MAY INTERVIEW

Rebecca Carpenter

Beck Carpenter is a Visual Artist, Director, Educator, and the Founder of WomenDo.

In addition to being a Clio and Golden Telly award winning director, Carpenter's long form work has been critically acclaimed nationally and internationally. She sits down with Solia Cates, Editor-In-Chief of WomenDo, to discuss inspiration, mentorship, and the emotional impact of women’s stories.

What inspired you to create WomenDo? 

I didn’t know much about my own history as a woman, and in many ways I grew up in a culture where women were still very much second class. As a child, I was really sensitive to social disparities as a consequence of race, ethnicity and class, in particular where women were concerned. Nobody around me seemed much interested in all of that, and it was very isolating. I was part of that generation who believed that the women’s movement had been a success. And yet… it didn’t look or feel that way. As I progressed in school and professionally, there was a lot I didn’t understand about my life and my decisions that stemmed from my gender - not just other people’s behavior toward me, but my own internalized behaviors and expectations as well. Wanting to understand better, I searched for a comprehensive documentary series like "Eyes on the Prize” about the women’s civil rights movement to help me get my bearings, but it didn’t exist.

At the same time, I knew that my both of my biological grandmothers had experienced horrific abuse and marginalization and discrimination due to their gender, class, and poverty. They were white, which bestowed a certain amount of privilege, yet the men in their lives were completely in control of these women's finances, their employment, their children, their bodies, and their medical decisions, even their right to participate politically. The lingering effects of this discrimination was a presence throughout my life. It took me a long time to see that their decisions weren’t simply shaped by their own individual circumstances, but also by the opportunities and barriers shaped by their gender. 

I wondered who would be the next Henry Hampton who could tackle this complicated, inspiring, gut-wrenching story of women fighting for equality in the United States? When I say women, I mean all women - cis women, trans women, black women, LatinX women, Asian women, Lesbian, bisexual, white women, immigrant women, and all the combinations and variations on womanhood, womanness, that are fighting institutionalized and interpersonal sexism in this country. 

After I gave birth to my daughter, I hungered to absorb storytelling about strong, interesting, fierce women. I wanted my child to be much freer than I had been, to have a strong voice and own her power. There were dozens, hundreds, of brilliant films told from varying perspectives about women’s experiences in the US and abroad. In absence of the kind of big, juicy series about women’s complex history that I was looking for, I decided to bring all these films together in one place to form a sort of a film club. I wanted to play with existing work and create playlists that could penetrate different topics from varying perspectives, and create a community of women to celebrate with, cry with, and aspire with. And also ensure that it would be intersectional, demanding that a wide range of perspectives would be featured.

What inspires you to make art? Do you actively look for inspiration, or do you wait for it to hit you? Has your inspiration changed over the years?

I’m not a traditional filmmaker. I’m more of an artist, a person who makes things, and film is one of the mediums I use to explore a subject. I work to get out of my own way and follow my gut. When that small quiet voice becomes louder than all the other voices I know I am going to have to pursue a subject until I’m done. It hasn’t changed over the years. I access that voice through writing, sketching, and long walks without my phone or music.

Was there a filmmaking icon you looked up to growing up?

I grew up in a small city and we didn’t have a lot of disposable income in addition to being in a family obsessed by sports, so we didn’t go to the movies very much. George Lucas was my first love - the opening credits of Star Wars is seared in my mind. Soon after, I discovered Su Friedrich. Terence Malick. Agnes Varda. I was a film projectionist at the Harvard Film Archive and had the privilege of watching brilliant obscure films projected in a theater so my exposure was pretty varied. I fell in love with gutsy honest storytellers willing to push the boundaries of form.

Do you have, or have you had, a mentor? What does that word mean to you?

I have had two mentors, one in film and one in visual arts. Both women. But the idea of finding a mentor who has the career you want to have? I didn’t find that person, and still haven’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still looking.

Which women in film inspire you? 

Ava Duvernay. Reese Witherspoon. Kerry Washington. Regina King. Chloe Zhao. Emerald Fennell. Each of them has such an inspiring body of work, provocative perspective as storytellers, and tremendous technical skill as well. I do have pangs of grief that I’m not twenty now watching these brilliant creative women do their thing, but very grateful that they exist.

Do you feel that you have a specific style to your films? Where did that style come from?

I freaking love Agnes Varda, the French New Wave, Ross McElwee, Errol Morris. So I suppose it’s a style that acknowledges - embraces - makes visible - that there is a maker in the story, and making the hand of that maker a conscious part of the story.

When creating films around real subject matters, how do you decide which facts to cling to, and where you will fictionalize?

Because I work primarily in documentary film, I might condense facts, or condense feelings, but I wouldn’t say that I fictionalize. For instance, I’m recutting a film now that was released in 2017. I’m keeping less that half that footage, and fleshing it out a bit more and adding a great deal of new material. The source material is the source material, but it will be used in new ways, reinterpreted. It doesn’t make the original source fictional or the new interpretation fictional. Just using a different angle. Many things can be true at one time, depending on where you stand. 

If you could say three words of advice to your twenty year old self, what would you say? 

Goddess, go forth.