I have to ask the question of whether as a researcher and artist, I can present an argument and conclusion to such complex issues? While I have the ability to do this, for a variety of reasons I resist presenting biased date.
At this stage it becomes important to ask..
What is this project at it's root?
A collection and a glimpse, born form the desire to show positive change.
What is hard is that what I have found is dark, complex and truly unresolved. I hoped to show the positive changes that can happen when women unite and now all I can see is the living evidence of sexism. This is just the filter with which I am viewing the data at the moment and that is what I need to shift. To resolve the burn out I am currently feeling, I am going to edit some of the more joyful moments of my footage to music and see where that takes me and alternate that approach with writing the structure down,
Possibly the greatest lesson gained form this pursuit is finding that I am a researcher and an artist and that working with others lives in documentary form is incredibly challenging.
There are changes that have happened that are positive and by focusing more on these I hope to show that progress has occurred. That progress is in evolution. Questioning the progress I see is important and staying open to the truth is vital also.
Compiling my resources and interviewing people was my favorite part so far and this stage of working is work, a lot of hard work. I want to do these women's lives justice and that might be my current problem. I am not the one who gets to save anyone else and honestly these women don't need saving and neither do future generations, sometime during the last week I forgot that I am only the one asking questions!
Letting people speak for themselves in this film is really important and what I want to do is create an environment that is open and contemplative.
Handing over and trusting the process is once again what I need to return to.
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