Sometimes you just need a best friend to collaborate with to bring something beautiful and meaningful into the world. It’s tiring and painful for me to see women who feel they have to make it on their own to be considered valuable in the work they do. But there is magic in a community. One woman who left her mark while she was here was Lynn Shelton. She was the glue for many in the Seattle film community. She collaborated with the city’s filmmakers and musicians. They were her friends and she helped make things happen. That spirit is what we try to encapsulate with Cinema Femme. Our team understands just as the Seattle film community does that we are stronger together.
Introduced by Lynn Shelton, Seattle musician Mindie Lind and filmmaker Megan Griffiths (“Lucky Them,” “Sadie,” and “I’ll Show You Mine”) have forged an unforgettable collaboration with their short documentary, “View from the Floor.” The film is about Mindie Lind’s story as a disabled woman who is also very artistically talented, having grown up in a world where she was exploited for both things. Mindie’s imposter syndrome as an artist is triggered by her uncertainty about whether she was getting attention because of her talent or her disability.
The short film is a proof of concept for their feature and premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. You can watch their short film online as part of the Documentary Short Film program. Tickets are still available. You can also support the making of their feature film by donating on their website viewfromthefloormovie.com. All donations are tax deductible through their fiscal sponsor, the Northwest Film Forum.
I thought we could start with how you two met.
Mindie Lind (ML): I’ll let Megan take this one.
Megan Griffiths (MG): There’s a little debate over when we met, but we actually met through Lynn Shelton, who was a friend of ours. And at that time, Mindie had talked to her about wanting to do some sort of project about her life. Lynn said, “You should talk to Megan,” because she thought we would be a good pair, which of course was true. That was ten years ago. Since then, we’ve been working on this project in various forms, and ended up with this animated documentary version. We’re now almost two years into that process.
Do you want to add anything Mindie?
ML: Yeah, what she said is mostly true. [laughs] But the actual date we met is a largely debated topic. I do remember Lynn saying that you’ve got to talk to Megan about this. And then Megan and I have just been talking about it for 10 years. But there is a language around these things that I am privy to and Megan’s special skill is listening to other people’s stories and being able to take in an experience that isn’t her own. We’re both good storytellers too.
MG: I just want to add that there is no controversy about the date that we met because it’s just that Mindie doesn’t remember meeting me. I remember meeting her. It was Lynn’s 50th birthday party,
which Mindie was performing at. So I think you were in that headspace. We were definitely introduced there. But yeah, it was a memorable moment for me, at least [laughs].
ML: Lynn had the most amazing 50th birthday party where she basically had her favorite local musicians come and perform. And she was doing karaoke to her favorite bands’ songs. It was incredible. But she also asked some of us to sing. I don’t remember meeting Megan there, but I do remember having coffee with her.
MG: We hit it off from the start. It’s been a journey, but a really fun one. And we’ve been able to get to know each other in these deep and intimate ways, which has been an important part of the process of making this documentary. But it’s also just been part of the process of becoming really good friends.
Can you talk about the animation element of the documentary? Did it feel like a freeing experience?
ML: It was absolutely freeing. It was great because I could just tell the story. I could sit down and talk how I talk. Megan and I developed the best friendship in the process, and a common language around these subjects. It just allowed for a really good story to come out. And then after I told the story, we just needed to animate it. Animation becomes this exciting tool because there’s so much that we can show as far as the specificity of my body and how I move throughout the years. We could really get imaginative with showing things like exploitation, such as when all of those people surrounded me and their faces were microphones. It was great because we were able to have that illustrative language around some of the things you wouldn’t be able to show with live action.
And ever since we made that decision to animate my story, it feels like we’ve been doing the real version of the film. We were always kind of hovering around it, but this new approach has brought it all together, and it’s been really fun and exciting.
Can you talk about your collaboration with the animator, Joe Garber? Was that a fun process?
MG: Yeah, we love Joe. He has been such a dream collaborator. He’s just on board to experiment and try things. Mindie and I brought a lot of ideas to the table for this short and he’s very “yes and…” about
everything. He’s like, “and why don’t we do this?”, and, “why don’t I try making Maury Povich’s whole face a microphone?” He just had all of these great concepts, and we were all elevating each other in the process. Joe is just a delightful human being.
ML: It’s been really great to work with him. I love that scene of me in the band uniform with all of these newscasters around me. That was based on a real photo that I gave him. He took it and then he created that image out of it.
I love that and I noticed that the colors are so bright. It really just immerses you in the story, as does the sound design. What was your experience like, Mindie, of composing the film?
ML: The song, “View from the Floor,” is a one that I wrote. It’s two minutes and I called it my no legs anthem for a while. I called it that because it was the first song that I did in which I made clear, ‘this is me and this is my experience.’ It’s about being true to who I am and how I talk about it in this complex way. That’s what this film has kind of turned into. It is my view from the floor. And I love the tune of the song, so getting to use it as the base of this soundtrack has been really cool.
MG: We got to work with Jamie Hunsdale, our sound designer, who we’ve both known for a long time. Mindie has known him longer than I have. Having him put all of the sound design into the film was the last piece of the puzzle.
He just brought such a fun approach to the sound design. He was doing a lot of the sounds with his own mouth. When Mindie is dropping into the pickle jar, he’d make sounds like “bloop.” The sounds that he created complimented the world of the film with its vibrant animation, while adding a lot of humor.
ML: I loved how silly it got. I think that the sounds that we chose are really playful. It adds this level of humor. I always saw the George Clooney scene with a wink and a sparkle.
Oh my god, I love that. That scene involves “ER”-era George Clooney.
What do you hope people see in your film?
ML: This film is a proof of concept that will lead to a longer feature-length version, which is 97 minutes as opposed to five minutes. For the short and the feature we’re working on, it is really important that we’re reaching wide audiences with true things to say about disability.
And I really love this idea of my story portraying a very specific kind of imposter syndrome, which is a universal syndrome that people are experiencing at some level. But this one is actually about the exploitation of a disability, and that is a larger issue. I think it’s about the relationship people with disabilities have with the media.
The goal is to reach wider audiences. It’s how people look at this antihero and see someone who didn’t get it right, and is looking at the internalized ableism that has been put upon her. This short is just an example of that, which is exploitation of a person with no legs and talent, and how confusing that experience can be.
MG: I think Mindie’s way of telling her story is so approachable. She has a lot of charisma and charm, but is also no nonsense. It’s this window into a different life experience that I feel is really accessible. People don’t feel like they’re being scolded or instructed when they watch or listen to it. It’s just giving them this expanded view of a topic that they haven’t thought about before.
Mindie has a gift for speaking in a way that’s really approachable. She gives a lot of people more access to a different lifestyle.
You received a grant from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, which is so great. I love how the Seattle film community supports one another.
MG: We also got a grant from the Seattle International Film Festival for courageous
documentary filmmaking, which is funded by the Satterberg Foundation. That was another grant we received for this project. And now we’re in the middle of fundraising for the feature. Another positive that can come out of people getting exposed to the short version is that they’ll see it and then want to see more.
How can people support?
MG: People can donate now on our website, viewfromthefloormovie.com. There’s a donation link which is tax-deductible through our fiscal sponsor, the Northwest Film Forum. And people can contact us directly if they want to invest at viewfromthefloormovie@gmail.com
What do you think distinguishes the Seattle film community from, let’s say, LA or New York?
ML: I’ll speak to this first because I feel like I’m on a little more of the periphery than Megan is in the film community. Because Lynn Shelton was the glue that held everyone together, and we all orbited around her beautiful ray. I do think that Megan has also functioned in that way, as our film community is like small, mighty and largely women-run, which is also true of the city’s arts and music communities. Megan and Lynn were really instrumental with things like the web series $5 Cover: Seattle that made the Seattle music scene central to the film community as well. So I connected with both of them through my music. Lynn had posted about one of my songs and I was like, “What? Lynn Shelton knows my music?”
MG: Lynn made that web series, and that was the way I met so many musicians in Seattle. So many of them were on the soundtrack for my film “Lucky Them.” And Mindie’s husband is in a band that was featured in $5 Cover. I’ve known him a little longer than I’ve known Mindie. There’s a lot of overlap between those two communities. I feel they feed each other and support each other.
I mean, there’s just a lot of great people who are making projects. The underlying thing that works for our film community is that we are not in a giant industry hub, so that the people who are working in film in Seattle are doing it because they love film. Like there isn’t a big financial drive because it’s just hard to sustain. I mean honestly, at this point, I think it’s hard to sustain almost anywhere in film. But Seattle has never been that. We have a lot of films that go up north or go down south. There’s not as much that lands here. So I’ve always found that the people who come out to work on an independent film here are just really dedicated to filmmaking as a tool for storytelling.
ML: Seattle is such a good place to tell stories. It has influenced the look and the feel of the art that is made here. Filmmakers and musicians use Seattle as a tool in what they’re doing. It’s kind of a beautiful thing.
