As you reach the end of a chapter in your life, the idea of confronting what’s next can be daunting, but the opportunity to start a new chapter can often be refreshing and meaningful. This month’s crowdfunding picks focus on identifying next steps — whether they are diving headfirst into app development, going after a dangerous cyberbully, or returning to your storm-ravaged home for the first time in years.
In “Freelancers Anonymous,” we meet a ragtag group of unemployed women in tech who are determined to work together to build an app to connect freelancers to jobs. They are led by Billie, who’s just hastily quit her own job to look for a fresh start before she gets married.
Season 2 of “The F Word: A Foster-to-Adopt Story” picks up with creators (and moms) Nicole and Kristan, who last season adopted their son out of the foster care system. This time they’re back to take a closer look at the intricacies of foster care and talk to the people who are trying to make things better for those whose lives are touched by fostering.
“#LIKE,” written and directed by Sarah Pirozek, is an edgy thriller about a small-town teen who avenges the death of her little sister by going after the man who bullied and harassed her online into committing suicide.
Finally, “Artist in Exile” combines documentary and narrative storytelling to create a powerful film that follows poet Sunni Patterson as she returns to her hometown of New Orleans after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina over a decade ago. She retraces her previous life to discover the things that have changed in the city over the years as well as the beauty that remains.
Here’s our latest round of women-created and women-centric crowdfunding picks.
“Freelancers Anonymous” lends a hilarious voice to all the hard-working and talented women and LGBTQ individuals working in tech by putting together a talented ensemble cast of unique characters. At the center of it all is Billie, who hates her job and is desperate for a fresh start. Breaking the news to her fiancée, Gayle, doesn’t go well, but she finds her new purpose when she meets a group of other women in a similar place and is hit with a great idea: develop an app for freelancers seeking jobs.
Together, Billie and her crew set out to develop and launch the app using their bizarre mix of skills and become closer than any of them could’ve imagined. The creative team behind “Freelancers Anonymous” is interested in working with multi-platform storytelling and even has aspirations of developing a real app themselves.
To learn about how you can support the project and help finish post-production, check out “Freelancers Anonymous” on Seed&Spark.
Filmmaker Nicole Opper will be returning for a second season of her heart-wrenching autobiographical docuseries “The F Word.” In Season 1, Opper and her wife, Kristan, chronicled their journey as they went through the arduous process of adopting a child from the foster care system. Now proud parents to their young son, J, they’re setting out to take a closer look at the complexities and difficulties that make the fostering process so complicated.
Rather than telling just Nicole and Kristan’s story, season two expands the story outward and includes the voices of those who make up the foster care system: birth families, adoptees, foster youth, and those using social entrepreneurship to help improve the system. The team behind “The F Word” uses their personal connection to delve even further into the world of foster care, exploring themes of reunification, forgiveness, and family.
Learn how you can help support Season 2 on the series’ Seed&Spark page.
“#LIKE” —Written and Directed by Sarah Pirozek
In the intriguing thriller “#LIKE,” we meet Rosie, a teen from the small town of Woodstock whose little sister Amelia passed away one year ago. Coming up on the anniversary of her death, Rosie makes a painful discovery — the man who’d manipulated her sister into committing suicide by targeting her online is back and looking for his next victim. She sets out to put a stop to him, turning to a darker side within herself to make sure he never puts another family through what she’s faced.
“Instead of complaining [about lack of opportunities for female directors], I decided to make a commercial, genre, micro-budget thriller, with a nuanced female lead, telling an important story,” says director Sarah Pirozek. “Writing ‘#LIKE,’ I shaped a backstory honoring heartbreaking real lives of girls like ‘Audrie & Daisy,’ echoing the #MeToo movement.” Themes of sisterhood and resilience in the social media era drive this complex and gripping thriller.
Check out how you can help support “#LIKE” through its post-production phase on the film’s Kickstarter page.
“Artist in Exile” (Documentary Short) — Co-Directed by Kiyoko McCrae
In an innovative new project merging documentary and poetry, artist Sunni Patterson returns to her hometown of New Orleans after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina for the last 12 years. She visits the neighborhoods that she and her family once called home in order to begin to understand the depth of the damage caused by Katrina and how different a place New Orleans is from what it once was.
“I am an artist in exile… a spirit on the run… displaced from the familiar, transplanted into the foreign, only to discover that the one has become the other,” says Patterson. “Either things happened ‘before the Storm’ or ‘after the Storm.’” In this moving documentary, we see a deeply affected artist take steps toward healing and falling in love with the new landscape of New Orleans.
Help support “Artist in Exile” on the film’s Kickstarter page.
To be considered for Women and Hollywood’s biweekly crowdfunding feature, please write to womenandhollywoodinterns@gmail.com. All formats (features, shorts, web series, etc.) welcome. Projects must be by and/or about women.
