Dancer and choreographer Jenn Freeman was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in 2021 at age 33. In 2023, she created the performance piece "Is It Thursday Yet?" for the La Jolla Playhouse. It allowed Freeman a creative way to explore her neurodivergent brain. The evolution of that show and Freeman’s navigation of her diagnosis form the basis of the documentary "Room to Move," which screened last night at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
"Room to Move" seems like it was a film that was destined to happen. So many things lined up perfectly that fate seems to have had a hand in its making.
Take the birth of the film.
"Alex Hammer, the director, happened to contact me the day I got my autism diagnosis without knowing that I was going through any of that," Freeman said. "So our journey started there. And along the way, Alex, through watching and learning about my experience in a really intimate way, he realized that he, too, is autistic and ended up going through a diagnosis process. And it became a really important part of the story. And Alex and I developed a really beautiful friendship over the five years, and you'll see a lot of that in the film as well."
In addition, Freeman's father filmed everything during her childhood. This meant she could look back on her past with her current understanding of having always been autistic.
"Something that maybe a lot of people don't know about a late-in-life autism diagnosis, it's such a gift to receive the diagnosis because I'm able to learn so much about myself and have context for so many moments in my life and so many struggles," Freeman explained. "But it does, at least in my experience, it gets harder before it gets better. There's just a lot to unpack and reframe."
Helping her to do that unpacking and reframing was the creation of her solo dance show, "Is It Thursday Yet?" for the La Jolla Playhouse.
"It premiered at La Jolla Playhouse two summers ago, which was one of the best experiences of my life. And the film covers the creation and the premiere and all of that," Freeman added. "And definitely the process of making 'Is It Thursday Yet?' was very, very therapeutic: going through all of my recorded therapy sessions, going through childhood footage, which a lot of that is in the documentary as well. It opened up the doors for a lot of conversations that had never been had before."
The documentary interweaves all these elements — home movies, therapy sessions, her dance show — in a spellbinding fashion. Hammer imbues the documentary with a vibrant sense of motion and movement that reflects Freeman as both an artist and someone with autism. She talks about how someone with autism has trouble being still and how repetition plays a role in coping. So Hammer edits the film in a manner that keeps it in constant motion and relies on repetition. Sometimes the repetition is a montage of Freeman spinning in home movies over decades as well as in performance. This sense of repetition helps us get inside Freeman's neurodivergent brain and feel what it's like.
Hammer also incorporates footage of "Is It Thursday Yet?" in a manner that provides insight into Freeman's creative process. But seeing the work develop also takes us on Freeman's journey to understand her autism and to share what her world is like with others.
"Room to Move" hopes to pick up a distributor at Tribeca so it can have a theatrical release and eventually be available on streaming platforms. It's a stunning work in which the filmmaking perfectly complements the subject matter.
