“We have to appease them so it doesn’t escalate”: Sheffield filmmaker wins best director for short film ‘Safe’
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00:00 [WATER FLOWING]
00:04 My name's Debbie Howard, and I run Big Buddha Films
00:06 in Sheffield.
00:08 I currently have a new film called
00:10 Safe that's doing the film festival circuit at the moment.
00:13 And it's tackling violence against women and harassment.
00:16 I don't know a single woman that hasn't experienced this issue
00:23 many, many times in their life, from smaller things
00:27 to very serious situations.
00:31 But what I really wanted to do with Safe
00:33 was look at making a film where there
00:35 wasn't a specific sexual or physical assault.
00:39 It was more the fear and threat of how that could very quickly
00:43 escalate, and how women have inherently
00:47 learned from a very young age to appease the situation so
00:52 that it doesn't become worse in order to keep ourselves safe,
00:56 and how that's something that we just have to carry with us.
00:59 It'll probably be late as usual, you know?
01:02 Yeah.
01:04 So years and years ago, when I was quite young,
01:07 I lived in London.
01:08 I was an actor.
01:10 And I had to go across London on the Tube
01:13 early on a Sunday morning for a rehearsal.
01:15 And I was on the escalator coming down into the station.
01:19 And on the escalator going up were two men.
01:22 And they looked at me, didn't think much of it,
01:25 because they were leaving.
01:26 And just as the doors were closing, these two men got on.
01:30 And my heart sank, because I knew
01:33 that they'd got on for me, because they were leaving.
01:36 And I just thought, oh, god.
01:38 And one of them came and stood right in front of me.
01:41 And the other one stood right there by the glass panel
01:44 looking in.
01:46 And I was absolutely terrified.
01:49 It felt like forever.
01:51 So this is what I mean about the instinct thing.
01:55 I didn't look at them.
01:56 I stayed looking at my book, pretending to read.
01:59 And then when the doors opened at Finsbury Park,
02:01 I got up and ran off.
02:03 And I was shaking.
02:05 And I've always wondered, you know,
02:09 what would have been the outcome of that had I challenged them?
02:13 Had I said, what are you doing?
02:16 Get away from me, or if I got up and moved.
02:18 And that's what I mean.
02:19 It's like we're always trying to intrinsically assess what
02:24 will keep us the safest.
02:26 It's quite difficult to report after.
02:28 I mean, what would I have said if I'd gone to the police?
02:30 Some men got on the tube, or somebody
02:32 spoke to me in a bus stop.
02:34 Or, you know, when there are situations that don't escalate,
02:41 it's difficult to know how to process them,
02:43 because people don't really understand or see it as a crime.
02:46 But it's still absolutely terrifying.
02:48 So I guess that's what inspired me.
02:52 One of the first festivals we screened at
02:54 was Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York.
02:58 And we had an amazing response to the film there,
03:02 which blew me away, really.
03:03 Then at the award ceremony, we won two awards,
03:06 which I was absolutely delighted we won--
03:08 Best Director and Best Screenplay, which was amazing.
03:13 [WATER SPLASHING]
03:16 (water splashing)