Neighborhood can imply a number issues: consolation, accountability, illustration, and identification, to call a couple of. The phrase holds plain energy, and our communities typically inform what we come to think about our personal identities. What does it imply for us and our private growth when our psychological state conflicts with the neighborhood we belong to? This week’s crowdfunding picks reckon with neighborhood.
Reflecting on the difficulty of meals shortage in British communities, Helen Iley’s “Egg & Chips” follows a mom and daughter, every attempting to grasp the gravity of their state of affairs in their very own approach. Tamara Sangdow’s “Welcome Dwelling” sees the filmmaker utilizing her identification as a Thai-American girl to discover the emotional tumult of a personality visiting her dying father in Thailand after years with out contact, wrestling with the forces of household and cultural identification. Kelsey Barry additionally takes on a heavy load of neighborhood, tradition, and illustration with the movie “Take Your Mark.” Impressed by her personal life, Barry examines the social pressures of Black excellence with its toll on psychological well being.
Questions of self-identity and the way one engages with their communities are common, so whether or not you personally establish with the plots of those quick movie tasks or not, we’re betting that their themes will resonate.
Listed below are Girls and Hollywood’s newest crowdfunding picks.
“Egg & Chips” (Quick) – Written and Directed by Helen Iley

“Egg & Chips”
“Egg & Chips,” a Raindance Finalist script tailored from a spoken phrase piece by author and director Helen Iley, tells the story of a younger British household. The quick sheds mild on the tough realities of British poverty whereas nonetheless celebrating the worth of neighborhood. It follows Flo, a ten-year-old lady who makes an attempt to feed her household by stealing a rooster. In the meantime, her mom Triss refuses to acknowledge their impending eviction.
Iley depicts the lived actuality of these dwelling in poverty and feedback on the boundaries to entry high-quality, nutritious meals. On the venture’s Kickstarter web page, the filmmaker attracts consideration to the truth that there are presently “4.2 million kids in poverty within the U.Ok, together with single dad and mom having 42 p.c of youngsters in poverty.” Iley was motivated to transform her script in mild of the pandemic and the way COVID-19 induced these points to escalate.
With “Eggs & Chips,” Iley is consciously making a movie by which the story and topic are used as a type of outreach, a part of an effort to mobilize her viewers to study extra about and partake in neighborhood tasks. She hopes to work with native tasks and charities that particularly help “low-income households and younger kids dealing with problem of their every day lives,” the movie’s crowdfunding web page explains. Iley teamed up with Lineham Farm, an outside kids’s centre, the place the staff “hope[s] to host a charity screening and do ongoing fundraising for them throughout the competition interval as soon as the movie has been made.”
Be taught extra about “Egg & Chips” and donate on Kickstarter.
“Welcome Dwelling” (Quick) – Written and Directed by Tamara Sangdow

Sangdow
Author, director, and inventive director Tamara Sangdow’s bicultural upbringing informs her upcoming venture, “Welcome Dwelling,” a brief movie a few Thai-American girl who travels to Bangkok from the U.S. to go to her dying, estranged father. A Thai-American herself, Sangdow strives to make tales that aren’t solely considerate and genuine, but in addition push boundaries in entrance of and behind the digital camera.
The story of “Welcome Dwelling” is one such instance. Sangdow describes the movie as a private venture on a number of ranges, delving into themes of identification, interpersonal household relationships, and therapeutic from previous trauma. Full of familial dying, ghosts, and darkish spirits, “Welcome Dwelling” explores how “we develop into extra at dwelling with ourselves along with our bodily houses,” per its crowdfunding web page.
As a result of illustration is essential on-screen and behind the scenes, Sangdow is working with an all-Thai movie crew — most of whom establish as girls — for all of pre-production and manufacturing, and probably post-production.
Be taught extra about “Welcome Dwelling” and donate on Kickstarter.
“Take Your Mark” (Quick) – Written and Directed by Kelsey Barry

“Take Your Mark”
“Take Your Mark” follows Jordyn , an completed swimmer striving to win the state meet as a way to uphold her household’s excessive attaining observe document. On this journey, she faces teammates actively rooting in opposition to her in addition to a string of panic assaults, forcing her to grapple along with her household’s legacy of Black excellence.
A meditation on neighborhood illustration and psychological well being, “Take Your Mark” is knowledgeable by the lived expertise of director Kelsey Barry as the one Black swimmer on her varsity staff.
On this woman-led venture, Barry hopes different Black women and girls will see themselves in Jordyn’s story and understand that their psychological well being issues, regardless of the societal expectation to continuously show themselves. “There’s at all times this strain of Black excellence, to be the perfect since you’re representing your neighborhood,” she mirrored in her director’s assertion. “Nevertheless it’s solely just lately that there’s been a motion to place psychological well being first. And regardless of this there are nonetheless those that don’t perceive how essential it’s to prioritize psychological well being.”
Be taught extra about “Take Your Mark” and donate on Kickstarter.
To be thought of for Girls and Hollywood’s crowdfunding function, please write to wandhcrowdfunding@gmail.com. All codecs (options, shorts, net sequence, and many others.) welcome. Initiatives have to be by and/or about girls.