Director’s BIO: Lisa Baron (HEDDA NEEDS HELP)

Short Film playing at the November 2017 FEMALE FEEDBACK Film Festival

Director Biography

Lisa

Lisa Baron pursued film in NYC after receiving a Masters Degree focusing on Spanish Cinema and has since made her directing debut in 2016, directing a Pilot, Guccies and her first comedic short film, Hedda Needs Help co-written with Malin Barr. Lisa started as a comedic actress and improviser, studying at Anthony Meindl’s Actor Workshop and Upright Citizens Brigade. After focusing on sketch comedy for 4 years, Lisa wanted to pursue more structured narratives that still have traditional sketch-comedy back-bones, which we find in Hedda Needs Help. She also works in Admissions for a prestigious performing arts conservatory based in Manhattan and Los Angeles.

Director Statement

Hedda Needs Help focuses on Hedda, an aspiring poet in New York City that has an opportunity to get her foot in the door with a well-known poet and publisher, Mr. Albert Stein. With this short film, we wanted to create a protagonist that shows the sense of naivety and child-like optimism in many young artists when moving to the Big Apple. As she literally kills her one chance to impress Albert Stein, we watch her go through the film without any real consequences, trying to embody stereotypes placed on women, and failing time and time again.

Similar to the film industry that co-writer, Malin Barr and myself, find ourselves constantly, Hedda is a character in the center of a male-dominated world. “Fake it until you make it” has a whole new meaning in this film, while Hedda tries to fit into female archetypes that never work for her.

It was incredibly important for us to maintain strong sketch comedy style throughout the short film format, which can often have abstract narratives and dialogue. Therefore, in addition to the amazing improvisor, co-writer and actor, Malin Barr, we casted our film with hilarious comedic actors such as Nick Fondulis (30 Rock), David Gibson (Quantico) and comedian, Saurin Choksi (FuseTV). We hope this film can reflect underlying themes about young ambition and female sexuality in a light-hearted and quirky way.

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By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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