Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Zahlit + Kat Belinfante
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Kat and I were set up on a friend date by our acting professor post graduation. We immediately clicked at a Starbucks on Wilshire, but Kat was moving to New York to study the Meisner Technique at the William Esper Studio. But soon I moved to New York as well, drawn by the city and theatre scene. We hit it off again in NYC and started to collaborate together, first on comedy sketches, play readings, and plays. We shared a similar sense of humor, a love for the craft, and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. We soon became creative partners. I had transitioned from acting to directing and fell in love with film, so I moved back to LA. Kat and I kept up our cross-country friendship and deepened that during the pandemic, writing and creating several projects together – sketches, a podcast called Love Criminal, and a screenplay called Friend Divorce. We knew there was something special about Friend Divorce and decided to embark on our first feature together. Making it is one of the best things we have ever done!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
We are a small, scrappy indie team of two and so setting out to make our first feature film together was a huge leap of faith. We have encountered obstacles every step of the way, trying to get industry support in pre-production, production, and post-production to no avail. Ultimately, we were able to draw from our creative community to help us each step of the way as we learned the ins and outs of making a feature on the job. We crowdfunded, held fundraisers at Kat’s yoga studio, recruited friends who were generous enough to lend their apartments for scenes, and ultimately called in every favor we had to help us make our vision a reality. It’s been a challenging road financially and workload wise, but we feel grateful that we have stayed true to our vision and kept our friendship intact!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We are very interested in relationships between people – whether it’s friendship, romantic, or familial. We joke that a big part of our creative process is downloading about our days, our thoughts and feelings, and everything in between – and it’s true! We get a lot of inspiration from our own lives and from the people around us. We’re both curious people and always trying to examine our lives and feelings. We love finding the comedy in dark situations, discovering the humor in the heartbreaks of life.
We’re most proud of making our first feature together. It was quite the feat, filled with joy, obstacles, learning, and excitement. While we’re proud of it creatively, we’re also proud of how we led the project and came out stronger as friends and creative partners.
What matters most to you? Why?
A big value of ours individually and as creative partners is community. We have spent years both in New York and Los Angeles building and cultivating a community of other creatives, and we have been so thrilled to bring so many of them onboard to be a part of Friend Divorce in various ways. From play readings to short films and plays to our scripted comedy true crime podcast “Love Criminal,” we have always found such joy in bringing on our friends and fellow collaborators onto our projects and meeting new people along the way. We believe in uplifting and centering voices and stories that often go untold and working in a truly collaborative way with everyone we bring onboard to one of our projects.
Stay tuned for more info on upcoming screenings in LA, NYC, and Atlanta!
Contact Info:
- Website: jenniferzahlit.com & katbelinfante.com
- Instagram: @frienddivorcefilm; @katbelinfante; @thereal_jz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY0fK2wiOW4
