Sheffield International Documentary Festival / Doc Edge 2019 – Kate Nash: Underestimate The Girl
Kate Nash, punk renegade, TV wrestling queen, and DIY leader of an all-girl band forgoes money and fame to speak out about injustices in the music business and to embolden other young women to find their voices. This high-energy, female-centered rock odyssey reveals the treacherous line that today’s artists must walk to survive while making art on their own terms in contemporary pop culture.
Interview with Director Amy Goldstein, Producer Anouchka van Riel and Editor Caitlin Dixon
Watch Kate Nash: Underestimate The Girl on Prime Video, iTunes and Qello
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
AMY: Kate’s story hits close to home for me. I was a part of the EEOC’s investigation into the lack of gender parity in Hollywood and wanted to capture this moment of women speaking out. In music and in film, it is often the exception rather than the rule to make a living wage and be treated with respect and care. This fact is compounded by the rampant sexism women experience in both industries. This is a film about a woman made by women. Our crew, producers and editors are primarily female. This is our story as well as so many other women in the entertainment business.
Recently, there have been a number of iconic documentaries focused on the tragic fall of female music luminaries such as Amy Winehouse (Amy), Janis Joplin (Janis: Little Girl Blue), and Nina Simone (What Happened, Miss Simone ?). While these films have a rightful place in the documentary cannon, their focus on the destruction and tragic loss of great female artists leaves us with the message that to affect the world, you must self-destruct. I had a profound desire to make a film about a living artist who finds redemption rather than despair. Kate gets her education through a harrowing defeat at the hands of the music business, a scenario common to many women who refuse to cave to an over-sexualized cookie-cutter pop ideal. Ultimately Kate stands her ground and is able to thrive. In that sense, the film is a heroic tale about reinvention and seizing power in a system that defies artists to be economically self-determining. As a woman who releases her own records, plays with an all-women band, and hires women to work on the promotion and distribution of her music, Kate embodies an ideal of self-creation and feminism without romanticizing or glossing over the ugly bits. And she redefines what success is for her.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
AMY: Kate goes for broke. She brings the audience on an adventure in her brush with fame, we live her determination to stay on the path of her truth and have a career on her own terms, something we all experience at some point in our lives, whether artists or employees. We feel like we are standing up to the man with Kate. It becomes our journey as well.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
CAITLIN: We feel that the struggles Kate faces are common to female musicians, and truly artists of any kind. How do you balance your own creative voice against what the market is telling you to do? How do you sustain yourself when your art is not paying the bills? How do you keep the quiet voice of self-confidence alive when everything seems stacked against you? And what can you do to make the world a little easier for next generations? These are challenges we face as filmmakers, specifically as female filmmakers, and all these questions resonated deeply for us as we worked to tell Kate's particular story.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
CAITLIN: In a documentary, as you film, the story is always evolving and changing--even after you finish filming, there are always multiple ways to tell a story with your footage. In our case, the director filmed with Kate for nearly four years, and we had older footage from Kate's early career as well. We had to figure out the best way to shape the arc of Kate's story with all these disparate pieces, without always knowing where she was going to land. At one point, Kate was ready to give up her music career altogether, and we had to be open to the idea of that being the end of the film. Happily, Kate kept fighting and we were able to follow her back into a place where she is still making music and her art.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
AMY: Audiences feel juiced by Kate’s story and empowered to go on their own journeys and to stand up for what they passionately believe.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
AMY: The feedback has thrilled us. The film resonates with people from way more different backgrounds and ages than I imagined. Kate’s story is a universal story and we use all of the cinematic tools of fiction filmmaking including musical numbers and animated graphics, which make for a highly entertaining tale.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
ANOUCHKA: We are looking for a streaming service or a channel that will make the film easily accessible to an audience starving for authentic stories and for women standing up for themselves and others.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
ANOUCHKA: We were lucky to just show at Bentonville Film Festival, one of Geena Davis’ initiatives for inclusion in the film industry, our film was very much aligned with the festival’s tagline “Include”, and the film was extremely well received by press and the audience. Of course it is important for us to be shown at more festivals and be reviewed by more press. We are specifically looking for a producer who is passionate about the story, and who is recognizable enough to inspire buyers to watch the film and assure them that it will be easy to bring a lot of eyeballs to that story.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
AMY: Artists are often underpaid and cycled through. We are hoping that this film will help build respect for the work artists do and make sure they are valued and well taken care of. In order for musicians to thrive, people need to understand that music cannot be free: if music is to survive, we need to pay for it somehow.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
CAITLIN: One of the things Kate is navigating is the profound changes the music industry has undergone in the decade of her career. On one hand, technological changes have brought amazing possibilities for young artists to produce and distribute their art--on the other hand, those same changes have discouraged customers from paying for music, and labels from supporting artists. More can be heard, but fewer can make a living. Are these tradeoffs worth it? What's gained, what's lost?
Would you like to add anything else?
Thank you for making this platform available to us.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
AMY: I went to Hampshire College in MA, and it is on the verge of going under. Some of the same creative team is working together on a short documentary: The Unmaking Of Hampshire College. Hampshire College is a progressive school where to know is not enough. It is a graduate school for undergraduates, where there are no grades, and the responsibility to propose work is on the students, they put together a committee to deep dive and evaluate. A new president came on board recently, she made unilateral decisions to empty out the college and prep it for a merger. The student occupied her office for 75 days, forcing her resignation. There is amazing press coverage reflecting the potential loss of many liberal arts colleges across the country. The faculty has organized to return with a creative reorganization, and Ken Burns, an alumn, has taken on spearheading the re-financing of the college. Can a college like Hampshire survive in today’s get down to business culture? The final act is unknown but we will be there to document.
Interview: May 2019
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Kate Nash: Underestimate The Girl
Kate Nash, punk renegade, TV wrestling queen, and DIY leader of an all-girl band forgoes money and fame to speak out about injustices in the music business and to embolden other young women to find their voices. This high-energy, female-centered rock odyssey reveals the treacherous line that today’s artists must walk to survive while making art on their own terms in contemporary pop culture.
Length: 1:29:13
Director: Amy Goldstein
Producer: Anouchka van Riel
About the writer, director and producer:
AMY GOLDSTEIN is a director, producer, and screenwriter of music videos, television series (HBO, Fox, CBS, Showtime, MTV), and feature films (The Silencer, East of A, The Hooping Life). Her work has been presented at film festivals worldwide, including Toronto and Berlin. She is drawn to compelling stories found at the intersection of social issues and pop culture. Amy graduated from NYU Tisch Film School.
ANOUCHKA VAN RIEL started her career in finance at Activision Blizzard where she was responsible for analyzing movie franchises (Ice Age 2, Scarface, Eragon…) and evaluating new publishing and distribution deals. She produces independent films about unheralded subjects such as modern hula-hooping and the transmen community. Since 2004, she has also been an organizer of the COLCOA French Film Festival to promote French artists and their films in the United States.
Key cast: Kate Nash, Alicia Warrington, Kate Craig, Marie Nash, Brett Lomas, John Kennedy, Frederik Thaae, Jeff Ellis, Tom Biller, Jarrad Kritzstein, Emma Hughes, Linda Buratto, Molly Neuman
Looking for: buyers, distributors, journalists, film festival directors, sales agents
Facebook: Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl
Twitter: @katenashfilm
Instagram: @katenashfilm
Hashtags used: #katenashfilm
Other: IMDb
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? Sheffield International Documentary Festival - June 10; Krakow Film Festival - May 26 & 29; Bechdel Film Festival - June 1; Doc Edge New Zealand - June 14, 18 & 20 (Wellington) & May 31, June 3 & 4 (Auckland).