By Ann Pappert

Early in 2001, budding filmmaker Therese Shechter read Natalie Angier’s best-selling feminist exploration of women’s biology, Women: An Intimate Geography.  For Shechter, it was a life-changing experience.  "The book made me feel great about being a woman," she says. "I thought, I haven’t felt this great about being a woman in a long time."  It started a chain of events, "I was turning forty and I started thinking about why women are made to feel so terrible about how they look or their marital status."  Shechter’s own life didn’t fit the stereotypical norm.  As someone who had always lived an independent existence, who never married or had children, she started reflecting.

"I thought," Therese says, " here I am at my economic peak, my intellectual and creative peak and my sexual peak and yet I feel so out of sync with the world.  How can I be coming into all this power and yet every external voice is telling me that I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do.  It really hit me like a ton of bricks.  I thought, what am I going to do? I can have plastic surgery, go out and find a husband, go on a self-help binge at the bookstore.  But I wanted to do something a little more subversive. So I started asking questions: Why, 30 years after the second wave of feminism, am I still feeling like I can’t make my own choices in life and feel good about them? That really got me exploring whatever happened to feminism."

In January 2001, Therese was asked to write a proposal for a documentary feature as part of a documentary film workshop.  She was advised to find a project that she could live with for several years.  The result is Therese’s first full-length documentary, " I Was A Teenage Feminist," a film that grew out of her exploration of what it meant to be a woman today.   The film, a lively first-person journey through the story of feminism-mining the past, grappling with the present and surveying the future – is her first full-length documentary.

Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Therese spent 16 years as a journalist and graphic designer here and in Canada.  Several years ago, she decided on a career change, and attended film school in Chicago.  An internship at Robert De Niro’s production company, Tribeca Films, where she worked on "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," convinced her that she didn’t want to go the Hollywood route.  She has worked as a researcher, producer and done post-production for several documentaries in addition to making her own short films.

In a way, "I Was a Teenage Feminist" is a return to her own early life.  As a young teenager, Therese heard Marlo Thomas’s record "Free To Be..You and Me," a groundbreaking album of feminist children’s songs that caused a sensation when it was first released.  "Discovering feminism as a young teenager was a profound experience," Therese remembers.  "It affirmed something I felt so deep in my heart-that I can make my own choices and still be happy."  It was, she says, "mind-blowing."

But for Therese, being a feminist was "very private, something that was in my heart." As she grew up her life moved further and further away from feminism.  "I went to college, I had a great job, and I just didn’t think about it, it didn’t touch my life."  As Therese started working on the film, she discovered a lot of young women were also ambivalent about feminism.  She started randomly asking women whatever happened to feminism.  Their answers shocked and surprised her. "Women would tell me, ‘I’m not a feminist,’ or ‘Oh, isn’t that over," she recalls.  "Worse, some women would say, ’feminists, they’re all man-hating, hairy legged, dykes.’ I heard that a lot from teenagers and women in their 20s."

She describes making the film as a journey and a personal consciousness raising.  "Before I made this film I had never read Ms. Magazine, I had never been part of any protest or rally, I had never taken a women’s study course.  I didn’t know anything."  When Therese started filming, the very first thing she did was go to Washington with a friend to film a reproductive rights march in April 2001.  "We didn’t know what to expect, we were a little nervous and uncomfortable with the whole thing."  "So we get down there, I’ve got this big camera, and we walk onto the lawn where everyone is assembling.  And I see all these men and women – there were so many of them – and they’re all holding signs, and they all seem to believe what I believe.  And I started crying.  I felt like I’m not alone.  There are all these people who are just like me."

In the film, Therese talks with women of all ages about what it means to be a feminist; about where or whether they place themselves within a feminist context.  She probes sources ranging from Gloria Steinem to a Cosmopolitan – reading opera singer who describes herself as anti – feminist, from "grrl" rock musicians to Womanist scholars, Wiccan high priestesses, and her own mother – all in the hopes of rediscovering a movement that once sparked passionate response and social revolution.  "What I’ve discovered is that feminism is alive and well, that in fact there is tons of stuff going on.  People are working really hard, but most of it is under the radar, they’re not being heard."

Support for the film will come mainly from grants, which Shechter describes as very difficult to secure.  She and producing partner Stephanie St. Pierre have self funded some of the costs of production.  About three-quarters of the film has been shot, and she hopes shooting will be complete in the next few months.  Post-production is where most of the expenses are.  The film is a finalist for a $50,000 post – production grant.  In addition to grants, she is staging a series of fundraisers over the next few months.  The first fundraiser will be held on Thursday, July 25th from 7-10 PM at Gallery 718, 164 Fifth Avenue (Lincoln/DeGraw) in Park Slope.  The fundraiser features food and drinks, live music and a silent auction.  Admission is $10.  Further information is available from the gallery, phone: 718-789-5776, or from Trixie Films (Shechter’s production company), phone: 718-399-7130.

Eventually, Shechter hopes her film will air on cable.  She has already held discussions with Oxygen, where the film is currently under consideration by their acquisitions department.  She also hopes that the film will enjoy on-going distribution at the grassroots level, at colleges and various organizations.

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