Hi there!

Update:

I should within the next few days about the status of my grant. Plus, I have other resources if that doesn’t come through. But I have good news! It’s that many others have agreed to be a part of this project. They are as follows:

Richard Soriano, Producer: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7312883/?ref_=nv_sr_2

Rachel Wynn Dunn, Director of Photography: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0242734/?ref_=nv_sr_2

Carlo Garduno, Production Designer: www.imdb.com/name/nm2048980/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

George Tataje, Sound Designer: www.imdb.com/name/nm4030319/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Candice Lopez-Lara, Makeup Artist: www.imdb.com/name/nm8341754/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr15

And I’m just waiting to formalize details with a few more people. I’ll keep you posted!

Have a great weekend!

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

 

Original Post:

Happy Friday pretending to be Wednesday! Coming down from Comic Con and playing catch up from being out of town for a few weeks slowed me down. But let’s get right into it…

I want to let you know about my short film Disclosure. As you imagine from its poster, my film is about rape except it talks about its nuances. (Sorry. Part of my poster got cut off. But you get the idea.) I know this for it happened to me twice. And I’m willing to bet my assailants don’t share my view since I didn’t say no or fought them off. I froze both times for I was in shock. This was especially the case with the initial one since it was my first time all around when I was sixteen years old. It didn’t help that he took me out in the middle of nowhere and removed my tampon. My second experience was little better for the guy took my glasses away from me.

A struggle that I had the first time was that I didn’t understand that it was “rape.” There wasn’t a fraction of the awareness we have today. It was only later that I heard the theory that rape is about power rather than sex. I’ll be honest that I tried to buy into this idea except it never really sat well with me. My reason for that was that I will always remain a “victim” if I buy into that aspect of the theory. It’s because it’s but a moment and the “victim” label can last forever. I pretty much stopped talking about since it colored how people look at me.

In fact, I loathe people feeling sorry for me in that it is another way for people to have power over you. It also feeds into that notion of considering yourself less than and people need to use kid gloves with you. I called bullshit on myself and eventually married after having interesting dating experiences. One could say that I even won except I still felt unsettled about it until a thought hit me like a ton of bricks…

I took my power back when I forgave the two guys. It felt so incredibly freeing when I did this and felt awesome. I also must say that I was never remotely perfect in my life and I’m not qualified to truly pass judgment on people for I don’t know their whole situation. And my film discusses this for I feel that this aspect of sexual assault and rape is missing from the national conversation. It’s an incredibly complex thing not easily reduced to a soundbite. The exception is when a random stranger attacks someone except most stories right now is where people can name their attackers.

Plus, I think that the difference between how men and women view sex also colors this whole topic and really muddies the waters. It’s that men want women to think about sex in the way that they do. Women want men to think about sex in the way they do. And everyone wants everyone to be a mind reader. I also address some of this in my film.

The status of my film is that I’m currently working on the script and prepping to do casting soon. I’m also excited that I plan to make it my directorial debut. I’ll be honest that watching Charlie Unger direct our feature My Apocalyptic Thanksgiving inspired me to want to try my hand directing. It’s going to be super fun. As I’m also producing, I’m getting the shit done that needs to get done in order for this script to become a movie rather than just remain on pages.

I’ll keep you posted about the status of my film since I’m going to make it happen soon.

Have a great weekend!

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