women in film
LYDIA FIORE
ACTED IN AND WROTE THE STORY
FOR THE SHORT FILM SWIPED RIGHT
FIRST FASHION, THEN FILM
>
ON WOMEN IN FILM
Because her producing partners are other women, Fiore says her experiences as a woman
filmmaker have been fantastic. “Dana and I held all the top positions — writer, producer, story
by, editor, director and executive producer. We’re female and we like sex, too! So why can’t I
want to go online and find sex the same way a guy does?” she says. “The guy is three-dimen-
sional; he’s a fully-rounded individual, uncle and brother. If a man had written it, he might not
have made the women’s characters as strong as they are. They talk the way we talk.”
38
MAY 2018 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
BAD DATE, GREAT
IDEA FOR A FILM
Fiore’s online
dating experience
provided fodder
for a fun film short.
GRASSO
I
f Lydia Fiore hadn’t done so well as a fashion
executive, her film career might have blossomed
earlier. Originally from Lackawanna, N.Y., she
attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and
launched into a career working with plus-size
clothing. “I did a big push in my 30’s to see if I was
going to leave my day job and act, and that didn’t
happen,” she says. A couple years ago, though,
after her company was bought out and her contract
wasn’t renewed, she decided to give it another
try. She took classes, auditioned for parts, and
got them.
“There’s a place called the Actor’s Green Room in the city, and I would go
to screenings to see what other people were creating,” she says. When she saw
the work of short film creator Dana Schoenfeld, she immediately wanted to
collaborate with her. “I thought, ‘I want to make films about subjects for
women my age,’” says Fiore. She co-wrote and starred in a short called
High Deny — “about pills, Prosecco and politics, and a loveable person a
dysfunctional family does an intervention on.” Then came Swiped Right.
The Nutley resident’s second short film is based on her own experiences on
a bad online date. “A few weeks later, I was telling friends about it and we’re
laughing,” she says. “They said, ‘This is a movie.’” Schoenfeld took the draft of
her story and rewrote it as a raunchy, relatable love story with a nice surprise
ending. She also cast actor Anthony Grasso as the male lead, gave him a sister
so he had more of a story line, produced and directed.
“It’s fiction now, but based on my characters,” says Fiore. “It’s not PG. It’s
more realistic, and it really resonates with people of all ages, because everyone’s
Internet-dating.” Swiped Right has been screened at numerous film festivals
and received accolades from New Jersey viewers; in March, it won the title of
“Best Home Grown Short” at The Garden State Film Festival.