Episode 4: An Interview with Filmmaker Cece Cissel

Hear Cece's perspectives on Neurodivergence, the Creative Process & Radical Self Acceptance.. & more! 

Cece Cissel is a LGBTQ+ and Autistic filmmaker and actor who is from Gettysburg Pennsylvania. She got her love of the entertainment industry at a young age and in 2020 started acting classes which further cemented her love for the arts. She hopes to create films that give people a place to ''forget about their worries and fears even if
its for a little bit.'' just like movies and tv shows have done for her in the past. She also hopes her films make people feel less alone in the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello and welcome to Crows and Roses Podcast, a podcast made for creative and intellectual exploration centered in love and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole, and my intention for this podcast is to invite learners to deeper awareness of themselves and the world around them. Inviting courage and discernments while publicly providing insight along the way. Now, always remember that what I share here is based on my own life and experiences. These are my insights. So although I encourage listening with an open heart and an open mind, it is up to you to choose what is most valuable and resonates with your own life and experiences. So without further ado, let's begin. Welcome back. Today we have my friend Cece Sistel on this podcast. Cece is an LGBTQ Plus, an autistic filmmaker and actor who's from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She got her love of the entertainment industry at a young age and in 2020 started acting classes, which further cemented her love for the arts. She hopes to create films that give people a place to forget about their worries and fears, even if it's just for a little bit, just like movies and TV shows have done for her in the past. She also hopes her films make people less feel less alone in the world. And so yeah, thank you. Welcome, Cece.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Thank you for having me. That's so weird to hear it read out. Because I just go I just go, I just I'm just a guy, well, girl. I'm just a little guy. I'm just a little guy. Hi.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

So I know you have your new film out. Do you want to talk about your role in the film?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Um sure. Uh the film is called Favor from the Devil. Uh it is a short film. Uh I play the main character um Verna. And uh it's a kind of a I call it a horror slash like psychological thriller, maybe. Maybe not thriller is not the right word, but just horror genre. Um, and it essentially shows or hopefully does a good job of showing kind of how far the mind will go to justify their bad actions. Um it was at the Milwaukee Horror Con slash film festival. Then in June this year, it will be at virtually the Film Collectives uh Film Festival. Uh those two are virtual. Um on top of that, uh on-screen stuff, off-screen, I produced and directed it and edited it.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Wow, that's awesome. That's really cool. Um, is this your first film, Cece? I know I didn't put this in the question list, but it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Um, it is not my first film. Uh, I did a film in 2024 called Waiting, and that is on my YouTube. Um, and uh that was kind of the little film that could. Um and on top of that, nobody's gonna be able to find this because it's deleted off of the internet. But I used to uh when I was a kid make movies with um Briar model horses. I don't know if that's a thing in Canada, um, but they're basically uh horse toy collectibles. Um I would write uh scripts and make movies that way, and um, I'm not the only one uh to do that. It's a whole community, and they're really majority good people. Um so technically it's my first movie with people, not Briars.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

It sounds like film has kind of always been your thing, though, the way you're sharing this now. What do you feel that this new film means for your creative process?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

I definitely learned a bunch of new things. Uh, just about I'm always learning stuff about filmmaking. Um, and sometimes the best learning tool and the best thing for a creative process is just jumping right on in. Um, I definitely learned uh new things, such as people can and will back out. And it's uh it may seem like the end of the world, but it's not. Because there's always gonna be people who are willing to step up and uh be like, yeah, I got you. Um so it kind of um made me trust a little more that when someone backs out, that maybe it's the universe being like, not them, but here's another person that was supposed to be here. Um and just getting to, with it being a horror movie, um, I had a lot of fun experience with uh fake blood and learning how to uh the creative process that specifically comes from creating a horror movie, um, and just learning practical effects um and all that stuff has definitely helped me uh grow as a person uh creatively and add to the already cool kind of creative process skills I've learned.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

I love that. How would you describe your creative process?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

You know what's funny is I went back and forth on this question because you do such a good job of sending the questions beforehand, and the only word that I could come up with is chaotic. Um it's not not necessarily in a bad way because I do plan, but um I have ADHD as well, so I it's harder for me to uh focus on one part of the whole process. Uh so I find myself bouncing around the process a bit, and it works for me, but I don't think that'll work for everybody. Um, so it's a mix of like on top of just spontaneously bouncing around, um, also planning and as someone who has produced and directed and been on that side of it, um kind of I I know that I guess within chaos, you need some type of structure, obviously. And so I would say it's a mix of chaos and like structure. Yeah. Um, they cancel each other out, but in a good way.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

It's a good balance. I think that that just like exemplifies how perfect film is for you because film is such organized chaos. And like so much you do on the fly. And I feel like that kind of answers the how does neurodivergence affect your creative expression, or do you have more to add on that question?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Um, I would say more to add on that a little bit. Uh not just with ADHD, I also have autism, like you mentioned. And um the way I process, or at least one of the ways, um, I'm still learning kind of about myself in this aspect. Um and uh basically I was diagnosed, I don't want to say late in life, but uh maybe between 12. Well, I was diagnosed uh when I was 12, but then re-diagnosed, like officially diagnosed at 15. So being diagnosed later in life, I had to kind of um I didn't fully realize what autism meant for me until I was in my 20s. And um, so I'm still kind of learning a lot about myself with that and how it contributes to my filmmaking. But the one cool kind of thing I've learned is uh and uh my creative process as well. That one of the cool things I learned is I think in pictures, and the best way that I can describe it is I don't know if any of the listeners know who Temple Grandon is. Um, she is an autistic woman who actually is the inventor of cow shoots. Um, shows you how um how country I am that I know that. Um, but there's a children's book that she had, or she made, or she either made or like helped make about her, and it's called the uh the woman the woman who thought in pictures. And in the book, it describes how someone could say a word like fly, and her brain works, uh, like all of a sudden she sees photos of like flies in her brain flying by. And then in the she also has a movie, and in the movie she describes it as her brain's like Google, to where like the only way I can describe it is like if you were to say uh Hollywood, immediately my brain thinks, oh, I see the an image of the Hollywood sign, the Santa Monica Pier, the like it's like someone opened up a tab on Google and went to the images, and all of a sudden that's like flooding in my brain. Not in a bad way, but like that's just kind of the way I can describe it. And that influences a lot it a lot because I'm able to visualize a scene and set it up in a way like it's using that picture in my head. Um and so yeah, that's kind of adds to that creative stuff as well, and that's how that influences that as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

It sounds like your mind can really help you in your creative process. So I really love that. And that sounds so unique. I've never heard of that before, but I have like the opposite where I sometimes can't even imagine anything in my brain. I can't, I think it's called aphantasia or something like that. I don't know. Like mind can't picture things. Yeah. So sometimes I have that. Sometimes I have a very vivid mind, but I I have to be like half asleep, so I don't know if that counts.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I think it counts. I think it counts.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Otherwise known as dreaming, though. Pretty much. Um, so I want to go into the next question, which is how neurodivergence influences your self-care.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Um so being autistic, we're gonna go back to that. Um autistic people, not everyone, um, but majority, at least from my experience, has what is known as a special interest. And I have to pull up the definition because I don't want to be wrong on it. Um let me quickly pull that up. Uh special interest definition. Um, it is an intense, deep, and focused passion for a specific topic, subject, or activity. Um, they go beyond typical hobbies, providing joy, comfort, and cognitive structure. Um, they can last for years or lifetime, serving as a key part of a person's identity regulation and career path. So uh for me, self-care, and I will talk to the high heavens about this show, is Ghost Whisperer. Um, for the Canadian audience who might not know what it is, uh, if you guys know who Jennifer Love Hewitt is, she was in stuff such as like I Know What You Did Last Summer, she's now in 911. Um she was in a show called Ghost Whisperer and basic summary, woman who sees and hears the dead and helped move on. Um, that show has been a special interest since I was 12. And I've been very fortunate enough to uh meet some cast members from it uh and the meet the not meet directly, I'd love to meet the creator directly of the show, but uh kind of have interactions with him on social media. Um I kind of jokingly bragged that as of right now, as of recording this, and hopefully in the future uh when people listen to this, he follows me. And so I've his name's John Gray, and I've had really cool interactions with him. Um so that so my a lot of my self-care is sitting and watching the show or re-watching it. I have certain episodes that I watch if I'm like wanting a pick-me-up of laughing, and um a lot of those episodes involve uh Jay Moore and his character Professor Payne um and uh all that stuff. Um it also I also use it as a way, like if I'm stressed and I need to just have something on the background to focus, I'll turn it on and regulate. Um or I have uh pieces of the costumes, the actual wardrobe, um on it. On like they did uh trading cards for a little bit. Um for a while, like TV shows, I guess it was a trend in the early 2000s where every TV show that I could think of then made trading cards. And some of the trading cards had the costume, like actual wardrobe and costume pieces. And I use a lot of that for texture. If I get overwhelmed, I'll just touch it and like rub my hands against it to bring my center myself back to center. Um, so very much a lot of ghost whisper. Um, but on top of that, just writing um and being like painting and sometimes throwing paint at a canvas, literally throwing it, it helps. Um so regulating. Oh my gosh. It's so much fun. Um, but a lot of my special interests, uh such as Ghost Whisper and a lot of like not to sound typical stereotypical autism, but dinosaurs, Jurassic Park, watching that, um, learning about like ancient Egypt or Greece, um that kind of stuff that I have just in general, but that I'm able to hyperfixate on or you know, have a special interest in, a lot of that is used for self-care and regulation. So I make a joke that um the normally when people tell me to calm down, I kind of roll my eyes at it and I I'm I'll like be like, no, that doesn't help. But if I ever meet anybody in Ghost Whisper who was in Ghost Whisper in person and they tell me to calm down, that's probably the one circumstance where it might work. Um just because I used it, I use the show as the regulation thing as a it's a special interest. So I love that.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

And I hope I get to meet them at some point. So, what does self-love mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Oh something that I'm constantly working on. Um this is gonna be a pot calling the kettle black moment because I've been some that's been some of them I've struggled with up until well, I think I'll always struggle with it. Um but to me, it means oh geez, that's it really I didn't write this down, my answer to this down. It means accepting yourself for who you are and flaws and all. Um I spent a lot of the time and my childhood uh growing up masking and hiding my autistic traits. Half of it was kind of out of survival, the other half was I didn't know what I was doing in the sense of I was a kid, I was taught a certain way and thought that that's what had to happen. Um, so for me, a lot of these past few years has been learning to unmask and learning to just stim and learning to like accept that, hey, you know, I do this and that's okay. So to me, self-love is a lot of radical acceptance of who you are, um, the good, the bad, the ugly, um, or the stuff that you think is bad and ugly. Um and yeah, I hope that made sense.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

That made perfect sense. I really love that. Yeah, I think that self-love, I agree. Self-love is about acceptance. And sometimes it's like accepting the things that are harder to like accepting our flaws at times, accepting our whole self rather than trying to um trying to hide who we are. Like I hope that that makes sense. Not to say that like also obviously our gifts and um our neurodivergence is part of that, but also I feel like for myself, it's like acknowledging that I'm human and like allowing myself to be human like I would anyone else, which means that I'm allowed to make mistakes and still love myself through that. Yep. Yeah. Then I save this question for last or almost last, because I think like I know that you talk about it a lot on social media. And with everything happening in America right now, I know that there's like a lot of talk about liberation movements. So I want to know what do you feel the role of creativity is in the liberation movements?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

So I had a friend tell me that you have the protesters who are on the front lines, but you need the creative ones, the artists of all kinds, because who's gonna keep up the morale? Uh, I also think that there's a certain level of creativity when it comes to protesters. Um, for instance, when it comes to being able to even organize people or come up with solutions to keep people fed, um, such as when the government was shut down uh for a little bit, um, the food, the food uh restaurants that opened and were like, we'll feed people for free. It's okay, we got this. Our reps just hold the line. That takes a lot of creativity to come up with that. Um, and to come up with people being taken care of when the powers that be don't. So I have to give my props to those logical people too, uh, because it's really creative. Um, I went to the big No Kings protest recently, um, and I saw a woman, a few people actually, but mainly uh a woman playing a guitar. She was singing protest songs, she was rallying people to sing with her. Um, and a group from a church was singing like Amazing Grace and uh church songs uh with the protesters. And, you know, that's another way that I kind of made note of to be like, oh, that's cool, that's another creative thing that keeps morale high. And it helped. Um, I also just there are people in the industry alone that are using their form of art to make a statement, and not just like the actors, but the writers of like, for instance, um, there's a TV show called The Pit uh for the Canadian audiences. Uh, it's a show about an ER in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Um, they did a really realistic situation uh with ICE bringing a person into the hospital that they detained from somewhere. And um, and I only saw clips of this, so I I might not get it fully correct of what happened. Um, but basically one of the nurses tried to help and like, you know, defend the person, and uh the agent said something along the lines of we don't need your help anymore, and tried to take the person they detained out, and the nurse fought fought back. And I never thought that that's a scenario that's probably happening in a lot of hospitals in America um until I saw a clip on it on social media. Um, on top of the entertainment industry, uh, there's a drag queen uh who dresses up as the Statue of Liberty. I don't know her socials off social media off the top of my head. I will send it to you, Nikki, if I find it. Um but she uh she walks around on her dress, it's a bunch of um anti-administration. Um I don't know if this podcast will get censored if I say the current president's name. So I'm gonna say anti-administration. Um so I look at her and I'm in awe because like that takes a lot of creativity, and that's a genius way to make a statement without speaking. Um and just to me, like I said, it takes a lot of creativity not just to uh not just to in the art aspect, but in the other aspects to protest in general. I don't think you're gonna escape creativity when it comes to this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Like creative solutions.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah. Um I like to think humans are humans are just creative as n by nature. So and with neurodivergencies, you're gonna have someone who's gonna be like, I have an idea, this might work. And maybe it's not like An arty artsy fartsy type of thing, but it's like logically like creative, like that makes sense. That might work. We can try it.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

So thank you. And is there anything else you want to share with the listeners?

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Um, so I again, as of this being recorded, I uh went to a film festival and they had the speakers, the speakers that they had were like three cast members from the original cast of Hamilton. And uh Philip Soy, so sorry if I butcher uh if you happen to be listening to this, I'm so sorry if I butchered your last name. Um but she ended up saying something and it just stuck with me, and I kind of just want to share it. Um she ended up saying the goal of art isn't to find an answer to a question by the end of it, it is to by the end ask another question. And that stuck with me. So I will leave that to where it is to let that resonate with people if it does, because it resonated with me.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining. I think that that wraps it up for now. I'll end the recording here. Thank you so much. Yeah.