Our new trailer! “How To Lose Your Virginity” from Trixie Films on Vimeo.
Hi! My name is Therese Shechter and I’ve spent the last three years working on the documentary “How To Lose Your Virginity,”. I’m not really going to tell you how to have sex for the first time, but I do want to know why, in our hyper-sexualized American culture, we’re so obsessed with virginity.
It’s a quest to dig beneath the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t double-speak of a culture that cynically encourages both virginity and promiscuity. How can young women wade through these mixed messages–like a reality show that auctions off virgins to the highest bidder or Disney starlets flashing purity rings while writhing on stripper poles–and act instead on their own needs and desires? What’s behind this strange moment in American culture?
The road to understanding our obsession with virginity takes me to places I never thought I’d go–from the set of a Barely Legal porn movie shoot in the San Fernando Valley to a Love & Fidelity Abstinence Conference at Harvard to the fitting rooms of David’s Bridal.
Along the way, I expose and decode a landscape of conflicting messages to young women. The goal? A non-judgemental conversation about real-world sexuality, whether you choose to have sex or not.
I couldn’t wait for the documentary to get finished to tackle these issues, so two years ago I started a blog called The American Virgin. Check it out!
WE’RE RAISING MONEY FOR OUR ROUGH CUT
So far, I’ve funded the film almost entirely out of my own pocket, with help from an amazing group of cinematographers, producers, interns and friends who have given their time and talent for little more than pans of baked goods. I’ve gone a long way on this kind of support from people who really believe in the project, but eventually I need to, you know, pay people.
Our trailer is already being used in Human Sexuality classes because there’s such a demand for this kind of information. We need to hire a full-time editor to finish our rough cut this summer. We’ll use that rough cut to pitch the film to theatrical distributors and TV programmers, and to develop curriculum for college screenings. To that end, we need to raise $10,000 by pre-selling DVDs at $25 a piece, and offering really cool rewards and incentives if you want to donate more.
If we exceed our Kickstarter goal (how awesome would that be?) the money will go to covering future post-production costs: editing to fine cut, sound edit/mix, music rights…and we’d really love to pay our interns!
My last doc was funded using this model, so I know it works. Thanks to supporters like you, “I Was A Teenage Feminist,” has screened all over the world, from Stockholm to Karachi to Seoul. We even showed it at Serbia’s first-ever women’s film festival!
WE’RE FEELING YOUR PASSION – HERE’S HOW TO HELP
I am passionate about this subject and will finish this film no matter what, but without your support, it will be a longer, harder road. Since we debuted the film’s first trailer on Vimeo, we’ve had well over 10,000 views, hundreds of blog posts and an overwhelming number of people telling us how psyched they are to see this film. So we know you’re passionate about it too!!
Please help support independent women’s media by backing “How to Lose Your Virginity” at any level. Thanks to our fiscal sponsor Women Make Movies, pledges of $100 or more are tax deductible.
You can also help by spreading the word. Every single dollar, Facebook post, blog entry and tweet gets us that much closer to our goal. Check out our blog, become our Facebook friend or follow us on Twitter.
To pledge or just get more information, click here: http://kck.st/9Hm93b
Click here to view a previous post on Paradigm Shift regarding “How to Lose Your Virginity”
