MS. FREEDOM
A Docufiction film, Ms. Freedom intermixes documentary footage of the Women’s March in in D.C., interviews with participants, and the fictional character Ms. Freedom. Signified by wearing all red and played by multiple women, Ms. Freedom is an ethnographer obsessively documenting what’s around her and acts as a cathartic element for the viewer to immerse herself into the real event.
MS. FREEDOM
(USA - 2023) HD video (color, sound), 60 min.
Screenings: TBA
Synopsis
Seeking to capture the energy and continue the momentum of the Women’s March of 2017, ’Ms. Freedom’ is a short film that combines performance art with documentary filmmaking. It intermixes footage of the Women’s March in D.C., interviews with participants, and the fictional character Ms. Freedom, an ethnographer signified by wearing all red and played by multiple women, who acts as a cathartic element for viewers to immerse themselves into the actual event.
Inspired by New Wave cinema and Socialist media theory, the project mixes fiction/nonfiction, planned/unplanned, and ethnography/performance to enter viewers on a cathartic journey that questions traditional modes of storytelling and brings to light the subjectivity of reality and media. It uses the character Ms. Freedom as a platform for the voices of many to be heard and as a symbol to empower women everywhere that they have a voice and to become their own media makers.
Director’s Statement
Ms. Freedom is played in two parts, by myself, who acts as an interviewer, and another woman who documents her experience. This multiplicity is to show the character as an enigma that represents women everywhere rather than a singular identity. In the short film, the two halves are symbolically weaved together through intermixed stylized footage of each walking around monuments on the national mall.
The project’s other main objective is to inspire women to be their own media-makers. This is why multiple women play Ms. Freedom to show that she is not one person but a symbol and catharsis that hopes to stand for all women. With the multiple interviews, I hope to show that not only do I and the women in this work have a voice, but so does every woman out there, and if desired, she should use it by making her own media.
The work's strength comes from the continual duality in content and form. This is shown best by paralleling the documentation of the Women’s March in D.C. with a protest at the Lincoln Memorial between women and Trump supporters where Gloria Allred gives an impromptu speech and an interview with three generations of Chinese female activists, and Chinese children dance team performing on the National Mall. This allows a well-rounded depiction, which hopes to ignite discussion and inspire viewers.
At the heart of ‘Ms. Freedom’ is the goal of creating a platform for women from diverse backgrounds, nationalities, races, ages, and orientations to be heard. So often, with movements, the voices we hear from are a select few or the subjective news. I wanted to create a project that counteracted this by asking open-ended questions that refrained from an objective and gave each subject a platform to voice their own views. From African American women to Chinese immigrants to Indian immigrants, the project includes a broad spectrum of voices to show the complexity, depth, globalness, and imperative importance of protests and the new wave of the women’s movement.
“It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked. For many centuries, in Christian art, depictions of hell offered both of these elemental satisfactions.”
— SUSAN SONTAG
FAQS WITH THE DIRECTOR
How and why did you write this story?
Writing stories about women for women, I use my experiences, plus extensive research, to create stories that empower others. Observing low self-esteem among women, I want to depict their confusion so they no longer feel alone, hoping to inspire women to discover strength within. ‘Pluck’ explores the depths of female sexuality from Anais, to the older woman with an escort, based on female sex tourism, and Rita, a real roadside prostitute. As legislation increasingly obstructs women’s reproductive health in America, essentially their sexual freedom, I feel it’s paramount to establish a cinema for women enabling authority over their unique voice and their sexuality.
How do you create a surrealist journey? What’s your approach to content and form?
Blurring opposing extremes, planned/unplanned, fiction/nonfiction, dream/reality, stylized/mundane, conscious/subconscious, I create stories that show the duplicity of the self and reality, entering viewers on a journey of self-discovery alongside Anais, hoping they will discover something more primal and true, within and without. I like to work intimately with my actors and crew by strategically planning everything to create trust that enables improvisation. I closely develop characters with my actors, blending their lives with the fictional to create immersive performative situations that directly enter them into experiences, developing something other.
How is this shown in Pluck?
This results in juxtaposing a real Peeping Tom, with stylized images of Anais, and the mundane, playful conversation of the hotel guests. I chose Rita, a real prostitute, to play the guardian to Anais’s paradise to highlight Italy’s roadside prostitution by African immigrants and to empower and transform her into something beautiful and fantastical, creating a deeper ritual that develops on screen. The film shows the inner and exterior world of Anais through editing, visuals, and scenes - such as Anais’s embrace with Thiago that provokes a memory of hunting with her father, giving insight into Anais's inner turmoil and her relationship with men/sex.
How does the film investigate sex and spirituality? Do these themes overlap?
The film investigates our culture’s obsession with sex and spirituality, and their interrelationship in transcendence, by using Italy’s culture as a backdrop, which broods sex, spirituality, and a complicated relationship to art and perversion. In the 1800s, upper-class English women traveled there for ‘sex tourism,' spending summers ‘finding’ themselves, translated now in America’s fetishization of Italian men. I wanted to show this through the cropping of male nudes in Italian painting, switching women from the erotic art object to claiming their own way of seeing. I also see it as a starting point for Anais’s journey of self discovery, where we often search for our higher self through transformative/transcendental experiences, which take the form of spirituality, sexuality, or adventure. I want to signify this through the religious paintings and the choir music in the opening credits.
Why do you play the music again at the end? What does it all mean?
The choir music plays again at the end when the two swim underwater to state Anais has found some of this transformative/transcendental experience she was looking for. Ultimately, I want to suggest our search for sex, spirituality, and adventure is our human need to transcend our existential existence. Strangers with a deep unsaid connection, Anais and Thiago, the young gigolo, have transcended themselves in each other, the choir music paralleling the sense of mystery and meaning found in the likes of erotic pleasure. The water symbolizes when we no longer fight life with fire, but float in its mystery, between our unconscious and our conscious self. The story is based on those people we meet, those sexual encounters, however brief, can be just as powerful and enriching as life long relationships. Outside of morality, it’s about the freedom to be yourself without limitations and the people you meet in life that show you such freedom.