page_title: Wanda (film)
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: Wanda (film) / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: English: Postcard of the sign and cross at Holy Land USA
context_page_description: Wanda is a 1970 American independent drama film written and directed by Barbara Loden, who also stars in the title role. Set in the anthracite coal region of eastern Pennsylvania, the film focuses on an apathetic woman with limited options who inadvertently goes on the run with a bank robber.
  Inspired by her own past feelings of aimlessness, as well as a newspaper article detailing a woman's participation in a bank robbery, Loden wrote the screenplay for Wanda before securing financing through Harry Shuster, a Los Angeles-based producer. The film was shot on location with a small crew of around seven people, primarily in eastern Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and much of the dialog and filming was improvised, with Loden only loosely referring to the screenplay.
  Wanda was chosen for the 31st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Pasinetti Award for Best Foreign Film. A restored version of the film was screened out of competition at the 67th Venice International Film Festival in 2010. In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
context_section_description: The film was shot on 16mm stock, on a budget of roughly $100,000 with a crew of four: Loden, cinematographer Nicholas Proferes, who also edited the film, Lars Hedman doing lighting and sound, and production assistant Christopher Cromin. Loden and Michael Higgins were the only two professional actors in the production and most of their scenes were a result of improvisation. Loden recalled the logistics of the production as difficult, and said she ended up "using the [actors] as they were" and quit referring to the script shortly after beginning. Loden worked for union scale, and Higgins's costumes came from Kazan's castoffs. Loden said the film's visual style was inspired by several Andy Warhol films.
  The film was financed by Harry Shuster, who formed Bardene International Films specifically to distribute it. Shuster had a one-third interest in the film; the other two-thirds was held by Loden, Kazan, and attorney Milton Kazan's nonprofit Foundation for Filmmakers. Any profits after recoupment that went to the foundation were to be put into a fund to finance future films.
  Originally slated to be set in the South, the high cost of filming there and the production's need to be near the film processing houses in New York City prompted a change to the coal-mining regions of Pennsylvania. Location shooting took place in fall 1969 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and Waterbury, Connecticut. Several of the performers in the film were non-actors who were arbitrarily asked to partake in the film; among these are the man Wanda speaks with in the film's opening sequence on the coal field, as well as the actor portraying Norman's father, whom Loden and Proferes invited to play the part after finding him in a local retirement home in Carbondale. The final scene was filmed at an actual roadhouse in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Loden filmed an alternate ending in which Wanda is accosted by the police at the roadhouse, but she ultimately deemed it "too corny" and opted to conclude the film with a morose Wanda being regaled by the local tavern patrons.
  Post-production of Wanda occurred in Loden's home.
caption: A sequence in the film was shot at the Holy Land USA theme park in Waterbury, Connecticut
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