reviewThe film “Ridden by Nature” is a tribute to the elements that compose the earth, bringing to the forefront the currently strained relationship of humanity with the earth’s ecology in hopes to inspire state and community action in response to the current environmental crisis. ‘Ridden by Nature’ witnesses the immense power of the earth’s biosphere through the art of film, dance and music, revealing the fierce and sacred existence of these visually stunning environments. With its expressive location photography and sophisticated editing style, Ridden by Nature is a transporting experience. Using specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional inquires, Kathi Von Koerber creates an emotionally complex meditation on the relationship between man and nature, resulting in a work at once raw and deeply poetic. Kathi, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium? Ridden by Nature is an ode to the earth and all the life and beauty it spawns. Dancing in nature is a vehicle to allow the earth to communicate through us. The dancer becomes the extension of the earths energy and the synergy co-created within this symbiosis. In the 90s I spent time in China studying calligraphy and landscape painting. The ancient masters depiction of nature in its magnificence though monumental paintings, the human is always depicted as perspectively small and as a part of nature. The word "Qi" in Chinese that we in English can translate to spirit, the force of energy is what binds these realities together. It was with this intention the film was made in order to preserve the longevity of this union and prayer. It is a form of remembering where we come from and where we wish to go, being a citizen and guardian of this beautiful planet. Ridden by Nature is the result of a ten-year collaboration between Kathi and and butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi. Can you talk about your creative relationship with Atsushi and how it has evolved through your work together? I met Atsushi in 1997 when touring Europe with my interview by Caitilin Tennant cinemakers // 11
Kathi Von Koerber performance group at the time called the Ransom Corporation together with the co-creators the Kuffner brothers from New York. It was at a time where we as group of young artists, dancers, filmmakers from all over the world where exploring movement, poetry, and ritual as a form to interact with nature, and awaken the viewer in their dialogue with what is greater than us humans on earth. Upon meeting Atsushi and Hiroko in Paris, it was a kindred meeting, where it seemed inevitable that we needed to dance together, a collaboration was waiting to be unravelled. I there upon invited him for 7 years consecutively to hold workshops in the wilderness of upstate New York, where we together pushed the limits of dancing in nature with people from all over the world. Dancing in Rain storms, dancing on rivers, camping and dancing for 7 days, performances in the the rawest of nature, with no music, no choreography; attempting to reveal each dancers carnal existence to the soul and spirit of the earth. As a filmmaker it seems imminent to archive these times, and slowly it gently evolved into the making of the film 'Ridden by Nature'. Taking the time to Travel and visit sacred sights around the United States and dance the requiem and memory of the earth and its different biospheres. In the many years that we have known each other, we have inspired one another and mirrored one another in dialogue with nature and creation. It has been a great inspiration to find a brother like Atsushi who is willing to be a spirit dancer throughout all the ties of his life. There really is no other way. We have been deeply impressed with the structure of the film. Did the film unfold before the camera, or were you already aware of these various pieces of the puzzle? Thank you. As a film maker and dancer I believe in improvisation. And that is only a term given from an analytical point of view. In other words "Leave space for the unspoken to be expressed or seen". When filming in nature under the conditions we were working, where storms come and go, currents of wind and water change, temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius, ice bergs falling; you can only hope and pray that we will be at the right place at the right time. It is also a very joyful and demanding process to watch the signs and listen to what the earth would like for us to A Living Landscape cinemakers// 40
you develop your filmmaking style? The filmmaking style is based on the philosophy of Chinese landscape painting and the flow of Qi. One breath, for each letter in Calligraphy is an entire single brush stroke. It embraces the entirety. Nature is greater than man, and honoring the infinite perspective of nature, and its grandeur. James Ewen the camera man I met in Mozambique on the island of Archipelago, while he was filming the manatee under water. I was struck by his independent spirit, and interest to film such a shy and hard to see mammal that is so special. When I invited James to join us in Alaska to film humans on icebergs he was inspired, and the challenge of binding an environmental film with humans spirit essence was close to filming animals in nature. I am a romantic and thanks to great teachers as Benjamin Hayeem in the 90s in New York and inspirations as Maya Deren, the editing was a magical process of weaving time, motion and color with sound. As in Butoh allowing us to move beyond limitation of form and reason. Can you describe the shooting of Ridden by Nature? What was the most challenging thing about making this documentary? Making Ridden by Nature was not a challenge in fact it was a dance. It is true when we started in 2003 I never thought of how it would complete itself. I was open. It was a story that needed to be told. As an independent production we danced to film, and we filmed to dance. What I find more challenging is bringing it into the world, as an artist I am not a marketing agent. The film is here to last and be seen by those who are willing to search and see. I find the film industry sometimes quite disheartening, as the genres it classifies as film, take the imagination away from the viewer. If you were to ask a film documentarian if this film is a documentary most would say no. There for it is a dance of trusting to simply make a film of this review demonstrate on film. For example when we were planning the trip to Alaska and Hawaii where the majority of the chapters Air, Fire, Water and Spirit were filmed we were planning to film the Volcano Pele as its lava enters the sea. One of the few spots on earth where this is accessible to see. When we finally flew to Hawaii it was the first time in 26 years that the lava flow stopped flowing into the sea that week. Incredible the message. Somehow the direction of the film became even more focused on the necessity, importance and sacredness of water. The spirit of water, the life force, the vitality and the respect towards its immensity. In essence the water cools and calms the fire in us, in this earth and in reference to all our emotions, our fiery society alchemized of gold, money, ore and petroleum to mention a few. There were so many of these stories and signs, you could ask about each location and there is a story that we can tell; either by how the energies of the earth spoke to us, or by the guardians of the land, or the myths and history that came with the specific sights. The earth is a very very sacred land, and it speaks. Butoh is a vehicle to listen to the source. In effect I give thanks for the earth being so patient with us, for us to learn to read what might look like a puzzle. Your film features intense editing and camera work, reaching spectacular visual heights reminding us of Vittorio De Seta's experimental documentary cinema. How did cinemakers // 41
87openspace
The history departs from a style, which I began in the short " The right of the potatoes ", and that I want to continue in my following full-lenght films " Love to death ", and in the adjustment of " The life is a dream ", that I call "degénero", in him break the procedure of the kinds, are checked, and interbreed, conjugating any resource of another art, industry or way: television, theatre, story, poetry, photography, video - art, documentary, animation. It is this mixture of orders, representations, kinds, and styles, and his break in them, his degeneracy, his principal characteristic. The histories have always the external vision, and he hospitalizes it, and also they can have a multiplicity of points of conference, of other prominent figures. One gives entry to the life in all the beings, animals, human beings, plants, objects, spirits, or beings of the universe. And sometimes, royal prominent figures can intervene in his own name, or we them can recreate. Here we have recreated Caddy Adzuba, the journalist who fights to improve the situación of the women in the Congo, submitted to the sexual violence. My idea, in a beginning, was to bring it in order that it was doing of yes same, but ultimately, I desisted for the shortage of money, and for the complication. The meeting arose when we are in the women's meeting, the club of the 25, invited by Isabel Betina Caparrós, and with that I coincided with Ouka Lele. The two, we ask for permission him to count his history. Barbara Allende realized his video - art "Porquoi", and a great installation, and I changed one of the histories of the movie and incorporated his testimony and his fictitious figure. Flights it is a story, is a movie of road, and is of also of adventures, is a tragicomedy (nearby more to the world of the baroque theatre in romantic scenes: caves, abysses, desert). It is reviewinterview by Alex Cavallari cinemakers// 11
Escapes mixture says especially cinema, theatre, literature and art. And inside the cinema, adventures, comedy, fantastic, road-movie, drama. And the literature it enters inside a magic realism. His origin is a story, a statement of trip, in the style of the Odyssey, of the Amadís de Gaula, the Cuisse, or of " The manuscript found in Saragossa ". In fact, each of the prominent figures who are appearing in the statement have a guide's function, in this emotive labyrinth and of ripeness of the personage. In his writing I thought very much about the film of worship: “The night of the hunter”. Art is present because China is a photographer, and hence the beginning of his speech, in which performance is mixed, and within it, the circus. The final idea is to make a video-art, streamlined and eventually returning to their photographs. In the film's three trips, with its evolution: the outer with his adventures in the real world, the internal (maturation and resolution of the character) and his look as artistic author. Sometimes, one has used theatrical resources, the actors are caught in immense spaces and at the same time limited. To I peeped of a throat, under a bridge, in a cave, in the desert, in the forest. The whole movie is at the same time a flight and a jail, and always a representation. The game of the representation is permanent. In the ravine, China finds a beggar who is looking at the bottom, since lost, sat like in a theatre, contemplating this space of the nature, since others they would see a movie. She accompanies him in this to see in the distance, and tries to begin a conversation, which turns into the impossible one for the difference of languages.. The dramatic moments are punctuated ticket absurd, surreal, or black, or elements of another genre comedy, is how if metiéramos a saw or an ax on the drama and lyrical moments. Routed shooting has been slow because we ran out of money during filming and I had to put all my savings, borrow from banks and loans from friends to finish filming, editing and posproducir. The film, initially also had parts of the documentary, but eventually that part has been taking shape in an external project, the documentary "Funerary Rituals of the newly dead," a name also has Mercedes Gaspar cinemakers // 40 Spain, 2015
making collages, and photos, and write poetry, short stories, plays, but increasingly the efforts of production, postproduction, and distribution, eat more creative side. Surely my interest mockumentary, comes from my work on television. Some things should seem casual ... The film should carry a sign saying "this film does not follow the rules of cinema, but any means of expression." Also wanted the actors seem trapped in a space without walls, as in a theater. For example when they, at night, are looking to Mus, in the abandon station. Or at the scene under the bridge, the child and her abductor, or at the scene of the ravine with China and the Tramp. Like the ghost of freedom, (el fantasma de la libertad) Buñuel film`s the characters are trapped and can not leave inexplicably. I had been writing the adaptation of "Life is a Dream" t of death, and tragedy that ends in comedy and vice versa, they also have to do with the Spanish Baroque theater, with the tragicomedy. On the other hand I'm from Aragon, in this area is normally a sense of black, ironic, absurd humor.... The surreal element is cinemakers // 19 exposure to China in the film, which is transferred from the screen to reality, and premiered in Madrid and Zaragoza so far, and we expect to accompany the film distribution. Silent and hidden behind her camera, Mercedes Gaspar leaves the floor to her characters, crossing the blurry line between fiction and documentary in her intense film Escapes. Mercedes, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium? I studied Image and Sound (audiovisual communication) at the University Complutense in Madrid. I studied also Spanish History at the University (UNED) and Direction for Cinema, Television and Radio at IORTVE Madrid and Theather direction at RESAD in Madrid. As a child I was part of theater groups and studied piano and music theory. I've worked in television TVE and other audiovisual media. I`ve worked as a teacher at the university and other film schools. I've always been a producer, director, screenwriter, and I worked on editing my films. I also made costumes for film, and I like
Between fiction and documentary also present in my work, whether in image, humor, topic, other senses...The modern viewer is already used to the mix of genres, codes, languages... We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Escapes? In this film there are many issues, and different parties as often happens on a trip ... One part, with regard to the confrontation of death came when my parents died. In fact I realized that I had never experienced grief, and that's why I took a long time, too, that sometimes you live so out of reality, customs traditions, which in some facts of life, not even you know as solved. Modern man lives in his individuality, very separate groups, communities that might support you. Sometimes it is simply by immigration, others by the abandonment of any tradition, customs...that leaves you only to life, like China. This film originally had more presence of "Funeral Rituals of the recent dead." Then I separated part documentary and is a job I'm doing gradually. And part of fiction, history. It was the funeral rituals nombrede of the newly dead, in the work of the main character's own Escapes, in his video-art end, based on photographs. On the other hand it wanted to incorporate the denunciation of the violence against the woman. Because of it there uses the royal history that Caddy Adzuba had counted on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In a beginning it was a escape of her of the pain caused by the loss of the father. Later I was giving me account of which he
was escapes of other things, and of other problems. And I saw that many of the prominent figures in the movie are fleeing also of his reality, of the life, of a situation... Your observational style proofs to be perfectly fitting as a counterpart of the emotional rollercoaster your characters live through. How did you achieve this balance? There is no possible compromise, but they achieved by his positivism, and for simplicity, for its natural goodness, his innocence .... but the viewer sometimes feels attacked. I also wanted to appear at many points on the screen the image being cut with a knife, that is burning or breaking even with music. While watching your film we got a sense of this very observational style that combines tragic and humor in a very innocent way. Is that something you aim for? In the film all the characters are quite innocent, Raul, China...In our capitalist western company the individuals can continue being children in more time. They must not fight, or the life be looked. They have not matured. China in addition displays of an immeasurable optimism, and of an innocence that comes from his artistic world, of his evasion towards the creation. I am fed up of that the prominent figures are rare, wicked, selfish, et ... because of it it wanted the simple, and innocent some, which enclosed can do bad jokes as Raúl. The point of view of the protagonist is kept, she looks at the reality, and we see at what she looks. Because of it there are moments in which the landscape happens, while we listen to the music, she feels, and thinks. I have looked for a more oriental narrative tempo, of I remind the personage. These innocents life treats them badly. My idea always was to produce a contrast. You go from a slap to a kiss, slap a smile. I wanted the viewer to feel attacked, which occurs in the film say a classical melody tempo broken by moments of twelve-tone music. The movie melodrama with the story is mixed. cinemakers // 49 Your "escape" is not only physical. First and foremost, your film is a surreal, metacinematographic journey. Can you introduce our readers to this idea behind your film? The star has been escaping the reality, building an artistic world, avoiding his feelings, avoiding pain. In his escape all these feelings arise, and her escape this should solve those other runaways who had not solved the other side on their way encentra other characters that must also confront his life, and stop running, face their fears and problems. Actually as subtopic of the film is the father's death, and his confrontation of the protagonist with her, becomes a metaphor further, that flight from death, present throughout the film ... As in the film "The Seventh Seal" ”Det sjunde inseglet'' by Bergman, death is present, accompanying life. What was your research process like? How much of what we see on screen is based on facts and records? Mercedes Gaspar
The film is fiction, except the stories of women in the residence. I wanted the same Caddy Adzuba Told the story of That Woman in Congo, as is Told us in a meeting of women, but That was not possible.. The Next, another story is based on some documentaries, Although the history of the experiences of Mustafa(Mus), has to do with a holiday in Morocco, Where We Talked with some children living sex tourism, but in the film, the story Mus, it is more a story in the style of the Arabian Nights, however Which hides a harsh reality. The bogeyman, was a character I always thought I Should Go in animation, is the record Whose character is more symbolic. What was the most challenging thing about making this film? The hardest part is being a producer and director at the same time. Get the money. The new equipment, programs and facilities in cameras, editing and postproduction, that change continuously. He was too accustomed to 35mm. Your cinema is rich of Waiting for Gaspar’s “Life is a Dream” references. From the first time we watched Escapes it reminded us of Agnes Varda's fluidity in storytelling. Can you tell us your biggest influences and how they have affected your filmmaking? Overall the surrealist movement and especially Luis Buñuel, are always present in my work. In this work he has more influence the Mexican Buñuel”Los olvidados” Los forgotten, and “Simón en el desierto” Simon in the desert. Writing the script was the clearest reference The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton. I also thought Miracle in Milan, by Vittorio de Sica. Also Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray , and indian cinema in general. But actually influences also come from other fields. I wanted to tell a story the way of the Odyssey, of Don Quixote. or “Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse” by Jan Potock. I wanted the protagonist scour, and follow his particular ordeal, as he found the stories of others. I always thought of all Chinese films he had seen. Also in Takeshi Kitano. “Kikujir”o. I think much of the type of character of Amelie by JeanPierre Jeunet. Of course, I thought of Agnes Varda, "Sans cinemakers // 40 interview
adptación “Life is a Dream”(la vida es sueño) by Calderon de la Barca, and Love to death, a story of fantasy genre, with my script. By assumptions have many creative projects, in which I move to tiny steps, or advanced for years ... cinemakers// 19 Mercedes Gaspar (Spain) toit ni loi" and that encouraged me to tell a story like this. On the other hand I was always thinking about during assembly in analis tales Propp You are not only a film director: your work ranges from poetry to theater. Can you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinaire nature of your art practice and thinking? I like to tell a story mixing genres, styles, and any kind of art, I do not think only in commercial cinema, locked into formulas. The viewer is smart enough to appreciate works of any gender and type, and is also prone to innovation and experimentation. You can follow a story telling from different media and arts. Thanks for sharing your time, Mercedes, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind? I have two feature films, I'm looking for co-production of the
Off Screen I tried to find a language for the film - not just telling stories. I picked the Picasso painting because it said more than I could explain. I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That's what I try to do all the time. Agnes Varda
I intended to use repetition for the film to resemble a memory, or a dream, where the elements come back and forth, as memories and dreams are constructed by repeated moments or meshes memories and thoughts. This also highlights the idea of the rupture that is about to come. Gabriel lives in this schematic world, where things repeat incessantly, the presence of Theodora is to him part of this routine, however the imminent fracture is being felt, the main action evolves in a very vulnerable time. The routine, the repetition is about to be broken. Rather than telling a story with a thick plot, I wanted to use a very simple one, a main basic idea and then develop it. My aim, in Deserts, was to let the details fill the gap of a plot, small objects, references, repeated actions, would give the audience a thread to let their interpretation develop. There’s also the idea of quotidian gestures and details that come into the film. While writing the script, I was keen on using vain, banal and everyday items, movements, and actions, as starting points of the scenes; waking up, pouring, coffee, lighting a cigarette, changing clothes, teeth brushing, taking a shower. These small things, are present throughout the film repeatedly and stand as everyday poetry, enhancing the intimacy between the characters, and making the arrival of the separation all the more present and harmful. These gestures are repeated actions that relate to memory and how we remember by repetition. Your cinematography seems to be deeply influenced by the emotional potential of color, it reminded us of Théo Angelopoulos's work. How did you develop your visual style? While preparing the production I was interested in Hopper’s composition and lighting, how his characters relate to the space in wide compositions, and how this generated feelings, rather than a proxim ity to the character’s faces. I paid atten tion to how Hopper depicts archetypical characters, their faces do not show any emotions, as if the space would do it for them. However the paintings transmit different impressions to the viewer: tension, exclusion, melan choly. I wanted the spaces to evoke the tension and melancholy that is growing between the characters, only by their relationship to the space and their positions within it. I asked the actors to prioritize body language and movement in relation to the space. Also in Hopper’s paintings, boun da ries, between interior and exterior spaces are materialized by windows, doors or light contrast. The light break through, stands for introspec tion, I wanted to do the same, make the light and the windows a boundary between the characters, their space and the out side world, as an impossibility of esca ping the (inner) world they inhabit. Although I didn’t have Angelopoulos in mind when working on Deserts, I love his work. I re cen tly discovered The Weeping Meadow and found myself immerged in visual and dramatic poetry. Every single shot is a gem. I’ll certainly carry it in my mind for further work. Both characters were born at the same time and I believe they don’t exist without each other, and it is perhaps what makes the core of the film. What will they do when they are not together? They seem to belong to each other and yet they are growing apart. I believe that is what makes their relationship endearing and what pushed me to develop the charac ters. I thought about Theodora as a lively character, clumsy dreamy and independent. I like female characters that you can’t really seize, that seem to be away already. I believe Harriet did that very well and she besides gave a different and interesting tone to the character, making her less absent minded much more present and somehow stronger. I think the shots came into my mind as I was writing. I had always a shotlist in mind and then it was developed with the camera department. During rehearsals, I encouraged the actors to find the rhythm of the scene, as in a choreography, in order to bring to life the shot I gave them indications of pace, and a rough idea of the space, indications of movements, and then let them play with that so they could compose the shot. How to fill with move ment, or immobility a space, a wide shot? That was the challenge I brought to the actors. Fortunately as the production was delayed, we had a few rehearsals to work on this matter. We started by rehearsing half scenes without dialogue, finding the right movement, the right energy that would allow the shot to develop. One of my main intentions was to put emphasis on duration, favoring long static or slightly moving takes to show the develop ment of an action, to see the bodies moving within the space, …..IRENE.GOMEZ.EMILSSON………………………
embracing it. I was interested in how quotidian gestu res, that become poetic and allow the audience to observe, distantly yet enga ging with the characters. One of the long wide and static shots, in which Gabriel, decides to dance in order to catch Theodora’s attention was inspired by a scene in Permanent Vacation by Jim Jarmusch. Although in this case along with the camera department we decided to go even wider and let the character much more within the space creating a dynamism while the actor is moving and an anxiety of the body during the beats a sense of wait and despair. Mark, Sandra, and I decided to use mostly wide lenses to create a sense of space and allow the characters to move within the set. The deep focus allows the characters to blend the subjects to the space. When shooting long takes, the actors are the ones that need to find the rhythm in order to make the shot work dynamically. One of the shots was actually inspired by the actors and their movements. When Harriet, took the Dylan Thomas book and started to play with it, and Charles started to follow it made me think of a shot that would follow the book, grasping the actor’s movements within the space. In order to create contrast and a sense of closeness, I also went with closer shots at specific moments, using longer lenses in which we would feel the intimacy between the characters. The closer shots allow, to share the intimacy with Theodora and Gabriel and then breaking it by going to a much more detached an observational and composed vision of the relationship. As I said before Jarmusch has a big influence in the construction of frames and the overall structure, but I think it also had an influence in the construction of the dialogues and the way the charac ters communicate. Juan Suarez in a book about the American director explains how in his early films “relationships develop in the realm of the unsaid little is actually verbalized unconscious minute gestures, body language and reflex reactions, these tell of a growing closeness and an even tual falling out” .communicate via other means than usual words. Poetry, prayer, gestures or in a mixture of foreign languages as if the everyday language was obsolete lacking of meaning and there was a need of using alternative ways to express themselves, in outbursts of words, contrasting with the dominant silence. Besides Jarmusch, there’s of course Godard’s ideas that I always keep in mind. As in Godard’s early films especially Une Femme est une femme or Le Mépris, the scenery the set becomes structurally part of the film. It is not me re ly there as a place where the characters live, but it is part of the mise en scène, almost as a character. For example the set in Deserts is used as a split screen space , using the partitions of the set in order to create two different spaces within the frame the characters are separate yet thinking about the other and the departure. They are alone, in the fragmented spaces, but always in relation to one another. This is highly inspired by Godard’s film le Mépris, where the cha rac ters a separate from each other within the frame by doors, partitions walls, objects, furniture and this is stresses the discord between Paul and Camille. The domestic space with its inherent structure is at the core of the action, and physically demonstrates how the characters relate. I like taking pieces of ideas,and refe ren ces, playing with them, making them work in other ways. I like being playful with the films and books I like, as an exercise of memory, homage, and above all as way of constructing worlds and stories with meshes found in other screens, other drawers or pages. ................................................................................
The emotional and physical continuity of a dancer was very important, so I decided to shoot with three cameras at the same time, each of which played different functions simultaneously or asynchronously. In order to utmost decrease the amount of cut, maintain actors’ physical and emotional state, and guarantee to maximize expression. I never took cameras to the training room, but I could catch each shot on set. I decided to let the camera dance with the dancers that eventually helped me to reach my expectation. What was the most challenging thing about making Room? The most challenging thing was the last scene when everyone pushed down the room. It was an like adventure to implement the last scene because we had to transport the intact room outside. On top of that, we needed a deserted land, which was flat enough to put down a room, and large enough to make sure that it would still look spacious after the walls were pushed down. All of those plans had to be accurate, logical, and strategic, which made us go crazy. Most importantly the last scene had to be accomplished in one go. So we arranged one person behind each wall with a transparent rope and they could not appear in the image after the wall fell in with our wide angles lens camera.Phew! Now that was a challenge I can't forget. However, in the end, we chose to use five cameras to take the last shot, and people that controlled the rope stood 50 meters away from their assigned walls. Our well planning paid off and the scene wasn't as hard as we had imagi ned. All the other scenes were shot in a room that was set up on stage. Another challenge for me was taking two positions during the shoot, I was the director, and the cinematographer, which was a like a double-edge sword for “Room”. The advantage is that I could control both the image and the emotion; however, it gave me a huge amount of pressure and distraction to communicate with actors from time to time.As top dancers in China, all the actors took part in performing and choreogra phy for Beijing Olympic Opening Cere mony. While as a movie director, direc ting dancers is quite different from directing professional actors, since dancing movie allows physical movements and emotional expressions happen simultaneously. How to protect their physical and emotional status was my key concern, and I have learned a lot from such challenge. We would like to explore now your latest film Mandala, a co-production between China, Tibet and USA. How did you come up with the idea for this work? Life is like a mystery for me, and every thing that I came across in the journey was a piece work of reincarnation. I first went to Tibet when I was 18 years old, every moment I could feel my soul was being touched and comforted. The gorgeous plateau scenery and Tibetan religious commissions seemed familiar to me while every cell and pore in my body told me that I was back home. Tibet felt like a home away from home. So, from then on, I went back every year, like visiting my own home. Mandala is a journey story about loss, death, recovery, and reincarnation, which happens from the United States to Tibet. The little trinkets in the film were fragments of my growing experiences, which included my understanding, the puzzle, and an undying desire towards reincarnation. Such a personal story was meaningful to me. The movie is about healing from this chaotic world and enlightening from the past, present, and future. A girl who lost her lover embedded the feelings into a belief: if she reincar nated, her lover would come back to her in a similar way. She gradually recovers from her misery and illusion so she can start a new life with hope and love because she put down the past. All of this is part of the belief system in Tibet. On the another hand, the film accom plished my dream that manifests culture collision and fusion. Besides, I have always been obsessed with female themes, as a female director, I found it divine to combine all of the elements in a single movie, which like a mirror reflected all my inspiration and beliefs. So I came up with an idea, and together with my crew gave frame, blood and flesh to “Mandala”. Mandala features gorgeous wide screen compositions reminding us of Carlo di Palma's work. With one startling, painterly composition after another, your film creates an intense, suspended atmosphere. Can you say your biggest influences in cinema? ……GUAN.XI.…………………………………………………
Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, was one of my favorites in high school. Carlo Di Palma generated his distinctive aesthetics of photogra phy, which greatly influenced me from then on. I worship his aesthetic of color control, and precise composition. The movies shot by him encompasses his formal and pristine visual style, which has a cruel but beautiful imagery. I feel, the intense distance, seduces you but never lets you get closer. Many directors leave long lasting impressions on me, such as Luis Buñuel, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Ingmar Bergman, Julio Medem, whose masterpieces have influenced me from different aspects. I wish my films are games between reality and illusion, filled with dark rhymed atmosphere. They should be eerie but not ugly, unreal but full of emotions. I’d like to use a character, Medusa to reflect my understanding of most outstanding female destiny in the past half century. Medusa’s beauty can be compared to the ideology about women’s talent. In the myth of Medusa, men were turned into stones after looking into Medusa's eyes, due to her lethal allure. According to Perseus’s logic, in order to avoid such tragedy, Medusa must die. Was It her fault to be such a beauty? Of course not, I deny Perseus’s logic, on the contrary, it was because of patriarchal curse towards the growth of women, whose careers and talents were suppressed and hidden. As a female director and cinemato grapher, (which is quite rare in the film industry) I am very grateful that I was born in an exciting time in which my creativity and ideas can be accepted and respected. The gender biases are now getting blurred in my opinion, but its important embrace our own strengths and fight for our rights. The core element of the patriarchal culture is to objectify women as exhibitions. The idea of objectifying women not only from the audience's point of view but also from male characters in movies reflects our society. The male is the symbolic of power in this society, so their watching “items” forms a field domain, including sex implication and reference. Those dominators use the strong implication power through images to manipulate audiences’ value, in order to reach their own aim of control. As a female film maker, I take respon sibility in evoking the public to not only accept the female figures under patriarchal value but also it is the essential problem for feminist researchers and directors. I want to create a voice for female themes, female characters, and stories with a female scent, of which I will be proud and insistent. Thanks for your time and thought, Guan. We wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next Can you tell us something about your next film? I would like to pursue being a cinema to grapher as my career path but also, I dream to direct films that convey my artistic voice and share stories with the world. Keep shooting all kinds of short/ long film. Hope all the movies, in which I performed as a cinemato grapher, can be invited to film festivals. Meanwhile, my work “Mandala” has just entered festival circuit, and been accepted and awarded by several film festivals. Hopefully, I can raise funds for a long feature film “Mandala”. ................................................................................
I discovered Pina Bausch when I was a kid and she did influence me a lot. I think she understood everything. I like this quote from her: "It is almost unimportant whether a work finds an understanding audience. One has to do it because one believes that it is the right thing to do. We are not only here to please, we cannot help challenging the spectator." LIGHTHOUSE FILMS is a stunning crew. Can you tell us something about the story of your group? LightHouse Films is a New York based production company and director’s agency that represent me as a director. They always believed in my work and have been very supportive from the start even if I only had experimental video work and no actual commercial or films under my belt. Thibaut Estellon, EP on SIMON and partner at LightHouse supervised the film from start to finish and did an amazing job bringing all the crew and talent together and make this first short a success. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? Women had always been as talented as men, we just didn’t have equal access to these opportunities. I believe female filmmakers can bring new visions and approach to cinema and deserve the same support and respect as male filmmakers. Our generation is making progress toward gender equality but it takes time to change a society and a culture established over centuries. Thanks for your time and thought, Camille. You are currently working on the next chapter of the Aria Series. Can you tell us something about this amazing project? I’m currently writing the next one, MARIE, who will have more narrative elements through a double layer story and series of dream-like scenes. The main character will be a female this time and she will be supported by a mysterious man. It will still feature psychological exploration and experi mental elements but it will be a much more complex and elaborate film. The passage between interior and exterior will still be present as in SIMON but this time more literally as it will be between life and death. CHANTAL BERTALANFFY The title of the film refers to being 17, jūnana means seventeen in Japanese. Unequivocally, being 17 is a fascinating time in one’s life and therefore bound to be made into stories. Due to the fact that everyone has experienced difficulties when growing up – be it trouble with the parents, to fit in socially or to feel comfortable in one’s skin – it is easy to relate to the struggle that teenagers face. With 17, our own expectations of the world change, just as much as the world has different expectations from us; we are supposed to “act like an adult”, “be a man”, to “grow up”. Nonetheless, it is a time when a newfound freedom slowly opens, or is about to open its doors to “adult stuff” – driving cars, drinking and smoking, sex – a world that yearns to be explored. Hence, 17 is a magical age, an age where everything seems possible. It is a time when we want to conquer the world, when we already have figured out everything, when we fall in love for the first time, when we are allowed to be reckless, when we get away with anything, when we eagerly anticipate adventures, when friends are more important than family, but also a time when we are perhaps the most vulnerable. It is a time when an unstoppable transformation takes place, absolutely impossible to be ignored; our bodies change from a child’s to that of an adult, and we are radically confronted with a new awareness of our very being. Suddenly, we are supposed to be ‘responsible’. Moreover, questions of identity arise, together with the question of where one’s place within the world could be; who are we supposed to be, who do we want to become? In Jūnana, our heroine Alexandra is 17 – in a way the personification of the “in-between”: trapped between being a child and being an adult, she knows change is inevitable but she wants to hold onto being a child a little longer, a time when everything seemed a little less complicated. Her emotional chaos grows when being ……CAMILLE.DE.GALBERT……………………………
confronted with Japanese culture, and she does not know what to do about these new and confusing feelings, how to articulate or come to terms with them. Therefore, she starts to clash with Charlotte, though their friendship means the world to her, and she holds onto the somewhat childlike notion of ‘best friends forever’. Accordingly, the way Alexandra and Charlotte’s friendship is initially portrayed is reminiscent of a kid’s friendship, e.g. they sleep in the same bed and take a bath together. Alexandra, however, denies her changing body and covers herself up in the public bathhouse scene, as opposed to Charlotte, who is comfortable with her physical transformation into womanhood, and wants to show off her feminine charms. Ultimately, contrary to Alexandra, Charlotte loves her newfound freedom within the grown-up world, especially since she is far away from parental control, though she does not understand the rules of that world yet, just as Alexandra does not understand the rules of Japanese culture. Both girls pretend to be what they are not; Charlotte is not a woman yet, and Alexandra not ‘Japanese’. Ensuing from this discussion, the central subplot of this film explores what it is like to be ‘in between’, and being adolescent is also a metaphor for a cultural “in-betweenness”: Alexandra is neither child nor adult, neither French nor Japanese. Effectively, she looks Japanese and speaks a little of the language, but does not understand the culture as such, since she has not been to Japan since she was little. Does this make her ‘Japanese’? To her, it is like she looks at Japan from the outside in, as if a glass wall surrounds her; she can see, hear, smell and touch, but cannot access cultural subtleties that especially take place interpersonally. When she was little, she could effortlessly choose between ‘being’ French or Japanese, but she wonders what has happened lately. Somewhere on the way of growing up, she lost the ability to “understand” everything Japanese, like a superhero loosing his powers. Hence, Alexandra has difficulties to understand Daisuke when he speaks Japanese to her at first, literally having lost the ability to socially participate in Japanese culture. The cultural ‘in-between-space’ Alexandra inhabits is not easily defined, it is not a country and not a culture, perhaps it is only an empty space lacking any shared identity or feeling of togetherness, therefore forever yearning for something missing. At the same time, an empty space can be moulded, painted, sculptured into whatever we would like it to be, so that new stories emerge. Consequently, of course many positive things come with being bicultural, but from a filmmaker's point of view, the most exciting stories derive out of conflict. Alexandra is torn between two cultures, trying to figure out who she is, where she belongs. In a changing world, it is becoming more relevant than ever that issues about the inbetween-space should be brought to the screen. I think all screenwriters out there will agree that writing a script for film is one of the most difficult tasks there is (*laughs). There is no one way of writing a screenplay (short or feature), although there are hundreds of books out there telling you what to do. At the beginning, I experimented a lot and tried out various approaches, e.g. taking the three-act-structure very seriously. In a way, it did help to structure the film, because if you know that on page so and so, something needs to happen in order to propel the story forward, then you can work towards that. At the same time, I decided not to take the screenwriting “rules” too seriously and followed my instincts. One thing, however, which I tried to achieve, is very much grounded in this beautiful quote by Robert Towne (Chinatown): A movie, I think, is really only four or five moments between two people; the rest of it exists to give those moments their impact and resonance. The script exists for that. Everything does. I think this quote has a lot of truth in it and is very much why we like to go to the cinema. Looking at Junana retrospectively, I think I learned more from making it into an actual film than completing the script. Directing, and subsequently editing your own work really forces you to rack your brains as how to make drama work. In fact, as a young cocky novice writer, I didn’t see the bloatedness of my script, so thank …............................CHANTAL.BERTALANFFY……
you for your kind description, but it wasn’t that the story was this concise and straight to the point to start with. I guess the only way to understand this was by learning it the hard way, and as a consequence, an entire subplot ended up on the cutting room floor. It was painful to see more than one beautiful scene go, knowing how much thought and effort went into it (let alone the blood, sweat and tears of cast and crew), but no one likes to watch a selfindulgent film, if it doesn’t work, away with it. Ultimately, though it cannot be generalized, I’d like to imagine a good screenplay as an organic entity where if one scene is taken out, everything simply collapses. You are currently pre-producing a feature version of Junana: can you tell something more about this exciting experience? Yes, I am very excited to announce that the story of Junana continues – or more accurately, is being reimagined into a new story, currently in development with a Berlin-based production company. Junana, the feature, was selected to participate at a production development workshop called Ties that Bind as part of EAVE, which specializes in European/EastAsian co-productions. This was a very exciting opportunity to get first reactions and feedback from European/Asian producers. The second part of the workshop takes place in Singapore in December, so until then, the script needs to be finalized and first steps towards production will be taken. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? Firstly, with Salma Hayek openly talking about sexism in Hollywood during the Women in Motion talks at Cannes this year, the discussion of the role of women in cinema is definitely more relevant than ever. I’m an optimist and would love to say that more women will make films in the future, in mainstream and outside of it. However, let’s look at the facts. My heroines are the Claire Denis’ and Catherine Breillats of this world, and yet, it is still extremely difficult for a female filmmaker to get to where Denis or Breillat are today, and the (financial) challenges these filmmakers are facing when putting together a film are almost as tough as for me as a first-time filmmaker. If this is different for male art house directors of their status, or this is simply the nature of the independent scene, I didn’t research, but I went to numerous women-in-film panels and the complaints are always the same. Secondly, while I aspire towards a career path similar to that of Denis or Breillat, I know that plenty of people, even filmmakers, have never even heard of them. Why is it that female filmmakers remain invisible while their male counterparts are celebrated in the media (Haneke comes to mind, only a few years older than Denis and Breillat; sure, he won the Palme d’Or, but Breillat’s earlier films were quite provocative as well)? For example, this is a little embarrassing, but until I went to Cannes in 2013 when Japanese director Naomi Kawase was a member of the jury, I had never even heard of her! That was a shock since I used to pride myself with my knowledge about films directed by women, actively seeking out female directors and making a point of watching all of their films (let’s not forget I’m part Japanese!). The problem is definitely the invisibility of great female filmmakers from around the world that are championed at filmfests, such as Lucrecia Martel or Claudia Llosa at the Berlinale, but the moment the unreal world of a filmfest is over, they seem to go up in smoke. Kawase’s films are not distributed in Germany (are her recent films now?), which may or may not have been the reason I didn’t hear of her, and perhaps the same goes for other female filmmakers as well. Now why is that? I assume that distributors eschew away from directors like Kawase, because especially her earlier films are not easy to watch. I’m not getting into a discussion of mainstream vs. art house (at least I want to mention Catherine Bigelow), but I’m quoting feminist film theorist Claire Johnston about women making films: “At this point in time, a strategy should be developed which embraces both the notion of film as a political tool and film as entertainment”. Johnston wrote this 40 years ago (!), but I think it is still very much relevant today. Story is king and ultimately, we all want a good story well told, but yes, gender politics cannot, and should not be ignored when creating a story. Ultimately, it is about finding the right balance and maybe this is the key to the future of women in cinema. In this context, I think Lynne Ramsey is someone interesting to watch out for. ................................................................................
Making Ridden by Nature was not a challenge in fact it was a dance. It is true when we started in 2003 I never thought of how it would complete itself. I was open. It was a story that needed to be told. As an independent production we danced to film, and we filmed to dance. What I find more challenging is bringing it into the world, as an artist I am not a marketing agent. The film is here to last and be seen by those who are willing to search and see. I find the film industry sometimes quite disheartening, as the genres it classifies as film, take the imagination away from the viewer. If you were to ask a film documentarian if this film is a documentary most would say no. There for it is a dance of trusting to simply make a film of this nature. A film like Butoh that defies tempo and speed as we know it. Matyas Kelemen did an excellent job assembling this film with visionary editing. How did you work with him? Thank you. Matyas is an old friend of mine, we have been working together since the late 90s in film and editing. He has a deep understanding of film and sound being a profound tool to evolve consciousness. I am very greatful to him for giving the final push to edit this film to its completion, as he was a big supporter and believer in making the final post production possible. Matyas has been there for the first Butoh workshops with Atsushi and documented our nature dance artists in residencies back in the day. Matyas has an incredibly good eye for color, and feeling the thread of the story line, that weaves itself through the pulse of the film. Together we spent many hours discussing and assembling the film, allowing the film to tell its own story. The palette of your film is dominated by blue tones. Can you comment this peculiar aesthetic choice? It is a choice we made, as we like to push the film to mirror the hue of the real eye. The colors to pop little. It gives a sense of 16 mm, more romantic to the viewer. The blue also bringings forth a deep inner reflection, and an underlying note of the presence of water. The old Mini DV format brings the film a grainy, vivid look. Why did you choose this format? We chose to shoot at 24p, as an artistic form to recognize the rawness of nature. As much as I love HD it is hyper accurate, and eaves little room for the audience to imagine. There is something dreamy and innocent that I like to leave the space for imagination. Sometimes the lack of accuracy allows other senses to be more awakened. Your hypnotic imagery reminded us of Bruno Dumont's early films. Can you tell us your biggest influences in cinema and how they have affected your work? Maya Deren’s” Meshes of the afternoon" and the "Divine Horsemen”, “Soy Cuba" Segeui Urusevsky the camera man and his style. Filmmakers like Zhang Ymou and Wonk Kar Wai. Jean Cocteau’s "The blood of a poet".There are so many inspirations, but here to name a few. I am very optimistic about women in Cinema. Just like Women in Butoh. Where ever we look the healing of the woman is to feel safe to express her views, and I like to add in a sacred way, as the nature of the woman is to nurture and educate. As all people were born through the mother, i hope very much that this message will be portrayed by women in Cinema. That it holds a place of value as constructive, beautiful and inspirational for all young people. Assisting women to understand why we need healthy women and men to maintain planetary equilibrium. Women in cinema bring a flavor of unexpectedness, and we need this in life. We women think different, more circular and our nature is to weave the facets of life together, bringing harmony to even the most challenging aspects of life. Thank you for giving myself and the film an opportunity to be portrayed by you. I feel "Ridden by Nature" is a blue print for future projects. Currently we are planning to make project in South America where I live, with the indigenous peoples dance and nature. Also we are teaching workshops, based on what can be seen in the film, for participants to access their own potential and activate nature that has been deforested, mined and desecrated. www.riddenbynature.com www.kiahkeya.com ….................................KATHI.VON.KOERBER……
The Regret actually was born thanks to my sister Heloisa Cobra who also works with cinema but as a costume designer. She wanted to create costumes that would tell the story and to be a total reflection of the charac ter’s personal experiences at the time. She read the book “O Remorso de Balthazar Serapião” written by Valter Hugo Mãe, a great Portuguese author and artist, who has received the José Saramago Prize in Literature in 2007 for this novel. She invited me then to join her on the creation of a narrative film to tell the story of this woman called Ermesinda. As a costume designer, she would sew by hand the story and life of this woman and as a director, I would bring all the It is part of a socio-historical system that has conditioned women to a hierarchically lower position on the scale metaphysical perfection, producing a force field of asymmetric relations between men and women in our society. Did you rehearse a lot with the shots you prepared in advance? I met up with the performer and also choreographer Patricia Bergantín in advance and really got admired by her work. We had met a few times to talk about the book and the story and how I wanted her to feel all violence the character had in her body. We rehearsed in front of camera on the shooting day, we prepared the script with parts of the book and actions and symbols I wanted Patrícia to show in the performance. From the first time we watched The Regret, we thought of Angelica Liddel's theatre. Can you tell us your biggest influences in dance cinema and how they have affected your work? Pina Bausch is indeed a inspiration, the way she connects the body to feelings is amazing. For me her dance cinema shows and inspires a world of possibilities, how a human being can exteriorize thoughts, symbols, to be a moving poem. When I read the book I thought that dance would be an amazing way to express all of Ermesinda’s feelings and pain caused by the love she had for her husband. I started researching body movements that could help the evolution of the violence she suffers. So the camera decoupage was all connected to her body. In the last decades women definitely have had a bigger participation in cinema, but we are still far away from an equal position not only in cinema, but in the arts and indeed leadership positions on society. We should all get together to make our voice stronger and to not be afraid to express our view and sensibility. We have to talk about it. And this question is not only relevant to men. Prejudice against women is not practiced only by them but also by us. There is a set of rules with which we are educated for a long time, where men speak and women listen, men act and women observe, men are active and women passive. By the time we start discussing all this - I think not only men but also women - we will be able to observe and better understand what’s actually happening. U ���� � ������������ camera style and focusing on performance, Aleksandra Chciuk initiates her audience into a heightened sensory experience, exploring the relationships between body, matter, time, and space. "Flux of sounds in the body is manifested in motion. Motion of the body is the thought of sound", Aleksandra says. … MARIANE.COBRA………………………………………
If this video were a painting, it would be by Francis Bacon: the set of Variation On Black reminds us of the flat color fields present in paintings like Study for a Bullfight No.1, while the figure of the pianist catches the constellation of forces generated by the dialogue with the musical instrument. Can you introduce our readers to your original, fresh approach to body and sound in your art? I am very happy that you found such similarities. Francis Bacon is my favourite painter. It is possible that my brain involuntarily aims to achieve similar body constellations. I noticed such analogy in another video work of mine, The Man and His Book. The frame, and the analysis of the human body conformations in a sitting position, may resemble Bacon’s painting Study for Portrait. In Variation, I wanted to create a meta-instrument, a selfsufficient organism. The body with the instrument resembles a kind of pulsating self-generating hybrid. I tried to arrive at the moment when the breath is in tune with the vibration of strings of the instrument.Another aspect is the pure perception of sound and its impact on the body. Since childhood I felt how sounds translate into a kind of internal vibration of organs (viscera). Even without hearing, the sound vibrations can be felt through the skeleton. I know Evelyn Glennie, an excellent drummer, who is deaf. I also often dream of string vibrations and similar things which I can feel physically. In Variation this translation occurs literally. The body is tightly pressed by the lid of the instrument against the strings in the resonator. Vibrating by the movements and the pressures exerted by my body, the piano strings influence in turn the way of my moving inside the instrument, which translates into the intensity of playing and emitted sounds. I perform “forest walks” with instruments. Here, the way of moving reflects nature’s movements. In Rise Moon (2015) the instrument guides me, serves as a kind of tentacle, a body extension enabling the exploration of the environment. To look where the eye cannot reach. When I am approaching the tree bark with a PVC pipe and I am “blowing” the sounds in it, it is in fact the tree that determines the trajectory and the rate of my movements, it is both nature and instrument. Then, as a kind of an anteater, I am creating with microbes a concert on macro and micro-entities. The energy is sucked in and out, it’s circulating. It’s astonishing, how instruments taken out from the urban culture may, in their resonance, literally in their vibrating, belong to the primal world of nature. I collect instruments, and apparently, each new one initiates a consecutive entry into nature. Moon is also an instrument, it is a Turkish drum called “daff”. A striking work of seemingly improvisational form, Variation on Black is in fact a highly layered film, open to several different readings. What are you hoping your work will trigger in the audience? Without any doubt, Variation is a very personal work. During a recent directing workshop that I led, I said to the participants a simple thing: “art is the only medium that enables us to “digest” (to push through) issues that are unsettling for us. One has to approach the heart of the matter. If we do not try to challenge it we will come to a standstill”. It is certain, that the principle of the world’s existence is change - movement. After the performance Variation in Leto gallery during Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2014, one girl came over and told me that “she knows me now”. We saw each other only once. She could have understood nothing about the performance, but thanks to the sincerity of the message, the dialogue with the spectator occurs on a different level, a level that does not require the use of precisely defined terms. It is enough that a thought, an emotion, emerges and guides the spectator towards a yet unknown direction. A little discovery will take place. Can you tell us something about the shoting of your film? What was the most challenging thing about making Variation on Black? Revealing personal feelings? The biggest challenge was working with the piano and simultaneously controlling the sets, light, etc. The identification of instrument’s body in contact with my own. Getting used to physical discomforts. I have never tried before to enter the piano and play it this way. I did not know what would happen. After the shooting I found out that the string tension in a piano reaches several tons. I guess some kind of risk must be included in such experiments. While shooting I had to quickly find the proper body configurations. I had to find the places in the piano where the ………………………………ALEKSANDRA.CHCIUK……
preparation results in interesting sounds but also where the tangle between me and the instrument is the closest possible. I felt the stings pulsing.I found myself in a yet unknown confrontation. Indeed, it was a very personal experience. We have previously mentioned Francis Bacon and Darren Arofnosky, can you tell us who among international artists influenced your work? It will certainly be contemporary music composers such as Alvin Lucier, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, György Ligeti or George Aperghis. The experiments of John Cage (his collaboration with Cunningham) or these of La Monte Young are also significant to me. The mindset of Glenn Gould as a pianistartist. The choreographic component in work becomes more and more important to me. I watch and analyze the works of Sasha Waltz, Marie Chouinard or Pina Bausch. Fluxus was an important support to me, with the creations of Nam June Paik high up on a pedestal. All films of Maya Deren one by one were a big discovery for me: Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, Ritual in Transfigured Time. Her fascination in anthropology, psychology of dance, mythology and confidence that creation for the joy of creation itself is the most right way to self-realization makes Deren one of the biggest inspiration for me. There are also such gems as L'année Dernière à Marienbad by Alain Resnais. The record of everyday life of Jonas Mekas in As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty is very touching. These are films that once you see them you cannot escape them anymore. I am interested in the fate of relationships, mutual influences of strong personalities, as the one between Katarzyna Kobro and Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Lech Majewski’s The Garden of Earthly Delights deals with the essence of a relationship, of living in a relationship, in a beautiful way. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? Sara Kathryn Arledge, Shirley Clarke, Maya Deren, Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Chantal Akerman, Marguerite Duras, Agnès Varda, Agnès Godard, Claire Denis, Ulrike Rosenbach, Lucrecia Martel, Pipilotti Rist, Sadie Benning, Yael Bartana, Valie Export, Ellen Kuras, Jolanta Dylewska, Reed Morano... are some of the names that come to mind right now, but the list goes on. We could fill entire pages with the names of filmmakers and video artists creating during the last half century. During the last decades these women have consequently, with great charisma, broken society’s stereotypes. They have crossed the frame, created new standards. They are artist warriors. Their art has a mission - they’ve prepared the way for those to come. They’ve proved that they are no less creative, brave, strong and mobile than men. This way, the world has met with the camera-branding woman. Nonetheless, the process of transforming the deeply rooted binary gender system, still is on. Most women have gone through this process. This clash with discrimination is the echo of a long generational education in the codes of professional systems, between men and women. It is a system that prevails from the upbringing in many homes to this day. Conquering this barrier will lead to strengthening the bonds between women in a societal, private and creative field. This translates into a clear respect their decisions and increase interest in them. I am not referring to a creation of a hermetic group of women artists, but rather reassertion of the power of women to forge their own path without looking at though and societal boundaries. …………………………………………………………………
My work can be ranked as cinéma d'auteur in which the director has also other roles to play: script writing, editing, set design, etc. Currently, I work with three and sometimes four people. I worked with cameraman Sławek Jóźwik and lighting technician Jacek Wierzchoś on my first film Russian Romance. The same team was behind Punctum. None of us has film-making qualification, we are self-thought film-makers. I remember that the early cooperation with the crew and actors on the set was very demanding and stressful. It was much smoother when we were shooting Punctum. The biggest challenge was the depleted crew due to a low budget. So far, I have been financing my films on my own, so the money has never been big enough. Sometimes the cameraman would help out with the light and I had to find time to prepare make-up. We stayed up till late to get the set ready for shooting the following day. I remember that when working on Russian Romance it was terribly cold while on the set of Punctum it was sizzling and stuffy. Still, the crew were getting on very well. We all pursued a common goal, everyone contributed something to the project and was very aware of that. I think that this kind of mind-set allowed us to finish the job against all odds. What is your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? Everyone in the project get the script and storyboard in advance. Before we start shooting, I talk about it with the actors and crew. The script did not envisage too many interactions between the characters, so if we rehearsed, we did it before the actual take. In many cases, the first takes proved best as they were free from tension, which sometimes accumulated when the time for recording a scene was getting shorter. Our work on Punctum was quite unusual. The photography took two weeks and several scenes were included spontaneously, they were not in the script, for example, the scene with May and a soldier on a table or small Robert playing with a paper bridge. It was completely new to me because the earlier film, Russian Romance, which is more linear and has no narration, had been authentically faithful to the script. Not that radically but Punctum alludes to the concept of Artaud’s theatre. He was of the opinion that theatre called for cruelty and horror. Similar ideas are discernible in Castellucci’s plays, Krzysztof Warlikowski’s works, or Jodorowsky’s movies. Punctum is an emotionally moving picture, but how strong the individual scenes are depends on your subjective reception. I appreciate artists who think about the cinema as a whole and are capable of escaping the conventional approaches. They certainly have something important to say to us and, at the same time, their created world is so “dense” that almost inimitable. There are many such directors, just to mention Ingmar Bergman, Peter Greenaway, Louis Bunuel, or Tarkovsky. David Cronenberg,They inspire me with their attitude and a strong and adamant message conveyed in their works. The cinema inherently is subject to a certain degree of hybridization. Its language is not homogeneous; it works by the image, text, and sound. In the 1920s or 1930s, the cinema was considered modern if it drew inspiration from other arts, for example, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) by Robert Wiene was inspired by German expressionism. In visual terms, Punctum is like a painting exercise, and it is so not so much due to the setting but due to the lighting. We used top lighting to make the character’s faces much sharper and their eyes concealed in the dark. Illumination is crucial as it ultimately decides whether the film is going to be gloomy or positive; it helps give life to the still elements of set design. Moreover, it has an effect on our perception of the characters. What advice do you have for other female filmmakers who are trying to make their way through a still maledominated industry? Our times allow women to develop professionally and be creative if they want to almost in any geography. To become a good film director, you really need vast professional experience. Your prior experience determines the quality of your work and its power as a medium. No less important is your personal charisma or good communication, which you learn when working with people. It is true that there are not too many women in the industry, but that does not mean that they cannot make it and be successful. ………………………URSZULA.PIEREGONCZUK……
C A H I E R S
Photo by courtesy of Aleksandra Chciulk ©