Member Screening: What Are You Looking For? and Fragile Beauty, A Visual Journey

Join us for this month’s NYWIFT Member Screening Series featuring What Are You Looking For? by Shiv Paul (Director, Co-Writer) and Jiayi Ying (Producer, Co-Writer, NYWIFT Member). Also screening is the short documentary Fragile Beauty, A Visual Journey by Wendy Stuart Kaplan (Producer, Narrator, Host and NYWIFT member) and Alan Kaplan (Director). The filmmakers will be available for a Q&A immediately following the screening.

The screening series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. Screenings take place at Anthology Film Archives, followed by networking at a nearby bar.

What Are You Looking For? 
Jiayi Ying (Producer, Co-Writer, NYWIFT Member)
Shiv Paul (Director, Co-Writer)
59 mins, 2017

How do we go about finding a partner today? What do we look for in a companion? In an age dominated by virtual communication, how do we build truly intimate relationships? After 10 years of being single, filmmaker Shiv Paul finds himself wrestling with these questions and how the rules of dating have evolved in our technology-driven reality. Aided by insight and commentary from a diverse group of couples, psychologists, and experts in relationships, he sets out on a quest to answer how, in today’s world, do we go about building meaningful connections?

Jiayi Ying is a writer and producer based in New York. She’s written everything from profiles on up-and-coming fashion designers to podcast episodes on organizational culture to TV comedy scripts in the works. Ever since learning English from watching Lizzie McGuire in middle school, she’s wanted to work in film and television.

Shiv Paul made his first film, Queens at Court, in 2014. This 20-minute short on diversity showcased the lives of LGBT amateur tennis players from the international Gay and Lesbian Tennis Alliance tour. Jean, an ex-military serviceman with PTSD, Giselle a male to female transgender woman, and Chip an obese man discuss in interviews how tennis and its community helped them to overcome their adversities and to gain a sense of self.

Fragile Beauty, A Visual Journey
Wendy Stuart Kaplan (Producer/Narrator/Host)
Alan Kaplan (Director)
19 mins, 2016

Traveling to the remote Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia, the film explores the customs and day-to-day lives of the Hamar, Karo and Mursi people that have remained the same for centuries.  Alan Kaplan and Wendy Stuart discover a culture of tribal people who worship, live, dress, and adorn themselves as they have for centuries. The question is, “How different are they than us and how long will they remain that way?.” The challenges of their unique way of life, their extreme adornment, elaborate body painting and piercings are being threatened by the outside world.

Wendy Stuart Kaplan is an actress and model, who calls New York City home, the place where streets are paved with gold or quicksand, depending on where you stand and how high your stiletto is. When not working with major brands like Eileen Fisher and Nina Mclemore to produce clothes that fit real people (is there nothing worse than a jacket that feels like a straight jacket), promoting products that will improve your life (if I I’ve tried it you should buy it), dancing ’til dawn wearing a tiara (I am sure I am connected to the royal family), or creating characters on screen and off (any excuse to wear a costume), Wendy can be found ordering dinner on her smartphone. Her serious side (yes, there is one!) will find her promoting humanitarian causes which include interviewing people and animals at global not-for-profits to promote their causes, working with The Upper Delaware GLBT “making it better now”, starting a scholarship program at GAIT – a horse therapy program, and creating on-camera interviews for The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival to spread the word about endangered wildlife all over the world. At this point in her life, there isn’t any time for hobbies. She lives in an apartment with a husband, daughter, 2 angora rabbits, a cockatoo, and a long haired chihuahua. All of the animals roam free, like Wendy ….