{"id":2464632,"date":"2018-02-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/filmmaker-knows-coolest-women-planet\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T12:44:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T18:44:41","slug":"filmmaker-knows-coolest-women-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/books-media\/filmmaker-knows-coolest-women-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Filmmaker Sarah Menzies Knows the World’s Coolest Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

When she showed up in Kabul for the first time, five years ago, Sarah Menzies thought she\u2019d be making an upbeat short film about young women in Afghanistan learning to ride bikes. Easy. Fast. Maybe a ten-minute short at most. The women on the nascent Women\u2019s National Cycling Team of Afghanistan had just started going to international races. They\u2019d also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in the beginning of decade, when the power of the dangerously gender-biased Taliban was limited. They were on the leading edge of independence in a country where it was widely considered immoral for women to ride bikes. But as Menzies got to know the young women on the team, the country slipped back into Taliban control, and cycling for women once again became fraught.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was much more complicated than \u2018I\u2019m going to get on a bike and ride,\u2019\u201d Menzies says. \u201cThese women were young and idealistic. Their families told them, \u2018You\u2019re the generation that\u2019s going to change this country.\u2019\u201d And they believed that, but as the Taliban gained power, things have gotten more complicated. \u201cAs soon as the country starts to slide backward, it\u2019s women\u2019s rights that go first.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film grew in scope as the girls on the team faced threats, physical violence, and corruption from coaches. As things got worse, some of the members stopped riding and others fled the country. Menzies dug into the history of the Taliban, traced the marginalization of Afghan women, and continued filming as that changed the way the team was able to ride. She ended up with a feature-length documentary, which she\u2019s now submitting to film festivals. The forthcoming Afghan Cycles<\/a> <\/em>follows team members as they break cultural norms.<\/p>\n

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(Courtesy Sarah Menzies)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s developed into a story I never would have envisioned,\u201d Menzies says. \u201cSometimes I forget that we\u2019re making a movie about cycling.\u201d Now, instead of just being a narrative about learning to ride, it\u2019s about the choices Afghan women face when their freedoms are taken away.<\/p>\n

Menzies says she remembers being fascinated by war-zone reporters as a kid. She studied broadcast journalism at Gonzaga University in Washington but went straight into environmental nonprofit work after graduation. While Menzies was documenting the effects of the 2010 Gulf oil spill, she decided she liked the documentary part of advocacy work best, so she decided to try making a living as a filmmaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI quit my job. I didn\u2019t have much money, but I bought a little DSLR\u2014which I still have\u2014and I sailed with some scientists from Namibia to Uruguay studying plastic pollution,\u201d Menzies says. \u201cAs a sailor, I was in heaven. As an environmentalist, I was in heaven. As a new filmmaker, I was in heaven.\u201d But when she got home and tried to put a film together, the footage was shaky and she didn\u2019t have a narrative. After beating herself up for weeks, Menzies abandoned the idea of the plastics film and resolved to learn everything she could about shooting and storytelling. Her next big project, in 2013, was Catch It<\/a><\/em>, a <\/strong>ten-minute film about French surfer L\u00e9a\u00a0Brassy, who moved to Norway to follow winter swells. It won best short at the San Diego Surf Film festival and spent years on the outdoor film festival circuit.<\/p>\n

The success of Catch It<\/em> came with a wave of insecurities. Menzies worried that she\u2019d fallen into the role of token female filmmaker in an industry that tends to be male-dominated, especially in the outdoor world. \u201cI constantly had this voice in the back of my head saying, \u2018It\u2019s only doing well because I\u2019m a woman and festivals are getting shit for not having enough women and this is a film about a woman by a woman,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt took me a really long time to quiet that voice and accept that people might actually like the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

People liked Catch It<\/em> for the same reason Menzies was drawn to Brassy\u2019s story. It\u2019s a portrait of obsession without ego and working toward a goal that came without much acclaim. \u201cIt\u2019s not intentional that most of my films have centered on women. I try to think, \u2018If I came across this story not as a filmmaker, would I still be interested,\u2019\u201d Menzies says. \u201cYou look at whose stories aren\u2019t being told, and often it\u2019s women.\u201d<\/p>\n

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(Courtesy Sarah Menzies)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She has a knack for finding those untold stories. This fall, Menzies put out a film about Mirna Valerio, a self-identified fat black ultrarunner. The Mirnavator<\/a><\/em> focused on an email Valerio received 27 miles into a 50K race, which she read during a rest stop when Menzies happened to be filming. It was filled with vitriolic body shaming and threats. Menzies\u2019 film is about the harassment and the microaggressions Valerio encounters by just showing up to run and how narrow the scope of the outdoor world can be\u2014and how Valerio unflinchingly deals with that. Valerio says she and Menzies clicked as soon as they met, and they\u2019d like to work on more projects about race in the future.<\/p>\n

The previous May, Menzies released A Steelhead Quest<\/a><\/em>. She tailed amateur angler Terry Myers on her mission to catch a wild steelhead in a different North American river every month of the year, even though steelhead populations have dropped off by more than half since the 1980s. Myers, who is in her sixties, has the same focused drive and self-deprecating sense of humor that Menzies\u2019 other subjects have. And by focusing on her, Menzies is able to subtly tell a bigger story about climate and rivers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Menzies is closing in on the end of her own quest. It\u2019s not easy to make a five-year-long, independently funded film about women\u2019s sports in a conflict zone. She says Afghan Cycles<\/em> is almost done, but it\u2019s taken five times longer than she thought it would. There have been endless rounds of fundraising to make sure she could pay the camera operators and editors on the crew. Travel plans have crumpled\u2014Menzies says she\u2019s often told by fixers or interviewees that it\u2019s not God\u2019s will for her to shoot\u2014and the plot has completely changed. And then there\u2019s the guilt that comes with being able to leave a war-torn country when the people you\u2019re covering are forced to stay.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s thought about canning it but says the film feels even more pressing now because of the Trump administration\u2019s attack on Islam. \u201cIt started as this short, happy film about women riding bikes, but now I want to contribute to fighting Islamaphobia. We\u2019re told to be afraid of Islam, but in my experience, these people are the people on the ground actually suffering because of the Taliban.\u201d<\/p>\n

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(Courtesy Sarah Menzies)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Menzies says she feels a huge amount of responsibility, especially as an outsider, because the girls have entrusted her with their story and because they\u2019ve risked so much to be able to ride. \u201cThe work that I\u2019ve been the most proud of, the common thread is that the person is willing to do anything for their passion, whether that\u2019s L\u00e9a\u00a0trudging through snow or the girls risking everything to ride a bike. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m that passionate about anything,\u201d Menzies says, after talking about five years of sleepless nights and editing struggles. She\u2019s worried she won\u2019t be able to do justice to the persecution the girls faced. It has consumed her to the point that Menzies\u2019 partner has to remind her to break away from her editing cave on nights and weekends to say sane.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s exactly the kind of story Menzies likes: the obsessive ones that take over everything else. As Brassy says in Catch It<\/em>, \u201cIt\u2019s not just surfing a wave. It\u2019s the whole surf experience I\u2019m looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When she showed up in Kabul for the first time, five years ago, Sarah Menzies thought she’d be making an upbeat short film about young women in Afghanistan learning to ride bikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44696,"featured_media":2281441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"549f68c6a0b6f8b81e9e74d831e546f3","footnotes":""},"categories":[2575],"tags":[3290,2787,3126],"byline":[1156],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2464632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-media","tag-afghanistan","tag-bikes","tag-film","byline-heather-hansman"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Filmmaker Sarah Menzies Knows the World’s Coolest Women","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/books-media\/filmmaker-knows-coolest-women-planet\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/books-media\/filmmaker-knows-coolest-women-planet\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/13\/sarah-menzies-swamp_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/13\/sarah-menzies-swamp_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Books & Media","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"jversteegh"}],"creator":["jversteegh"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["afghanistan","bikes","film"],"dateCreated":"2018-02-27T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2018-02-27T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T18:44:41Z"},"rendered":"