top of page

We'll Be All Right

Frankie Presslaff and his son Tanner view home videos, and Frankie pauses on a frame of his late mother Mimsie. She wipes pizza off her grandson's face. Father and son giggle together, and the innocuous frame opens another Mimsie story.


Until the fall of 2014, Indiana did not legally recognize Frankie and his partner's family. Regardless, Mimsie guaranteed that the two dads and their eight adopted children stuck thicker than blood. Her life story inaugurated this family, but as she always taught, "another story continues after.” When Mimsie passed away she left her family a set of hidden cassette tapes. Frankie discovered days after her death. He put one of the tapes in the tape recorder and pressed play. Mimsie was back: "if you're listening to this, I guess that means I'm looking down at ya. I thought I'd leave you this, funny stories." Immediately, Frankie pressed stop. Five years later he still has not listened to her final stories. But as he learns to let his adopted children leave home to start their independent lives, Frankie realizes discovers it's time.

'We'll Be All Right' is about making beginnings from ends. In letting Mimsie go, Frankie and company begin new middles and ends. In this documentary Indiana filmmakers Barton Girdwood and Carissa Barrett demonstrate how the stories we tell bind us together. In Mimsie's case her stories have become a bloodline now passing to her great-grandchildren. There's always another story.

YEAR

2013

RUN TIME

11m

DIRECTOR

Barton Girdwood

Barton Girdwood

Barton Girdwood is a new voice in Queer Cinema. Hailing from the Midwest, his work focuses on gay men off the map. His unique blend of photography, audio, and film bypasses “No Trespassing” signs to uncover the complexity of queer landscapes.

Girdwood has screened at the Heartland Film Festival, was an official selection at the Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival, MIX NYC, and The Indiana University Cinema. He has worked for NPR’s Snap Judgment, American Public Media, and the Public Radio Exchange. His second film, M4M: Seeks Love, blends film and photography to follow a 70-year-old man’s quest for love on CraigsList in the middle of nowhere.

Girdwood studied Public Memory at Indiana University, Documentary Production at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, and has worked in public radio for three years. He recently worked on a Bollywood feature in South-Central Indiana.


Carissa Barrett

Carissa Barrett began producing and directing documentaries in 2013. Her first experimental short, The Apprenticeship, was shot on 16mm color film and the highly stylized art of glass blowing. Barrett works for WFHB's weekly queer radio show, bloomingOUT, which provides an open forum for the Bloomington LGBTQ community. Barrett is completing her studies in Indiana University’s Department of Communication & Culture and recently designed individualized coursework in LGBTQ television representations.

bottom of page