Articles by & about HEIDI
The Berkshire Edge - FilmColumbia 2018: Nine days, 50 films
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Heidi Philipsen was just another Schenectady mom, juggling two kids and a film career — bouncing between upstate and down, working and mothering and multi-tasking like crazy — when, several years ago, it all got to be too much.
"I was killing myself going back and forth between New York City and here. My daughter was 3, and my son was 5, and I was really ready to have a nervous breakdown — I mean, seriously," she said.
In 2007, having just graduated film school in Michigan after an early spell in German theater and television, she moved with her husband and kids to Schenectady for his job at General Electric. Not much was happening on the Capital Region film scene at the time, so she blitzed down to New York City four days a week for an internship with New York Women in Film and Television. In 2009, "Salt" arrived in Albany, along with a precision-driving job — she was trained on the spot — and a Screen Actors' Guild card. After that, the downstate blitzing resumed for driving gigs in "Tower Heist" and other films, and she began to wonder about other upstate female film professionals in the same bind: "I can't be the only one who feels like I'm on an island here."
This is a TU+ story. Click for more information.Then two things happened: She founded her own group, the Upstate New York Women in Film and Television, UPWIFT for short. Then she made a movie, "This Is Nowhere," an independent feature shot in 14 days in Palenville, Greene County.
Co-directed by Philipsen and Albany filmmaker Jon Russell Cring ("Little Bi Peep"), "This Is Nowhere" stars Gus Birney as Darcy, a teenage girl who helps her parents run a motel in the sticks. Also starring Johnathan Tchaikovsky ("The Wolf of Wall Street"), David Thornton ("The Notebook"), Paulina Singer ("The Intern") and Philipsen herself, it was shot this spring on a budget of $60,000 — and needs another $20,000 or so for post-production. The director hopes crowd-funding (seedandspark.com/studio/this-nowhere) will cover it.
"We're on the finish line. Man, I can see it," said Philipsen, who's also producing the film and counts film critic Thelma Adams as an executive producer. She aims to wrap it all up by next spring, in time for Toronto and other September festivals. After that? "We'll see. It's like betting on a horse."
Being a woman in show business is less a matter of horses than doggedness. "Some people will say 'no' to you, but the right people will say 'yes.'" At first, "This Is Nowhere" went nowhere, but she just kept knocking on doors — and she just kept talking until someone listened. Still, she said. It's tough.
More InformationContact Amy Biancolli at 518-454-5439 or abiancolli@timesunion.com or visit the arts blog at http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts
"I often feel like the ugly stepchild. I do. Because you're the one at the side of the room, and you have this project you're working on — but you're not the preferred candidate. Nobody really sees the potential in you, and I just feel like the competition's all the harder. But thankfully I'm a rebel, and I don't know any better, and I just keep at it — because there's gotta be room for us underdogs. And this is a film about underdogs."
That underdog determination drives UPWIFT, which started in 2012 — helped by NYWIFT — with a handful of women in the Hudson Valley. It now boasts around 150 members from Dutchess County to Rochester, and it's busy: At 8 p.m. Dec. 5, the group will present the Alzheimer's documentary "Looks Like Laury, Sounds Like Laury" at the Linda. (The film was produced by "Orange is the New Black's" Connie Shulman, wife of Reed Birneyfrom "House of Cards" and mother of "This Is Nowhere" star Gus Birney.)
UPWIFT is "so necessary, because I think quite often, in this field, a lot of it is who you know," said Jillian Fisher, an UPWIFT board member and a location scout who's worked on several independent films in the Kingston and Hudson area — including "Good Ol' Boy" with Jason Lee and "The Sisterhood of Night" with Kal Penn. "If you're starting off from a point of, you know, a group of guys that went to college together and are now filmmakers, it's just very easy to stay with that group of guys." UPWIFT helps. "There is probably very, very little that gets made in the Hudson Valley without somebody from the board being part of the production."
Boosted by state tax credits, the 518 film scene has grown "enormously," Philipsen said. On her own movie, "I made sure I hired more women than men at the top level." Having a male co-director gave the movie a balance. "I like to think that we did a better job together on this movie, bringing both genders and both gender perspectives to the characters, than we would have done as singular. Let's face it, we're all selfish human beings, and your world is the only world that counts — until someone comes up and says, 'No, no, no. It wouldn't have happened that way.'"
She and Fisher both shared their war stories of disrespectful men: a blame-shifting assistant director in Philipsen's case, a shouting location manager in Fisher's. "I could not help but wonder," Fisher said, "if I were a burly guy, would he have behaved that way? I don't know. Because I'm not."
Being a mother adds yet more complications, Philipsen said. "Most women in film, I'll be honest with you, if they're actually going to be in productions or whatnot ... they don't have kids. Because it kills the career. But I couldn't notbe a mother. It has molded me as a person."
Her son is now 13; her daughter will be 11 in November. The've helped her grow in the process. "I think they made me a better filmmaker, a better producer, a better actress, yeah," Philipsen said. "Because I can multi-task like nobody's business. And I can deal with temper tantrums pretty well."
abiancolli@timesunion.com
"I was killing myself going back and forth between New York City and here. My daughter was 3, and my son was 5, and I was really ready to have a nervous breakdown — I mean, seriously," she said.
In 2007, having just graduated film school in Michigan after an early spell in German theater and television, she moved with her husband and kids to Schenectady for his job at General Electric. Not much was happening on the Capital Region film scene at the time, so she blitzed down to New York City four days a week for an internship with New York Women in Film and Television. In 2009, "Salt" arrived in Albany, along with a precision-driving job — she was trained on the spot — and a Screen Actors' Guild card. After that, the downstate blitzing resumed for driving gigs in "Tower Heist" and other films, and she began to wonder about other upstate female film professionals in the same bind: "I can't be the only one who feels like I'm on an island here."
This is a TU+ story. Click for more information.Then two things happened: She founded her own group, the Upstate New York Women in Film and Television, UPWIFT for short. Then she made a movie, "This Is Nowhere," an independent feature shot in 14 days in Palenville, Greene County.
Co-directed by Philipsen and Albany filmmaker Jon Russell Cring ("Little Bi Peep"), "This Is Nowhere" stars Gus Birney as Darcy, a teenage girl who helps her parents run a motel in the sticks. Also starring Johnathan Tchaikovsky ("The Wolf of Wall Street"), David Thornton ("The Notebook"), Paulina Singer ("The Intern") and Philipsen herself, it was shot this spring on a budget of $60,000 — and needs another $20,000 or so for post-production. The director hopes crowd-funding (seedandspark.com/studio/this-nowhere) will cover it.
"We're on the finish line. Man, I can see it," said Philipsen, who's also producing the film and counts film critic Thelma Adams as an executive producer. She aims to wrap it all up by next spring, in time for Toronto and other September festivals. After that? "We'll see. It's like betting on a horse."
Being a woman in show business is less a matter of horses than doggedness. "Some people will say 'no' to you, but the right people will say 'yes.'" At first, "This Is Nowhere" went nowhere, but she just kept knocking on doors — and she just kept talking until someone listened. Still, she said. It's tough.
More InformationContact Amy Biancolli at 518-454-5439 or abiancolli@timesunion.com or visit the arts blog at http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts
"I often feel like the ugly stepchild. I do. Because you're the one at the side of the room, and you have this project you're working on — but you're not the preferred candidate. Nobody really sees the potential in you, and I just feel like the competition's all the harder. But thankfully I'm a rebel, and I don't know any better, and I just keep at it — because there's gotta be room for us underdogs. And this is a film about underdogs."
That underdog determination drives UPWIFT, which started in 2012 — helped by NYWIFT — with a handful of women in the Hudson Valley. It now boasts around 150 members from Dutchess County to Rochester, and it's busy: At 8 p.m. Dec. 5, the group will present the Alzheimer's documentary "Looks Like Laury, Sounds Like Laury" at the Linda. (The film was produced by "Orange is the New Black's" Connie Shulman, wife of Reed Birneyfrom "House of Cards" and mother of "This Is Nowhere" star Gus Birney.)
UPWIFT is "so necessary, because I think quite often, in this field, a lot of it is who you know," said Jillian Fisher, an UPWIFT board member and a location scout who's worked on several independent films in the Kingston and Hudson area — including "Good Ol' Boy" with Jason Lee and "The Sisterhood of Night" with Kal Penn. "If you're starting off from a point of, you know, a group of guys that went to college together and are now filmmakers, it's just very easy to stay with that group of guys." UPWIFT helps. "There is probably very, very little that gets made in the Hudson Valley without somebody from the board being part of the production."
Boosted by state tax credits, the 518 film scene has grown "enormously," Philipsen said. On her own movie, "I made sure I hired more women than men at the top level." Having a male co-director gave the movie a balance. "I like to think that we did a better job together on this movie, bringing both genders and both gender perspectives to the characters, than we would have done as singular. Let's face it, we're all selfish human beings, and your world is the only world that counts — until someone comes up and says, 'No, no, no. It wouldn't have happened that way.'"
She and Fisher both shared their war stories of disrespectful men: a blame-shifting assistant director in Philipsen's case, a shouting location manager in Fisher's. "I could not help but wonder," Fisher said, "if I were a burly guy, would he have behaved that way? I don't know. Because I'm not."
Being a mother adds yet more complications, Philipsen said. "Most women in film, I'll be honest with you, if they're actually going to be in productions or whatnot ... they don't have kids. Because it kills the career. But I couldn't notbe a mother. It has molded me as a person."
Her son is now 13; her daughter will be 11 in November. The've helped her grow in the process. "I think they made me a better filmmaker, a better producer, a better actress, yeah," Philipsen said. "Because I can multi-task like nobody's business. And I can deal with temper tantrums pretty well."
abiancolli@timesunion.com
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