V for Victory

Film Makers

Tessa Germaine

Director & Producer – Tessa is a recent graduate of Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production and minor in Leadership Studies. Tessa has always had a passion for sharing stories about female leaders and had been traveling to festivals around the world with her award-winning short film Rosie, depicting a fictionalized origin story to the feminist icon Rosie the Riveter. From this film’s success she found Raya Kenney and they quickly became friends over their mutual passion for women’s history. Tessa has been working as a Producer’s Assistant at Cake Plate Productions for the past year, focusing on documentary and non-fiction productions. She also has been freelancing as Production Assistant with Lifetime, Amazon, and ABC Studios. This will be Tessa’s first time directing a documentary.

Instagram: @tessa_germaine

Website: www.tessagermaine.com

Alex Joyce

Editor – Alex graduated from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production with an emphasis in post-production. Her first experience in documentary was as a Post Production Assistant for Brewmance. Most recently, Alex has been working as an Assistant Editor for World of Dance and an upcoming music performance app. She also freelances as an Assistant Editor for E! News. Alex won Best Editor at Tallgrass Film Festival in 2020 for her work on a short comedy film Out of Stock, which has traveled to over 25 festivals in the past year.

Website: alex5joyce.wixsite.com/editing

artistic approach

Imagine seeing the end of one person’s story while watching the start of another’s. That is what V for Victory intends to do. This documentary will follow the linear structure of Raya’s journey building the memorial from fifth grade project to actual monument. Similar in aesthetic to Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower, we will see the juxtaposition of a teenage girl embarking into the tumultuous world of government while also attempting to live her own life. Intercut within this narrative will be the individual stories of various women who worked during WWII. These stories will include interviews with the women, their families, and archival/family footage. Each woman will share her experience during the war and afterwards, explaining how working a job for the first time changed her perspective on life and her own self-worth. These stories will be depicted similar to historical figure documentaries such as RBG and Gloria. The women being showcased are between 95 and 105 years old. We hope by sharing their inspiring stories alongside the tale of a teenager working hard to honor their legacy, we will show the progress women have made over the past 80 years and how far we still must go for true equality.

project stage and timeline

In June 2021, the filmmakers flew out to Washington DC to conduct interviews with Raya and the major players involved with the memorial. They got to interview Mae Krier, a riveter from the war, as one of the historical figure stories and got to watch as Raya met one of the women, she is working so hard to honor for the first time. Now the filmmakers will spend the summer editing their footage and scheduling interviews with other women from WWII while waiting for the memorial’s legislation to be reintroduced to Congress. They plan on following Raya throughout her journey of building this memorial so they can share her story with the world.