Documentary "She is Herself"

The story of the documentary:

The 12-minute documentary explores the life of Jinfeng Huang（Golden Pheonix）.

Jinfeng is a woman from China who a much different life in New Zealand than the one she had in China. Jinfeng was the oldest child in her family, but her family wanted a boy. Therefore, she took on a lot of family responsibilities to fulfill their expectations. She paid for all of her and her sister's college tuition, as well as buying a house for her parents. She was admitted to Tsinghua University, the best university in China, where she studied and worked for 20 years, specializing in linguistics. But she didn’t like her major, and chose to become a teacher because of social pressure. Others thought it was a good career for a woman. She decided to move to New Zealand because she could not express her personality in China and was less influenced by the outside world than she was in China.

She is a Chinese medicine practitioner now who specialises in acupuncture and gua sha. She opened her new wellness clinic earlier this year. She feels that her mission is to help women heal in the West and that in the process of healing others, she is also healing herself. She felt that she had lived before in China for her parents, for society, for her children, never because of herself. But now she felt that after 50 years old was a new stage of her life, finally living for herself and no longer for others.

Why we want to make the film?

There are a lot of women in this world who are always trapped in all kinds of chains, they can't live the life they want, we hope that with our movie, we can at least bring them a little bit of courage!

It is never too late to live for yourself!

What will your donation contribute?

Help us feed our crew members

Transportation

Prepare a gift for our participant

The film festival entry fee

The rest of the money we will donate to Women's organizations

Meet our core crew:

Director and co-producer Yundi Lu: 大家好, Hello, Kia ora, I am an international student from China. I have a similar background and emotional resonance with the documentary participant, jinfeng, and her story has inspired me, so I especially want to share her story with you!

Producer Carolina Fuentes: Hi, I’m Lena, I’m the producer for She Is Herself. This documentary is about a woman’s journey, from leaving her home country to making a career change later in life- as an international student also starting my career in New Zealand she is an example of a woman who found success in taking big risks. We’re making this film to encourage woman to honor their passions and to pursue a life that is for themselves. 

Director of Photography Yulong Yang: Yo sup guys, I’m Yulong the DOP for this documentary, As a young person growing up in China, I think the decision that 金凤凰 made really changed her life, and I hope to be brave enough to make that decision in my life like she did, That's why I chose to involved in this documentary.

Director of Sound Tracy Tan: Hi everyone! I'm Tracy, and I’m excited to be handling the sound design and production for this documentary, from on-set recording to post-production. It’s an honor to work with such a talented team, and I’m proud to be part of this amazing production family!

Editor Katherine Wang：Hello everyone, I come from China, and I deeply admire those who dare to make changes and pursue their true selves, which is why I chose to work with this team. My colleagues are both compassionate and professional, and I am truly honored to work alongside them.

All our crew members are students from Victoria University of Wellington. Our crew is all female friendly and we want to document the most authentic female emotions and female selves and bring it to you!

Thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to read our boosted campaign, we really appreciate it! 

If you want to participate in our film, follow @doco_she.is.herself on instagram:)