Brooklyn-based director of ‘Rock in My Pockets’ reacts to challenges of the new administration with her second animated feature.
BROOKLYN, NY -- Signe Baumane’s new animated feature film My Love Affair With Marriage is launching a $124,670 Kickstarter campaign four days after the swearing in of the new president. The film, to be completed in 2019, is a personal story told from an unapologetic female point of view. Baumane explains, “A strong female perspective is more relevant now than ever. And the concept of marriage is an essential part of the conversation around gender and women’s rights.”
The storyline follows Zelma, a fiery young girl, as she grows up and develops an understanding of her place in society as a woman. She mimics popular girls in her desire to become a perfect woman, but the very thing she learns later destroys her two marriages.
“My Love Affair With Marriage is based on my personal experiences -- I have been married two times and could never understand why those marriages didn’t last longer than they did,” Baumane says. “To unravel this mystery, I set out to research the Neuroscience and Mythology of Love.”
Baumane weaves her research into the fabric of her story using the power of animation to show the unseen. My Love Affair With Marriage has an approach to love that has probably never been explored in film before. It is a personal love story interwoven with examinations of the biological and anthropological aspects of love. The story follows a triangle between Zelma, who is trying to get the best out of her life and Biology, who kindles the chemical processes in Zelma’s brain and four singing Mythology Sirens, who pressure Zelma to conform to societal norms.
The Kickstarter Campaign for My Love Affair With Marriage went live on Tuesday January 24, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. EST. It is a 31-day campaign concluding Friday February 24, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. EST. The goal of $124,670 will be used to complete the audio track of the film. Thirty SAG-AFTRA actors and singers will be hired, music commissioned, rehearsed and recorded.
The campaign is all-or-nothing -- reach the goal or the money is returned. With 29 days to go, the fundraising campaign has already raised $12,309 from 29 backers, with rewards ranging from digital downloads of artwork and the finished film to physical production cels and a chance to be animated as a character into the film.
Signe Baumane is an award-winning writer, director and animator. Her shorts Birth and Teat Beat of Sex examined female sexuality and teen pregnancy from a woman’s point of view. The New York Times called Baumane’s first feature, Rocks In My Pockets, “a sharp, surprising and funny animated feature, plumbing the depths of depression via her family history… It’s told with remorseless psychological intelligence, wicked irony and an acerbic sense of humor.”
Source: Signe Baumane
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
