FILM PROJECTS
Please click on the links below to learn about my individual film projects:
Lift the Lamp—A feature documentary about four immigrant women living in New York City and transforming their communities with their work.
PERFECT: A Conversation with the Venezuelan Middle Class about Female Beauty and Breast Implants—A 25-minute documentary exploring Venezuelan's fascination with breast implants and how beauty is used to define the country's national identity.
Writing and Working for Change Video Project—Created to accompany the upcoming Writing and Working for Change book, these six short documentaries feature interviews with members of NCTE's caucuses regarding the caucuses' history and achievements.
Making Writing Public—A 20-minute documentary about the Introductory Composition at Purdue 2009 Showcase.
FILMMAKING OVERVIEW
As a documentary filmmaker, I draw inspiration from Agnès Varda (The Gleaners and I, The Beaches of Agnès), Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound) and Pamela Tanner Ball and Nancy Kennedy (Who Does She Think She Is?). Like them, I try to find a balance between personal storytelling and addressing issues that are relevant on both national and global scales. I ask documentary participants to tell their stories around a theme such as immigration, race or female beauty, so that the resulting films explore both the people whose stories drive them and how that particular theme has affected their lives and those of the ones they love.
Like many people who pay attention to what is playing in the multiplexes and even the independent theaters scattered around the country, I am concerned by the lack of female-centered and feminist films being screened and distributed today. As a way to provide more vehicles for women's stories, I focus my work on female and feminist themes, especially those of women of color, whose stories are even more scarce. Not only are women present in front of the camera in my work, but for Lift the Lamp, the first film I made with a crew, I made a conscious effort to hire women. We were a crew of four women and one man. Supporting female stories, I would argue, starts with providing women the opportunity to learn and practice the filmmaking craft.
With my documentary, I also aim work to create connections between film and video production and academia, not only applying academic ideas to my filmmaking process but documenting academia in some of my work. The Writing and Working for Change Video Project and Making Writing Public both seek to capture academic history, thought processes and events in a film/video format in order to enrich and complement our scholarship.
Whether documenting academia or telling women's stories, feminist ethics are a major concern for me during all stages of production. I work closely with participants when crafting the questions they will be asked, as well as the places where the interviews will take place and what sorts of images of their lives we will capture. When editing down hours of footage into a concise narrative, my main concern is choosing excerpts from each participant that faithfully represent the ideas they expressed throughout the entirety of their footage. Capturing someone's personality in minutes is a complex task, but one that if done ethically can be transformative for everyone, participants, filmmakers and audiences alike. That is the kind of movie magic I seek to achieve with my work.