Looking For Leia Highlights Women in Fandom

The “Looking for Leia” Kickstarter is in full swing! What is it you ask?

“Looking for Leia” is a documentary that will explore the girls and women* who have made Stars Wars the pop culture powerhouse that has flourished over the last forty years.

*Note from “Looking with Leia” Kickstarter:

Girls & Women = anyone who identifies as such. Women of cisgender experience, women of transgender experience, masculine of center/butch women, queer women, straight women, people who identify as gender non-binary or gender nonconforming and feel that their story belongs in a film about fangirls. Gender is a big, complex concept: For this project, the shorthand “women” and “female” includes ALL the kinds of women described above. 

We first spoke to “Looking for Leia” visionary Dr. Annalise Ophelian about the film on Fangirls Going Rogue, and you can hear more about the Kickstarter on the most recent Hyperspace Theories. She recently spoke to Comic Book Resources about the stories she wants to capture with this documentary:

I understand why folks think their narrative of a homogenous fandom is a true narrative. I think they’re very subjective, and as a filmmaker who’s very interested in experiences of marginalization and how people survive and thrive within those margins, fandom’s really compelling because as you say women have always been Star Wars fans. I’m talking with women who were Star Wars fans in 1976 when the novelization of A New Hope came out and folks went into the theater in 1977 knowing who these characters were. The fanzine culture in general was tremendously female led. There was a huge amount of women doing fanzine contributions and editorial so when you shift the lens and the focus I think you suddenly get to see a lot more in view. There’s something compelling as well about women getting to tell their own stories, so while this is a story of folks who might be considered on the margin or on the outside, when you’re in that margin it doesn’t feel like other, it feels like the place where you live. I like being able to tell stories from that position.

There are some cool perks with this Kickstarter. Here’s a sample of a few:

Find out more:

• Kickstarter page
• Looking for Leia website
• Facebook
• Twitter

• Author
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Fangirl

Tricia Barr took her understanding of brand management and marketing, mixed it with a love of genre storytelling, and added a dash of social media flare to create FANgirl Blog, where she discusses Star Wars, fandom, and the intersection of women within Star Wars fandom. She is co-author of Ultimate Star Wars and Star Wars Visual Encyclopedia from DK Publishing, a featured writer for Star Wars Insider magazine with numerous articles on the Hero's Journey. Her FANgirl opinions can be heard on the podcasts Hyperspace Theories and Fangirls Going Rogue.

Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.

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