through image, through attention, and through form itself.

In Really Good Friends, re-enactment is more than revisiting a moment. It acknowledges the unspoken, the parts of the story that remain elusive and fragmented. The objects and rituals of BDSM become tools for negotiating power, establishing trust and asserting autonomy. Mary’s careful unpacking becomes a metaphor for how we reveal and conceal ourselves. It is a visual representation of the layered complexities of human connection.  

The film is about absence. It is about what is not seen. It is about the space between people that defines who they are to each other. It is also about forging intimacy outside traditional narratives, where love, friendship and desire exist on their own terms. Really Good Friends meditates on memory, intimacy and connection. It invites viewers to reconsider what we think we know about human relationships.  

Really Good Friends emerged in tandem with The Flamingo, a feature-length documentary with Mary as its central figure. Both films challenge normative frameworks around aging, pleasure and desire, positioning BDSM not as spectacle or taboo but as a site of self-expression, vulnerability and connection. Where The Flamingo offers a broader exploration of Mary’s journey through the BDSM community, Really Good Friends distills those themes into a singular, intimate encounter—one where the boundaries between memory and reality blur, and intimacy unfolds outside the conventions of romantic love.

This commitment to exploring how people negotiate their identities, sexual, emotional, and otherwise, guides my larger body of work. I use a hybrid approach that bridges documentary and fiction, embracing both the vulnerability of the personal and the constructed nature of cinema. By foregrounding the complexities of human relationships and the performative acts that shape them, I aim to surface the ongoing work of meaning-making and care.

Really Good Friends has screened on three continents and been featured in over twenty film festivals, including programs centred on aging, intimacy and embodiment. It has received five jury awards and was most notably invited to the Cinémathèque Française, where it screened alongside other American films concerned with the fringes of society. That invitation, at such a storied institution, felt like a quiet, hard-won recognition.

Mary and I travelled to many of these screenings together. Her presence extended the film’s impact beyond the screen, through post-screening conversations, lobby exchanges and shared meals with audiences. These were not passive viewings but mutual acts of vulnerability. That experience underscored the film’s central ethic: that storytelling can be a collaborative, relational act, one that makes space for care, both within and beyond the frame.

REFERENCES 

Bruzzi, Stella. 2006 New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.

Foucault, Michel. 1988. “Technologies of the Self.” In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, 16–49. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Hess, Josie, and Isabel Peppard, dir. 2019. Morgana. Australia: House of Gary. Film. 

Kuhn, Annette. 2000. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. London: Verso.

Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Morin, Edgar, and Jean Rouch. dir. 1961. Chronique d’un été (Paris 1960). France: Argos Films. Film. 

Nichols, Bill. 2017. Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition. 3rd ed. Indiana University Press.

Oppenheimer, Joshua. dir. 2012. The Act of Killing. UK: Final Cut for Real. Film.

Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Welles, Orson. dir. 1973. F for Fake. France: Les Films de l’Astrophore. Film.