Girl on Film

They looked alike. He was dark, with shaggy hair and a handlebar mustache. But the man in the photo was still a mystery. Although her mother had told Lisa that she would answer any question about Tebben, Lisa says the topic seemed off-limits.

In college, Evans started hanging out with an artsy crowd. She spent her freshman year studying psychology at Kansas State University, but the next year, she transferred to the University of Kansas, where she graduated with an advertising degree.

During her sophomore year, she decided not to come home for spring break. She wasn't avoiding her parents; she just had other plans. Her mother convinced her to come home anyway, and a talk at the dinner table led to a blowup.

Lisa's mother couldn't pinpoint the source of the unspoken tension with her daughter.

But Mike Evans was suspicious. "Well, you like boys, don't you?" he asked.

"Yeah," Lisa said.

"I wasn't exactly lying," Evans tells the Pitch now.

But she wasn't exactly telling the truth. After the argument, on a walk around her family's suburban Johnson County neighborhood, Lisa finally blurted out, "Mom, I like girls."

"Then it just clicked," Kathy Evans tells the Pitch.

Lisa figures her mom probably noted that day in her baby book. "She still writes things like that in my baby book."

Lisa's need to express herself was obvious. In a rusty old toolbox next to her bed, Evans keeps nearly 30 journals she has written. After she came out, things at home remained tense — her mother told her that she didn't feel as though she knew her anymore. Evans started keeping a journal. She wrote for two years, and for Kathy's birthday in 1999, Lisa gave her a book-length record of her feelings.

"Whether it was good or bad, it was there," Kathy says. "It was kind of an eye opener." But the writing brought the two closer. "We could talk about things more openly," Kathy says.

"Now," Lisa adds, "I'm like the son my dad never had. I'll be like, 'Yeah, look at her. I dated her.' And he'll be like, 'Nice going.'"

After graduation, Lisa started volunteering at Campfire USA, working with preschoolers at a domestic-violence shelter. A full-time position came up, and she took a job conducting diversity training.

Five years ago, she bought an 8 mm camera off eBay but couldn't find film or manuals for it. She called Barnes & Noble for help. The guy on the other end of the phone invited her to the Westport Coffee House for a meeting of the Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City.

Lisa Evans sat quietly at the back of the room. The more meetings she attended, the more vocal she became.

Her first real project was a 3-minute film titled Tell Me for the IFC-KC Bentley Film Festival, a competition in which filmmakers shoot a 25-foot roll of film and return it undeveloped to IFC. The IFC develops the film, and the filmmakers see their work for the first time at its public screening. Evans' grainy short flashes questions — Where do you find darkness? Are you safe within your own skin? — and statements — These things are not real, really and You see but your eyes do not — spliced with images of a dominatrix, a cemetery and a man in a dress, all of it set to the UNKLE song "Lonely Soul."

Tell Me came about, Evans says, at a time when she'd begun to practice yoga and was dating a lot of women. "I think I've always had this innate feeling ... that one must look inside and feel for a person's connection. This probably stems from being gay and finding my place, often stumbling, in this world."

After five years at Campfire, she quit to search for a new challenge.

"I wanted more flexibility with my schedule and to be able to have more time for filmmaking," she says.

A couple of Lisa's friends were massage therapists. They convinced her to try it. She spent two years training, and now, for 30 hours a week, she is a massage therapist at Mario Tricoci Hair Salon and Day Spa on the Plaza. She spends the rest of her time working on film projects.

Evans swaps massages for lessons in the computer programs Photoshop and Flash. She has bartered for artwork for her DVD covers. She has given massages to her interview subjects to compensate them for their time. She has traded massages for the right to use equipment.

For a fledgling filmmaker such as Evans, the Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City is vital, says Joe Heyen, a former IFC-KC president who is now a producer for Evans' next film.

"Lisa needed knowledge and encouragement, and the IFC was good to give her both of those," Heyen says. "She needs, I think, to work on some bigger projects with some other people. Lisa's kind of in a tough position in that she would like to make a living as a full-time filmmaker, but she probably can't make enough money today to justify quitting her job and making that leap."

Evans is still trying to make a name for herself in a crowded scene. Kansas City filmmakers such as Benjamin Meade (Das Bus, American Stag and James Ellroy Presents Bazaar Bizarre), Kevin Willmott (C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America), Gary Huggins (First Date) and the team of Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt (405: The Movie) have all made national names for themselves.