Samara Meyer never expected her sapphic remix of a 1920s silent film to get much attention. So when she found out her short, “THE SITUATIONSHIP,” placed third in the Internet Archive’s 2025 Public Domain Day Film Remix Contest, she was stunned.

“The Internet Archive is probably my favorite place on the web,” Meyer said. “So, I was honestly over the moon when I got the news.”

The film, which reimagines the iconic Clara Bow in a queer college romance, blends archival footage with modern themes. It’s equal parts past and present, driven by a creative process rooted in intuition. Meyer didn’t begin with a script. She began with a card.

“The initial concept actually came from working with a deck of oracle cards,” she said. “I drew a card called ‘the love children,’ which showed two women frolicking and holding hands. It set a lighthearted, romantic tone and placed two women at the center of the story. So, I took that and ran with it.”

Running with it meant remixing the legacy of Bow, whose appeal as the original It Girl both dazzled and confined her. Meyer wanted to explore what happened when that archetype was reframed.

“Clara Bow’s appeal is timeless,” she said. “But I also wanted to challenge the It Girl archetype that was coined for her. It was liberating in some ways, but also a powerful tool for controlling and marketing her image. Men were supposed to want her, and women were supposed to want to be her. She became defined by those desires and expectations. It was compelling to break her out of that heteronormative formula and channel her star power in a new way.”

The short film primarily uses footage from “The Wild Party,” a 1929 production that starred Bow and was directed by Dorothy Arzner. Meyer said she chose that work for its dynamic scenes between Bow and co-star Shirley O’Hara.

“There was so much energy in Bow’s performance, and her scenes with Shirley O’Hara were so emotionally dynamic,” she said. “I knew I had to make that the focus of the story. I looked for anything that would highlight her dramatic expressions and physicality.”

While the title “THE SITUATIONSHIP” comes from a modern lexicon, Meyer said the word speaks to themes that stretch back a century.

“Romance in the 1920s was transformed by the social advancements of women,” she said. “Formal courtship was replaced by more casual forms of dating, so it felt natural to draw attention to that by using contemporary language. This one term is capturing how a lot of young people think about relationships right now. At the same time, though, messy romances aren’t exactly a novel concept. So, this film kind of poses a playful question: why should we doubt that 96 years ago, girls in college were also falling for their friends, struggling to define their feelings and making fools of themselves in the process?”

Editing was both a technical and emotional process. She credits her girlfriend with helping shape the story into something more focused.

“I probably struggled the most with cutting down the amount of backstory I had imagined,” Meyer said. “I had my girlfriend watch the first version for feedback, which helped me simplify the plot and place the focus on Stella and Helen. It’s always important to have an editor who you trust.”

To convey romantic tension and emotional depth, Meyer used intertitles to pace the narrative and underscore emotional beats.

“The chaotic pace of everything also captures the giddiness that comes with getting swept up into feelings of obsession and fantasy,” she said.

She also used music from a harp recital by Carlena Diamond and sounds from the Silly Symphonies cartoon series to round out the mood. These subtle additions helped shape a layered viewing experience that embraced old techniques while delivering new resonance.

The core of the film’s appeal, Meyer said, might be its honesty.

“I wanted to be realistic about the oft-doomed nature of situationships without casting judgement or criticism,” she said. “They can be painful, but there’s also a lot of humor and sincerity to be found even in our messiest moments.”

That relatability, along with curiosity about Bow—whose name recently appeared in a Taylor Swift lyric—may have helped the short resonate.

The subtext in older films became one of Meyer’s most powerful tools. She described it as a secret language that speaks through blocking, eye contact, framing and silence.

“A film is much more than dialogue,” she said. “These other channels of information can end up outweighing the apparent meaning or events of a scene.”

Meyer also acknowledged how working with pre-Code films—a brief era before the Motion Picture Production Code began regulating morality in movies—opened a window to narratives that were once suppressed.

“This year’s contest was about celebrating works from 1929, which was one of the last years before the Hays Code imposed a set of sexist, homophobic and racist censorship regulations on the American film industry,” she said. “My appreciation for this time period grew even deeper when I started looking into Dorothy Arzner.”

Arzner, who directed “The Wild Party,” was one of Hollywood’s first female directors—and a lesbian who, Meyer said, never completely hid who she was.

“She invented the overhead boom mic during the film’s production. She taught Francis Ford Coppola. She launched the careers of Lucille Ball and Katharine Hepburn,” Meyer said. “But her career decline was related to suppression under the Hays Code. It wasn’t just about erasing fictional portrayals of queerness. It was silencing actual queer people.”

Meyer sees the public domain as a powerful space for cultural recovery.

“The public domain asserts that, in a literal legal sense, the past belongs to everybody,” she said. “The erasure and suppression of marginalized histories is a very real threat. But just by engaging with and absorbing that history, we can carry it forward in new ways.”

Sometimes, those ways come with surprise. Meyer said some moments in the original films needed little reinterpretation.

“When I initially watched ‘The Wild Party,’ I couldn’t believe the intimate body language, or the scene of Stella running to Helen on the beach,” she said. “All of that was in the original film. I didn’t really have to change anything. I just had to give it the spotlight treatment instead of the side plot.”

That unfiltered resonance revealed the depth of meaning already present in early film. It only needed a new lens.

“There was another moment I didn’t end up using where Stella and her friends are being harassed by some men in a bar off campus,” Meyer said. “The girls start a full-on brawl to teach them a lesson. It was remarkable to see such an explicit rejection of conventional gender roles from nearly 100 years ago.”

Flexibility played a large role in her process. She emphasized the need for patience when sorting through archival material.

“When you come across something that speaks to you, it takes on a life of its own,” she said.

Meyer believes remixing film can push conversations forward, especially around LGBTQ+ history. She mentioned “The Celluloid Closet” and the popularity of books like “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” as signs of growing public interest.

“Even more iconic films are going to be entering the public domain in the coming years,” she said. “So, I certainly hope that will prompt even greater acknowledgement of how queer people have shaped cinema.”

As for her own trajectory, Meyer sees herself as an editor above all. But “THE SITUATIONSHIP” has nudged her toward exploring that line between cutting footage and writing story.

“This was a step up for me in creating a coherent narrative out of a preexisting work,” she said. “It was an interesting exercise in seeing where those two skills converge.”

She’s not done remixing just yet.

“I love Buster Keaton, and actually thought of remixing some of his performances into a story about a drag king named ‘Butchster Queenton,’” she said. “I’m not sure how the judges would have taken that, but it would be fun to bring to life at some point.”

New video essays are also in the works, and she’s reviving her old YouTube channel to share them.

At the end of the day, Meyer hopes her film reminds people that love stories don’t expire.

“Desire, confusion, friendship, romance, humor, disappointment—these experiences are not limited to any one era or group of people,” she said. “Even this silly little gay story is proof that the past is not beyond our reach or understanding.”

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the best part. Because nearly a century later, Clara Bow is still stealing hearts. Just in a slightly different way.