Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Abie EKENEZAR. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Abie, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
I just had the opportunity to finish a documentary that I believe was absolutely inspiring and becamse even more so as we finalized the creative road in which it took. As someone who was in the military, I never believed in politics. I honestly thought it was a popularity contest where people who didn’t really care about the issues and what was plaguing our current society. I voted, but I always felt like even if I did, what did it mean? What was actually going to change? Because everytime I looked around me, things seemed the same. Women were still under represented in most of sociatal conventions and the patriarchy still felt like it could tell us as humans, what to do. When I was first optioned for the idea of brainstorming something political, whether it was a video podcast or talk show, I really wasn’t sure what direction it would head into. When we decided on the concent and the title of Bad Ass Women Doing Kick Ass Shit, it was a flow of words that didn’t quite make sense yet until we were able to round it out a bit more. Former Senator Mona Das was able to collect an intriquite network of women of color who were doing everything they could to fight against racism and make change which was something that I had never seen before and helped to relinquish some doubts that I had in supporting this project. Even with getting the different stories, something still didn’t feel absolutely complete until our editor brought up the amazing idea of incorporating young women who were trying to make their way in the world of political means. Using that, helped to round out the entire story, making it so much more than what we thought it could be. This project was and is very important to me and I’m glad that others are seeing that with the awards we have been winning.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve been in the industry since 2013. I started after I got off of active duty service from the US Navy, as creative work was something I’d always wanted to do, even though my start was from graduating with a Musical Theater minor and being a part of the Seton Hall University Touring Choir. I started my work with bakground acting which later turned in to principle work on shows like JourneyQUest 3.5, Retch which is on Amazon and other independent projects but I fell in love with writing because I didn’t see enough roles for me that I wanted to fall in love with. That writing passion turned into directing and producing during the pandemic with creative content from the BLM protests and eventually producting the documentary feature of BAWDKAS.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I think if I were to know about grants to help fund projects, I would have done more meaningful independent works. Feeling the need to always work FOR others was something that drove me to get more creative work not realizing that I could find monetary help to fund my own projects. If I would have known of this, I would have researched more and would have done that. There is a certain type of gratefulness that you get from funding and creating one’s own projects and I want to do that more.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to learn to stop saying yes to other people and giving them the credit of the hard work that I was doing and start saying yes to myself and wanting to expand my own creative horizons.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.babsek.com
- Instagram: babsek79
- Facebook: babsek79
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abie-ekenezar/
- Twitter: babsek79