Film Director Paula Goldstein
Paula Goldstein is a director and film maker who didn't set out to go into this field. She was a fashion editor for publications such as Refinery29, Purple and Dazed and Confused, until about three years ago. “I moved to LA to figure out what’s next and said I absolutely wouldn’t be doing the cliche thing of starting to work in entertainment…but honestly, filmmaking came to me, on discovering that American women are 50 percent more likely to die in childbirth than their own mothers... it was a story that I wanted to know more about and that others needed to know and it seemed like a documentary was really the only way to tell it. Thus I started on a wild ride.”
Paula is the director of the film Born Free, which she says was a baptism of fire. Making a feature length film is probably the best film school imaginable, Paula claims. “It was really important to me that the entire crew was female or non cis given the nature of the subject.” She believes this choice made the experience easier and says that everyone was always welcoming with ideas and knowledge but she didn't feel like asking questions belittled her control, as it might’ve with males on set. “I wasn’t fighting for my voice in a male dominated production as there were so few men around. There are certainly something’s I’d have done differently and been more organized about but there’s so much heart and creativity in it that it’s hard to say exactly where I would have made those changes.”
The best advice she was given about making a documentary was that she wouldn’t know the story until she had finished filming, and she says that they couldn’t have been more right. “I started imagining something gentle, just educational and in places fun for mothers to be. What transpired was a heavy issues film, with trips to Congress, and unpacking of personhood and racial bias in healthcare.”
When it comes to other projects Paula has been involved with would include little fashion films she has made over the years, but she says that until Born Free she would never have said that she was a filmmaker. “After Born Free, I’d say that I’m definitely on my way to finding my voice and something I’ll be good at.”
Paula is an ideas person and she has 1000 ideas a minute and that she is very specific about her taste. She says that a film lets you really explore that taste and ideas. “But the most challenging things are realities of time, money and location, which means in reality there is a lot of compromise.
“What transpired was a heavy issues film, with trips to Congress, and unpacking of personhood and racial bias in healthcare.”
Paula has created the Semi Retired as a home for all of the new projects she is working on. She has also created The Mother Lovers, a non-profit that she started with her friend and producer Rebecca Dayan to basically amplify and educate people about things such as birth, reproductive health and our rights. “We will be scaling up events and collaborations once it’s safe to do so given the current situation with Covid.”
When looking at her life in five years, she says that “if my life has taught me anything it’s that plans never work out the way you imagine. If I’m happy and healthy in five years that would be fantastic.”