Liberty Joy
Liberty Joy is an emerging filmmaker working between Austin,TX and New York City. She is currently a senior at Marymount Manhattan College in New York studying Film and Media Production. The film she is proudest of isWild Roses. Liberty was the writer and director of this piece. This film has had a film festival run, getting Honorable Mention and Quarterfinalist honors. The film had been selected for seven film festivals over the past year. Premiering at the “Seguin Film & Arts Festival” festival. Wild Roses is about an artist, Rose, and her boyfriend, Jesse, who attend a party with his friends, Jesse lets loose all his concerns with her career choices and her work. When she is finally fed up with his opinions, she leaves him to seek solace in the thing she values most: her artwork. Some of her other work includes being the director of photography on Peter Del Re’s Borsoné, and helping on many other projects as various jobs where needed. She tends to lean towards films that feel slightly otherworldly, in a reality that isn’t always ours.
Artist Statement
“I believe that fantasy in the meaning of imagination is very important. We shouldn’t stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination,” this is a quote from one of my favorite directors Hayao Miyazaki. This philosophy is how I approach film. I love to base my concepts in reality, have real emotion, real people, but with a sense of fantasy. Specifically with Dinner with Demons I knew that I was going to be working with a touchy subject that is very real for many people but I wanted to bring a sense of myself to it which is where we get an otherworldly location that could possibly be looked at as an Alice in Wonderland tea party. I like to show characters that cope in ways that real people cope, using nostalgia, comfort film, escapism in general. Getting too bogged down in reality can drown a story in my opinion. Going back to one of my favorite directors he has also stated “Many of my movies have strong female leads — brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They'll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.” This is also a philosophy that I take with me in my films. I am always very conscious about wanting to make films for women and girls as well as BIPOC people. I like creating characters that can save themselves, self-soothe, girls that are stronger than the people around them want to give them credit for.