written, produced & Directed by beth park
In wild 18th century Britain a lonely woman discovers that her menstrual cycle is of interest to a stranger.
ABOUT THE FILM
FISHWIFE is a dark and mysterious period piece which treads the line between horror and fantasy. In traditional horror a woman's fate is used as a plot point to terrify and excite an audience. In creating FISHWIFE filmmaker Beth Park was more interested in a true and specific female experience.
The film was shot in two days in Wales during a biblical storm, and once released it had one hell of a festival run. Not only was FISHWIFE nominated for several awards at our festival last year, it also played at renown genre festivals (Filmquest & SITGES), Academy Award qualifying festivals (Hollyshorts, Flickers Rhode Island, & Austin Film Festival), and BAFTA qualifying festivals (Underwire, Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, & Aesthetica). Recently, FISHWIFE premiered online with ALTER.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
Beth Park trained as an actor and worked for several years in theatre. She also works directing actors in video games including Baldur's Gate III. During the pandemic Beth wrote and directed her first short film, FISHWIFE.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH beth
Welcome to our Short of the Week series. Tell us a bit about yourself and your filmmaking background.
I worked as an actor for about 10 years then when I took a year off to have a baby my world got flipped upside down. I was no longer content expending so much energy trying to fit into other peoples stories and I wanted to tell things from my perspective. I've always been imaginative but never really finished writing projects before. I think although I had some privileges growing up I've never had an abundance of time or money. When the pandemic hit I had time off work and a lump sum of a few thousand pounds in furlough money transferred into my account. That time and money combined with my new life experiences enabled me to create Fishwife.
How has your experience directing video games informed your narrative filmmaking process?
The two are not particularly closely linked. Video games are enormous machines with sometimes thousands of people in different countries working indirectly together. So when I direct an actor in a game there is a whole world of context, visuals, music etc which is nothing to do with me. In film I am trying to make the whole mise en scene cohesive and meaningful to the story. The only very useful transferable skill is that I direct actors every single day. So I'm good at reading what they need and don't get into my own head about that.
Tell us about the genesis of Fishwife. What inspired this film?
I was just driving along the motorway with my baby asleep in the back and the idea popped into my head! Initially I thought about writing it as a short story or even a novel but then when the furlough money came in I started to turn it into a script. At the time I didn't even want to be a filmmaker, I just wanted to make this specific film. Now I'm obsessed!
What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making of Fishwife and how did you overcome them?
Oh gosh, there were so many. As I mentioned I got this lump sum, but it was only a few thousand pounds (which is a lot of money to get from nowhere but isn't a lot when it comes to film making!). So everything had to be bought or made as cheaply as possible. Then when we actually shot it there was a dreadful storm so we were contending against almost hurricane level winds in the middle of Snowdonia. And I was also crazy enough to make everyone do a 2.5 hour unit move between the internal and external locations. All shot in two days! Post production was hard as I was basically a team of 1 person, having produced it myself, so trying to get everything to the editor, colourist, composer, sound mixer myself was really tough. I was very burnt out when it was finally complete.
Fishwife has had some amazing festival success. Tell us about some of your favourite festival experiences.
There were a lot of festivals! Many of them were overseas so I didn't attend them, except Sitges which was absolutely incredible, the audiences there are just amazing! It wasn't easy for me to attend even some of the uk ones as I have a job and a small child so I have responsibilities I have to attend to. But my favourite thing about the festivals was being able to watch films to be honest, just a weekend of watching non stop movies is a real blast.
any tips for filmmakers currently trying to navigate the festival circuit?
I used Festival Formula to create a list of festivals to target and a schedule for me to submit by. As I mentioned I was very burnt out when I finished the film. I was in kind of a hopeless state, I truly believed the film was bad and I had wasted everyones time and money. I couldn't afford to use Festival Formula but my parents very kindly paid the fee because they recognised what a mess I was in! I would recommend investing in this service if you can, they helped me find the right festivals to apply to and saved me wasting money on Festivals which weren't appropriate.
Now that you've completed your festival journey the film has been picked up by Alter. How have you found the online release of the film compared to the festival circuit? Any tips for filmmakers looking to release their film online?
I have really loved it being released online! There have been so many appreciative comments from people who really liked it and really seemed to get it! In comparison to the festival circuit this launch has been much more gratifying. I found many festivals to be quite impersonal, with no feedback or any kind of response about the film, just a 'congratulations you got a laurel, now please send us all the data', now I can actually see that there is an audience for it and people are mostly enjoying it!
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
Money. It's so expensive to make a film. If you have money you're already so far ahead in the game. If you can combine that with having a good idea then you can hopefully make some headway. It takes a lot of hard work, but it's worth it.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
A couple of films I saw at Festivals are now available on Netflix; Nocebo and Vesper, I loved them both.