Bio
After graduating from The University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Writing and Visual Studies, Pepi started her career as a professional recording artist, releasing five albums, which received critical acclaim from such media outlets as NPR, KCRW, Pitchfork, MTV, Rolling Stone, and many others, as well as touring widely for over eight years. After leaving the stage due to a personal tragedy Ginsberg began working in the film industry and subsequently enrolled in NYU’s Graduate Film Program, where she graduated this past September. Her thesis film, THE PASS, premiered at Cannes, and has played at TIFF, BFI, Hamptons, and many more. THE PASS has been licensed to Canal+, The New Yorker (June 23’), Kanopy and The Criterion Channel (March 24’). Pepi is currently an NYU Production Lab Fellow and a winner of the 2023 NYU Purple List Screenplay Awards with her feature script HAAZER. She was a 2021 NYU Development Studio Fellow, a 2021 Princess Grace Foundation Winner and a 2021 IFP Marcie Bloom Fellow in Film. Her first film MISS AMERICA won first place at NYU’s Wasserman Awards and has screened internationally. Commercially, Ginsberg has made films for Gucci, Domino Records, John Cale (Velvet Underground) and many more.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
I’ve always had a complicated relationship to men - love and loathing, admiration and distaste, a desire to be them and a desire to be wanted by them - the world of men for so long - dominated my female existence. As a young woman, growing up after losing a father, I found myself trying to navigate the world of men with little success. Expectations of how to behave and how to look in order to be wanted often clashed with my desire to be loved and known for my mind, heart, ambition and even my pain. Like Caleb, I looked for approval from people who didn’t want to give it, didn’t need to. In my teens and twenties I settled into the safety of my loneliness and often acted out in self-harming ways born of this self-denial. It was only after a traumatic loss in my life, when I too set out on an odyssey to find what was missing, that I found self-acceptance, and ultimately love.
As a woman, I am excited to tell male-centric stories from a feminist perspective. I understand, first hand, how corrosive agendas of masculine exceptionalism adversely affect our ability to thrive. Like my short film, The Pass, HAAZER uses allegorical realism and suspense to explore the challenges of self-acceptance within an oppressive culture of toxic masculinity. We are a critical juncture in our culture where we are finally able to look at systems of power and choose a better way to live. This choice is a rejection of the toxic norms we were raised with and is the first step in dismantling the oppression of all people who wish to live freely and equally. HAAZER is an allegory for the refusal of systems of power that limit our ability not only to love and accept others but to love and accept ourselves. For exactly who we are. With HAAZER I am interested in exploring how we find our place in society on our own terms and more importantly, how we find ourselves. My greatest wish for HAAZER is that audiences find something recognizable and deeply healing in Caleb's journey. It is a story of radical hope.
SYNOPSIS: HAAZER
Caleb Beck is a queer freshman wrestler on scholarship at a Southern university, pledging ZETES, a wealthy fraternity for the 1% and fasting zealously to stay in his weight class. Caleb — from a lower class background — is an unlikely fit for Zetes. But his charisma and good looks have bought him a shot at joining the elite frat — and with it, he feels, his chance at a better life.
At a Zetes party, after a round of heavy hazing, Caleb meets the self-possessed Albert, and the two connect. Destabilized by their chemistry, and high off the molly his chapter president Brady fed him, Caleb returns to his pledge duties, fetching drinks for Brady and a mysterious friend - The Girl in the Blue Dress - who are sequestered upstairs in the house's alumni suite. Brady flirts with the young woman who takes Brady’s pills as Caleb waits in the room for his next order. Shortly Brady is called away, leaving Caleb and The Girl in the Blue Dress alone. The two share a moment of fleeting personal connection before Caleb blacks out.
Waking alone the next morning Caleb struggles to remember the party. Tossing it off as a lost night, Caleb continues to pledge and pursues a relationship with Albert. But when The Girl in the Blue Dress, Ana, turns up missing, Caleb becomes the prime suspect in her disappearance. Soon Caleb is ostracized and maligned by the fraternity, his wrestling team and his fellow students as he struggles to prove his innocence and hold onto his scholarship. As an investigation ensues, Caleb takes fate into his own hands - finding a chance at love and absolution as he attempts to clear his name.
PRODUCTION INFO
HAAZER is currently in the NYU Production Lab's Development Studio.
Email: pepiginsberghaazer@gmail.com
Instagram: @newagerealchange
Website: www.pepiginsberg.com