4th Wall – The French Chef with Julia Child: Abortifacient Herbs
A New Film by Chloé Rossetti
Friday, September 6, 2019 – Sunday, October 13, 2019
Presented in Black Box
About the Exhibition
I, Chloé Rossetti, have had an abortion in 2015. It broke my heart, but it was necessary for my health and well-being. I had the good fortune to be one subway ride away from Planned Parenthood, and I had health insurance which covered me for “one abortion a year.”
I knew I was pregnant almost immediately, and got a positive pregnancy test about two weeks in, when my period didn’t come. I wanted to give myself an herbal abortion, and I had a tailor-made emmenagogue recipe, but I didn’t have the resources or support to safely go through with it. But I knew I wanted to be present for the bloodletting. So a dear friend, acting as my abortion doula, dressed in white, took me to Planned Parenthood, got me a hot pink water bottle, and came over on the scheduled day to my apartment. We prayed over the medicine and did a ritual, and then I took the misoprostol, and my friend read me bone broth recipes and timed out all my pain meds while I slipped in and out of consciousness from the pain. I wish everyone could have support like that.
Recently, I encountered a brilliant book, Natural Liberty: Rediscovering Self-Induced Abortion Methods by the Sage Femme Collective. It is a thoroughly well researched compendium of herbal abortion remedies from around the world. I was also watching and thinking about Julia Child: how she tried to make seemingly out of reach recipes accessible to everyone. I hatched a plan with the illustrious Anita Revolution Now, who is a huge Julia fan and has been doing drag as Julia Child since the tender age of nine, and together with the brilliant Layla Mrozowski, Kayla Watkins, Lamont Nathaniel Gibson and Kwabena Kwateng, we made The French Chef with Julia Child: Abortifacient Herbs.
Production Credits
Chloé Rossetti (writer/director/co-producer)
Anita Revolution Now as Julia Child
Layla Mrozowski (co-producer/art director)
Kayla Watkins (cinematographer/color correction)
Lamont Nathaniel Gibson (cameraperson)
Kwabena Kwateng (sound/grip)
Chloé Rossetti: The French Chef with Julia Child: Abortifacient Herbs is presented by Vox Populi’s Black Box Committee as part of 4th Wall, an ongoing series dedicated to screening new film and video works by emerging artists.
About the Artist
Chloé Rossetti is a writer, director, performer, and artist, worldbuilding positive futures in the husk of the capitalist experiment. In their work, through the production of film scripts, play texts, films, videos, and performances, they practice worldbuilding as a means to convey their belief that decolonizing, queering, and regenerating are linked processes.
Chloé is currently pursuing their MFA in Film and Media Arts at Temple University. Their short film, The French Chef with Julia Child: Abortifacient Herbs, premiered and was a finalist in the Get Free Film Fest in Los Angeles, 2019. Their short film, SUNRIDER, premiered at Les Femmes Underground International Film Festival in Phoenix, AZ in September 2018, and was featured at a MONO NO AWARE screening at Anthology Film Archives in New York in April 2018. Their short films, Hold and Wait, were screened as part of “Positive Futures,” co-curated by Chloé Rossetti and Loraine Wible, at Vox Populi in May 2019.
More Info: chloerossetti.com