Love Between the Covers was finished last year and premiered at the Library of Congress alongside a one-day conference about the genre that was a standing-room-only affair for the entire time it was going on. You can read my Storified tweets from the conference if you’d like to take a look. The film has made the rounds of several documentary festivals, and was a featured selection at the Los Angeles Film Festival and at HotDocs in Toronto, along with many other film festivals in the past year — you can see some of the press about the film on their press page.
And now it’s available for download and streaming! You can find it on Amazon and iTunes, and it’ll be available on many cable and subscription options as well. Per the documentary website, you should be able to find it at:
Satellite Television:
- DirecTV
- Dish
Digital Streaming:
- iTunes
- Amazon
- Google Play
- Xbox
- Vudu
- FandangoNow
- Kaleidescape
- Hoopla
- Charter
- RCN
- Suddenlink
- Mediacom
- WOW!
- Independent Systems (ie. Midcontinent, Metrocast, Clearleap)
Cable
- Comcast – (‘Page to Screen’ folder, ‘Indie Film Club’ folder)
- Time Warner Cable
- Indemand
- AT&T
- Verizon
- Cox
If you’ve been curious about the documentary and haven’t been able to get to a screening, you should be able to find it today – woo hoo!
I’m in a weird position here, because I supported the documentary’s Kickstarter campaign, and I’m in it (I’m not wearing my glasses because of reflection, so you can see my eyes start to cross when I’m thinking hard), and I’ve seen it a few times, including at the premiere at the Library of Congress, at the Romantic Novelists Association conference in Lancaster, and will again this week at RWA in San Diego where I’m hosting a Q&A after a screening for conference delegates. I don’t think I can review it fairly, given that involvement: I have opinions, but they exist alongside so much affection and delight at seeing so many people I admire featured with respect and warmth.
I also think that a documentary about the genre, one that’s affectionate and largely positive, and one that features so prominently authors like Beverly Jenkins, Brenda Jackson, Nora Roberts, and so many others, is crucial because it presents an opportunity for people who aren’t familiar with the romance genre to have a point of introduction that isn’t a book. It seems sort of obvious that a book would be the best intro to romance, but… not always. A documentary connects romance to an audience that might not be otherwise familiar with it is good. A documentary about romance that reveals the community of readers and writers, and that showcases the friendship and warmth that exists between the writers, the readers, and the books we collectively love, is better, and that’s what Love Between the Covers is.
I hope if you watch it, you’ll share what you think? As I said, I’m not sure I can review it given how much involvement I’ve had and how much affection I harbor for the project, but I very much want to hear what you think.
And of course, can’t forget – here’s the trailer:
Love Between the Covers – Official Trailer from Laurie Kahn on Vimeo.
I watched Love Between the Covers at the RNA Conference in Lancaster at the weekend. I was expecting to see something similar to the slightly condescending documentaries that had been done before on the topic.
Love Between the Covers completely defied my expectations. It was, essentially, a film about female community. It brought across that intense connection between the authors and their readers and between groups of readers themselves. It also gave a glimpse of why this community is important. It covered how people read romance not just to ‘escape the boring housework’, but because they enjoyed it. The analogy to the rollercoaster ride was a good one – I’ve survived it, I’m shaking, when can I do it again?
The focus on the communities fostered by Radclyffe and by Beverley Jenkins were especially interesting to me because they both gave a voice to women who didn’t see themselves represented in mainstream fiction. Things are changing now, but when they started out there were almost no voices like theirs. They told those women that they weren’t alone. That’s incredible. When Beverly Jenkins said ‘No one had told us we were beautiful before’, she cried. So did I.
I liked that it was affectionately done. The tongue in cheek snippets about covers were great and set just the right tone for that topic. [I spent ages later trying to recreate the ‘almost kiss’ pose with Lego stormtroopers – I blame the wine]. I loved that the authors were portrayed as they are – women who are warm and smart and professional.
From the Brit perspective – the US romance market is very different to that in the UK. The boundary between romance and women’s fiction is much less clear over here. It was very interesting to get a proper insight into that. Sarah’s Q&A afterwards was incredibly informative too.
British readers (being British) aren’t as expressive as the people in the film, but I don’t think we feel all that differently about the books we love. We’re just a bit more muted in our responses.
I’d like to see it again, so I’m glad to see it’s available now.
Oh, and I want to be like Beverly Jenkins when I grow up. What an inspiration!
I saw it at the conference, too.
I loved the interviews with some of the stalwarts of the genre, and the stories of how these smart women climbed to the top of the profession. At the NOLA RT, I was put at a table with Beverley Jenkins and Brenda Jackson. That thrilled me to bits. What an honour to meet these ladies!
I did enjoy the film, but it was exclusively American-focused, with little indication that the romance industry even exists outside the States.
I found the focus a little narrow, but trying to cover all aspects of the genre would be difficult in the hour and a half that it had. Trends weren’t really covered, either, and how important these are in shaping the market.
But I’d advise anyone to see it, because it was fun and interesting. I guess we just need a few more of these!
I saw it only a few months ago. The Hot Docs cinema here in Toronto was hosting the Romance Writers of Toronto for their 30th anniversary and I bought a ticket to the movie screening not realizing at the time it was part of a bigger event.
As a reader, I loved the insights of the film. It was fascinating from every perspective that was shown.
In line for the film, I met a lot of lovely women who were so open to speaking about books – something I don’t always get in my real life. The best though was a conversation I overheard between 2 aspiring authors sitting behind me before the film started – one who wrote erotic romance and another who wrote inpirationals trading their secrets of character development in the constrains of their chosen genre. The inspirational author was talking about creating heat in the constrains of no sex and the erotic author was talking about creating character development in sex scenes. WOW, it was book geek heaven!
That event, as a reader, was incredible especially the Q&A that was afterwards with local published authors that I didn’t even know were Canadian. Yay for supporting local authors :).
So my experience of screening this film was in the greater context of an amazing afternoon that was purely accidental :). Those are the best kind of days.
Thank you for publicising this film. As a veteran, business professional, and politican I have hidden my addiction to the romance novel in it’s many varieties. Now there is a film that show’s I’m not alone in my obsession. I feel empowered.
I saw it at the Library of Congress and really enjoyed it. It was great to hear more about the authors’ lives and what the romance world had meant to them. There were parts that made me cry.
Is this part of the Popular Romance Project? http://popularromanceproject.org
It was on Hoopla this morning (I flagged it to watch later), but now it has disappeared! Here’s hoping it re-appears later…
I saw it at the Public Library Association conference in April in Denver, and it made me so proud to be a romance reader and writer! I loved how supportive everyone involved in the genre is of each other, and the wonderful humor expressed too. I raved about it to my RWA chapter when I got home. Can’t wait to watch it again now that it’s more widely available.
I saw it at the Library of Congress opening and was glad I was able to see it. I really appreciated seeing the community of the romance genre. Did it change much from that initial preview? My understanding was some of the music wasn’t final, so I didn’t know if there were other changes.
Our library has Hoopla, but alas not for video. I may rent it later.
@Julia: I don’t remember it clearly from the Library of Congress premiere, but I know that animations were added, there’s more interviews and edits to the middle and end for sure. I liked it at the LoC, and I LOVED it this time around.
I would love to see this, but apparently it’s not available, even through iTunes, here in Finland :(.