Tag: Seed and Spark

Overcoming Doubts: Jillian Corsie on Her First Feature Film, ‘Trichster,’ and its All-Female Creative Team

Filmmaker Jillian Corsie
It all started with a simple idea. I wanted to make a short documentary about Trichotillomania, the impulse control disorder that causes people to pull out their hair, because I wanted to better understand what once ailed a childhood friend. It would also give me a chance to edit my own piece of work. I had a camera and a microphone so I figured I would just go out and shoot some people and throw something together. Fast forward a year and a half and I’m just wrapping up shooting Trichster, a feature documentary that has blown up and gotten immeasurable support from across the globe with hundreds of donations, social media followers, and emails from people asking to help. That can be a lot to take in.
I never thought I would be able to direct a feature-length film, nor did I think I would have so many amazing people working along side of me who were just as passionate about the film as I am. I think I doubted myself in part because of my age and experience, and in part because of my gender.
When I started working on Trichster, I rallied a couple of my producer friends who then introduced me to two cinematographers. The five of us are all women. When we started building our website and writing grants, I did everything I could to hide the fact that we were an all-female team. I already had a male graphics guru and audio mixer who had agreed to help, and I included their names on grant applications and on our website. I wanted credibility, and to me having an all-female team gave me none. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in my team, it was that I was afraid that other people wouldn’t. Looking back…that’s really sad. Where did this notion come from? Women in the film industry are almost always surrounded by men. I recently read that in 2011, women comprised only 18% of the creative roles in the top 250 highest-grossing domestic films. No wonder I thought we needed men on our team to be taken seriously!
Then I met Emily Best, the founder of Seed&Spark, who told me that we should be marketing ourselves as an all-woman team. It makes us different and interesting, and there are so many wonderful programs available to female filmmakers. Taking her advice, we dropped the act and started presenting ourselves as the tight-knit female team that we are. We started getting recognition for being an all-female creative team, and I quickly developed a new-found confidence that I had lacked before. This confidence is what made us able to fly an important cast member from London to New York to attend the National Trichotillomania Conference and hire fifteen crew members for a weekend shoot. It’s what’s allowed us to connect with people all over the world about a topic that very few understand. Because of the strength of our team, we’re giving people hope by showing them they’re not alone in their struggles and that there are people who care working to make a difference. 
We’ve raised over $25,000 via crowdfunding sites and travelled across the country to shoot over 200 hours of footage all while working full-time jobs. Our trailer has 14,000 views online and counting. We’ve amassed thousands of supporters in over 15 countries. And this was all done during nights and weekends. It’s not easy to convince someone that you kick ass when you don’t believe it yourself. But once you do, and you’re passionate about something, that confidence and zeal is contagious. Now–onto cutting Trichster from 200 hours down to an hour and a half! We look forward to the next step of our journey.
Learn more about our project!
Jillian Corsie is a filmmaker who currently works on the editorial staff at Fluid Editorial. Having worked in post-production for the better part of four years, Jillian is no stranger to the ever-changing world of filmmaking. She has been working on her latest creative venture, Trichster, since late 2011 and is passionate about making work that explores relevant social issues and causes people to think critically about that which makes them uncomfortable. 

Up the Stairs, Out the Front Door: ‘Nyctophobia’

Nyctophobia, a film by Emily Bennett
This is a guest post by Emily Bennett.
If you asked me a year ago if I liked scary movies, I would have responded with the immortal words of Sydney Prescott in Scream: “What’s the point? They’re all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It’s insulting.”
When Scream first came out, I remember being completely obsessed with the film. I watched it at a friend’s slumber party and never told my parents. I secretly made a collage of Skeet Ulrich and hid it in my closet for months. And I remember, every time we’d have a slumber party, someone would bring out some horror movie that we weren’t allowed to watch. Halloween, Arachnophobia, and the dreaded It were favorites. 
Drew Barrymore stars in Scream
I remember my friends and I stuffing pillows into our pajama tops, pretending we were big-breasted girls running away from the killer. None of us thought we could play the killer, so we would run around the house, with huge pillow breasts, screaming in terror. We thought this was what horror films were about. And we thought they were really, really scary.
Once I hit high school, I stopped having slumber parties and started going to acting classes. A LOT of acting classes. I was so devoted to learning my craft that I became an acting snob. And I mean a complete snob. I refused to watch anything without Marlon Brando, James Dean, or Vivien Leigh. My horror film days were over. They were garbage compared to what I was watching and studying, as far as I was concerned.
Fast forward to a few months ago. Devon Mikolas cast me in his horror feature House of the Witchdoctor. I was fortunate enough to act alongside the brilliant Bill Moseley, Leslie Easterbrook, and Dyanne Thorne. I was thrilled! A paying film gig! Then I started to do my research…
I watched nothing but horror films for weeks on end. And I was fascinated, because I was finally seeing them with adult eyes. Don’t get me wrong, The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby held up completely. But other films that had scared the crap out of me suddenly offended me. Some of them were pure obscenity, in fact. There seemed to be no purpose to the female characters’ suffering, and because of that, it wasn’t scary to me anymore. 
After filming House of the Witchdoctor, I returned home and started to write. That childhood love of scary movies came back to me. I decided I wanted to write, produce, and star in my first horror film. It took me no time to decide on the subject of the film. I chose what I felt is the most quintessential fear we all had as children: Nyctophobia, or fear of the dark. 
I wanted to write a seemingly weak male character (Dennis), and a seemingly overpowering female character (Martha) to explore gender stereotypes that exist in horror films. And I wanted to place the male in the fearful role. Writing another “big-breasted bimbo” horror flick didn’t interest me. Instead, I wanted to explore fear in a different way. Hopefully, the end result of the film is that audiences can enjoy it without feeling that they’ve already seen it before. 
Using the crowd sourcing site Seed&Spark was the best decision I could have made for my first film. Instead of being lost in the Kickstarter crowd, I was featured on the site, giving me a HUGE advantage. In the wake of the “Zach Braff Kickstarter debate,” I’m so encouraged that an unknown producer, such as myself, could raise enough money to make a film. I believe crowd sourcing may change the landscape of film for the better, and I’m grateful to be a part of that movement. (This is not a statement for or against Zach Braff’s film.)
Honestly, I don’t have an overarching message to women filmmakers, other than JUST KEEP MAKING FILMS. In the end, I don’t care if a man or a woman made a film, as long as it’s thought provoking and not formulaic. I don’t want to keep seeing the same old horror films with “some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door.” When I watch a horror film, I want to be terrified. And the old formula is just not terrifying anymore. We’ve all seen the same big boobs running away from their death. I’d like to see something else now. So I’m going to write my own films and see what happens.
Emily Bennett was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She attended The South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, then moved to London to attend The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (3 year BA program). After graduation, Emily acted extensively in New York City and Chicago. Most recently, she starred in Devon Mikolas’ House of the Witchdoctor with the wonderful Bill Moseley and Leslie Easterbrook, premiering at Crypticon Kansas City later this year. Nyctophobia is the first of several films Emily hopes to complete in the next year. Her upcoming horror short Delete will hit the web in June. Once Nyctophobia is completed, she will begin production on her next film Chat Room, starring the devastatingly brilliant Callie Stephens. Ultimately, Emily hopes to combine these films into an anthology to showcase both her vision and the brilliant talent of her cast and crew members. 

Travel Films Week: Finding a Brave ‘New World’

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
This is a guest post by Li Lu.
It’s quite serendipitous that May is “Feminist Travel Films” month here on Bitch Flicks. My film, There Is a New World Somewhere (TIANWS), is exactly that. We are crowdfunding on Seed&Spark, a platform exclusive to truly independent films and filmmakers. We are midway through our campaign, and my team and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s going thus far.

Our film is centered around Sylvia, a troubled young woman. Sylvia struck out from her small town roots in Texas to try her luck in New York City. Why New York? Well, I think E. B. White said it best:

Many of [NYC’s] settlers are probably here to merely escape, not face, reality. But whatever it means, it is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers – for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.” –from E. B. White’s Here Is New York

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
Her “creation” comes in the form of painting. Sylvia strives to achieve success as an artist, but after years of rejection, the honeymoon is over. Now, the city is oppressive rather than inspiring. When an old friend invites Sylvia back to Texas for her wedding, Sylvia jumps at a chance to escape her diminishing self to find the confidence she’s left behind. But on the night before the wedding, she meets Esteban, an electrifying drifter. He dares her to join him on a roadtrip he plans to take through the Deep South. On the morning of the wedding, the two strangers speed off toward New Orleans, leaving the wedding party behind.

Sounds like a dreamy escape, doesn’t it? Travel, for most, is the highest form of escapism. Vacations take you away from the monotony of the daily grind and are the only allotted times when we are allowed to shut that phone off 100%.

This kind of “escapism” is tied to a kind of forgetting or relaxation, but what happens when the act of letting go becomes a euphemism (or “excuse” instead of euphemism) for burying deeper problems at bay? Sylvia, our heroine, takes escapism to the absolute extreme – she literally runs away into the unknown to avoid facing her own shortcomings. It’s an intimate portrayal of a young woman at the sobering, pivotal moment when she must choose to continue to try or to retreat completely. I’m sure everyone has had that moment when you ask yourself: At what point do my dreams begin to hurt me?

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
Esteban isn’t a perfect man either. He’s a failed musician and has refused to let music become a source for third party pain. He drifts from one place to the next, and seems to kindle a true lust for life. Sylvia admires him and attaches herself to him in hopes of emulating his free spirit. The two find each other at different points in their lives, but they are both just as lost.

This is where the road comes in. Roadtrips are amazing. They give the explorer the freedom to experience and connect with different people and places along the way. There is no itinerary other than the time you allow yourself to become lost within it.

So is this kind of escapism “bad”? Is it selfish? Why does this term connote a negative, judgmental tone?

Ultimately, no. I think it’s necessary to detach from our obligations and get lost for a while, even if it hurts the ones we love. As human beings (let alone professional creatives), we forget that inspiration is the key element to everything that we do. In all honestly, forcing creativity is the crux of the problem. I recently picked up a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work to try to see how my heroes did it. The ultimate conclusion? Practice makes perfect, but you can’t rush it. Although Sylvia ditches her friends for a random stranger, she is choosing to embark on a journey of self-discovery, even if she did so unconsciously. And she has to hope that her friends can understand and love her all the same.

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
What makes this a feminist film? As a female filmmaker, I want to tell this story because it is so intensely intimate to Sylvia’s point of view. I relish the intimacy of films such as Oslo August, 31 or Lust, Caution, and I want to make a film that doesn’t shy away from hard or complex issues. The love scenes will be scenes, not flashes of toned muscles and fluttering eyelashes. Yes, you can call it a coming of age film, but please don’t expect quirky shrugs or one-liners. This is a film about the fight, and all the beauty and ugliness it can contain. I’m not shying away from the hard stuff. I’m not making a self-important film either. I think anyone who has tried to express anything creative can relate to Sylvia’s fears and can take away something meaningful from the film. As Wim Wenders said, “I want to make personal films, not private films.”

All in all, the story of TIANWS and its journey to getting made has clearly been an introspective one. Putting this process out there for all to see is scary as shit. But when I feel this vulnerable, it usually means I’m doing something right.

Here’s to going for it.

To all the roads ahead,

Li

Li Lu was born in Suzhou, China & raised all around the US. She is an alumna of USC’s School of Cinema-TV. Her narrative work has played international festivals and screening series. Her music videos have aired on MTV, Nickelodeon, and YouTube, with some surpassing 1 million views. She loves Siberian huskies.

Picture This: A Woman Goes to Film School and Becomes a Filmmaker

Filmmaker Violeta Barca-Fontana
This is a guest post written by Violeta Barca-Fontana.
INT. FILM SCHOOL, CLASSROOM – DAY 
First day of class at a film school in Madrid. Twenty impatient students are waiting for the teacher, PACO, a very well known film director. Also in the classroom is VIOLETA (20). 
The professor enters the classroom with a serious look and a decided walk. Taking a moment to look over the beardless students, some with incurable acne, who return his gaze with eyes wide open waiting for his wise words. 
MASTER 
You are twenty five students. 
Only three of you will ever direct a film.
The students look at each other hoping they misunderstood him. 
The professor continues with his welcome speech. 
MASTER 
I see there are some women here. 
(beat) 
In film women usually end up in make-up, wardrobe, or as script supervisors. 
The six girls, including Violeta, look at each other for moral support not knowing how to react. 
MASTER 
I say that, just so you take it under consideration. 
That was my very first contact with the film world. The first of many scenes I would live through during my career. 
But my professor was wrong. My first boss was a woman; one of the best line producers in Spain and, without a doubt, one of the toughest and most unscrupulous bosses I have ever had. I learned the most about film making from her. I learned how films were really made, and how a well organized production leads to certain success. 
Carmen, my boss, treated the women of her team much more harshly than the men. At first I thought she was very unfair to do so, but after all these years, reflecting on how much I learned being around her, I realized that maybe she did it because she felt she could bring out the best in them that way. 
I worked with her in two different productions. Without a doubt she treated me worse than any of my co-workers. I think she wanted to take the wind out of my arrogance and break through the wall every film school builds around you: “I know everything and I´m the best.” I think she wanted to show me the subterranean underground of real life, where real movies get made, grown-up movies; where if you want to be called Director, first you have to earn your place with lots of effort and years of experience. 
Violeta, in color.
Schools, and above all film schools, just serve to create confusion among the students leading them to believe that their initial easy success inside can be achieved in the professional world. No, ladies and gentleman; making movies is very complicated. 
In my second film with Carmen, she promoted me from PA to Second AD. The director was the very well known master CARLOS, already considered an icon in Spain. 
Pretty soon Carlos took a liking to me and wanted me to sit in front of the monitors with him all the time, explaining every shot to me. I was fascinated to observe how he would sketch the next shot on a scrap of paper with his Mont-blanc fountain pen to show his Director of Photography. As a film student I look back on those hours with him as a divine gift. 
I have great memories of Carlos as one of my greatest teachers, a true genius. Despite this I sensed that inside he believed the idea that women do not direct movies. Carlos constantly asked one of my male colleagues, strangely enough the script supervisor, when he would direct his next short film, and what was he writing lately. I always hoped that longed question would be asked of me, but it never came, as if he assumed that I was not writing, and I had no intention of directing either. I always wanted to expound about my many projects to my Master. 
INT. PLATÓ DE RODAJE – DAY 
A huge set with over fifty people coming and going, working, loading, unloading, cameras, rails, spotlights. Carlos in the background talking to three men in suits, producers. They talk, they laugh. 
Violeta walks in their direction. Within a few feet she feels observed by the group, who have a big laugh. Violeta is about to pass by when Carlos stops her. 
CARLOS 
Violeta, wait. Come here for a moment. 
Violeta draw close. The men in suits stop laughing but kept their smiles behind their ties. 
CARLOS 
Tell me, what are you working on? So you write? 
Have you ever directed anything? 
Violeta pauses. Uncomfortably, she looks at the group which is waiting for her to give them a failed reply. 
VIOLETA 
(timidly) 
Well, I just finished producing a feature film with two colleagues from school. It’s called La Fiesta and the Walt Disney Company has picked it up for distribution. 
Silence. Their smiles go away. Violeta smiles amiably and moves on to continue her work. 
I don’t know if it’s easier or harder to work with men or women. I feel very comfortable working with both. But what I do know is that most of the time working with women means not having to constantly prove your worth. We all know what we’re capable of and just do our job. 
The Color Thief crew.
This theory held up in my last project, Color Thief. A project, and I promise unintentionally, led almost entirely by females, which from the beginning has been characterized by its fluidity. Is this because it is guided by women? I do not know… 

Mixing Business and Pleasure: Making ‘Movement + Location’ and Staying Together

Bodine and Alexis Boling
This is a guest post by Bodine Boling, originally published at Bright Ideas, the Seed&Spark blog.
Here is the synopsis for Movement + Location, a crowdfunded independent science fiction film currently in post-production that I am making with my husband, Alexis Boling:
Kim Getty is an immigrant from 400 years in the future, sent back in time to live out an easier life. It’s a one-way trip of difficult isolation, but in the three years since she landed, Kim has built a life that feels almost satisfying. She has a full time job, shares an apartment with a roommate, and is falling in love. 
But when she stumbles on a teenage girl who is also from the future, Kim’s remade sense of self is tested. After the girl leads Kim to her long-lost husband, now 20 years older than her and maladjusted to this time, Kim’s carefully designed identity begins to unravel. Kim finds herself having to choose between two entirely different lives. But once her secrets are exposed, she realizes that the real decision is what she’s willing to do to survive.
I want to say first that it was a gift to make a movie with my husband. I came back to that thought a lot when we were in the thick of production, both of us feeling misunderstood and unappreciated. Gratitude is a good way to find center when all else is cratering. It bailed me out of stress-induced derangement more than once. 
If you find yourself about to get into something similar, I’d warn you that production with a loved one feels a bit like the worst parts of getting a tattoo. It can be painful, enormously so, and you’ll question whether you’ve made the right decision, and well-meaning friends will be like, No, but really? You’re sure you want to do this?
But if you get the chance, take it. Sharing what matters most to you with the person you most love is something almost no one experiences outside of parenthood. And the end result could be something you’re proud of for the rest of your life.
I have three pieces of advice:
1. Bring in an outside producer who can break ties. You need to trust this producer and they need to feel comfortable saying no to both of you. This is the person you’ll call when your spouse hasn’t responded to an important email even though he promised he would and you don’t want to be accused of nagging. This is the person you’ll pull aside on set so you can vent while the next shot is being set up. It will feel like this person is saving your life, but they will actually be saving your marriage.
2. If something is said to you that can be interpreted two ways, assume it was meant in the way that doesn’t offend you. This is hard advice to take but will make your life ten million times better.
3. Making a movie requires a level of confidence that is brutal to maintain. Remember that the person in the room it’s easiest to get mad at is also the person best able to help you cope. You both understand how hard what you’re doing is and how much it matters. Give the support you want to receive and watch it come back.
And look forward to production ending, which it will, because that’s when people will start telling you how cool it is that you were able to make something with a loved one. This sentiment will be absent on set, but trust that it’ll come. What you’re doing is wonderful, all difficulty aside. Enjoy that if you can.
I promise it’s worth it.

Bodine Boling is a writer, actress and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her on Twitter and follow her process of making the film at http://movementandlocation.com.

Anne Flournoy on Her Comedy Series ‘The Louise Log’

The Louise Log: A Web Comedy Series
Guest post written by Anne Flournoy.
Back in the early 90’s when making an indie feature film was the standard NY indie filmmaker route to a career as a writer/director, I got bogged down for more than a decade in rewriting my second feature. Hey, my first one had been in competition at Sundance, how could this be so hard? Seventeen years later, I gave up, picked up a camcorder and started shooting something, anything. 
Six months later and less than a week away from my sixth attempt at a self-imposed deadline, the ‘something, anything’ subject matter, even with a heart-breaking Enrico Caruso soundtrack, was long and boring at 80 seconds. 
Anyone who knows anything about screenwriting will tell you to avoid voice-overs. It’s a last resort to be used sparingly and only by people who know what they’re doing. I’d heard Godard’s whispered voice-over in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and had been browbeating friends to use it for years. What a great device! No one is doing this! 
Up against my deadline, I was down to my last resort: over this long and boring 80-second video I’d whisper what Louise was thinking. 
Stealing wholesale from my 3-page free-writing scribbles, I started whispering into my Macbook. I called it The Louise Log. A month later, due to popular demand for more of actor Christine Cook, it was followed by The Louise Log #2. Today there are 34 episodes available at http://thelouiselog.com and we’re crowdfunding on Seed&Spark to shoot Season 3. After five long years under the radar, BuzzFeed recently compared the series favorably to Louie and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and it was a 2013 Finalist in the Shorty Awards. 
So what’s it about? As one of my kids summed it up, “Louise has issues.” Yes, she has a high-maintenance husband, and a lot of other very difficult characters in her life, but it’s her over-active inner voice that is her biggest problem. It’s also her salvation. 
And it turns out to be the core of the series. 
Louise and Raj in episode 13
When I was growing up, Bitch Flicks would have meant porn or something so redneck and gross that if I ever mentioned it, it would have been in a whisper to a friend. The gap between what I was raised to be (a young lady who was careful to keep her knees together when sitting in a dress) and the leather bomber jacket-wearing indie filmmaker I became, caused a certain tension. That tension is the essence of Louise’s inner voice.
Her eidetic image of what a real woman is is at the core of who Louise is, and it causes her a lot of problems. A ‘real woman’ is someone who could have lunch with the Queen of England and have, not only a grasp of which fork to use, but also a sense of self sufficiency to carry on in sort of a peer relationship with the Queen. Marlene Dietrich plays the role to a T. Louise, on the other hand, falls far short. Not that she doesn’t wear a good mask and appear to carry it off some of the time, but we know what she’s really going through–the self-criticism, the expectations, the dashed hopes, the paranoid rape fantasies. 
I flatter myself to think that Louise is a lot more neurotic than I am, but the truth is that her inner-thought loop is closer to home than I’d like to admit.
Watch “How To Take It Like A Girl: The Louise Log #4”

Fight to See Yourself On Screen

This is a guest post by Joyce Wu.

I’ve always loved movies. When I was a kid, nothing brought me greater pleasure than walking across those sticky floors to find the perfect seat, the scent of stale popcorn hanging in the air. My dad, my big brother, and I would always share a box of Sour Patch Kids. I loved spending those two hours inside the theater on thrilling adventures, falling in love, traveling to exotic locales, suffering terrible tragedies.

But Asian Americans didn’t seem to go on these adventures; they didn’t seem to fall in love; they didn’t travel to exotic locales. If anything, they were merely set decoration when the real protagonists of the stories got to those places. People of Asian descent didn’t seem to exist on screen at all, and when they did appear, bucktoothed and bumbling, their fleeting presence filled me with a burning shame, as if watching a family member humiliate himself in front of someone I was trying to impress.

When you hardly ever see anyone who looks like you on screen, and when the only people who look like you don’t seem like people at all, you begin to have a very limited notion of your own possibilities. This nagging insecurity I’ve lived with my whole life (and truthfully, what will always be a part of me and what drives my work) was nagging particularly loudly a few weeks ago.

Still from Screaming in Asian

I was at CAAMfest, an Asian American film festival in San Francisco. For the last two years, I’ve been trying to raise the money to make my first feature film, The Real Mikado, a comedy about an out-of-work Asian American actress who moves back in with her parents and directs a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s opera The Mikado to try and save the community theater. I was at the festival to sceen the first ten minutes of the film as a short and to pitch the feature for the chance at a grant.

The day before the pitch, all of the filmmakers did a practice run-through of the event, and I was the last to present. I saw these passionate, talented people pitch their films about victims of war and impoverished children, and when it was my turn, I couldn’t find my words. All I could think was, “Why should anyone care about me or my stupid movie?” After years of struggling, I was so exhausted from pretending to be far more confident than I really was and so frustrated and hurt by the constant rejection that it all finally got to me.

Still from Screaming in Asian

I did the one thing that a woman who wants to be taken seriously is never supposed to do. I cried. I couldn’t even hold it together long enough to wait until I was in the privacy of a bathroom stall. I did it in front of everyone. Fortunately, the other filmmakers were incredibly supportive. Some of them cried too. That night, I stayed up all night revising and rehearsing my pitch. I stood in front of a mirror staring into my own bloodshot eyes and tried to convince myself that my movie was worth making.

The next morning, on about two hours of sleep, I walked up to the podium and told a panel of judges and an audience of about 70 people about The Real Mikado. I summoned everything I had from the deepest places of my soul and gave those people everything I could about who I am and why my film needs to be made. I killed it. I did as well as I possibly could have.

Short film teaser for The Real Mikado

Even though I gave it my all, I didn’t win the grant (that went to a wonderful documentary), but when I finished, a throng of young women from the Center for Asian American Media student delegate program came up to me and told me how excited they were about my film. They asked to take pictures with me and for advice on how to be an actor and whether or not I would watch their videos on YouTube and give feedback. One of them exclaimed, “Everything you said is what I feel!”

I had been feeling so defeated and so trivial that I failed to remember how powerful movies can be in shaping a person’s imagination and sense of self. These young women are yearning for the same thing I did and do: they want to see themselves as protagonists in their own stories; they want to go into a theater and see themselves.

Maybe this is too simple or wide-sweeping a generalization about white male privilege, but I doubt that Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach ever wondered if their stories deserved to be told. The fact that I was filled with so much self-doubt speaks to a vicious cycle we’re all in, and we need to work together to stop it. How can we expect young girls (especially those of color) to grow up with enough confidence to be filmmakers when everything they watch is telling them that they are not valuable and that their stories don’t matter?

My film, like a lot of first features, is a personal one. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I’m acting in and directing a movie that I wrote based on my own life. It feels more than a little self-involved to put myself on screen for all the world to see. But I realized a long time ago that if I don’t do it, no one else will.

Joyce Wu grew up outside of Detroit. Her short films have screened at festivals around the world. She was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to attend New York University’s prestigious graduate film program, where she completed her course work and is in pre-production on her first feature film, The Real Mikado. To find out more about the film, please visit: http://www.seedandspark.com/studio/real-mikado.