With Medusa, i wanted to explore the differences and gray areas that exist between owning power for protection and power for malevolence which, I think, is a narrative specific to the female character. It exists within characters like Maleficent, Carrie and Poison Ivy, and I wanted to use Medusa as a vehicle to dive deeper into this characterization.

For the longest time, I understood Medusa’s narrative being one of evil. She would turn men to stone as they dared to look upon her, enticing them with her beauty—using her feminine qualities as a trap—solely for her own pleasure. It wasn’t until i took a mythology class and did more research that I learned her powers were granted to her by the goddess Athena as a means of protection after she had been raped.

She, along with many other female characters, have been both demonized and glorified in different narratives, depending on varying points of view or slight actions and differing understandings behind their motives. Do they use their powers to keep themselves or others from harm or do they mean peril?

Medusa was something I thought up for an experimental art film class in college. This short film has a lot of mistakes and nuances and ideas that don’t fully develop, and I think that’s because experimental art was so different and new to me, that it translated as something that was going to be difficult to create. What I wanted to show became convoluted, but the main theme I was trying to show was too. I think I did the best with what I had: $200 and two days with the camera, so I’m still proud of the outcome. This is a story I hope to develop further in the future.