Our Projects
What We Carry - a web series
An ongoing series of short, quiet films built around noticing how much women are carrying, both literally and figuratively, as they move through the world.
Women don’t love pockets because we want more things to carry. We love pockets because they make it easier to hold what we’re already carrying.
So take a look inside the pockets.
You never know what someone might be carrying.
Currently filming
Two members of the It Has Pockets! team are joining forces for The Front Porch Players’ upcoming production of Les Misérables. IHP East Coast Producing Partner Joanna Griffin will direct, with IHP Founder & CEO Maria Lee serving as Assistant Director. At the heart of this epic story of revolution and redemption are deeply personal stories of motherhood, family, sacrifice, and the lengths we go to for the people we love—making it especially meaningful to see this production take shape with mothers and women helping lead the creative team. We’re thrilled to bring our shared love of storytelling, collaboration, and theatre to one of musical theatre’s most powerful and enduring works.
Coming Spring 2027
Les Misérables - a musical
Three mothers—a former actress, singer, and dancer—have built full lives in the years since their artistic pursuits took a back seat to raising families. But when small, unexpected moments reconnect each woman with the artist she still is, they begin to wonder what it might look like to make room for both. On the Shelf is a warm, funny, and hopeful short film about motherhood, creativity, and discovering that some parts of ourselves aren’t left behind—they’re simply waiting to be taken off the shelf.
Currently in development
On the Shelf - a short film
The Healer - a feature film
Set amid the red clay roads and pine woods of Jones County, Mississippi, The Healer is a Southern Gothic psychological drama about a blind teenage girl, her charismatic preacher father, and a community bound together by faith, history, and secrets. As the past begins to press against the carefully maintained present, the film explores the complicated territory between spiritual giftedness and goodness, appearance and truth, justice and forgiveness.
Currently in development
Clinton Public Schools - a documentary feature
In 1970, as communities across the Deep South struggled with the mandate to desegregate their public schools, a newly formed school district in Clinton, Mississippi, quietly chose a different path.
Rather than dividing children among neighborhood schools, Clinton built a “community school system” designed to bring students across racial and socioeconomic lines into the same schools, moving through them together from their earliest years through graduation. What followed was a decades-long experiment in integration, high expectations, community investment, and academic excellence that would eventually draw national attention.
It Has Pockets! Productions founder Maria Lee grew up in those schools, experiencing this unusual system not as an educational case study, but simply as school.
This upcoming documentary will return to Clinton to explore the people and decisions that shaped the district, the generations who grew up within it, and what one small Mississippi community’s story might have to say about the promise—and possibilities—of public education in America.
Currently in development