Jessica Hankey’s Experimental Short “One Rehearses, the Other Doesn’t” 

Ann Randolf & Marjorie Annapav

Director Jessica Hankey’s unique experimental short film One Rehearses, the Other Doesn’t premiered last week at Slamdance 2025 where it received the honorable mention Grand Jury Prize for Experimental Shorts. The film features Marjorie Annapav, a peripheral figure in American Surrealism and performance artist, storysmith, Ann Randolf who masterfully plays Annapav’s fictionalized performance teacher. Also appearing in the film are Terrie Silverman and Marcia Stein.

Don’t Make Assumptions

I first watched One Rehearses, the Other Doesn’t with the assumption the film was about developing this amazing and beautifully cinematic solo-show. I wanted to know more. When I spoke with Jessica Hankey at Slamdance she said, not necessarily a ‘solo-show’ but an effort for Marjorie to discover a version of her life that might play to audiences or work into a memoire. Marjorie was well aware of what it means to be an older woman, to become invisible, to feel unseen, she was working with that. Art therapy.

Ann and Marjorie’s rehearsals flow and weave through Annapav’s recounting of her life as a Sex Worker, witnessing the murder of her boyfriend by the mob in 1970s New York, her marriage to wealthy American surrealist William Copley and as one of Andy Warhol’s High Society Women –Marjorie Copely 1980.

Annapav’s work with Hankey and Randolf is cathartic, gorgeous and deep. She’s authentic and endearing as she shares secrets of the trade and her compassionate boundary if there is a heartbreaking but impossible ask. There are places where lines cannot blur.

Appreciation cannot be bought.

William Copley had deep roots in Los Angeles when he opened The Copley Gallery with his brother-in-law, a Disney Artist in 1948. It was the city’s first real exposure to Surrealism but they were ahead of their time and when it failed, he moved to Paris where Duchamp encouraged him to paint. He became known in both the Surrealist Movement and in American Pop Art circles. He was also known as a man who struggled to relate to women. Old school, he loved W.C. Fields in the 1970’s. His daughter Claire Copley observed that her father’s paintings portrayed women “Usually faceless, nameless, and almost always nude…The impossibility of knowing them is apparent in every painting…” Phillips

In the same year that Andy Warhol painted her portrait, “Marjorie Copley” in 1980, Copley paid her $600,000 to marry him with the understanding that she could leave at any time. He didn’t want her to feel obligated, he just wanted her to be protected as she aged with enough money to prevent her from becoming a “Bag Lady.” She didn’t stay in their arrangement long, they divorced in 1981, the year that Copely painted “Do You.” The money helped sustain her as she built a new life in Los Angeles.

Leave the world a little better than you found it.

Unfortunately, Marjorie Annapav passed away last year. Jessica said she wishes that she could have attended the premiere, she thinks she would have enjoyed it. Hankey’s film is a gorgeous homage to a woman that left the world better than she found it, as do the dynamic team who made this beautiful film. Marjorie made a difference in a lot of peoples lives, she volunteered with foster children in Santa Monica, CA at CASA, she was a PTA member and Sunday School teacher… Her entire life, she was frontline. Life is art and art is life.

As a bonus, I found a talk that Marjorie did at Sunday Assembly Los Angeles called “I’m trying my best” I urge you to listen to HERE.

I’m definitely looking forward to whatever Jessica Hankey does next!

The entire Slamdance 2025 Lineup is available until March 7th on the Slamdance Channel

Credits

Director/Co-Writer/Producer: Jessica Hankey; Writers: Ann Randolph, Marjorie Annapav, Jessica Hankey and Victor Kaufold. Producers: Keren Hantman, Jessica Hankey; Creative Producer: Gaby Hoffman; Editors: Julia Straface, Jessica Hankey; Cinematographers: Chris Dapkins, Helki Frantzen; Sound: Dalmar Montgomery, Chris Ward; Music: Corey Fogel

Jessica Hankey Bio from The Center for Independent Documentary

Jessica Hankey works across film, photography, sculpture, and publishing to explore the social lives of institutions, engaging with a particular site for years. In entities that include museums, schools, community centers, social clubs, and Amtrak cross-country trains, the desires of individuals—and the consequences of desire—are set against these larger institutional bodies and environments. Being in relation with others, intimacy, improvisation, and formal experimentation animate this work. A 2019 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, Hankey attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2015 and has exhibited at venues that include the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Rubin Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso, Texas, and Bowdoin College. Her work has been screened at Anthology Film Archives and Vox Populi, reviewed in Artforum, The Chart, and Glasstire.

*Special thanks to Wildworks PR and Cinematic Red Public Relations.

**Images courtesy John Wildman, Susan Engel and Annie Jeeves.