In Julia Aks & Steve Pinder’s Jane Austen’s Period Drama, Estrogenia (Julia Aks) is about to become engaged to Mr. Dickley (Ta’imua). But when she gets her period and he thinks it’s a serious, life-threatening injury, she has to decide whether it’s worth educating him fully about how little he knows about what it means to be a woman.
Awards Buzz spoke with Aks and Pinder about how this has been received and whether there are any haters out there. Pinder shared that it’s been quite the opposite:
“Honestly, not from the Jane Austen people, I don’t think. I’m still in touch with my professor from college, Rae Greiner. She teaches at Indiana University, and she actually is one of the editors now of Persuasion for Norton Anthology, and she sent the script to a bunch of other English professors who teach these novels and who are the editors for the Norton Anthology. And they were all like, ‘This is amazing.’ They loved it. I don’t know how it strikes that balance. I don’t know how we manage that, but at least in the Jane Austen fan world, they seem to really enjoy it.”
Aks agreed but did laugh off one objection that’s come up:
“Most of the haters, and again, they’ve been very few and far between, it’s not like there’s a crowd of haters knocking on our door all the time, but it’s always about the menstruation bit. They’re like, ‘This is disgusting. This is horrendous. Shut this away. Don’t talk about it. You shouldn’t be talking about it.’ Which is just kind of proving our point with the film. So we’re unbothered by it all, really.”
Watch the video above to hear whether they’d like to cast actors and actresses who have starred in actual Austen movies for a feature version of their project and the great fun they’ve had along the way.
Jane Austen’s Period Drama is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Live Action Short.
