The Popular Romance Project Film and Website: Creating Community in a Mass Cultural World

FAIN: TR-50389-12

Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc. (Melrose, MA 02176-3933)
Laurie Kahn (Project Director: January 2012 to March 2023)

Production of a two-hour documentary about the history and context of the romance novel and the global community built around a mass-produced popular cultural product.

Though popular romance fiction readily adapts to new technologies and cultural concerns over time, the impulse to tell stories about love is universal and timeless. "The Popular Romance Project" film, a two-hour documentary, will capture the humor, irony, entrepreneurial energy, and sheer exuberance of the romance novel community. Even though reading and writing are both extremely personal, intimate activities, romance readers and writers have created a highly interactive global community based on their shared experiences of romance fiction. The film and its integrated companion website will inspire millions of viewers to think contextually and historically about popular romance stories, consider the origins of canonical stories that are repeated in each era, and focus on the complex roles of class, race, and gender in popular romance around the globe.