The art of collage

When I was a kid, I loved making collages. I’d gather all the old magazines lying around the house and, with a pair of scissors, cut out whatever caught my eye. Words, faces, colors, patterns. Everything was fair game. And out of this mess of paper and glue, I’d try my best to make something coherent and beautiful. 

The process lit up my brain in a way that stays with me still. It’s likely why I was so drawn to nonfiction filmmaking from the start. Crafting a documentary is in some ways the art of collage. Of taking bits and pieces from the world around you and assembling them in an attempt to create narrative. And in this attempt, make meaning out of the everyday. For me, this prospect of finding and making meaning is what makes each nonfiction project so exciting, time and time again. 

Choosing ‘selects’ from our interview with author Darcey Steinke, who explained why the idea that women lose their value as they age is, for lack of a better word, bullshit.

Recently, we took out our scissors and began snipping away at our short documentary, The Body Is Not a Thing. The film follows three women who question everything they’ve been told about menopause and aging to find new narratives in unlikely places. The project recently won a grant from the Southern Documentary Fund, which has not only given our labor of love a much-needed financial boost, but also helped us find the confidence to keep going. Right now we’re somewhere between production and post-production, but we’ve already begun sifting through the hours of footage we already have. And while we’re not sure what we’ll do just yet with all the gems we’ve excavated, we’re excited to put the pieces together and craft a story that delights and heals.

—Steph