5 Questions with Arielle Goldman
1) What was the impetus of your short?
The true impetus for this short was two years ago when I had been crashing in a friend's living room for six months. I got my period one month, and as usual the first day was debilitatingly awful. I found myself in the shower with horrible cramps, body aches, totally depleted, and there I was shaving my legs, by rote. I stopped and thought: What the hell am I doing? My body is in its most primal raw state and I'm expending energy on aesthetic traditions specifically designed to keep me from listening to my body. I thought how truly amazing it is that women can undergo such an intimately physical and deeply personal experience all whilst running countries, working demanding jobs, caring for our families, and defying whatever level of pain and exhaustion currently consumes our bodies once a month. Then, I thought about how men would never stand for this. How the government would never tax necessary men's health products because their absolute involvement in daily life is seen as just that, necessary. I thought about how unfair it is that tampons and pads are taxed in this country, and that in many countries women do not have access to those items, forcing young girls to stay out of school whilst on their periods and further setting back a woman's progress in her society. .... I thought about a lot of things. I started asking my female friends and their female friends what their "day one" period experiences were, and realized I have never seen any experience like this represented in film. So, I made it.
2) What was the process of developing the aesthetics and visual language of your film?
I wanted the experience of the film to be as realistic as possible. For me, this meant taking time and really asking the audience to listen, to be patient. From the beginning I knew it was going to be a patient film because it is about the relationship between a woman's body and herself -- it is intimate, personal. And specifically, I wanted the camera to mirror what that "day one" experience is: slow moving, a bit unsteady, an internal heaviness that ultimately has to be seen as an external lightness.
All this I wanted to come through in the way we pieced each scene together leading up to the end designing her face in makeup for the outside world.
3) What was your approach in assembling the crew for this short and how did you tackle the challenges in having a successful shoot as a team? (Insert any funny or horror story here).
It was so extremely important that we had a fully female identifying team. As this was my first film project working as the writer and director, I asked around for recommendations and 90% of people would recommend male artists. It was extremely frustrating to see the kind of gender bias that exists behind the camera. BUT I am so grateful for the team we assembled because they are all such kick ass women. It was small and intimate, absolutely perfect, and shot over three days. Joonie Jang is a stellar sound mixer, Kayla Sklar is one of the most creative collaborative editors I've met, and the shoot would not have been so clean without Rebecca Castilho assisting on nearly everything. Most of all, our cinematographer Kay Hung is just an incredibly thoughtful and collaborative woman-- who in fact was very very pregnant during filming. I'll always remember Kay squatting in a tiny corner beside the shower holding a giant camera with her future daughter right there in her belly. The best part of making this film was the true collaboration amongst all of these women -- everyone insightful, talented and creative in such different ways. Being able to watch my friend Stephanie Gooel create the musical composition for the end of the film was particularly special. We both sat in a room with a few instruments and just experimented until she found a few chords that felt perfect, and then I trusted her to play with the rest and it was magic.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently (new or old, short or feature) that you really loved and why?
I recently re-watched the film Pure written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Lisa Langseth. I'm a big fan of her work, and really love the way she finds such full spontaneous life in detailed scripted work.
5) What are you working on now?
I recently completed filming a short in Atlanta called Polly written by Morgan Gu and directed by Elizabeth Rakhilkina, and I'm very excited to see how that turns out. Currently producing theatre with my friend Eloise Cassidy through our production company, Neurotica Productions. We hold monthly "Shorts Nights" where we ask female playwrights to write a short scene based on an audience interactive prompt. (It's so fun you should come! Next one is at Dixon Place Lounge, April 2nd @ 7:30pm!). And, writing a five episode dark comedy series with my friend Hiram Delgado about a dying theatre company in New York!