MORRIS: International Women's Day is important
because it's a chance for us to take toll of how far we've come,
and then assess how much farther we have yet to go. It's a mile marker.
Um, it's a chance to celebrate achievements.
[upbeat music]
I'm Caitlin Morris.
I am an actor, producer and the co-founder of Pitch Her Productions a
Pitch Her is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting women in film.
We really target emerging, early career female filmmakers and try to provide them with
community and
resources and advice to help them get their projects off the ground.
So our main goal is really to disrupt the industry, uh, in whatever small way we can.
You know, essentially we're trying to put more female stories out there
and change the narrative a little bit because,
as everyone is acutely aware of, the female narratives have not really been shared in mainstream media
You know, it's an underrepresented demographic.
So we want to give women the tools they need to to tell those stories.
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I've been in theater my entire life, since childhood.
And, storytelling is in my bones. It's part of how I function. It's how I move through the world.
So, about six years ago
I started becoming curious about what this parallel medium of film would be like
and how it would differ from theatre. Um...
So two of my closest friends,
Chanel Waterhouse and Gloria Muñoz and I decided to dip our toes into filmmaking.
And initially the plan was just to make a short film. That was it.
The three of us were gonna come together.
Gloria was gonna write and direct. Chanel and I were going to produce and act.
And that was all.
But, as we started researching and digging into what filmmaking was and and what the process was,
we started coming up against some pretty startling statistics.
Um, we were faced with just article after article about how bad the disparity was in the industry.
And we started questioning whether or not there was a way to pair this desire to create film
with a larger, more macro mission based approach
by sharing the tools that we acquired with other female filmmakers.
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When we first started what we realized was there is such an...
an unnecessary barrier to entry for film
You know from a theatre background, there are so many similarities
and as I said, the kernel of storytelling.
So it makes sense that theater people would want to do film,
but there does seem to be this perceived
like chasm between the two things, and a lot of that I think is perpetuated by these, um...
This kind of machismo sense of like "well we know and you don't and if you didn't go to film school
you'll never be able to learn," but that's fundamentally untrue.
So, I think that a lot of what we're doing is trying to empower women to--
if they have the project, if they have the idea, if they have a great script--to just make it.
To just do it and stop waiting for someone to say "okay, now's your time,"
because no one's ever gonna say that you just have to do it
and probably you know fall on your
butt a couple times of [laughs]
But you only learn through doing, and you have to make mistakes on set and in post, and then you learn.
You pivot.
[music]
One of kind of the big breakthroughs was the realization that this glass ceiling that everyone talks about
I think has been in some ways formed by and certainly strengthened by
many, many years of misrepresentation in media.
I think there's a one-to-one with the type of media we consume
and then how we
see those people and those types in our everyday life.
So in some ways I think of it as a larger humanitarian goal of...
Kind of equality for women in a broader way.
As soon as we start seeing movies like Wonder Woman,
with Gal Gadot just utterly kicking ass,
then all of a sudden, like, the strength of a woman
and the capabilities of a woman are not being questioned.
What I have taken the most from being a part of Pitch Her and running Pitch Her
is just a sense of pride and excitement about
the capabilities of women.
It's not something I ever doubted or questioned, I think, but just seeing it in action all the time
it's, it's such a beautiful reminder of how...
how compassionate and focused and determined and principled women can be in their approach to art?.
And I think, in terms of the company as a whole,
I mean I can't speak for both of my co-founders,
but I will say,
there is a collective excitement about the relationships we've fostered.
I think seeing...
Seeing women connect at our screening series for example,
and then go on to work on a film project together is just... It's so exciting.
You know, because a lot of times you have an idea, you have drive, but you don't have your people.
Um, so...
Endowing women with those people, with that community and that team
has just been, has been amazing.
[music]
So, I think the reason that we focus on women in film is
because we are women. [laughs]
We understand and kind of yearn for...
a more robust, richer landscape of stories that we feel like reflect the truths about what it is to be a woman.
You know, we also find that
that the stories that we're really responding to are often helmed by female directors.
And it seems kind of crazy that there's not more of that
So in a way, I will say that we, we are addressing
the question of youth in film because if a young girl
watches a movie and says "I want to do that. I want to be a screenwriter. I want to be a director."
She has to have the Ava's and the Shonda's and the Greta's
out there kind of forging the paths before she can see herself in that role
So for us it's a lot about that right? It's about, it's about creating a world
where they're seeing examples of themselves
you know kind of
making moves, changing the scene, and then all of a sudden it becomes more possible for them.
[music]