Afraid to walk alone at night? You're not the only one, promises debut Collarts student film, Text Me When You Get Home.
Made by a group of Collarts screen and media graduates, the documentary has already picked up Best Documentary at the Australian Youth Film Festival, and it’s just getting started.
Keys gripped between knuckles.
Headphones off.
Crossing the street into the light.
Women enter an entirely different world after the sun goes down.
Text Me When You Get Home explores the pre-emptive processes women have been taught to employ when moving through the world at night.
Collarts – Text Me When You Get Home
- Debut documentary by Collarts screen and media graduates
- Winner, Best Documentary, Australian Youth Film Festival
- Directed by Jodhi Ramsden-Mavric, shot by Annie Spiteri
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The film doesn’t serve to “just recount the specific incidents, the horrible doom and gloom of it all,” says director Jodhi Ramsden-Mavric, but rather it “looks at the internal monologue, thoughts and processes women do differently that men don’t see.”
But how justified are these worries? The keys gripped between knuckles, the constant looks over the shoulder; all actions that the documentary’s subject, Sarah, recounts thinking during a night out.
“The brain is a fickle thing. We’re all just brimming with imagination. Who is to say what is real and what is not?,”
Sarah says in the film.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics still reports that more than half of Australia’s female population feels unsafe out and about in their local area after dark.
“We all bonded over the mutual experience and struggles with women’s safety,” says Jodhi.
“The film is for women who see those experiences and go, ‘I do that too’, and find some sort of reassurance in it. To go, ‘it’s a normal thing, I’m not just paranoid.
“We always said from the start that this was a film for women. We know that the people who are going to actively seek it out and engage with it are women, but we always kind of hoped that a byproduct of that would be that the men in these women’s lives will end up seeing and engaging with it,” Jodhi said.
The film’s Director of Photography, Annie Spiteri, may have been new to the position, but she captured with clarity the creeping fear of disappearing security throughout the film’s hybrid narrative/documentary structure.
“Some of the guys in our class were shocked at the test screenings. They didn’t realise it was such a serious issue,” says Annie.
“They were like, ‘we want to help Sarah out’, you know? It was a really positive reaction.”
They had a few hurdles when originally pitching the idea of the documentary to their peers and teachers.
“I think it’s hard, especially for male authority figures, to comprehend something that is so mental and tuned specifically to the female psyche,” Jodhi said.
“I think the men that originally doubted the idea got it after seeing the film and listening to us.
“I think the duality of this film is that it’s an important story we wanted to tell as women, and we also wanted to prove ourselves as women, that we had the power and the tools and the ability to tell a story like this at a high technical level. We’re telling our story and we’re also proving that women are capable of speaking for themselves creatively.”
Annie agreed.
“Sarah is a real person, and these are all her real experiences. Because this is a documentary, people realise she is a real person. This actually happens. This is someone’s life,” Annie said.
The film, now with accolades attached, has been submitted to film festivals in Australia and overseas.
“There’s a real catharsis in sharing this conversation in a room full of women,” Jodhi said.
“I want the film to function as that conversation.”
To find out more about Text Me When You Get Home, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Collarts.
