In many scenes like the one in the Morro Solar, we partially controlled the couples and drag performers in a technical aspect, whilst their performances were minimally controlled. We all got together to “see what happened”, and every aspect of the process was soaked in it. To diffuse the limits between documentary and fiction allowed me to talk about existential doubts through gender. To give space to what’s versatile makes it a consistent hybrid. I think that the richness of the visual experience comes from the universe that was created for Amador. Every area of production was crucial for this to come to fruition. Despite it being a very intimate story, there were many perspectives involved, so I decided to mix them and shape them. In the end that is how identity is built, is it not? How could I not be astute with a story that I embody. Elegantly shot, Ma s amor por favor features stunning cinematography and from a visual point, with keen eye to details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? The use of various types of cameras was fundamental for allowing the spectator to identify with the different stimuli that
Women Cinemakers came from the different image formats. These formats represent the versions that we create of ourselves daily to connect with our interior world and with others. I chose to use them in this way because we live in contemporary times and spaces where we stay conscious of what we see and that we are being watched by people, digital technology and social media. Thus, the cameraman’s job was not restricted to a professional, any person can be in front of and behind the camera. We thought that it would be important to give Amador the camera to get to know what he proposes and how le looks at the details of his story. Together with Jean Franco Tinoco, our devoted director of photography, we agreed that what Amador would propose was a sensory search, sloppiness, dirty frames. We gave the actors the camera to see what they could register. The gaming system with the cameras consisted in differentiating three parts. The first one was the main character’s self-exploration where we used three cameras. We used a 7D mark II that allowed Amador to obtain a high quality resolution and its DSLR function allowed him to vary the object’s distance according to the space where he was. Another one was the 2001 HandyCam that could make the image dirtier, the zooms more violent and it created a stark contrast with the quality of the image that the 7D mark II gave, which manifested the difference between an amateur regard with a more professional one. The third camera was a GoPro hero 3 that we fixed on Amador’s body so that we could feel his movement and have a more unstable close-up so as to transmit his emotional unstability. For the second part, we used a 7D Mark II and a 70D to have more control on the takes. We wanted it to look as if Amador was always filming himself. However, in reality, it was Jean Franco and Amador who manipulated what they would see together. Both of them would play with the empirical side of the situation: a professional like Jean Franco with an amateur like Colores Castillo, who played Amador. Lastly, the experimental scenes like the drag queens and kings one, the one in the Morro Solar and the couples’ kisses were shot from a point of view of a scenic montage that integrated the spontaneity of the characters with a professional studio shot. We used mainly a BlackMagic camera that brings a fantastic sense to the image due to its extreme high quality. interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers In general, we wanted a dream-like aesthetic where it is difficult to discern what is really happening. That a search is regarded a such, since the camera movements up until the observations of a body from up close. In this film you leave the floor to your characters, finding a simple still effective way to walk the viewers to develope a bridge between their own inner sphere and the epiphanic journey of Amador. Moreover, it's important to remark that you openly show the mistakes that take place during the artistic production process: What was the most challenging thing about making this film? What did you learn from this experience? Showing vulnerability, having to be all connected with our sensitive side and using frustration to go forward is quite challenging. We knew that the path we had to follow was the scariest one because it would bring a brand new result. We had until the end of the semester to finish the film, we were under pressure to finish it and not everyone was there 100%. As the director, I really wanted to, but it was hard to keep a crew of nine motivated and enamoured of the project by arguing that the more sensitive they were, the better they would be at their job. Not everyone wants to be that sensitive, or be empathetic, nor try to connect to whatever is beneath the anger instead of getting angry. For me at the time, being a lover was to connect with my sensitivity and motivate my team to come forward defiantly with the project. I found it difficult to defend the documentary aspect of the film within the docu-fiction hybrid. To be consequent with not having to be in front of the camera in order to tell my story. Colores Castillo, the person who portrays Amador, shares my fears and fixes her eyes on my eyes because she knows what I’m talking about, and she has the same need to find a way to our identity. Finding her gave me extreme confidence and that is where I can say that I learned the mot. If this similarity exists between us, I think that it was what justified the documentary point of view. I don’t think it is necessary to force the process of construction of an identity in order to keep creating. I learned that whatever I have to tell, be it interview
Women Cinemakers with mistakes or the feeling that something is missing from it, is enough to allow me to create because the rest comes along the way, and that I don’t have to inject testosterone so as to make another important work. As a director, I learned that to direct the actors it is necessary to reach an emotional balance. It is also important to be careful not to pressure others when trying to get them to show me that mix of their human side and their wild one. What’s perfect for me will come when the shades exist and the imperfections arise, when doubt is settled, especially when we are dealing with the certainty that it exists. I think that this is what we have to show, this trying to get out of the comfort zone, otherwise we would fall in the trap of monotony and get bored with ourselves. The theme of identity along with an interest the concept of transformation are central in your artistic research and we have particularly appreciated the way you draw the viewers into a constructed reality that conveys a consistent sense of truth: could you explain this aspect of your filmmaking practice? I am not sure if I can explain it properly, but here we go. What comes to mind first is the documentary practice and its realisation. With it comes the constant question of whether it’s truth or fiction. Why do we want to know if something is real? Why is it important? I know that we need to trust something, but do we only need to trust on what’s a certified truth? These questions surge in the realisation of a documentary and in any moment of existential doubt. I don’t have an answer for it, except for just keep thinking about it like egg or chicken, fiction or documentary. On many occasions we limit ourselves when we are, act and perform, and our exploration becomes lazy, as if we couldn’t/wouldn’t find that favourite shade. I think that we are constantly fictionalising ourselves in order to adopt a necessary attitude in certain contexts. If you ask me to deal with a job interview I prepare myself mentally to sell my best speech on what a good worker I am. Does that make me false? If I decide to always be the woman who keeps her calm and one day I lose it completely, will I stop being me? Where can I find my reality, in the multiple profile pictures and Facebook covers that have my face smiling on them? interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview Every time we fictionalize ourselves we are motivated by something other than the evident which makes us create a sense to what we propose. If I’m aware of what I, as an individual, want and make my way towards it, I’m making my own world right there. It is up to each one of us to decide what we want to take as real in this world. What we have within us and what we get from others. I think that the film is perceived as a truth because many times I live in a limbo, and this is my natural approach towards my projects. I don’t have another way of looking at it and I don’t like it when I notice that it is too rich. I already bought the idea, so I’m not surprised when others believe it. My creative proposals are related to transformations because I respect it in the body, in thinking and in feeling. From my trans perspective, I can understand that it is inherent to human beings and I don’t pretend to play from the static side because I don’t know it, I don’t embody it. There is certain visual and narrative subtlety when we tell about what’s confusing and in a confusing way. The images become unintelligible because we come so close to the detail that we are introduced to it by its own magnetism. We live so stunned by our day to day life that we find it hard to fix our gaze on something; it requires patience. Listening to the silence is despairing, it happens to me a lot. I would expect to keep away from that desperation but I decide not to do it, and it is that contradiction that I try to translate into my projects. A social exercise occurs when the routine breaks in those visits that Amador makes to those in their jobs. In one scene, Amador asks Angelica, the lady hairdresser, to put a long hair wig on his male cousin Cris. I don’t know what Angelica feels, despite her behaving understandingly, but I’m sure that it is not something that she asked to every day, and the singularity of the situation contributes to the normalisation of this fact. Angelica never asked us if Cris really wanted to put on the wig nor why did he wish it, she just believed us and played with us. Cris is a character interpreted by an actor. What was really there? We daresay that your film could be considered an effective allegory of human experience: how does everyday life experience fuel your
Women Cinemakers interview creative process to address your choices regarding the stories you tell in your films? My films are few, I only have Más amor por favor finished. This project and others that I’ve done in still photography search for an artistic representation with a symbolic sense of life. The idea of life as a cycle and as a search for liberation in it has not been proposed as such from the beginning. I think that they can be interpreted as such because they surged in very motivational moments where I was trying to understand energy in general, the universe, time, the duration of the moments, matter and how they coordinate to exists in a cyclic way, as circles. That way I was less afraid of the ending. My thinking is exhaustive and anxious in many themes, trascendental or not. As commonplace as they may seem, I give them the weight that I want to because I believe in the importance of the absurd for getting rid of the rigid and square. To approach my ideas as if they were tangible or visible actions is only a goal within my creative projects. It is a struggle to me not to apply the weight that I wish to my ideas every day and to my relationship with others because I don’t live alone in my head, even though I wish I did sometimes. Allowing myself to feel and to stop regarding vulnerability as weakness is a difficult task for me. Openness to feel with all my senses, to be conscious of my days, of my whys. I don’t always defend the organic in thoughts, actions and emotions, but I try to understand where it comes from. The work I do in Gestalt psychology, listening to my present, is something that guides me. Being attentive to the male faggot person that I am always breaks the heteronormative structure of gender. I want to be a challenge for the gender, but, afraid of the expectations that I have of myself, my imagination starts to roll. Then, I realise that what I imagine can be represented by images and that maybe others feel the same way I do. Would someone else dare to do what I don’t do? Yes, and that’s where I find Colores Castillo.
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview To document, to rearrange myself, to cut and paste… me. Taking distance from myself and being my own material. I see myself and -see- more deeply and objectively at the same time. What’s behind what’s seen? What stories can be told by what we don’t see? These ways in which I relate to myself make me notice the way in which I build my own identity. In doing and undoing the selection of episodes that I want to tell about me. I think that that is where we find the trascendental in the ordinary and its self-representation. We like the way you created entire scenarious out of psychologically charged moments: what are you hoping Ma s amor por favor will trigger in the audience? Mainly, I wanted the spectator to feel something, and I was worried that for many it would be necessary to understand what was happening on screen. To share just the feeling, to invite them not to worry about defining themselves by labels and asking about the conflict that selfexploration is. To expose the shapes that gender adops while playing with the identity. I was interested in being visible within my close circle and my family, for they are my audience too and I wanted them to find out what I felt without having to talk about it. I don’t know how unknown people think of or feel about the film; I thought it was an open window for them to inquire about being. For them to ask themselves why I keep talking about love. To propose the audience the perception of the confusion about the body as if it were a contemplative space. To motivate them to take action not just for what they understand clearly but also for what is not. 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? I haven’t had the chance of seeing the film before the audience yet. I haven’t experienced that exclusivity. I think that it is because I’m not a filmmaker, and so I haven’t been to many film festivals. Maybe my distance to filmmaking makes me move it towards a more organic space, besides the potency of such an intimate story. Más amor por favor has
been screened in more than 10 festivals worldwide, an accomplishment that I never expected because I did not know the film’s true potency. It started to move since I contacted a distribution agency in Lima. My interest in film festivals was more like me being a sheep in the herd than to having a clear motivation. I wanted to know if my film would be seen, if other people would care. I thought that if it was accepted in film festivals it would show me its true potential and it would give me the confidence to believe it. It surprised me how that happened. The most meaningful feedback that I received was as simple as having heard a genuine thank you from someone I did not know. Satisfaction is the most accurate term for that feeling. However, this feeling comes from over a year ago, now I’m more interested in getting feedback that enhances my tools for me to work on new projects. 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. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? I see all the power, I think of women who know each other more, I think of freedom. I think of a medium to demand and to make visible. In a near future, I see is it as a tool for ourselves, for us to throw up all the shit. In a distant future I hope that we are as respected as we deserve. As spectators, we many times fall in the trap of trying to understand films in an objective way, but as filmmakers we shouldn’t be limited by using our strictly subjective side to narrate what we want. This sensitivity is what we could call real, whether it’s in our lives or in the movies. The organisation in films, from preproduction to the film distribution stage or the creation of spaces like this one to share our art, realizing within ourselves as women, as gay women, trans lesbians, feminine energy, we are motivated to understand this art as “our”, opening up the dialogues in an even less male-dominated space, they need to know who Women Cinemakers interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
we are and what we go through. I think that as the more we share individual stories, the more intense our experiences-specter becomes. Every female author will find its unique way of using the cinematographic language. This way, we make a great effort in not generalising and in recognising how diverse a community can be. I believe in how valuable it can be to isolate ourselves so as to connect with what we can see only by ourselves, but I also believe in how important it is to share ourselves, to include ourselves. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Adali. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I see my work as something slow and steady, sensitive and transgressive. I’m not saying this just for the readers but for myself also. To tell myself and them that this job comes from my guts, it takes time and it will get here. I want to keep on play-interpreting and questioning my fear with those of yourselves. My efforts to put myself in front of the camera, which I didn’t do in Más amor por favor, are developed at the moment in a project called Beso Negro Drag, which works as a gay audiovisual collective where we explore our transformation and we deal with the public space. This is an important project because we play with our impulses and because of our emphasis on applying our ‘not knowing’ treatment that I mentioned before. I see it evolving into more questions, into undefined images, in the discovery of our five senses from the cinema. This comes together in a film that I’ve been working on since last year and is still in its developing stages but also carries some old uncertainties. One of them is to find out what this word “love” that everyone talks about and defends means. Is it an energy, like an abstraction? To inquire about beliefs in cycles, focusing on the limbo of the end and the new beginning. All of this for the new project. Many ideas, I don’t know what’s going to happen. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] Women Cinemakers interview
Hello Kristen and welcome to : we would like to invite our An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] readers to visit in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would like to start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You Kristen Brown Women Cinemakers meets A rugged, agrarian landscape on the California-Oregon border bears witness to the region’s violent past. This cinematic essay, narrated by Stephanie Foo (from This American Life), meditates on the landscapes that tell, reinvent, and obscure the history of the nineteenth-century Modoc War. Refusing to continue living under squalid conditions on a remote reservation in Oregon, several hundred Modoc people, led by Kintpuash, also know as Captain Jack, returned home from forced exile in 1870. This move aggravated European-American colonists who had moved into the Modoc homeland, resulting in armed conflict between 52 Modoc soldiers and the U.S. Army. At the beginning of hostilities, the Modocs retreated to the safety of an otherworldly lava fortress. The Modoc held off a well-equipped army of Civil War veterans for seven months, embarrassing the Army in what was an international media sensation -- though the war is now largely forgotten. Eventually succumbing to dehydration, low morale, and political infighting, Modoc leaders struggled to preserve unity among their ad hoc confederation. The agrarian landscape of contemporary Modoc country is a physical byproduct of the region’s conquest. This landscape is inhabited by markers of primordial, ancient, colonial, and modern history. Hidden within its wildlife refuges, ancient obsidian mines, abandoned trains, war memorials, and even a former Nazi POW camp, is a more complete history, which tells of more than just battles and assassinations. This is as much a film about the displacement of Modocs from their homeland as it is a story about memorialization, remembering, and forgetting. Directed and Produced by Kristen Brown and Matthew Harrison Tedford Narration by Stephanie Foo Music by Joseph Genden Fiscally Sponsored by the San Francisco Film Society Support provided by the Puffin Foundation
Women Cinemakers have a solid formal training and after having earned your B.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Saskatchewan, you nurtured your education with an M.F.A. in Painting, that you received from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your artistic research? I have been interested and involved in the arts since I was young, and all types of creative and artistic visual expression have always seemed very natural to me. While in college I studied a wide range of studio practices including photography, painting, video, and printmaking. Nearing the end of college, I started to develop my own style and conceptual ideas, but it was not until graduate school that they became more clear and defined. Because of my technical training through private art classes growing up, I wanted to attend a school where I could keep honing these skills while developing my conceptual ideas further. Since finishing graduate school, I have had the opportunity to keep evolving the foundation that I have built. While Modoc is the first feature-length film I have worked on, I have always been interested in film and visual storytelling, and it was an amazing experience to collaborate on a project like this. 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. What has at once interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into is the way your sapient narrative provides the viewers with such an intense visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell how did you develop the structure of your film? In particular, do you like or do you prefer of your shooting process? The idea for Modoc grew out of a road trip my husband and I took to northeastern California, an area we had not previously been to. The Modoc War was an armed conflict between the U.S. Army and the Modoc people, the original inhabitants of this region that were being displaced. Being from Canada, there is much that I do not know about American history, but we learned during this project that most Americans, and even Californians, have very little knowledge of the Modoc War. We are still always surprised when we talk with someone who knows this history. Even my husband, a Californian who has been interested in history all his life, had not previously been aware of this conflict. When we visited the region, we were immediately fascinated and taken with the land and its history. The landscape is beautiful, spacious, and rugged— filled with natural elements like lava caves, obsidian mines, and lakes. We came across very few people and encountered almost an otherworldly deserted emptiness in certain places. The lack of people also gave space for encountering wildlife, particularly many different types of migrating birds, as the location is along the Pacific Flyway.
My husband wrote the script, I did the photography, and we developed the structure of the film together. Before returning to the area for our first shoot, we created a long list of places we wanted to document that were historically or visually important to the story. Although we had very specific locations in mind, each time we went to shoot, there was always plenty of time to make an unplanned stop to film spontaneously. This happened many times, as the natural beauty of the landscape was everywhere. One morning, just after sunrise, we were driving around when we heard a massive flock of geese and were surrounded by the howls of several coyotes. In this moment, we had to jump out to capture it as soon as we could, and we were able to film the whole flock landing. Elegantly shot, features stunning landscape cinematography and each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall
structure: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? Prior to beginning work on Modoc, we had been interested in Slow Cinema, particularly experimental films and documentaries, and we saw ourselves working in a similar style. Because my training is primarily in painting and photography, I was very concerned with and brought a lot of intention to the composition of each frame. Placement, color, and lighting were major priorities with each shot. The slow, still, and methodical shots are meant to be meditative and to create space for viewers to think more deeply about the past and its influence on the present. Most frames are not directly tied to the dialogue—they are intentionally disjointed in order to create a juxtaposition between the contemporary landscape and the history of the land. We
Women Cinemakers encountered very few people while filming. This was beneficial in some ways since it reinforced the importance of the landscape in the story, but sometimes the absence of people also made it difficult keep certain shots engaging. We produced the film with a very small budget, but we were able to purchase and rent all the equipment we needed to get the job done. Having access to a variety of different camera lenses was necessary for many of the shots. We have particularly appreciated the way you use specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional and philosophical inquires into the themes of memory and especially to shed light the history of the nineteenth-century Modoc War. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, " ". Not to mention that these days almost everything, from Maurizio Cattelan's ' to Marta Minujín's ' ', could be considered : do you think that Modoc could be considered a , in a certain sense? In particular, does your artistic research respond to cultural moment? We do envision this film as political, and while we strived for historical accuracy, it was certainly created from a political perspective. Although we do not explicitly argue interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers a specific position in the film, we know that the history of colonialism cannot be addressed neutrally. For example, rather than discussing the war as an unfortunate but unavoidable conflict, the language used makes clear that the cause was European-Americans moving onto Modoc land. To fail to acknowledge the Modocs’ inherent right to their land is a political position, and so is acknowledging that right. In fact, when we premiered the film at a festival not far from where the war took place, we wondered if some locals would feel like the film was an attack on them (and this was a group of people who would know the history of the war). The response to the film was very positive, but there were some individuals who seemed to think that not all sides of the story were told, and I think this points to how any historical narrative has a political dimension. Displacement and entitlement are not things of the past, making this history still relevant to contemporary times. This is demonstrated by the Japanese-American internment camp that was built nearby during World War II, but is also seen in the news today. People are still defending their land against displacement, exploitation, and destruction. We saw this most visibly with the Standing Rock pipeline protest, but it is happening all over the world where corporations or powerful groups put their interests above others. History repeats itself when we fail to recognize the connection between our histories and our daily lives, and interview
Women Cinemakers we hope to call attention to this disconnection by pairing the seemingly different but actually related visuals and narratives in the film. the notion of elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé, has drawn heavily from and we have highly appreciated the way it questions the nature of our perceptual process, and its with the outside world: how did you select the locations and how did they influence your shooting process? Much of the story of the Modocs’ resistance to the U.S. Army took place in a natural lava fortress that is now called “the Stronghold,” which is featured prominently in the film. We made sure to film other historically important places, like the lake many Modocs originally lived near, places where battles occurred, and war memorials. But there are many other layers of history in this landscape that we wanted to capture, including history that predates the Modoc War, like numerous petroglyphs. We spent a lot of time in nearby wildlife refuges, forests, and even on a volcano in order to present the natural beauty of the region. But we wanted to illustrate how conflict, agriculture, development, and drought have shaped the current landscape, so we also focused on places that had contemporary significance. This included interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview farms, grain elevators, towns, and a restaurant named after a Modoc leader, as well as other modern landmarks that nominally reference the region’s past. During World War II, this landscape was also the site of a German POW camp and a Japanese-American internment camp. Though this history is not discussed in Modoc, we filmed the POW camp and what remains of the internment camp to show the continued conflict and displacement. Alongside the stunning nature, quiet towns, and a national monument, there is also pollution, damage from wildfire, and drought, as well as abandoned business and houses. The overall mood and atmosphere of this landscape is complex and, like anywhere, highlights its complicated history. unveils the details of reality and the hidden tracks of history: we have appreciated the way you show of human perception that raises a question on the role of the viewers' viewpoint, inviting us to going the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to such unexpected sides of reality, urging the viewers to elaborate ? The unhurried and reflective pace of the film is designed to create a space where viewers can ruminate on the dialogue or specific locations. We tried not to force too much direct meaning on particular shots, instead relying
Women Cinemakers on the viewers’ own thoughts, opinions, and personal connections to the story. features effective use of has reminded us of Tsai Ming Liang's work's work: could you tell us your biggest influence and how did they affect your work? Documentaries about historical events like the Modoc War are often told in a very specific format that includes images of maps, black-and-white photographs, reenactments, actors reading old letters, and interviews with historians. As we began to develop the idea for Modoc, we thought about how we might visually tell this story relying instead solely on the contemporary landscape. The area has been transformed but still holds so much concealed history, and the disconnection we created between the story and the visuals parallels how we are often detached from our own histories. We were drawn to aesthetic styles of filmmakers that allow viewers to contemplate a scene or story element. After visiting the region, we thought that both this landscape and history would be well served by this visual approach. For example, James Benning takes this approach to an extreme with entire films without a single pan or tilt. John Gianvito’s Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is similar, and maybe even more minimalist, with a series of shots of gravestones that tell the history of resistance and activism in the United States. While we were working on Modoc, filmmaker Jenni interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers Olson released her documentary The Royal Road, which is about love, the Mexican-American War, and classic Hollywood. It was refreshing and inspiring, at that time, to see someone else doing something that was both similar and entirely different than what we were working on. is the result of the collaboration with your husband Matthew Harrison Tedford: could you tell us something about the making of this video? How would you consider of your work? Matthew is a writer, and I am a visual artist, so our different roles in the film came together very naturally. He researched and wrote the script, and together we decided what locations, geographic features, and historical sites were important for me to film. After each shoot we went through all of the footage together and decide what was both visually and narratively important. Because we considered both the narrative and the footage to play equal parts in telling the history of the land, editing the film needed to be a collaborative process. We spent countless hours together comparing shots, talking about the historical or geological importance of certain places, and thinking about the ambiguously linear flow from one shot to the next. A particular aspect of your artistic research that has particularly fascinated us is your inquiry into : do you think that there's an elusive, still between interview
Women Cinemakers interview personal experience and universal imagery? In particular, how does fuel your artistic research? We focused a lot on commonplace scenes because we wanted to represent the area as closely to the way we experienced it. This means that we included everyday, almost universal, places like diners, gas stations, and farms. Even people who have not been to this region will have some experience or familiarity with these kinds of places. This helps create connections for the viewers in a story that might otherwise be unfamiliar or distant. We also wanted to avoid making the film spectacular and mythologizing and mystifying the events. It was important for us to reinforce that this war was real and had lasting effects. I also take similar concerns into consideration in my painting practice. Even though my work uses some abstraction and distortion, I depict everyday, unspectacular scenes in order to ground the paintings in more universal experience. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and 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 from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing: as a passionate advocate of women in film, what's your view on ? Do you think it is
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? Film and visual arts, as a whole, are still very maledominated fields, and film festivals generally show more films by men than women. But it is inspiring to see that so many great films made by women are gaining visibility and being produced. Even though women are still underrepresented, lead creative roles are filled by women in more and more films, even blockbusters. The more people continue to expect all types of inclusion, the more diverse and equal the industry will become. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Kristen. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I do not have anything film related planned right now, but I hope to do more collaborations with my husband in the future. With me being a visual artist and him being a writer, film makes for a great place for us to meet and collaborate. And although we are in no rush, we are looking forward to the creation of our next film. I am currently focused on my painting practice and developing a body of work that deals with transience, memory, and truth. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Hello Alba and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. You An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] have a solid formal training: you hold a Bachelor in Philosophy and you have earned a wide experience as a Music therapist: how did these experience influence your evolution as a muldisciplinary artist? Moreover, does your cultural background direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Everything I experience influences and reflects on my Alba Morín Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Madrid, Spain Alba Morin is a multidisciplinary artist based in Madrid, Music therapist and Bachelor in Philosophy. She improvises with violin and voice, playing different styles, from post-rock to free improvisation. For 10 years she has been exploring many ways of dialogue between music, dance, photography, performance art, poetry and video art, blurring their borders and seeking to experiment with the limits of the expression so as to find new ways of encounters with the Other, in multidisciplinary openness contexts, bearing in mind the body-instrument relationship and the connection between the sound space and the movement. Some of her video pieces have been selected at the exhibitions of experimental short films 'Unseen Zinema' and 'Zumo de Video'. During the projections of these videos she plays while improvising in order to complete the audiovisual experience. She has improvised at many venues with great musicians including performers, dancers, poets or painters. She always carries her camera as part of her process of identifying art and life, so as not to miss unrepeatable moments that can acquire another meaning according to the visual idea that she will choose to mix it with at any time.
Women Cinemakers work, of course, but I think I have always had the need to improvise, and that improvising is the only time I can stay fully focused. I'm interested in vital approaches to philosophy and I need to connect it with action. When I started studying music I realised that rather than playing the violin, what really thrilled me was improvising, like an ecstatic moment to artistically recreate reality. As a music therapist I also have all the senses set to listen carefully to the other person's expression, and react to it. And I live it partly as an art form too. I don´t want to separate art from my life. For me shooting, as well as playing, is therapeutic; it is a way of moving on to action and surprise myself expressively taking part in it, in that very moment, here and now. It might even be a kind of art therapy. It's a way of being there, creating reality while watching it, and doing it in an intense way, showing it and interacting with the small details that go unnoticed and spontaneous, and unexpected elements that just happen. Listening to the other person, and myself, with all my senses. You are a versatile artist and your pratice is marked out with such stimulating multidisciplinary feature, that allows you to create a stimulating dialogue between music, dance, photography, performance art, poetry and video art: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select a medium in order to explore a particular theme? I’m really interested in the multidisciplinary dialogue, that’s why I took an interest in philosophy, since is the cornerstone for of any discipline of knowledge, of making, of art… I like interview