Joyce - Short Film

Our Story 

Joyce, an immigrant Filipino nanny living in NYC, makes a friend that puts an end to her loneliness when she needs it the most.

We decided to start this crowdfunding campaign in order to raise funds for the following aspects of production: Light, cast and crew, set design, rental of camera gear, transportation, location, rental food and post-production needs as well as festival submission fees.

We begin production in one month from now.



The Filmmakers Bio 

Nora Jaenicke





Nora Jaenicke is an award-winning filmmaker from Italy. She has worked on multiple films that have been screened at festivals all over the world. She is currently in pre-production for her first feature film. She lives between Cambridge and New York City and is an avid traveller, continuing to explore the world and telling stories about it, whenever she gets a chance.

Nora's Letter of Intent


With this film, I am hoping to raise awareness of the condition of immigrant nannies, who often have their own children back in their home countries, while living and working for very wealthy families.

There may be no more peculiar employer-employee relationship than that one that exists between parents and nannies. I am interested in the paradox of such a relationship constellation. We have mothers that are too busy for their own children and nannies that are also unable to take care of their own biological children back home.

By showing Joyce torn between two worlds, not just physically, between New York and Manila, but also emotionally, between Lisa, the girl she takes care of and her own daughter; I wanted to shed light onto this paradox: A tragic example of the fallout of capitalism and global inequality.

In Order to work as nannies in the USA, mothers and daughters from the Philippines leave their families so that they can do the type of "women's work" - caring for the young, the elderly, and the infirm - that females in affluent countries no longer want to do or have time to do. They function as what Maria Ibarra, a professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University, calls "emotional proletarians!: they "produce authentic emotion in exchange for a wage".

Nanny care is often represented as a rich mother's indulgence, but, in a country that provides few options for affordable child care, the practice just as often represents a negotiation between two working mothers, dividing their labour between work and parenting and rarely succeeding completely at either.

In my story, Lisa's mother fails at being there for her daughter when she needs it the most (she doesn't know her favourite food or colour, but Joyce does). On the other hand, Joyce hasn't seen her daughter since she was a baby. She is now ready to go to high school!

Sadly this story is the story of many Philipino nannies who, at a very young age, are already conditioned to aspire to overseas jobs.

The script is sad but quite telling about the hard work of women who are so far from home to work for wealthy families. Ultimately it is a story about the connection between two lonely immigrant women in New York city, their longing for home and the hope for a new beginning: Their relationship. Which ends up being more than just a friendship.


CAST AND CREW

Producers

Kim Münster

Kim Münster is a creative producer, director and Managing director of the German film production Treibsand Film for independent documentaries and feature films for cinema and also for the education and information sector. We produce personal films at eye-level with the protagonists which deal with social, socio-critical and predominantly political themes.

Her first feature-length Documentary "Coming and Going“ by Treibsand Film was funded by Film and Medienstiftung NRW and Sundance Film Fellowship and has won numerous awards.

The mother of a little girl was a grantee of the Mediengründerzentrum NRW 2015 and received the award "High profile women", "Frauen mit Profilim Bergischen Städtedreieck“ 2016 from Kompetenzzentrum. She completed her film studies in 2013 at the University of Dortmund with her feature-length documentary ‚Nur das Beste.‘

Parallel to her studies, she worked as a freelance filmmaker, hence her particular strength in camera work. Over the course of time, she moved towards auteur filmmaking and production. She perceives filmmaking as the process of her personal growth through examining people and themes: ‚I always had this incredible urge to understand people and their actions. The cinematic medium lends itself for creative exchange with perspectives and realms that are unknown to me. This way I learn something about the others and also about me.‘ She is a member of the association Filmbüros NRW.

Aalok Rathod

Aalok Rathod was one of the Producers on Nora's latest film Between Seconds that has won more than 30 Awards all over the world. He has his own production company in India which focuses on films that deal with humanitarian issues as well as entertainment.  He is more and more interested in developing international co-production between India, Europe and the USA down the road. Joyce will be his second collaboration with Nora as a Director.  He lives in Cambridge, USA. 

Danielle Campbell

Danielle Campbell / Vision Light Productions - Vision Light Productions is the Producer / Production Manager of JOYCE the short. Vision Light Productions, produces and manages Feature, Short, Documentary films and Commercials in New York City. Danielle Campbell is an award winning International Producer, Director and Cinematographer from the British Commonwealth ... Grenada, West Indies. She has worked in moving picture industry in film, tv, indie film and commercials wearing many hats over the years. She entered the film industry as an actress and soon became SAG/AFTRA union actress after smaller roles in commercials, film and tv. She started in the theatrical New York theater scene as a young girl performing on stage in musicals, stage soon followed.

She has studied under many NYC teachers including John Strasbourg, Alice Spivak, Heidi Miami Marshall to name a few. She worked as a Director, Assistant Director, Production Manager with Off Broadway plays as well as with the producing team of the Drama Desk Awards for 4 years. She has been the cinematographer for many brands and commercials, and has Directed / Produced various indie shorts and feature film. She is a Co-Producer on Nora's other family drama, Whales the short / feature length in Europe (Germany & Italy). In March 2018 her animated/live action feature she produced called "Apocalypsis" received distribution nationwide through Lionsgate to Best Buys, Art Theater & Museums as well as online streaming through various channels.

Vision Light Productions next short film stars Christian Ferreira from the Paraguayan hit Los Buscadores. Next producing features include 2 other "Untitled" features in the USA (Action and Contemporary American Drama) and as Producer/Director for 2 other passion film projects in pre-production for the last year for the Indian/American & Israeli/American film market.


Richard Stein

Richard A. Stein is a molecular biologist whose work is focusing on understanding microbial populations and their interactions with humans. He grew up and was trained as a physician in Romania, and subsequently completed a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Over the past two decades, Richard has written extensively about host-pathogen interaction, epidemic and pandemic preparedness, and the cross-species “jump” of microorganisms, and has explored other topics at the interface between biomedical and social sciences, such as HIV/AIDS in victims of human trafficking. Richard has served on the editorial boards of several international journals, and he recently wrote his first book about the dynamics of microbial transmission in populations and co-edited the 3rd edition of a landmark book about foodborne diseases.

Richard’s work on human trafficking inspired his passion for storytelling through film. In addition to studying screenwriting at The New School, he is currently involved in several film projects as a screenwriter and as a producer or associate producer. A narrative feature film for which Richard is the screenwriter, INVISIBLE DESTINIES, is currently in pre-production and tells the story of victims of human trafficking that after being rescued return to trafficking on their own. Another film project that Richard is writing is a dramatic narrative about ancestry genetic testing and the way it may shape family dynamics and relationships. The first movie for which Richard was an executive producer, a virtual reality short drama, HOW YOU SEE ME, premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in October 2017. Richard lives in New York City.



Akshay Chawla

Akshay Chawla grew up and currently lives in Mumbai, India. He’s a businessman aged 20 and currently is known for working on renewable energy sources in India. In 2017, he produced his first film with award-winning director Nora Jaenicke, deeply exploring the phillipino culture and further plans to explore a variety of genres while bringing a sense of charisma and working towards inspiring others to bring out their acceptance to society’s version of unrealistic goals and ambitions through examples on and off the screen.




Director of Photography 

Dominic Chan

Dominic Chan: Born in Taiwan and with roots in Hong Kong, Dominic grew up in Vancouver with a strong pursuit in the Arts. He began studying acting and filmmaking, however, his natural flair for photography soon became evident and his innate passion for photography took over.


Cassandra Seidenfeld as Joyce 

Cassandra is a graduate of Columbia University 2013, a Professional Actor, Humanitarian and an athlete. She is also active philanthropically. Cassandra received the 2016 Women4Empowerment Gold Medal of Honor for her philanthropic work focusing on human trafficking and empowering women and young girls. She has also been nominated to be on the Advisory Board of LDEO (Lamont – Doherty Observation Earth Conservatory) as a direct affiliation with her interests at Columbia University. 

Cassandra has appeared on TV Shows, in Indie Films, Feature Films and on “Person Of Interest”. She secured a role in the Guild Hall’s Labor Day Production in East Hampton, New York where she performed in “The Night of 75 Stars”, alongside Alec Baldwin and Bob Balaban, and she is slated for the roles of Ambrosia in Blue Fly Film’s “Bite Me” (2018), Iris Braun in Tyriq Mustaqyuim’s “From Sin To Salvation”, and Constance in Gregory Brown’s “Eastern Citrus”.

Cassandra is a graduate of the 2- Year William Esper Conservatory. Current roles include Mystique in Rob Margolies’s “Weight” starring Randy Quaid and the completion as Johanna Monevata in The Arkansas Repertory Theatre / Robert Hupp’s “August: Osage County” in July 2015.

Cassandra has helped to organize numerous charitable events in the New York area. She feels deeply that it is her privilege to give back for the many gifts she has received in life and is active with many organizations that she supports. Among them are: Global Advisory Board Member & Global Ambassador of Women4Empowerment, New York Advocacy Board Member of the Sphinx Organization, Co-Chair of The Women’s Project, Brand Ambassador of Forde Skincare, Co-Chair of The Chita Rivera Awards, Co-Chair of the New York Dance Alliance Foundation, Chairwoman of Fashion4Development’s Modavie Club, Global Curator of Fashion4Development’s Online Shoppe, Producer of the First Women’s Fashion & Film Festival, Producer of the Oberon Theater Ensemble, and Board Member of The Tank Organization. 



Perks and Rewards

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