Nearly a half-century after her death, writer and diarist Anaïs Nin is taking over the Mission. While she may be more closely associated with Paris, New York and Los Angeles, Nin also lived in San Francisco in the late 1940s, when her lover, Rupert Pole, was studying forestry at the University of California, Berkeley.
Now, her shade returns to the city in two vastly different projects, both serendipitously opening in April. On Saturday, April 26, Lynne Kaufman’s two-hander “Shameless Hussy” begins a three-weekend run at the Marsh, while on Sunday, April 27, the Anaïs Nin Diary Film Festival unreels at the Roxie. The erotic explorer, gone for 48 years now, seems to be relevant as ever.
So, why Nin, and why now?
“She was an icon, and in the ‘60s, she was sort of ahead of her time in women’s liberation, sexual liberation, being an artist, being self-reflective, choosing her own life, the freedom of it,” says Kaufman.
“I see what’s happening now with our new administration and this highly reactionary, overly conservative insistence that what women should be doing is in the home and having a lot of children,” adds Kaufman. “I guess, in a sense, this is a pushback against that. Anaïs didn’t stay in the home, and she didn’t have children, so she was rebellious early on. … I think, right now, we need women models who are self-declared. ‘Don’t tell me who I am, don’t put me in a box, don’t limit what I can do.’”
Kaufman’s latest work is experimental in nature, and begins when Nin is 11, at which point her mother gave her her first notebook. It continues to the end of her life, with Arwen Anderson playing the writer at various stages, and Johnny Moreno as Nin’s lovers.
Kaufman, an award-winning playwright and novelist, has frequently produced her work at the Marsh; the seeds for “Shameless Hussy” were actually planted with her last show there. Kaufman took her inspiration for her 2024 production of “Extreme Acts” from the career of yet another bold woman, performance artist Marina Abramović. Like “Shameless Hussy,” it starred Anderson, with whom Kaufman has previously worked, and Moreno, who was new to her. When she saw the erotic charge of their chemistry together, she was eager to explore it further.
“They just are easy with each other, in an essential way,” Kaufman says. “Their movement is intuitive, and they are hot and steamy together. I thought: I want to see them again in something even more overt, because their body sense is so strong. Arwin is a dancer and acrobat. Johnny is a dancer and boxer and stunt guy. So, they have these wonderfully tuned-in bodies to each other. I just wanted to see that. For me, the kind of theater that thrills me is intimate theater. I love The Marsh for that.”
While “Shameless Hussy” centers itself directly on Nin’s life, the film festival is more of a homage. Three short films and one feature take up the mantle of diarist in these personal works. Nin speaks for herself during the event in a 10-minute archival clip.
San Francisco filmmaker Marjorie Sturm, best known for her 2014 documentary “The Cult of JT LeRoy,” examining the made-in-SF literary hoax, presents the Anaïs Nin Diary Film Festival along with Jessica Tunis and Pam Uzzell. This is the second iteration of the festival; the first was in 2004 at an institution named for one of Nin’s most famous lovers, the Henry Miller Library, in Big Sur. Both festivals were designed as a showcase for a type of film that rarely gets shown, and speaks very much to Nin’s own life’s work.
“Video diaries are just not something that’s going to get that much screening, and Anaïs’ whole thing is having agency,” says Sturm.
In the archival footage that screens at the Anaïs Nin Diary Film Festival, Nin lays out her feelings about the place of women, saying, “The effort of woman to find her own psychology and her own significance in contradiction to manmade psychology and interpretation, woman finding her own language and articulating her own feelings, discovering her own perceptions, woman’s role in the reconstruction of the world.”
The quote encapsulates the theme of the festival as the four filmmakers offer their own observations of the world around them. Shantre Pinkney’s “After Mario” is a short film that Sturm describes as both poetic and horrifying as Pinkney reflects on the 2015 SFPD shooting of Mario Woods. Nova Duarte Martinez’s “No Plan B,” a film Sturm calls raw and open, depicts a consensual sexual relationship that goes sideways. Kay Zheng’s “Who is Eileen?” is a testament to women’s friendship as the filmmaker explores the plight of a jobless friend.
Sturm’s own “Show Me What You Want to Show Me” is the feature in the festival spotlight. Tales of psylocibin mushrooms bookend the work, but the heart of the film is the lives that unfold in between: Over two decades, the filmmaker amassed footage of the birth of her two children; the life she built with them and her partner, composer Ernesto Diaz-Infante; professional and personal struggles; political activism; and that most tense of San Francisco situations, the sale of their rent-controlled building. When the pandemic shut down the world, she started going through that personal archive, incorporating news footage, including some from Mission Local, to create a deeply personal, honest work.
For Kaufman, that honesty and self-exploration is at the heart of what Nin set out to do, and why she and so many other artists are still drawn to the writer after all these years. “There’s a line in my play, where she is talking to the audience, and she says, ‘Well, there are people who don’t approve of me. I am not here to get the approval. That’s not why I’m in this world, but to become myself,’” says Kaufman. “It’s a cry for independence and self-discovery, away from other people’s judgment.”
‘Shameless Hussy’ plays weekends from April 26 through May 11 at The Marsh (1062 Valencia St.). Tickets ($25 and up) and more info here.
The Anaïs Nin Diary Film Festival screens at 12:30 p.m. on April 27 at the Roxie Theater (3125 16th St.). Tickets ($10) and more info here.
Thank you Pam Grady and Mission Local for the excellent article on my play “Shameless Hussy”. You captured the essence of Anais Nin’s contribution to today’s world. And the film festival in her name sounds wonderful. All best,Lynne
Fun fact, Nin fucked her dad.
Literally, they did consensual father-daughter incest when she was 30some as I understand. Look it up if you don’t believe me. She even published writing about it.
Most salient fact about her I think, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
Oh no, did I judge someone? Don’t judge my judgment, you metapuritans!
Additionally, rhetorically pitting two incest enthusiasts against one another (trump/nin) to make a political point is humorous in my opinion.
to clarify my own position: trump makes me sick, nin I can take or leave.
Go valks!