Montecito resident Leslie Zemeckis is an award-winning filmmaker and social media influencer, and she loves chasing her dreams.

Among those dreams was going back to school and Santa Barbara City College last fall. The first time she walked on campus, she fell in love.

“I don’t do things little so I just signed up for full-time school with my schedule, but I can do it, I am going to just take one class,” Zemeckis said. “I am in class with 18-, 19-year-olds and I love it.”

Zemeckis spoke with journalist Josh Molina in the latest episode of the podcast Santa Barbara Talks. View by clicking here or on the YouTube link below.

Zemeckis is coming off release of her critically acclaimed film “Grandes Horizontales,” a period piece that tells the story of mid-1850s courtesans who accumulated wealth, power and property by breaking the rules, when women could not marry or work outside of their class.

“I wanted to push the limits of the documentary form,” Zemeckis said. “I don’t like to do my documentaries with a bunch of stills.”

She wanted the film to match as closely as possible the era in the mid-1850s, during the second empire in France.

“I hired these burlesque girls that looked exactly like the women they portrayed, and they are very comfortable with their bodies,” Zemeckis said. “I don’t think you can talk about courtesans without having nudity.”

The film shows how “gorgeous” the women were, she said.

“They used that to obtain their power,” Zemeckis said. “Married women couldn’t. They couldn’t have their own property. They couldn’t have their own house. They had no say so. Their husbands had all that power, but these women, the courtesans, had their own.”

Zemeckis also discusses her Instagram personality, where she posts daily about her life, including going to school with her children, and interests. She has accumulated more than 145K followers. Check out her bio here.

Joshua Molina is journalist who currently writes for Noozhawk and teaches journalism at Santa Barbara City College. He formerly covered politics and land use for the San Jose Mercury News. Santa Barbara Talks is an independently owned podcast where Molina looks to bring together voices from all perspectives to discuss and provide solutions to the challenges related to housing, education, transportation and other community issues. Subscribe to his podcast here and consider a contribution here.