Can I Run In These Shoes? A Short Film

Background

Can I Run In These Shoes is a Columbia College Chicago Cinematography III short film directed and written by Emily Polark, and will be an entirely women created and run project.

The film was written to highlight the collective experience that women go through on a day-to-day basis to keep themselves safe. We as women must go through certain actions, thoughts, and mindsets each day to protect ourselves from being harmed or attacked in public, and use many tactics to do so, such as holding our keys a certain way, carrying pepper spray, avoiding dark alleyways, putting ourselves close to other women on public transportation, remaining vigilantly aware of our surroundings, and very commonly, constantly wearing shoes that we are able to run away from an attacker in. Our film has the goal of awareness and recognition of the unspoken and often unrealized things women have to go through and experience on a daily basis while doing something as simple as walking down the street.

Synopsis

Can I Run In These Shoes is a thriller about a woman who is being chased by someone. As she is running away from her perpetrator, she runs into the bodies of multiple women who were killed and left on the street. With each woman she finds, she becomes increasingly angry and heartbroken. She turns a corner in her rush away, and comes across a pile of more corpses, again, all women. Petrified and furious, she grabs a high heeled shoe off of one of the women and turns to attack her abuser. We see her swing, and then we see a group of hands — the murdered women — suffocate the man and pull him into the pile of bodies. Throughout the film, any time a woman’s body is found, we also see a beautiful portrait of her standing in a luscious field, so she and the rest of the murdered women is not forgotten.

Funding

We have a goal of $2,000 in order to make our production as fun and productive as possible. With such a powerful message behind the project, we believe our all-women crew deserves the absolute best that we can provide for them on set.

Our budget will go towards:

Craft Services & Catering — We would like to provide our cast and crew with snacks and warm meals for their dedicated hours on set.

Hair, Makeup, & Wardrobe — In order to bring the story to life, we want our art team to have the ability to honor the look of our women characters to the fullest extent.

Transportation — Transportation includes getting to and from set, as well as the truck rental we would need for our Camera and Grip and Electric equipment.

Paying our Actors — We would love to give our cast some of the share of what we raise. Without our cast, we would not be able to bring the advocacy and story to life.