Film by Samantha Antolini

A Walk In Her Shoes addresses the upsetting and delicate issue of street harassment experienced by young women. Through anecdotes of female victims, paired with footage of a young woman as she walks through her daily life, audiences are able to recognise and relate to the tragedies and feelings of discomfort experienced by not only these three women, but the entire female population.

Click below for a Q&A with the filmmaker.

WHAT WAS YOUR TOPIC FOR THIS FILM?

I focused on the theme of street harassment towards women. The political aim of this was to highlight how women feel when they are walking alone on the street as well as when they’re harassed and how the public reacts to this. I wanted to the video to give the viewer a first-hand perspective of how it feels to walk alone on the street as a woman.

My target audience would be men because I want them to get a better idea of how women feel when they’re cat called or harassed on the street. On a side note, I think it’s important to clarify that the film also takes into account that men also get harassed on the street, the video just doesn’t focus on it because the majority of victims happen o be women.

I chose this topic because I felt like it was something that affected me on a personal level and because I am passionate about women’s rights. I feel like it’s an issue that we’re not doing enough about rather we’re focusing on what the victims can do to make this stop instead of working out strategies to stop the perpetrators.

ANY DIFFICULTIES FACED DURING PRODUCTION IN YOUR APPLICATION OF ‘EXPERIMENTATION’ / POETICS ?

Some difficulties I ran into when filming this documentary was whether focusing on just women could be seen as sexist because it was only looking at how females are affected not males. I decided that as this would be okay as long as I write after the credits the reason for my decision and acknowledge that men are also affected by this. Getting my interviewees to feel comfortable opening up and sharing their experiences without prying was also a challenge with some of the girls. It was hard to know whether any questions would potentially upset someone so I made it very clear that if they do not want to answer something, that they had every right to say no.

I would classify my documentary an experimental documentary because of the way it was filmed. I used a DIY snorricam-like rig to film the back of the actor which was quite an unconventional filming technique. I used this technique because I felt like it positioned the viewer ‘in the shows’ of the character, hence why I called it A Walk in Her Shoes.

HOW DID THIS PROJECT CHANGE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL AND POETIC DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING?

I found making this film quite challenging as I was using equipment that I didn’t have a lot of experience with. (a DIY snorricam-like rig, a GoPro and a Zoom recorder). In approaching the film through experimentative techniques, I feel like I am a lot more competent in all of this equipment now.

In terms of film poetics, playing around with the audio helped me to understand the importance of layering sounds and making sure volume is properly set. I enjoyed experimenting with different overlays and searching for copy-right free