Editing and Technology and Vimeo, Oh My!

Thanks for sticking with us over the last few months!

We've been editing the episodes using a process that involves a number of step: first, lots of discussion about what material we have, what we think the thesis or argument of the chapter is, and then a potential narrative line. Second, Erin cuts together a rough draft over a week or so. Third,  Heather offers notes, and then Erin recuts the material.

This involves a lot of scheduling, both Erin and Heather are busy with other jobs, but also much technological support. Erin is in Utah and Heather is in Arizona.

Thank goodness for Google!

And once the chapter is posted, Heather still has many more notes for Erin.

We've had requests lately for the entire film on DVD. As you can imagine, this will involve more discussions and edits, as material, info, and images that are used in stand alone segments needs to be re-evaluated for a more cogent narrative.

Thanks for your support, as always, and wish us luck as we apply to film festivals.

Web series now available for subscribers!

The Fascinating Women documentary series is now available! When you subscribe you will receive the weekly emails with a web address for the latest video and the password to be able to view it. Each Friday a new segment will be shared with a private viewing link.

Please click on the Paypal link to purchase a subscription for $22, for the 8-part series.

Please click HERE to subscribe to our Facebook page and leave your comments.

Announcing Web Series

Announcing Fascinating Women Documentary in a series

New distribution & updates We hope you're having fun in the sun this summer! The Fascinating Woman documentary team and Handkerchief Films is excited to announce the release of the first part of the documentary. We have decided to release the film online in an 8 part series. Thanks to you, our supporters for making this project possible!

Introducing all-new Docu-series We will be releasing the Fascinating Women documentary through YouTube in 8 parts. Supporters will be given a password to be able to watch the newest Chapter in the series. A note from our Director Handkerchief Films is excited to be releasing the documentary in small parts as they are completed. We have enjoyed putting together the story behind this fun and controversial book. We want to hear from loyal supporters like you. Follow us on Facebook at "Fascinating Womanhood Documentary" and let us know what you think about our film series. Your feedback makes us better. Please sign up and purchase a subscription to the series with our PayPal button on the side-bar >>>>>.   Thanks, — Erin Fox

8/30
Introducing...
Chapter 1, "The Book"
5 pm, YouTube link (password-protected)

9/6
Chapter 2, "Women on the Verge"
5 pm, YouTube link (password-protected)

9/13
Chapter 3, "Helen's Paradox"
5 pm, YouTube link

Looking for Funding

Last week Erin interviewed with the Burton Foundation in Salt Lake City about funding to market the film once we've finished postproduction. These funds would help us create press packets and festival applications, as well as travel to festivals to promote the film.

We've got a few other options before us, including Arizona Arts grants and the like. If you know of a funding opportunity or a private donor that is interested in the film, please let us know. We've gotten very good at writing grants!

Erin's Past Films III

An excerpt from Erin's film about Salt Lake artist Dan Brady.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGVKnaQx24M

Hairstyles

"Hair styles men find appealing" from an early version of Fascinating Womanhood

I love when self-help books get specific about what a reader can do to change her life for the better. These are the tips that every reader must understand to know you've found the sage wisdom. Fascinating Womanhood has several gems, particularly, the hair and fashion guidelines. These tips for women to change their appearance suggest the change will bring greater success in marriage and relationships.

 Which hairstyle would you pick?

Have you noticed a difference when you change your hairstyle?

Brian Andelin, creative force

Brian Andelin, Executive Director of the Renaissance Society and Fascinating Womanhood.

An influential force behind the Fascinating Womanhood Documentary is Brian Andelin, the current Executive Director of the Renaissance Society. He manages the website and day-to-day operations of Fascinating Womanhood. He has made arrangements for interviews and introduced us to key people in the unfolding development of the film.  We interviewed Brian several weeks ago at the beautiful Salt Lake City Library downtown. Its always a pleasure visiting with Brian and we have appreciated his encouragement and creativity. Last time we talked he said, "if Beethoven and Handel had access to all the technology we have today they would be amazed because they were writing music with a bird feather!"

Brian Andelin, Executive Director of Renaissance Society and Erin Fox, film director.

Helen's Ideas on Love

From Fascinating Womanhood, 2007 edition...

"Celestial love is what every woman has longed for since the world began. Even in childhood little girls have tender dreams of romance in which they are the beautiful princess sought after by the handsome prince. Snow White and Cinderella are favorites of little girls. During youth, uppermost in a young girl’s mind is finding a man who will love and cherish her. This tender love has long been the theme of great operas, novels, and songs. Romantic love, one of the most moving forces in life, rightfully deserves our study and consideration."

Helen's ideas on love are influenced by her Mormon background, hence the term celestial, which for Mormons represents an exalted heavenly sphere. But they are also influenced by her extensive reading of 19th century European literature (Hugo and Austen come to mind) and popular culture (the Disney films Snow White (1939) and Cinderella (1950) were incredibly popular).

And her ideas bring up questions. Is romantic love truly something we should associate with heaven? Should our wants and needs when we are teenagers dictate the rest of our lives, or should we expect our wants and needs to change and mature as we (and our relationships) mature? What does it mean to love, and which responsibilities does it entail?

Modern Mormon Men

We have a post on Modern Mormon Men!

Check out their blog here:

www.modernmormonmen.com/2012/08/guest-post-what-do-modern-mormon-men.html

They'll let us know what they think is fascinating.

Shirley Cox, Fascinating Womanhood master teacher

Thanks again to our Kickstarter supporters! We made our goal and some of the donors will be receiving a gift in the mail from Emily. The artwork has been featured in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Exponent II Magazine.

Last week I had the privilege of meeting with Shirley Cox and we filmed an interview for the film. Mrs. Cox has been teaching Fascinating Womanhood classes since 1968 with great success and dramatic stories from her students. She is currently teaching online classes to women from around the world (you can find more information about how to contact Shirley HERE). We're thrilled to include her experiences in the Fascinating Womanhood Documentary.

Future One-liners

Here we are hashing it out at the studio, reviewing footage, tying ideas together, living the dream. I've run across some great one-liners from our interviews. I may be saying these to the people around me over the next few weeks.

Sonja Farnsworth, Rhetorician. "As Mormon feminists, we didn't charm anybody."

Alissa Goodwin Snell, Dating Coach and Licensed Therapist. "A lot of women don't have confidence in themselves, don't truly love themselves. So they decide to read another book, or get another degree, because they don't think they're worth a man's attention."

Sannette Judy, Helen's sister-in-law. "You know, when Helen taught me how to do dishes, that completely changed my life."

Merrilee Saunders, Helen's youngest daughter. "Feminism has created a whole generation of weak men."

Stephanie Probst, Blogger. "I think each edition became longer because it took a lot more words to make the same concepts palatable."

Holly Welker, Scholar. "I wonder what Helen would think about 'cougars'."

Rough Cut

We're working on the rough cut this week, having rented a work space in the charming studio of Ink Run Press, in the heart of Salt Lake City. How could one not be inspired by the surroundings?

We hope to have a solid draft by the end of the week--lots of note-taking and discussions. Wish us luck and please tell your friends!

Pioneer Women

If you're in Utah, you celebrated Pioneer Day this past week. This holiday, celebrated both by the state and the LDS Church, marks the arrival of Brigham Young and the Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley.

And the week's festivities reminded me of something that one of our interview subjects argued...that Helen's ideas about romance and femininity represent a cultural shift away from the ideas about women just a generation before her. That, on the frontier, there was no room for dependence and childlikeness and flirtation. That pioneer women in Helen's mother's and grandmother's generation often needed to be hard-laborers in the fields and in the house, that they endured incredible privations complicated by high birth rates and isolation, that Mormon women were sometimes within polygamous relationships that demanded much and offered very little.

Helen's ideas about fascination then seem a conscious effort to escape the very demanding lives of the pioneer women who came before her. This is something we explore in the documentary.

Fascinating Women

Sally Ride died last week. She was an astronaut, physicist, teacher, tennis player.

But she wouldn't have counted as fascinating in Helen's book.

Sarah Palin, conservative doctrinaire, has taken it upon herself to remain a warning voice in American politics.

Also not fascinating.

Hillary Clinton...  I don't even have to finish that thought, do I?

Maya Angelou, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Toni Morrison, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah Winfrey, Madeleine Albright, Rachel Carson, Marie Curie, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, Condoleeza Rice, Sandra Day O'Connor, Rosa Parks, Martha Stewart, Margaret Thatcher. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Parran.

None of these women rate very high for Helen. They are powerful, competent, articulate, successful women, whether or not we agree with their politics. Helen says often in her book that women's first calling is to be a wife and a mother. She repeats on her website that feminists have ruined our economy and upended our American values system. At one point, she even quotes Rush Limbaugh, saying that women have "screwed up America."

And she advises that if single ladies must work, they should try not to be more successful than the men around them. It's more important to be feminine and well-liked than proficient and accidentally insult a co-worker's masculinity.

Yet, Helen still has an incredible following on the web and in print. The latest edition of Fascinating Womanhood went to press in 2007. Her message appeals to many women, perhaps because they feel like their choices to raise children are denigrated by today's society. This is what our documentary hopes to explore. 

Erin's Past Films II

Here's another film from Erin!

Called The Milliner, this film was created for the 2009 Attack of the 50 Foot Reels at the Egyptian Theater, Los Angeles, CA.

Erin focuses on the process of hatmaking here, an art some consider out of style. But her use of experimental techniques brings a real physicality to the subject.

Helen's Thoughts on Daughter's Education

Taken from the 2007 edition of Fascinating Womanhood.

Should Daughters be Trained for Careers?
You may think your daughters should prepare to make a living in the event of widowhood, divorce or other compelling emergencies. Consider the seriousness of this step from the following viewpoints:

1. Makes her independent and less likely to attract a man.
2. Encourages her to continue working after marriage.
3. Wastes her time on training that changes from year to year.
4. Provides an easy escape from marriage.
5. Deprives her of a liberal education that will prepare her to develop creativeness, intelligence, sound reasoning, and wisdom.

Valerie Hudson Profile

Dr. Valerie Hudson is professor of Political Science at BYU and director of the WomanSTATS project.

Hudson's research into international family law and the global status of women confirms that the health and wellness of women in a nation-state will predict the stability of the economy and state security.

How does this connect to Fascinating Womanhood?  One of the arguments about Helen's ideas is whether or not she promotes gender equality. With Helen's call for a return to previous standards of femininity and sexual division of labor, is she helping women regain the respect and protection they lost via the Second Wave of Feminism? Or is she asking women to give up legal, social, and ethical gains they've made because of Second Wave Feminism?

And how does that affect our society?

You can read this article in Foreign Policy about Dr. Hudson's new monograph, Sex and World Peace.

Funding

As you know, independent documentaries and feature films scramble for funding on a constant basis. Handkerchief Films as a production company is no different. Much of the travel, equipment, and other fees have been paid from Erin's work as a commercial editor. Other positions are unpaid, and generally we're doing what we can to move the project efficiently along.

We continue to work on grant applications. One of our successful grants is fiscal sponsorship from the Utah Film Center, which extends us non-profit status. This means anyone donating to our project via UFC can earn a tax break for 2012. Please contact us if you're interested in donating in this way.

We also have two more days on Kickstarter. We've already reached our goal, but the website is an easy way for people to donate to the project. You can donate at a level ($22) that will reserve a DVD copy of the final film to be sent out next spring.

Once our Kickstarter campaign has finished, we will make pre-ordering of the DVD available on Amazon. Look for that by the end of the week.

Many thanks for all those who continue to support the project.

Erin's Past Films

Erin has been making documentaries ever since we met in 1996. She specializes in portraits and for today's post I want to show off one of her earliest pieces, called A Merry Widow.

The beauty about Erin's work is that she approaches her subjects with generosity. And when she focuses her work on women, she's able to hear the stories that are often overlooked in our mainstream culture. This means that in the interview process, the women she interviews trust her, open up, are unafraid to laugh at themselves but also unafraid to make claims about who they are and what they want to be.

As we finish up interviews for Fascinating Womanhood Documentary and head into the editing process, we still don't know what the final film will look like. It has been a journey, an exploration, and we appreciate all the support we've had so far.

We'll link to other films from Erin as we go along. Think of them as tapas; small and flavorful, satisfying.

Helen's Thoughts on Feminism

Taken from Helen's website http://fascinatingwomanhood.net/.

"What is the Fascinating Womanhood Way, and how does it differ from the Feminist Way? Here is a quick review of the basic differences: Feminism centers round claiming rights, whereas FW centers around filling responsibilities, especially those in the home. The feminists want to assure equality of the sexes, whereas FW women want to preserve the differences between the sexes. Feminism teaches women to focus on their needs. FW teaches women to focus on their husband's needs and their family's needs. Feminism promises women a life of freedom and equality. FW promises women a life of love and happiness. Feminism is a self-centered philosophy, whereas FW is an unselfish, giving philosophy. Feminism ignores basic religious principles, such as those taught in the Bible. FW is based on religious principles, supported by the Bible.

It is easy to see why some women become involved with the views of feminism. The words rights, freedom and equality sound so fair and square. They are especially attracted to feminism if these ideas are planted in their minds by their mothers, who hate housework, hate men and urge their daughters to liberate themselves from the chores of the household by seeking careers outside the home. Once out in the world of men they are urged to claim their rights in all areas - equal pay, equal opportunity, equal benefits etc. Naturally, young women exposed to this background are easy targets for feminism. They relate to their ideas and the influences of other young people. If there is no light to guide them in a better direction, they listen to the loud voices of the feminists and think it must be the only way to go."