Writer/director Chyna Robinson has lived in Fort Worth all her life. She grew up knowing she wanted to tell stories, and set her sights on filmmaking in high school. “No Ordinary Love” is her debut feature-length film. It explores intimate partner violence – including spiritual abuse. It will be available on multiple platforms beginning June 15.
“I was approached by a friend who ended up being my executive producer on the film, Tracy [Rector], she served as the chair on the board of directors for a local women’s shelter and service center. And she approached me and said, ‘hey, if I find funding, would you be willing to do a story about these toxic relationships and coercive control?’ And I said, ‘well, absolutely.’”
“It’s not my story that I’m telling in the movie, but I was able to pull a lot from my own stories as far as being in relationships with manipulation or with coercive control to a certain degree… definitely a lot of myself is in that film.”
“In Texas, we’re part of the Bible Belt. Church is a very big deal to us… So I wanted to show how scripture could be used and manipulated as a form of coercive control, along with, you know, the psychological abuse and the emotional abuse and everything that comes with it, because at its core, intimate partner, violence and domestic violence, domestic abuse, whichever you call it, it’s about power and control.”
“We know that Hollywood was never set up for people that look like myself… which I mean female or black filmmakers… So it’s very important to me to allow the audience to see a story from a female perspective… But also it’s important to me to have females behind the camera in key roles as well.”
“I do feel like it’s my responsibility and everyone’s responsibility to make the art that we see on screen reflect the world that we that we live in, in the world doesn’t just look like one ethnicity or one gender or one age group or one income. The world is you know, it’s the world. It’s everybody.”
