Derrek Vaughn | The Valdosta Daily TimesAtlanta filmmaker Fran Burst-Terranella directed 'The 12 Lives of Sissy Carlyle.' The movie is scheduled to be part of the South Georgia Film Festival at the Valdosta State University Student Union.

VALDOSTA — Sissy Carlyle has a secret journal where she lives out 11 different adventurous lives.

She lives out these lives at the expense of her real life, until “a charming new friend tempts Sissy to leave her fantasies and discover what her real life – (number) 12 – might become.”

This is the story behind “The 12 Lives of Sissy Carlyle,” a feature film directed by Atlanta filmmaker Fran Burst-Terranella. It is scheduled to be shown 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 3, during the South Georgia Film Festival at the Valdosta State University Student Union.

Burst-Terranella is an award-winning film and television director whose work spans four decades and encompasses more than 700 productions with more than 100 festival and industry awards. Her documentaries have aired nationally on ABC, TBS and PBS.

“The 12 Lives of Sissy Carlyle” is her debut feature film. 

Burst-Terranella said she discovered film in college. Growing up in Dallas, she said her family didn’t have a TV and rarely went to the theater because her father thought it made people stupid.

“I had hardly seen any film, but I found myself in a film study class and realized that’s what I have to do,” she said. “I started seeing 15 to 20 movies a week.”

The French New Wave was a big influence on her, and when she first started, she didn’t realize there was a stigma against women directing films, she said.

She even had a professor in college tell the women in his class that “everyone knows women don’t make films,” she said. 

Despite him and all other nay-sayers, Burst-Terranella started making 8-mm film movies and became the first woman to graduate from the University of Texas/Austin as a film director in the university’s master in communications program.

After school, Burst-Terranella traveled the world with her husband. Eventually, she landed in Georgia because she believed it would be a major film center in the country.

She started making independent films, directing anything she could and created her own production company. She also taught film classes at the Art Institute of Atlanta, where she taught a young man who was writing the script for “Sissy Carlyle.” After reading the script, Burst-Terranella teamed up with the student, George Carlos, to turn the script into a feature film.

“It took us more than 10 years from there to get the movie made, and we financed it with our money,” she said. “This movie is really going to be our calling card.”

The movie has already been shown at the 2017 Atlanta Film Festival, and Burst-Terranella hopes for it to have a wide distribution. She is also working on multiple other projects, she said.

“It’s going to be an interesting year,” she said. “I think Georgia has the potential to be the filmmaking capital of the world. My goal is to inspire filmmakers to get started here and come here.”

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256