R29's Shatterbox Anthology put women behind the camera in more ways than one. In her Shatterbox short Watching You Watching Me, director Pamela Romanowsky was curious to turn her lens outward, to see how real people feel about how they're perceived.
Romanowsky and her producer joined Refinery29 at 29 Rooms to talk about her film, Watching You Watching Me.
"Shatterbox Anthology is about power," Romanowsky told R29's Arianna Davis. "When we got the request to pitch something, I was thinking about an iteration of power that could be something new to explore."
Romanowsky decided to think about power in terms of perception: "I think that's something we take for granted — how [differently] we see things, and how much that affects how people see us. I wanted to explore that very literally and ask four different people, 'How do people look at you' and, 'How do people perceive you?'"
For producer Gabrielle Nadig, the story was important to her as a New Yorker.
"Pamela came to me with this idea of showing real people expressing how they feel about being watched or being seen," Nadig said. "As New Yorkers, we're constantly being stared at or staring at other people. I wanted to explore that through different subjects. Pamela and I were able to find some really different people to talk to about it."
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