Award-Winning Short Film 8

Julie Gould ’10

Spring 2012 · Comment · Share

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Author Joan Didion said grief is a place none of us know until we reach it. Alumna Julie Gould reached it the day her husband, Clay, died from colon cancer in 2001 at age 29. As a filmmaker, she captured a glimpse of it in her experimental documentary 8, her husband’s number when he played and coached baseball at UT Arlington. The movie follows Julie and her then-10-year-old daughter, Logan, on the anniversary of Clay’s death. While she made the film to complete graduation requirements for a degree in video production, she found the process cathartic. “I did not necessarily want to make this film, but I felt that sharing some personal moments from a tragic situation was something I needed to do to move forward.” The film, which places Julie and Logan, now 11, in partially scripted fictional and nonfictional settings, won the Texas Shorts Jury Award at the 2011 SXSW film festival in Austin. Co-directed by Daniel Laabs, the melodic short has resonated with audiences at film festivals across the nation. “8 lets you peek into a grieving mother and daughter’s world and gives you time to interpret what you are seeing,” Gould says. “I knew some people would not relate, but I also knew some would. And to those some, it may open needed conversation.”