Women Cinemakers influenced this project in terms of embracing Americana tropes. The guitarist Anna Calvi - Her stage presence is dramatic and masculine at times. Her outfits inspired one of the characters in the music video. For this special edition of we have selected , a captivating film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. We have been fascinated with the way your clear and effective approach to narrative provides the viewers with such an emotionally intense visual experience, enhanced by elegant composition. While walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? My best friend put me on to Lera Lynn’s music. Her whole Resistor record has a cinematic quality and easily conjures up visual worlds. Everything is subordinate to the song, and is there to give expression to the song. And it’s a wonderful, sultry song. I was interested in Americana and nostalgia. The idea that there was a constellation of characters, images, places, and beliefs that were irrefutably “American” was fascinating. It led me to think about Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” painting. At that point, I began to wonder about timelessness and nostalgia. What is that relationship? So I chose three genre characters – a showgirl, a cowgirl, and a businesswoman – in order to try and deconstruct them as nostalgic, cinematic entities. My interview
costume designer Rocky Avalos and I did serious research to make sure the costumes reflected this. Elegantly shot, features refined cinematography and a keen eye to details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? I wanted it to look warm, dark, and slick. We shot digitally on a Canon C500 connected to an external recorder. Aside from some inserts, we tended to stay Women Cinemakers A still from What You Done
with a 35mm prime lens, and we kept a Tiffen filter on at all times (Glimmerglass) to soften the look incamera. As far as lighting, we often included a colored backlight, such as bright pink or lavender, in order to separate the actors from the background and bring a glow to their costumes. In post, I brought down the blacks and lifted the highlights, basically intensifying the contrast. I also pushed the saturation to bring out the textures of the set. Women Cinemakers A still from What You Done
Women Cinemakers We have appreciated the mix between sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to the grammar of body language: how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your performative gestures and the need for spontaneity? How much importance does improvisation play in your process? Each character arc was established ahead of time. My actors knew exactly what their characters’ interior struggle felt like and looked like. This allowed all of the actors’ movements to strike the correct note regardless of how they moved around on set. We did full takes, dollying back and forth, to allow their performance to run the length of the song. I always leave space for actors to do their thing. This was especially true for the showgirl – her makeup runs when she cries, so we could only do that take a few times. We did a master shot and used it as a template for consistency once it came to inserts. I also knew which details I wanted to capture from the beginning. Having a precise shot list allowed us to capture those quickly and left time to play and experiment. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your work deals with identity and how a sense of Self can be created, lived, transformed, abandoned, and interview
Women Cinemakers
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Women Cinemakers recreated: what are you hoping will trigger in the audience? In particular, do you think that your artistic research responds to a particular cultural moment? I’ve always been interested in the ways we represent ourselves and how appearances can betray us. That’s why I chose three characters who are more like archetypes or symbols than real people. I wanted to document how they embody their physical stereotypes, and how they fail, too. How a woman fails. In the history of western art, this has always been a classic fixture. I hope that the music video gives expression to the music in all its richness. I do hope I can give voice to a handful of sensations that I view as characteristically female: shame, rumination, terror, and loneliness. Not to say that men don’t feel these too; I’m just more interested in the female version of them. Another interesting work that we would like to introduce to our readers is entitled and we have appreciated the way it leaps off the screen for its essential still effective mise-en-scéne and its hypnotic suspension of time: how did you structure this video in order to achieve such powerful visual impact? Thanks. I am the one performing in this one. The tone was inspired by a dream I had. I was also inspired by a vintage variety show called “Window on the World.” It interview
Women Cinemakers didn’t have a host, which is spooky for a variety show. I took cues from its unusual rhythm. My awesome gaffer Nima set up some hard light and suggested we soften the focus in-camera. I added more layers in the edit to further soften the look, overlaying a film grain as well as desaturating the color. Over the years your works have been screened in several occasions, including the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the ArtSci Gallery at UC Santa Cruz and the Little Gallery at UCLA: how much importance has for you the feedback that you receive in the festival circuit? And how do you feel previewing a film before an audience? Well, it’s always fun to share work with non-filmmakers because their reactions are straightforward and generally helpful in illuminating the simpler truths about your piece. Like, if it’s boring, you’ll know right away. It’s important to have honest critique from people whose taste you trust. People who can infer what you’re trying to achieve and meet you halfway with suggestions. I’m lucky to have a small circle of friends and collaborators who do this before I present a work to larger audiences. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the
A still from
Women Cinemakers future of women in cinema. 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? Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? The future of women in cinema looks incredibly exciting. I’ve seen some mindblowing new work by female directors in the last few years. In the film world as in many others, there are disparities in representation and who holds power. This is certainly changing. I know that female experiences are truly special and unique, and as the creative voices of women proliferate, they will be celebrated with even more nuance. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Lydia. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you. It’s always a blast to work with actors, so I’m planning to take acting classes myself. It would yield some great insights into directing, but more than that it’s just really fun. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Featuring brilliant cinematography and effective storytelling, Doll and silence is a moving short film by Brazilian director Carol Rodrigues: inquiring into social taboos and the consequent sense of loneliness that affect people, she demonstrates the ability to capture the subtle dephts of emotions, providing the viewers with such heightened and captivating experience: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Rodrigues' captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Carol and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly inform your current practice? Moreover, does your cultural An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] background inform the way you relate yourself to art making in general? First of all, I would like to express how thankful I am for being one of the selected people to make part of this WomenCinemakers edition. Not only it is as a space of visibility, this interview is also a space for a reflection about our artistic paths. Both of these questions that you ask are fundamental, but also captious. After all, my story, just like for everybody else, is the result of a nonlinear and discontinuous long process. It’s easy to create a coherent and artificial meaning, but it’s very hard to tabulate one or two experiences that allow unveiling or even getting to know my current practice through them. What I can say is that I come from a hard-working and middle-class family in the suburbs of Sao Paulo. The most part of my childhood and adolescence I lived with my grandmother, a black and indigenous woman. My mom is black and my father is white. Both are Carol Rodrigues Women Cinemakers meets Doll and Silence, is about the loneliness of Marcela, a a 14-year-old girl who decides to interrupt an unwanted pregnancy. In a country like Brazil, where abortion is illegal in most cases and still a huge taboo, the weight of laws will crumble on Marcela. This story is told from the point of view of Marcela, how she sees it and not how she is seen by the world. A narrative where fantastic elements materialize and her memories mingle as a river that flows and flows into the sea. When Marcela makes the decision, under the materiality of blood, she joins her destiny with women from other times worldwide. A counterpoint to the loneliness that seemed to be the only way of life. Perhaps, Marcela's only mistake was thinking that she was alone.
Carol Rodrigues (Photo by Julia Zakia)
Women Cinemakers government employees. I have two sister and a brother. All of them much younger and funny than I am. The racial issue in my family is more complex and contradictory. Thankfully to the debates that my siblings and I bring to our home, there’s a better acceptance towards blackness and a search for our history. I was raised Catholic and Spiritist, although I always went the folk healer, while my grandmother attended the candomble house. Today, I’m atheist. When I was a teenager, I used to fight a lot with my parents about religion, but I kept my sexuality hidden. I officially came out of the closet at the moment I told my parents about my marriage. Both of them laughed telling they already knew. My family always treated my wife with lots of affection and warmth. They were also the ones who encouraged me to have critical thinking and to not accept humiliations… I had a scholarship in a private Catholic high school. It was an odd place, where everyone thought they were better than me. In order to be accepted I lied a lot. I created numerous stories, trips, relationships… It was the first time that I realized that fiction could save lives. I lived a few years in the countryside while I was studying Social Sciences at The University of Campinas (Unicamp). I was the first in my family to attend a public university. After that I came back to Sao Paulo, but I moved to the city center. I thought that here I would suffer less from homophobia and I would have better access to work and culture. It didn’t work very well at the start, so I ended up going back to live with my grandmother for two more years, when after that I came back for good to the central city. When my father was 15 years old, he worked at the central part of Sao Paulo as an office boy. Sometimes he took this opportunity to go to the movies. He watched many films during his teenage years and always talked about them with me. The video rental shops near my home didn’t offer many interesting options. But I used to rent lots of movies and watch many others showed on the open TV. When I was 14 years old, I kind of mistakenly watched Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. I found myself disturbed by it for a long time after that. It was the first movie that I watched that contradicted me, that made me rethink about my own values when I was presented to a hateful character, a rapist, in such an affectionate way. I started going after movie titles that had the same affect on us. That challenged us, that dislocated us from our comfort zone, that transformed us… When I was around 15 years old I found the Paulista Avenue region in Sao Paulo. A friend of mine presented me the local independent movie theaters, where still today concentrates the most part of the city’s alternative programming. So, I used to live in the suburbs. To get there, I took from one hour and a half to two hours, depending on the traffic. The Carol at that time had a very peculiar way on seeing things. I used to think that if I took at least three hours transporting myself, this meant that I had to
stay at least four hours inside the movie theatre to make my trip worthwhile. It was a time when a movie ticket wasn't too expensive as it is now. So I watched two, three or even four films in a single day. Between 1999 and 2000, I watched more than 200 films in the movie theater. It was the first time I followed up film festivals, such as the Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival (Kinoforum), or the Sao Paulo International Film Festival, for example. This was very important to my development, because more than just feeding my hunger for new films, the desire of making films had awaken in me... I chose to study Political Sciences because I thought that I wanted to become a documentary filmmaker. I was 17 years old and I thought that the only way to recreate the world and to bring the topics based on my point of view would be through the documentary. Although I have watched lots of movies, I haven't watched many with stories that looked like mine. There were brown characters, almost no blacks and a
very few lesbians that were always white. The families were very different from mine. Colorism wasn't discussed and it seemed like there was no racism in Brazil. Just in the United States. The affective violence nor our cordial racism were discussed... The Political Sciences course didn't lead me to making films. I had to go back to the university, and just a few years after I finished my second undergraduate course, Audiovisual, at the University of Sao Paulo, that I took the filmmaking path. However, the Political Science course lead me to something more important, which effectively transformed me and sealed the way of how I view and act over the world: the political activism, the social activism within the feminist, the LGBT and, later on, the black movement. It changed my life, because I discovered that mostly of the suffocation that I felt was shared by other people like me. The activism brought me a collective perspective of transformation. It taught me that it was necessary to know how to build bridges so that people could understand your point of view. It taught me empathy and offered an infinite horizon of dreams.
Women Cinemakers Of course, with numerous contradictions, but they were fundamental lessons to the person I am today. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Doll and silence, a captivating series that our readers can view directly at https://vimeo.com/113716921. What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into the loneliness of Marcela who decides to interrupt an unwanted pregnancy is the way you address the viewers to such emotionally charged visual experience. When walking our readers through the genesis of Doll and silence, could you tell us what did attract you to this particular story? First of all, it is valid to state that like a gesture of resistance and selfaffirmation, all of my projects portraits colored women (black or brown) as protagonists. Therefore, my stories always shows the subjects of gender and race on the spotlight. I come from a background very connected to the social and political movements, in which the strive against the discrimination of abortion is constant and fundamental. Despite being illegal in most part of the cases in Brazil, it is estimated that at least one million of abortions are made every year, resulting in one of the principal causes of death among Brazilian women, specially the poor and black. In most cases, these women don’t have the means or conditions to pay for an abortion at a “reliable” clandestine clinic, and so they end up taking desperate actions, in which can result in real damage to their bodies or even death. The law of silence reigns over these deaths. Just as if the lives of these girls and women don’t matter. They are viewed as criminals, monsters, assassins of children, and for that they don’t deserve any kind of forgiveness. Most part of the Brazilian society thinks that way. However, everyone knows someone close that has already had an abortion and no one wants that person to be arrested. When you know the person, their story and their motives, it’s much more simple for you to comprehend their decision. Or at least it makes it difficult for the establishment of a moral judgement. That is precisely why I decided to write “Doll and Silence”, so that we follow Marcela while she makes the decision to interrupt an unwanted pregnancy. Her point of view, what she feels, how she sees herself, and not how others see or judge her. A choice that turns into an unbearable pain that she carries just to herself… Solitude is one of sexism’s most perverse aspects. Isolation weakens us, destroys us. Our biggest strength is on our relations and how they help us to realize that many violent situations are repeated and that sexism is a structural and structuring element. The only counterpoint to the isolation that Marcela feels is in her final moments, during an instant of evocation of support, caring and collectivity. A glimpse of a perspective that, to her, is denied. Ravishingly photographed, from a visual point of view, Doll and silence is elegantly composed and we have particularly appreciated
Women Cinemakers the way your sapient use of close ups allows you to capture emotionally charged moments: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? My conversations with the director of photography Julia Zakia started from the concept that structures the film: Use of the naturalist representation with extraordinary moments of oddities, but without changing the form. We were looking to create an atmosphere of strangeness, of something out of place. The naturalism was evoked by the lighting and the color temperature. On the decoupage, in almost all of the shots we bet on the use of the diagonals for composition: - on the architectonic elements of the location in relation to the frame, like, for instance, the master shot of the park were everybody observe Marcela; - on the disposition of the furniture, like in the kitchen, when Marcela covered in blood talks to her father while we can see the blood dripping from the sink behind them; - the position or the movement of the character's bodies, just like Marcela's body shrunken on the bed right after being assaulted by her boyfriend; or - the scene objects, the close-up shot of the scissors occupying the whole frame. About this last one, it's valid to highlight that it's a very powerful image of menace, that has its effect magnified by being presented with the amplified sound of the metal blades closing against each other. The image is uncomfortable and distressing, and it announces a story that will be interrupted, cut off. For the composition, we also made use of the golden triangles in certain shots, like for instance the medium long shot of Marcela sewing on the couch, in which the vanishing point is located by the left. Another fundamental aspect is that we filmed on the aspect ratio of 2.39:1, which is a wonderful format for a film constructed from the point of view of a character. The Cinemascope aspect ratio allows us to make silence zones with expressive effects, dividing the visual field in a way to create multiple areas into which we established the relation between the characters. Therefore, by the choice of proportion of the screen and the emphasis to the diagonal composition of the shots, we chose the Cooke mini s4 lenses. These are prime lenses that distort expect for the diagonals, and give more tridimensionality to the image, highlighting the character on the background. We also wanted to work with low light at the abandoned building, and we needed clear lenses of perfect crystal, just like the Cooke, which it worked very nicely with the aperture f/5.6.
In the internal shots, the lenses that we most used were the 50 mm and the 85 mm, with low depth of field so that we could use the focus and defocus with a dramatic effect. For the camera, we used a Sony F55 that, in 2014, was the one which had the best system of filming that was accessible for our production. In addition, it filmed in raw mode, which meant the less possible compression for the color correction, with a bigger scale of colors. This allowed an extensive manipulation of the image in postproduction. The dialogues of your film seem natural and spontaneous, and give the viewers the sense they are watching excerpts from real life: how did you structured the script of Doll and silence in order to achieve such energetic narrative structure? I believe that was the hardest part of the process. Because it is such a controversial subject, in which by its own reference already causes the most visceral reactions, it was as huge challenge to find a way that permitted highlighting the internal contradictions of Marcela, whereas, at the same time, it was shielded against any possible interpretations of an
anti-abortion idea within the film. This was a concern since the beginning of the script, after all, it was about a girl whose death was led by her attempt of practicing a clandestine abortion. There was the possibility of the film be interpreted as a moral fable of blame... However, the film builds up from the point of view of Marcela, not giving much of a chance for simple judgments. The script intersects fragments of Marcela’s memories along with the execution of the abortion with almost no ellipsis. We follow Marcela’s pain and strength in a narrative in which her concerns are materialized into fantastic oddities. Just like in the magical realism, but without the ancestral mythology, it is more subtle, within a more intimate aspect. There’s a naturalness between what is real and what is fantastical. Marcela doesn’t surprise herself with her mother, neither with the sudden presence of the women around her. Right after the violent gesture of her boyfriend, she lies down as a woman and wakes up as a child, meeting again with her mother’s affection. Marcela pierces with her finger a piece
Women Cinemakers of dead meat, which bleeds to a point that her dress gets soaked. When she talks to her boyfriend at the park, everybody around her stop what they’re doing to observe her. In terms of dialogue, I believe what’s most important is to work on the subtext of every scene. When I write a script, I always face the difficult battle between the revelation and the subtlety. One scene that everything is very explicit, turns out to become shallow, banal. Part of our job is to make everything more subtle. Create a scene that has a whole other meaning than what’s being discussed. The characters miss the topic, they don’t finish their thoughts, they say one thing instead of saying what they really mean to say, and they also show unexpected reactions when directly confronted. In other words, they are humans in all its complexity, beauty and perversity. It may sound a bit obvious, but there's still a great lack of this kind of complexity being portrayed by black characters in the Brazilian audiovisual sector... We have particularly appreciated your insightful inquiry into the personal sphere of the character of Marcela: your approach seems to be very analytical, yet your film strives to be full of emotion. What was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticulously schedule every details of your shooting process? I have to reconcile both of these paths. In one hand I try to organize the details of the filming, structuring the decoupage, creating the storyboard and establishing the floor plan in order to anticipate possible issues. At the same time, I try to let the film permeable to the reality that the film locations may provide, or to the actors' improvisations. But, honestly, this is something that I would rather anticipate during rehearsals and have time to amend with the actors. However, this is not always possible. For the "Doll and Silence" film, we've made four rehearsals of six hours each. In the first one, I dealt only with Morgana Naughty (Marcela). We've talked in the most part of the time, getting into the initial discussions in a profounder way. We've talked about subjects related to the personal life of the actress, such as her love life, sexuality, her plans for the future, pregnancy, abortion etc. We've also practiced a few relaxation exercises. At the time, Morgana was 16 years old and a very few experiences as an actress. I felt that this first dialogue we've established at that first rehearsal was very important in order to make her feel more at ease towards the topics. On the second day, the rehearsal had the presence of Morgana and the actor Giovanni Gallo, who played Joao, Marcela's boyfriend. Together we discussed the essence of both characters. In case the actors had any doubts, they could always go back to that essence as their safe haven. Marcela wants to get rid of the blame in order to free herself. Joao wants to overcome the insecurity to prove himself as a man. We've created stories and improvised about the couple's relationship history, since their date till the brake-up at the park. We've practiced a few exercises aiming the trust and intimacy between Morgana and Giovanni. I emphasize that
I presented all exercises as optional, meaning that they could be interrupted at any time in case someone felt uncomfortable in some way. As matter of fact, in the conversation I had with Morgana's mother, I emphasized that I had no intentions of traumatizing or to cause any discomfort to her daughter. Even the scene in which Marcela use the needle to make the abortion, the camera avoids the emphasis of the violent act, diverting the gaze and showing the blood running on the floor. On the first half of the third day, we worked their bodies through dance, and also by blindfolding and guiding them verbally, by sound or even by the corporal interaction between the two of them. On the second half of the rehearsal, we focused on the scenes of the bedroom and park, working with the actual script. With the absence of Giovanni, the last day was divided between the investigation and record of the inventory of possible gestures for each one of the scenes, and the rehearsal over the reunions between Marcela and her mother, both in the bedroom and final scene. In these moments, there was also the participation of the actress Naruna Costa, who was invited to interpret Marcela's mother, and Rebeca Kethely, in the role of Marcela as a child. We weren't able to rehearse with Eduardo Silva (the father) due to his agenda. We just discussed about the film and the nature of his character. It was an intense process. I reckon that one of the most important elements of this whole preparatory work was gaining Morgana's trust so that she would permit herself to expose fragilities and vulnerabilities, and also overcome the initial judgment and condemnation that she had of her character. Morgana was a teenager and in her own view she believes that she has become a woman right after this experience. We like the way you created entire scenarious out of psychologically charged moments: what are you hoping Doll and silence will trigger in the audience? I reckon that what I would most like to trigger in the audience is empathy. That people would show being more displaced from their common sense and easy judgments in order to assume a different perspective. At least recognizing another perspective as equally true. I would very much like that people felt the film with Marcela. Women Cinemakers After a few exhibitions of the film, we've performed debates and group conversations. In more than one occasion, women took advantage of those opportunities to talk about their own abortions and the loneliness they felt for not being able to talk about their experiences with anyone. What I came to realize was the safe and trustful atmosphere that the exhibition of the film created, in which women felt confident to share their experiences without feeling as they were criminals or as they were somehow being judged. I believe that the Cinema has this vocation of creating connections. A film can give expression to certain feelings and restlessness that we bring within
ourselves and that they are shared, public, but we're not always aware of that. Through Cinema, we can realize that we are actually not alone. We can recognize a subtle social criticism regarding the taboos that affect our patriarchal and male-oriented society, and it's also important to remark that you are currently developing a feature film about colorism and racism inside a brazilian black family called Criadas (Made to be maids). Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once remarked that "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under": what could be in your opinion the role of artists in our unstable, everchanging contemporary age? In particular, does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? I believe that the role of the artists are to push the boundaries of our perception beyond to what our society impose us, creating a world where all existences are possible, and not only of the white heterosexual man and cisgender. Art must be free, but we a have an enormous
responsibility to produce films to dispute the imaginary racist and sexist world of the present. Films that helps us to build ourselves as new types of subjects and therefore, permit ourselves to find out who we are - as said by Bell Hooks. It's a huge ambition, but at the current historical moment that Brazil finds itself in, it's a great responsibility that many filmmakers have taken into action. Renata Martins, Jéssica Queiroz, Safira Moreira, Glenda Nicácio, Everlane Moraes, Larissa Fulana de Tal, Viviane Ferreira, Jamile Coelho, Cintia Maria, Joyce Prado, Keila Serruya, Lilian Solá Santiago and Sabrina Fidalgo. These are just a few of the black women who are bringing a whole new perspective to our history by producing a counter-memory. I would dare make a small change at Orozco's phrase. I reckon that the role of the artist also modifies according to the position that he or her occupies in a certain society. All of the themes that I work with are related to who I am in the world, the location and historical moment I find myself in. I'm a bisexual black woman with lighter skin, who came from a working family, grew-up in
the suburbs and now lives in the city center of a big city of an underdeveloped country. Each piece of who I am is expressed somehow in my projects... In "Doll and Silence" (A Boneca e o Silêncio), for instance, all of Marcela's closest relations are with men, who she cannot establish a communication with. The boyfriend doesn't listen to her, either he offers a true support, or he even respects her wishes. The father is a material provider, but emotionally empty, who confuses vigilance with love. Marcela's path is filled with solitude. Despite living the most different experiences, solitude was the feeling that has accompanied me throughout my whole childhood and adolescence. Both the short film "Their Happiness" and the feature film project "Made to Be Maids" brings a reflection about the chase for perspectives, for ways to get out from inside a context of violence and suffocation. In "Their Happiness" (A Felicidade Delas), two girls deny the bitter reality of submission and claim the power of their sexuality in an absolute way through a metaphor of libertation, which is the symbol of destruction and potency of life. "Made to Be Maids" (Criadas) is built from the game of brutal and affectionate power between two black women with different experiences in regards to the blackness and history of their families, striving for a form of conciliation. The project has as theme the violent construction of the black identity in a racist country, and the difficulties of understanding and accepting its own blackness. On the other hand, despite being a project that I was invited to co-direct and co-write with Vaneza Oliveira, the short film "Mother Doesn't Cry" (Mãe Não Chora) brings a fundamental aspect in my work: the moral judgments and the social obstacles that are diluted into subtleties of the daily life. The protagonist is a woman looking for support and interaction. A woman who doesn't see anything beyond maternity. As a matter of fact, the matter of the gaze is present in all of my projects. Gazes can be claustrophobics, violent, confronting and gestures of resistance. In addition, I feel like we need to show more affection, empathy and love. Also with all of its contradictions, within a context of individualism, barbarism and violence. We would like to introduce our readers to a new short entitled A felicidade delas (Their Happiness), that you just filmed and that will be shortly released. Would you tell us something about this new project? Would you tell us how did you come up to this idea? "Their Happiness" presents two black girls that together run from the police. Despite the context of violence, they seek to find a way to live their desire. With no dialogue whatsoever, the film explores the dramaturgy of both bodies inside the scene, in constant movement of approximation and distance. The project emerged from my desire of approaching the homosexual experience in a positive and natural way, through a story built from the subjectivity of characters that historically Women Cinemakers
Photo by Agnis Freitas
were silenced and invisible in Cinema. Lesbian black women that interact with each other, creating a space of resistance and empowerment towards a world that seems to insist on ceasing us. According to an official census, 54% of the Brazilian population is colored (black or brown). However, this demographic majority is not very much represented in our Cinema, which is predominately white and male, leaving a very few space for the representation of varied sexual orientations. Even when we encounter homosexual characters, in the majority of times they are white men. Furthermore, there's a very contradictory context in our country, in which the young people are "coming out of the closet" more and more at a younger age, also where we have one of the biggest LGBT Pride Parades of the world, and have won the homosexual marriage and LGBT parenting rights. On the other hand, the homophobic and transphobic violence grows up, it's not criminalized and Brazil stands as one of the top countries in the world in LGBTs deaths. We daresay that your films could be considered allegories of human experience: how does daily life's experience fuel your creative process to address your choices regarding the stories you tell in your films? It makes me really happy to hear that you see my films in that way. My creative process is very much related to the images that rise from the tension between my experiences (my own and from people around me) and the way that I think of them. I think too much, all the time. I am what they call an overthinker. But when I try to structure certain feelings that emerge from determined themes, in many cases the words aren't enough, and appeal to other forms of expression, such as images and sounds. Solitude, desire, exasperation, pain, absence, the search for affection... it's hard to translate in just a few words. But they are great raw materials to powerful images, which probably won't respect the physical (or moral) boundaries of our reality. That is the reason why I need to make use of the symbolic language. I work with allegories and metaphors, because I reckon that the pure realism is not enough to express the complexity of our experiences in such violent and oppressor world. Through symbols we can subvert the physical laws and the social and historic boundaries, creating gaps of caring and refuge or, for instance, perspectives of liberation to the characters. I also believe that we have to think about other ways of expressing violence without needing to explicitly ravish or destruct female and black bodies on the screen. I reckon that many movies, instead of creating and nourishing some kind of indignation, they actually corroborate to banalize violence. We can talk about rape without having to show a single woman being violated. We can talk about the Women Cinemakers
genocide of the black community without the need to show a single dead black body. The Brazilian movie from Jessica Queiroz, Peripatético, for example, showed an interpretation of the death of a young man killed by the police by showing children instead of the police man and the victim, a red balloon popping instead of the gun shot, and ketchup representing the blood. The scene doesn't diminish its potency or the pain of death. Jessica, a black director, has made this choice because even if she wanted to discuss about violence, she didn't want to show one more motionless black body on the floor. The creation of images is a huge responsibility and cannot be taken without its proper seriousness. Being a film doesn't mean it lacks power to cause real consequences in the real world. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. 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. Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects greenlit today? What's your view on the future of women in cinema? There's no doubt about changes happening in the last decades. In Brazil, for example, despite being still a small number and disproportional when compared to men, there's much more female filmmakers today that, differently from a decade ago, find themselves going beyond their first feature film. We have considerably advanced in terms of our organization and in the way we intervene in debates regarding representativeness, or the harassment that were the normal standards inside a film set. We look for alternative ways of production and distribution. We have a permanent focus about formation, fostering debates, social gatherings and festivals that amplify the receptivity of the public towards certain themes or points of view expressed by our productions. I imagine that WomenCinemakers is certainly a result of an aspiration towards that same direction. Another juncture element that I think it’s worth highlighting is the expansion of our presence within the audiovisual media as a whole, in You tube Channels and in the series that have taken on the lead in the
cultural debates. By the way, the internet as a whole, and the social media in particular have been essential tools to amplify silenced voices and to experiment new languages. Also, some people that are now today producing films and series have actually started out producing web series. I include myself on this. Apart from my Cinema projects, I’m a script writer for streaming and television series. However, I believe that what’s most important is to highlight that these changes don’t occur in the same way to all women as a whole. Like in other debates and achievements of the white feminism, black women still Women Cinemakers don’t have the same access to the same advances or don’t have the same visibility as white women have achieved in the media or market. In a recent study in Brazil that aimed tracing the gender and color profile of actors, directors and scriptwriters of the Brazilian feature film blockbusters released from 1995 to 2016, it showed that our Cinema is still white and masculine, inside and outside of the screen. From the 219 analyzed feature films, 85% were directed by white men, whereas 2% by colored men. The remaining percentage of 13% corresponded to the ones directed by women, in which doesn’t include any colored women, black or brown. Within the 411 script writers involved in these same films, only 22% were women and, once again, none of them were colored. On screen, the numbers aren’t any different and the study shows that colored women represents only 4% of the characters portrayed in the films. In other words, what this study shows is that the vision of the white heterosexual male from the high society is still predominantly the only voice and form of representation that gains relevance and visibility. A depiction by which tends to produce one type of Cinema that reassures their own values of class, gender and race, and disseminates stereotypes and representations skewed from the other social groups. Despite having a very defined class, gender and race within this kind of Cinema, it is not seen as a high society white male Cinema. It’s viewed as universal, as “the Cinema”, the quality standard criteria of Cinema and of what deserves to be watched and considered. On the other hand, the other types of views are considered minorities and defined by labels such as “Black Cinema”, “LGBT Cinema”, “Women Cinema” etc. As a matter of fact, it’s quite common that these “other Cinemas” are pointed out as being politically motivated, pamphleteer, precisely because they bring a whole other perspective than the white heterosexual male one. It’s quite a very fragile and mediocre attempt to demoralize our films. Every film is politically motivated. The neutrality is impossible, because the facts come from a social and historically determined point of view. The myth of neutrality is a political and ideological construction that are precisely used to erase race, gender and the class of certain facts, opinions etc. We are now in a moment, precisely, of seeing the race and the gender of all views and realize, in many cases, how the selfproclaimed “neutral view” is actually a white and masculine one about the world, and this kind of view wouldn’t be a problem… If we have an effective diversity of access to the means of production and distribution…
of the next. In addition, I'm developing "Maid to be maids", my first feature film, which will be a great challenge in terms of dramaturgy and staging, as all scenes will be played inside a house, and there's only black women in a movie about racism and colorism (or pigmentocracy). Since "Doll and Silence" I realized how I've been growing my posture as a director and also becoming more confident, secure about the type of language and narrative that I want to evolve, as much as the themes If we have access to the profits of our productions… If we are allowed to make as much mistakes as they are allowed to... If we can experiment as much as they can… If we don’t need to deal with the harassment and the sexual violence… If we are paid and valued for our work… If maternity is not a barrier for the career of a woman… If the obstacles of the sexism and racism are taken into consideration during the hiring process and curatorships… That is if the white male view was just one within a whole spectrum of views, and not the only one. In other words, if there wasn’t the monopoly of representation or oppression. If our differences didn’t back up structural inequalities and dissimilarities over access to resources in our society. I am aware that the procedures are not linear or progressive. They are contradictory. When we least expect, there may have some kind of shift in our reality, in which everything that has been achieved until now is suddenly lost. But we need to be optimistic. I believe that pessimism is always reactionary. The Cinema still can present itself as an association of white men, but we are coming full strength and hungry for transformation. And the future belongs to us. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Carol. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? About my future projects, as I said before, I'm finalizing the two shortfilms: "Their Happiness" and "Mother Doesn't Cry", which I plan to release in film festivals between the end of this year and the beginning Women Cinemakers
that I want to dive in. The progress in the geopolitical scenario in the debates of genre and race helped a lot in that sense. As well as my articulation with other women directors and script writers, specially with other colored women. Our constant conversations strengthens me. Finally, once again I would like to thank for the invitation, and to say that you make a very propitious magazine in relation to our current historical time, as a platform of visibility for directors, as much as a space of narrative language debate, which many times are commonly made invisible. Thank you. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
La La London is a captivating short dance film by writer and director Madeleine Spivey: inspired by the film, La La Land, it gives life to a brilliant allegory of human condition and expresses the resonance between human body and urban environment, providing the viewers with a An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] multilayered experience. Particularly interested in musicals, Spivey demonstrates the ability of capturing the emotional value of movement and we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production. Hello Madeleine and welcome to : we would invite our readers to visit in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we we Madeleine Spivey Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in in the UK and the USA Madeleine Spivey is an award winning filmmaker who was born in Australia but grew up in Tanzania and Senegal. A graduate of the international school in Dakar, Madeleine attended New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts where she completed her BFA degree in Film and TV Production. Her nomadic lifestyle then brought her to England where she studied for two years to receive her MA degree from the National Film and Television School. Madeleine has worked for various film and television production companies, including the BBC, in a wide rage of roles. She has steadily made several short independent films and television pilots over the past 5 years and hopes to direct her first feature within the next 2 years. Madeleine loves to tell a great story and has a great many yet to tell. Not one to settle for what has already been done, Madeleine hopes to push the boundaries of what storytellers are capable of doing in the film industry - never being tied to a specific genre, Madeleine wants to make all kinds of films and television dramas. One of her biggest dreams is to direct a movie musical with songs written by Taylor Swift. With her optimistic outlook on life, she firmly believes that this is within the realm of possibility.
Women Cinemakers would like to start this interview with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BFA degree in Film and TV Production from the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts in New York City, you moved to England, to nurture your education with an MA degree, that you received from the National Film and Television School: how did these experiences influence your evolution as a director? Moreover, does your multifaceted direct the trajectory of your artistic research? I was born two months before my due date and nearly on an airplane - so I don’t think I was ever destined for a normal life. My parents were world travelers, so from a very young age my family and I were traversing the globe in search of adventures. I was 9 years old when my parents moved my siblings and I to the jungles of Sumatra, Indonesia for a year where I would routinely come face to face with snakes, monkeys, scorpions and wild boars but strangely it felt normal. Just before my 10th birthday, we moved again but this time to Arusha, Tanzania, the place I still consider my hometown, because it’s where I spent my formative years. Tanzania is a stunning country and I had many wild adventures in my youth - especially with my best friend whose parents own a safari lodge in the middle of Tarangire National Park, so we often spent weekends out on game drives, fascinated by the elephants, giraffes, zebras and lions we would regularly spot. It wasn’t until we moved to Dakar, Senegal did my life feel “settled”. It was the first place where I was encouraged to think about what I wanted to do with my life and where I would want to go interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers to university, something I hadn’t ever really thought about before. I’d always had a strong connection with movies, having filmed all of my family’s home videos since I was old enough to know which buttons to press on the camera, and it was a high school media class that made me realise that making films was an actual option for my career. I knew I wanted to live in New York City as I had spent several summers in the city as a teenager, so my best option of film schools was NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts, a highly prestigious and extremely competitive program. I was anxious for weeks leading up to the day that I was accepted, convinced that I would be rejected. I spent 4 years fully engrossed in everything to do with film. Going in, I had no experience at all with directing actors, but I could craft a story - so I took writing classes, producing classes and every directing class that I could so that I could have a wide range of skills once I graduated. Once I did graduate, I took jobs as a videographer, filming events for a Broadway website and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, but I struggled to move into film, so I decided to get a MA degree. After living in New York City for close to 6 years, I was ready for a change and I had spent some time in England so I figured I should try and find a directing MA somewhere close to London. I’d heard of the National Film and TV School because it has consistently been named one of the top international film schools and many of my favourite directors, cinematographers and writers were graduates of their distinguished MA programs, so on a whim, I sent in an application which was accepted two weeks later and a month after that I was packing up my Upper East Side apartment to move to the sleepy town of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. interview
I studied at the NFTS for 2 years, graduating in February 2017. When it comes to what I got out of these programs, I’ve often said; Tisch laid the foundation, but the NFTS built the house. I wouldn’t be nearly as confident a director as I am today without the guidance and teachings of both of these schools and the friendships I formed while attending and I don’t think I would have be accepted to either of these schools if I hadn’t had such a unique start to my life. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting dance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . What has at once impressed us of your insightful inquiry into is the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with such captivating aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? La La London was made for the ADCAN Awards charity commercial competition. I had been speaking to legendary