Collaboration makes you stronger, as filmmakers and as people.
Paula Eiselt had embedded with her camera in a Hasidic all-woman EMT unit. Tonya Lewis Lee was showrunner on the She’s Gotta Have It update. And when they met, their strengths multiplied.
Eiselt’s film 93Queen showed women changing their healthcare options from inside their worlds. Lewis Lee’s work writing and producing the Netflix series brought authenticity to Nola’s voice. (She’s married to Spike Lee, and has long made it a priority to get more Black women’s voices on TV.)
When they joined forces, it was to make the Sundance film Aftershock and share the voices of two women in particular: Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac. They were brilliant mothers-to-be whose deaths after childbirth were entirely preventable. Their stories are a frame and a touchstone for the maternal mortality crisis in America. It’s shocking and tragic, yet heartwarming to learn through their voices and their husbands’ call to action.
Lewis Lee and Eiselt spoke with No Film School on the eve of the film’s premiere to talk about making Aftershock.
Author: Oakley Anderson-Moore
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
