The film tells the story of Hera, a 35 year-old woman. Her home is her world and her world is magical. Her loneliness is filled with objects. She forgets herself in her daily routine and gets tangled in her made-up micro worlds. Her difficulty to cope with social gender norms and an awkward encounter with a jeweler, lead her to buy a wedding ring. The ring gives life to an imaginary relationship, fleeting like a dream. As the relationship comes to an end, Hera goes back to her everyday life. Director Bio: Anthie Daoutaki was born in Athens, where she resides to this day. She graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts in 2016 and has been experimenting with cinematography ever since. She studied Film Direction in the Metropolitan College of Athens and upon graduating she had already made her first short film. As an artist, she has taken part in several exhibitions in Greece and abroad. In 2019 she was awarded the Artworks Fellows award by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

AS IF UNDERWATER

A wedding ring gives life to an imaginary relationship.

MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE weaves together interviews with the so-called “selfish” women who have said no to motherhood, a vivid tour through pop culture’s obsession with birthing babies, and Shechter’s own reckoning with her choice to remain childfree. You’ll meet a childfree Brooklyn rapper who wants to grow old like the Golden Girls, to a professor teaching a class on ‘not having children’ at the oldest women’s college in the US, to a woman whose unsuccessful IVF treatments led to a total life transformation–with side trips to bust myths about the biological clock and the fertility rate. MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE arrives at a time when global media teems with dire warnings about both declining birthrates and unsustainable overpopulation due to climate change—as well as ongoing threats to reproductive rights. Entertaining, thought provoking, and very timely, the film invites you into a conversation about who’s really in control of women's identities and bodies. Director Bio:Therese Shechter&nbsp;is an award-winning filmmaker and writer, and the founder of the feminist production company <a href="https://trixiefilms.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Trixie Films</a>.&nbsp;Her work fuses humor, activism, and personal storytelling to disrupt what's considered most sacred about womanhood.&nbsp;She is a Canada Council for the Arts grantee for her documentary "<a href="http://myselfishlife.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">My So-Called Selfish Life</a>,” releasing in 2021.&nbsp;The film examines what it means to say no to motherhood in a society that assumes all women want children, and exposes what’s at stake when women are denied the right to control their own reproductive lives.&nbsp;It is the third part of a trilogy which includes her films&nbsp;<a href="https://trixiefilms.com/virginity" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">How To Lose Your Virginity</a>&nbsp;(2013) and <a href="https://trixiefilms.com/i-was-a-teenage-feminist" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">I Was A Teenage Feminist</a>&nbsp;(2005). These documentaries have screened from Rio de Janeiro to Istanbul to Seoul, and her work is in the collections of over 300 universities, non-profits, and libraries. She’d love to <a href="https://trixiefilms.com/speaking" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">screen at or speak to</a> your class or organization.

MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE

Who are the “selfish” women who have said no to motherhood? A tour through culture’s obsession with birthing babies, and the filmmaker’s reckoning with remaining childree.

Dr. Michele Mekel talks to filmmaker, Therese Schechter.

Talkback with the filmmaker of MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE

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MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE + AS IF UNDERWATER

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Centre Film Festival. Live-Hybrid-Virtual. Nov. 1-7, 2021. Altoona-Philipsburg-State College, Pennsylvania.

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