AUB Equality in Film society’s first production raises awareness of STIs

Co-founded by Ella Leboff, a second-year student on BA (Hons) Film Production, the society was started at the beginning of the academic year in September 2025.

Ella says, “Three of us set up the society. Myself as the President, Hati Sutherland as Secretary, and Gabi Barrett as Treasurer. We made plans about mid-last year to set it up because me and other women on the course have experienced misogyny and gender discrimination.

“Our society is very discussion-based. Every film we watch, every education session we do, everything is all about discussion and challenging each other. And that's honestly what I think we really need in order to expand our minds and be more inclusive to people.”

The society was contacted by Respected, an charity dedicated to empowering young people to make healthy informed choices in the area of relationships and sex. Respected was looking to expand and update its educational resources, which included educational videos of young people talking about their understanding and experiences of sexually transmitted diseases.

“When Respected reached out to us, it was perfect timing really as we’d just started as a society to do production projects," explains Ella. "Up until now, we’d been hosting fortnightly film screenings, and fortnightly workshops but had wanted to expand out into making films.”

Beatrice Webber, a fellow BA (Hons) Film Production second-year, and the Society’s Production Projects Manager who produced the Respected project, comments “We thought this would be a good small-scale production for the society to start with.

“We worked with a small skeleton crew because sometimes people feel intimidated if there's multiple cameras and microphones in their faces, so we kept it small to try to make them feel as comfortable as possible.

“We also wanted to encourage collaboration between different courses and different year groups. For example, we had Sophie and Cherry, who are both in first year – they did camera and sound – and then we had Harit who was our editor. It was a really good experience for them and something to put on their portfolios."

Respected provided the team with a brief and some ice-breaker questions and supported the team with risk assessments.

“There were quite a few students who weren’t comfortable speaking on camera,” says Beatrice, “but we just reassured them that if they didn’t want it to be used after they’d seen it, then we wouldn’t.

“We did also get a few laughs from students as they were sharing their stories and captured some good banter between people as well. It was great for the students to meet Respected too. They were really impressed by what they did and thanked for them for their work.

“It's good that we're helping to open people's eyes to charities and organisations like Respected that support young people in ways that parents or schools might not.

“What we filmed is going to be part of something bigger that’s going to be shown at the beginning of a class to get people engaged. I think it's great to decrease stigma on these sorts of topics and bring these conversations into schools because I definitely know that myself and a lot of other girls would have appreciated more talk about sex.”

Ella adds, “I think that's also one of the reasons we took on the project. All the films we screen, we try and touch on these kinds of taboo topics. The first film we screened was How to Have Sex, which is by an AUB alumna and a really powerful film to screen first [...] that’s about consent from a girl that’s inexperienced in having sex and she's kind of pressured into having it.

“So, it was kind of perfect for our first production project that we were offered was something like this.”

You can find out more about Equality in Film and the society’s upcoming events on the AUBSU website or via Instagram.