#crowdfunding - Tightly Wound
A woman recounts her experience living with chronic pelvic pain – how health professionals have failed her, men have rejected her, and shame, anger, and hatred have plagued her body.
Interview with Writer/Director Shelby Hadden
Watch Tightly Wound on YouTube
Congratulations! Why are you crowdfunding your film?
We are running our Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds necessary to animate our film. Animation is a very time consuming, labor-intensive process. It takes about 10 hours to complete 5 seconds of animation.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
This film is personal in form – it is an essay film about my own experience with chronic pelvic pain. There’s nothing more personal than illustrating your own menstruation, pelvic floor physical therapy sessions, and your failed attempts at having a love/sex life. My story is resonating with those who also have pelvic floor/sexual dysfunction, those who are victims of abuse, and those who simply feel inadequate when it comes to sex and dating. The film explores intimacy, rejection, fear, love, and vulnerability.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development and production?
We haven’t gotten very far in production. We made a one-minute teaser for our campaign. I’ve been writing the essay/script for over a year now, and Sebastian (my animator) and I have been collecting visual references during that time.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
Since the launch of our campaign, I’ve heard from women all over the world who are so excited about this film because they no one else is talking about sexual dysfunction. For those of us who struggle with it, it’s extremely isolating. Sex is everywhere, and the media makes it seem easy, fast, and fun, but that’s not everyone’s reality. I think that Tightly Wound is already making people feel less alone.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
I still need more funding to create the film. I also need film festivals and distributors to come on board to amply the film’s message.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I’d like to raise awareness for pelvic pain, create community for those who have it, and engender empathy from those who don’t. I think there’s a lot of messed up expectations for sex and dating and we need to talk about them. We need to talk about women’s bodies and women’s health so women can find answers to their questions. I want potential partners to be aware of these conditions so they have a framework in which they can ask questions and start conversations.
Interview: November 2016
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Tightly Wound
A woman recounts her experience living with chronic pelvic pain – how health professionals have failed her, men have rejected her, and shame, anger, and hatred have plagued her body.
Length: 15:00
Director: Shelby Hadden
Producer: Shelby Hadden & Sebastian Bisbal
Writer: Shelby Hadden
About the writer, director and producer:
Writer/Director/Producer: Shelby Hadden is a documentary filmmaker whose films explore issues of gender and identity. Most recently, she’s directed “Ms. Texas Senior,” a short documentary that follows a beauty pageant for women 60 years and older. Her films have screened at various film festivals including the Nashville Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, and BEA Festival of Media Arts. She is currently a producer at Bring Light & Sound, a film production and creative agency in Austin, TX, and a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin Radio-Television-Film department. Shelby holds a B.A. Comm. from the University of Alabama and an MFA in Film and Media Production from the University of Texas at Austin.
Producer/ Animator: Sebastián Bisbal is a filmmaker, animator and visual artist from Rancagua, Chile. In 2003 he began his undergraduate studies on Audiovisual Directing at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Since then, his work has continued to explore fantastical and surreal elements within real-life situations. His undergraduate thesis film "Cazuela", a mixture between stop-motion animation and live-action narrative, has been in many film festivals all around the world. It earned the Best Short Film Award at the 2008 Valdivia International Film Fest, the most renowned film festival in Chile and one of the most important in South America. Sebastián has also worked as an independent videographer, animator and motion graphics artist since 2008. Among these projects are two video installations for the Chilean architects Smiljan Radic and Alejandro Aravena, both showed during the Venice Biennale in 2010 and 2012 respectively. On 2012, Sebastián was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, and later in 2013, he was awarded a Chilean Government Scholarship to pursue his MFA in Film & Media Production at The University of Texas at Austin.
Executive Producer Sara Bordo: Prior to founding Women Rising, a company dedicated to empowering women and girls through unique content and experiences, Sara held positions in media and entertainment including Executive Director of Interactive Marketing at Paramount Pictures, VP of Digital Marketing at MGM Studios, and CEO & Co-Founder of NowLive which was acquired by Live Media Group in 2013. Sara directed and produced the first TEDxAustinWomen, which ultimately became the #1 viewed TEDxWomen event in the world across 58 countries.
Sara’s directorial debut, “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story”, broke Kickstarter records with its fundraising campaign becoming one of the site’s most successful crowdfunded documentaries of all time. A BRAVE HEART premiered opening weekend of the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, went on to win 10 awards from 9 festivals, qualified for the Academy Award, secured worldwide broadcast distribution, named a double honoree by the 2016 Webby Awards, and most recently selected by the U.S. State Department as Film Envoy for the American Film Showcase. Recently named by Inc. as a “Top Female Social Good Startup to Watch in 2016″ Women Rising gives a percentage of profits from each project to a related cause. Sara is a member of the Producer’s Guild of America New Media Council, was selected to attend The White House Women Entrepreneurship Conference, The White House Champions for Change Summit, has been nominated twice for Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur, and has been featured in publications including Forbes, Inc., Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, Yahoo!, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Key cast: (Shelby Hadden)
Looking for (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists): buyers, distributors, film festival directors
Funders: Need funding for post-production
Release date: expected release date: 1/01/2018