See the documentary here: https://emilysteelefilm.wordpress.com/video-gallery-2/
From the start I knew I wanted to make a documentary about Feminism in University. The only thing that changed throughout the project is how I structured the film and the topics within Feminism that the documentary addressed. At the beginning of the module I had recently watched “Miss Representation”, A Sundance documentary that resonated very strongly with me in its topics and style. However, that was an hour and a half whereas mine was a maximum of 8 minutes so obviously I could not mention the majority of the topics within the film from a student perspective so I decided that my project would, although be inspired by “Miss Representation” be covering a Feminist Society at University which is something not mentioned in “Miss Representation”.
I was fortunate because a week after I had decided to make a documentary on Student Perspectives of Feminism the Student Union Website posted that a Feminist Society was being formed at the University. I attended the initial meeting although I was not allowed to film anything during the meeting so as not to make anyone uncomfortable whilst discussing sensitive issues in Feminism. I did catch the founders of the society at the end of the meeting which began the filming process of my documentary. The society was very supportive of this project in the hope that it would be able to help tackle some of the misconceptions of Feminism and encourage more people to either join the society of simply be less afraid of the word Feminism.
I think one of the main issues I had whilst making this Documentary is that the topic of Feminism is so broad it was incredibly difficult to cover anything in 8 minutes or less. Also, there are so many different sectors in feminism that people align themselves to it was difficult to not sway to any of them. What I wanted to portray was that at a simple core level, Feminism is inclusive and strives for equal rights for all genders including non-binary people. Another issue was that I was conflicted between making the documentary a discussion with Feminists and Non-Feminists or whether I should just have it from the Feminist Society’s point of view. As a Feminist myself I tried to keep my own opinions out of the way but I don’t think I was very impartial. I did decide in the end to make the documentary very focused on seeing a Feminist perspective into University life which is something that highlighted a lot of issues that I don’t think many people knew even existed as we simply accept the aspects of University that include LAD and Rape Culture as a given without saying that this behaviour is not acceptable. This was again something I wanted to highlight in my documentary.
Emily Steele 