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>> "Touchy Feely" will be showing this year at SIFF.
It's a homecoming of sorts for Shelton, who grew up in Seattle and went to the school of drama.
Enrique Cerna sits down with Lynn to talk about her latest film, her career, and women in film making.
>> Let's talk about touchy feeling, because it really is a movie about touch.
>> Yeah.
And about healing and intimacy, and there are a lot of different characters that are all on journeys of self-discovery that are more parallel than they may seem at first.
>> Typical Lynn Shelton.
>> Fare, a little bit, yeah.
But in a very different form than my last few films.
I also edited this film by myself.
I started as an editor in my career and edited the first two films.
With this film, I really felt like just getting into the driver's seat.
I just thought I'm gonna go for it.
>> Sundance, was that the big breakthrough?
>> Yeah.
That was the life changer.
I was a teacher, a part-time teacher, for years and years, almost a decade, before sundance.
And after sundance, I did not have time to teach anymore.
I was able to start to dip into other waters, such as getting to get some guest TV directing spots, my very first one being on "mad men," which was completely surreal.
And then switching to half-hour comedies, I did this great show called Ben and Kate, and then an episode of new girl, and then I'm going to go do another one.
So talking to some other people about possibly doing some other shows.
And it's a nice kind of counter balance to the independent film world.
>> Enrique: Let's talk about film making here in Seattle.
And you have made this the base.
>> I was raised here, and then I did get my B.A. from the school of drama at the university of Washington.
And I went to New York a couple years later.
I was in New York for a good 10 years, but always knew I was going to come back to Seattle, so I did that at the very end of the '90s.
And had no idea what my creative life would be like here. And I found that there was already this nascent film making community at 911 media arts and northwest film was new at the time.
But there were a lot of people who were interested in trying to engender a really strong community of local film folks.
And I've just seen it really come into its own.
And when "sister sister" was invited to be the gala opening film at the film festival last year, it made me so happy and proud, that I felt like the whole Seattle film scene was being recognized.
>> Enrique: And was it the first Seattle-made film to be premiered?
>> It's a 38-year-old film festival, and they had never had a locally produced film open their festival.
So it was a really big deal.
>> Enrique: Do you feel that there are different kind of challenges that women face in doing feature films, versus what the men face?
>> Well, it really depends on the world that you're making it in.
The studies that have been done recently came out show that if you're in the studio system, in the sort of entrenched Hollywood studio film system, where the films are millions and millions of dollars, and a lot of the bureaucracy and studio heads are men, it's real patriachy.
And then there's the world that I'm in, the more independent film.
A lot of it has to do with you can make your own way.
The technology now is such that you can make really high quality looking films on equipment that is not going to cost you, you know, every limb in your body and your first-born child.
Ive I've never felt any obstacle, especially being in Seattle, because there are so many women producers and film makers in Seattle, that if you are say, you're a gentleman who wants to shoot films, or work on films as a grip or an electric, and you're not comfortable with a woman authority, you're not going to work in this town.
>> Enrique: Well, with that in mind, what do you tell those aspiring film makers?
>> The first thing I tell people who are starting out is to get yourself on set, other people's set, and to help other people make their films, so that you can learn and keep getting better and better and better, and go make movies too.
And again, you know, you can do that, people can make movies on their iphones these days.
You just don't have an excuse to not do it.
>> Enrique: Lynn Shelton.
Thank you for your time.
And thanks for putting Seattle on the map.
Thanks for watching.
>> Thanks so much.