SWIM

Poetry meets film

An experimental film about a young girl struggling with her fear of the water and the pressures of growing up, set to the poetry of Jamie Wimberly.

Above all, my goal was use Jamie’s piece as a narrative guide, and translate the sentiment and emotionality into a film. Jamie’s poem is so dense and tackles so many issues, that there were truly so many directions we could take the film. Ultimately, I settled on a story of a teenage girl that on a macro level is struggling with her self-confidence as a woman, but on the surface has a fear of water. So we amplified this by telling the story metaphorically: setting it in the moments before she jumps into a pool. To flow with the poem and also emulate the struggle our character is going through, I told the story sporadically; flowing into and out of scene haphazardly, but painting a picture of this girl in the same way the disjointed thoughts in her head are happening. We were lucky enough to cast Becca Zeiger, who truly elevated the piece to a new level.