Nice Girl Films premieres The Chanticleer, a fun and sexy new web series inspired by 1955 lesbian pulp fiction.

Season 1 Premieres March 1, 2015.

NEW YORK ­– Nice Girl Films, announces the release of "The Chanticleer," a dramatic web series inspired by the transformative and salacious lesbian pulp fiction novels of the 1950’s.

 

Nice Girl Films, known for its award-winning short films Hens and Chicks, Poker Face and Happy Hour, announces the release of The Chanticleer, a dramatic web series inspired by the transformative and salacious lesbian pulp fiction novels of the 1950’s.

Beginning March 1, episodes will be available to stream at www.TheChanticleer.tv, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo. New episodes are launched every two weeks through the end of May.

The Chanticleer is a fun, sexy, romp through mid-century U.S. culture. The series takes us to 1955 Ithaca, New York as ‘Edie Chaucer’ returns home to inherit the family bar following the death of her father.

Writer and director Becky Lane is passionate about this project and the subject matter. “I wanted to create a world where women’s perspectives are at the center,” says Lane. "The Chanticleer is about outsiders trying to find a place-- be that in a small clique, a town, or the outside world in general."

This is the first foray into webisodes for Lane and her creative partners. “Creating an episodic series allows us to explore the many cultural shifts that were happening in that time period,” Lane says. “It was the time of McCarthyism and the red scare, the beginning of the civil rights movement, and the first glimpses of the gay and lesbian rights movement. Conservative values were coming into direct conflict with more modern and open viewpoints.”

The notion of creating a series about lesbian pulp fiction may seem contradictory, as many of the novels of that era contained storylines where homosexual behavior was villainized; publishers often mandated that lesbian characters met a tragic end. There is another side to this story, however.

“Lesbian pulp fiction was often the only way a woman realized that there was a name for what she was feeling; that there were other women out there like her,” notes Lane. “It was still a valuable, often transformative literary genre for women.”

Lane sums it up: "People will always resist mandated conformity, she says. "Then and now, people find ways to be true to themselves."

The Chanticleer stars Annie Paul, Rebeca Miller, Darryle Johnson, and Sarah Hankins.

 

About Nice Girl Films

Nice Girl Films is an award-winning media company based in Ithaca, New York.