Hi everyone. So, it's been a good day, right?
Yeah. So before I start my speech,
I want everyone in the audience to keep in mind
the importance of mentorship.
So, I'm young, I'm a woman.
I am from a poor family with a single mother.
I am from Dayton, Ohio. I am a filmmaker.
This is a story of how I became
a feminist filmmaker in Ohio.
I would say that a lot of young, talented people
have left Ohio for greener pastures.
I would say that the staying hasn't been easy.
It's been cheaper. I don't regret it. It's possible.
So, this isn't a total "pull yourself up
by your bootstraps" story.
I am aware of the privileges that I do have.
I grew up poor, but I fit in.
I'm white. I appear to be upper-middle class.
I have my health. So, I want to start from the beginning.
I was always a good student.
A good art student, at least.
And I was always kind of saved by my art teachers.
One teacher in particular, Mrs. Dun,
she gave me 5 dollars in gas money to get home
from high school one day.
Mrs. Dun saw me through my entire college application process.
She saw something in me that I wasn't able to see in myself:
that I was worth something.
I didn't always know that I wanted to be a filmmaker.
It wasn't until I was at Wright State University.
I was sitting in class with Dr. Charles Derry,
who's a very revered person in our film world.
He was talking in public about things
that I'd never heard talked about in public before.
He was talking about taboo things, like death, and sex,
and being out and gay, and politics and the war.
He showed me films where these things
were the subject matter.
He showed me that film could be
an intensely powerful medium.
So, that was all great.
I still had a lot of things to learn, though.
For example, when I saw my first film camera,
the K-3, which is very big, it's bulky,
it's user-unfriendly, I was terrified.
And I told my male professor at that time,
I told him, I was joking, but I said,
"I can't do this, I'm a girl."
And he told me, he was joking, sort of,
but he said, "You know, my daughter is the same age as you.
if she were in the room right now,
she would punch you in the face for saying that."
(Laughter)
So, it was an important moment though,
because it was the first time that someone pointed out to me
that I was sexist, against myself.
And I thank him for that.
So, Wright State University is a competitive school.
Every year, your class size diminishes.
So, by my second year, all of the women had dropped out,
except for me.
So, for 4 years, I was the only woman.
I had to be fine with it. I had to be better than fine.
I had to be like really damn good at everything.
So, I cut off all my hair, which was so liberating,
but it was definitely for survival.
In 2008, I was sort of developing
into a political filmmaker.
I was really interested in the Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton iconomy
at that time.
It was really interesting to me to see how the media portrayed them.
For instance, Sarah Palin was always like
this pretty, sort of like dumb character,
and Hilary Clinton was always this like
shrewd, ugly character,
and nothing else they did and said really mattered in the media.
And that really bothered me.
I did my first short film, Park,
which is a coming of age story of a woman
growing up on a trailer park.
Park was a huge project at that time.
It took so much talent.
A lot of the people who worked on the film
are now working in the industry professionally.
It took 3 years to make.
I did it while I was a student.
The film was mostly about how a young person
might become a sex worker.
Park was successful. It played at about 9 film festivals,
one of them being Slamdance.
And to those of you who aren't familiar
with the hierarchy of the film festivals,
Slamdance is a major film festival.
It happens in Park City, Utah,
across the street from the Sundance Film Festival.
It's like in response to Sundance.
It's like the indie of indie film fests.
(Laughter)
Yeah. So, my mentor and a great documentary filmmaker,
Julia Reichert had said I had beaten the odds.
And she was right.
But I wouldn't have been able to beat the odds,
if it hadn't been for people like Julia Reichert
and Steven Bognar.
They really gave me an opportunity to hone my skills
as a filmmaker.
My apprenticeship with them
let me see how masters really do their craft.
There's no better education than that,
and I thank them.
I remember I was shooting on a film
called Remote Area Medical,
which is a documentary about uninsured people
camping outside a NASCAR stadium overnight,
to try and get free healthcare the next day.
So, I was with Steve and we were interviewing this woman.
She had been in line all day.
She was just in line to get glasses.
She couldn't see. She needed glasses to get a job.
She broke down crying during the interview.
And for some reason, we started the interview above her.
She was sitting in a chair and we were shooting down at her.
And, when she started to cry,
Steve immediately sank down to one knee,
and so we could look her in the eye,
and he finished the interview on the ground.
Being able to document a sensitive moment like that
is a total privilege, and deserving of respect.
And Steve taught me how to be
an empathetic storyteller.
As a documentarian, you're always looking for that line.
The line of, "Am I portraying this reality
the way that is like the most objective?"
And the line of, "I don't want to exploit my subject."
It's actually really easy to exploit someone
as a media maker.
You have the camera, you have the microphone,
you have the power over someone.
So, when you have the privilege
of being able to like, discern a moment,
is worth documenting or worth being left alone,
you have to use that power.
You know, you may see something that's interesting,
or worth documenting,
but that may be someone else's heartbreak,
and you have to remember that.
But the power of media as a political tool is undeniable.
So, in 2012, I left Dayton and moved to Cincinnati,
with my fellow classmates Erick Stoll
and Chase Whiteside, with New Left Media.
In 2012, we did a pre-presidential election series
for the Internet.
I am most proud of my contribution
to the War on Women's Health,
piece that we did.
It's a video of that went viral, with over 100,000 views.
It was successful.
But, I mean, if you remember that time at all,
you know, women's productive health was like quite a hot topic.
If you guys can remember like "binders full of women",
which I'm sure some of you do,
I don't understand what I'm talking about.
So, I'm a political person,
I'm a feminist, I'm not afraid to say it.
So, that's kind of let me to where I am now.
I am the co-founder of Women Working Collective.
We're three women.
Right now, we're working on a short film
called Alternative Auto,
which is about an auto garage
in Columbus, Ohio.
It's run and operated by all women.
It's one of the only female run and operated
auto garages in the world.
These people, these women are amazing.
We just wrapped shooting.
we're really excited about it. We're editing right now.
In short, while I was in Dayton,
I was lucky enough to be mentored by the best.
My professors at Wright State,
all the people who helped me along the way,
the women at WISO all contributed
to me becoming a filmmaker.
I hope I get to continue to make films.
I hope to, one day, inspire people
the way they have inspired me.
So, to close, for those of you in the audience,
I would like for you to think about someone in your life
who you can mentor,
or to think about something you would like to learn or do,
and to seek those people out in our community.
They're there.
We're doing a TEDx. They're there, you know.
You could really enhance your life.
You will enhance the life of others, here in Dayton.
Thank you.
(Applause)