Women Cinemakers and the viewers’ emotional sphere. What are you hoping SHE.TEMA.OHA will trigger in the spectatorship? First of all thank you that is one of the best complements I got about the film! Compassion. My main purpose in filmmaking so far as been showing that people always have a reason to be like they are by showing them the character background. I guess all the close-ups lead the audience closer to character and with help of her naive gestures, it shows that she like anyone else was just was trying to escape of her life for one day. We have 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 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 think its bright! I thank everyday to be born on this century, I think women are gaining power bit by bit, not only in cinema but in every other place or job in the world. We live in the age of image, were image interview
Women Cinemakers takes the place as as the main form of communication and I’m glad that women are finally coming through with another point of view, the feminin point of view. I know that know we are a small percentage of that but if women keep on doing audiovisual material for the media other women will empower other to do it. Of course I’m talking in a positive way, because I’m white and I had the possibility to pursue my dream. But I believe that films should not be directed or done by white privilege women but by all that consider themselves as one, and this is a much bigger struggle that just being born a woman. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Cristiana. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Well, I’ve been working mainly with this young director called Tomás Paula Marques. I’ve been assisting him for his next short film called “Cabra Cega” that will be shot in January. It’s an amazing film full with questions about how young girls deal with the activist nowadays. And also I’ve been working on my next script. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] interview
Women Cinemakers
Brilliantly constructed and marked out with captivating dreamlike cinematography, Box is a captivating short film by London based director Fumi Gomez. Inspired by the wellknown thought experiment Schrödinger's cat, this captivating short film triggers the viewers' perceptual categories with such a stimulating tapestry of images and sounds, to inquire into the thin line that links fantasy to reality: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Gomez's captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Fumi and welcome to WomenCinemakers: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would ask you some questions about your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly influence the evolution of your practice as a filmmaker? Moreover, could An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] you tell us what are your biggest influences and how do they affect your artistic research? I’m mixed race, and I come from a diverse background. All my cultural references, TV, films, literature, represent people who never look like me, or like my family. Growing up, I would spend hours watching films and television and feeling as if I were a spectator of a world I didn’t belong to. People and families like mine seemed like they didn’t exist. When I was older, living in either of my parents’ home countries, I realised that being mixed race made it impossible for me to fit in with the local culture. I learned to fill in the gaps and to adapt. I ended up thinking that I played with an advantage: I know their stories but they don’t know mine so there’s space for the unexpected and unpredictable! My love for French films took me to ask for a scholarship to study in Paris, where French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) was born. Truffaut, Godard, Rivette... I was finally there. However, I Fumi Gomez Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in London, United Kingdom Trapped in a room. There is a box inside the room. The box is theroom. Inspired by "Shoredinger's Cat" thought
Women Cinemakers wasn’t... I was living at the campus of Nanterre University, also known as the University of the Immigrants. There was no French New Wave, there were people who were just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. I lived in the “banlieue” outskirts of Paris with foreign students and French 2nd, 3rd generation who constantly suffered discrimination. Eventually this frustration would be visible during the Paris riots of 2005. I am a theatre director and, for the past decade, this is what I’ve mainly done. I love spending time with my actors, brainstorming ideas with my creative team and cast. In theatre, there is always a sense of being part of a working family. The company becomes more than a team, and everybody works really close to each other. I try to bring in those dynamics into film, and make the set, and the production meetings, a creative family. My experience as a working class immigrant in London inevitably defines my work. Because I do not have a budget and all my work is shot on a zero budget I have to counterbalance the lack of money with creativity and gathering extremely talented people for my projects. I usually shoot everything in one day. It’s intense, but professional filmmakers and actors often embrace this type of challenge, and give their very best. I choose stories that do not require expensive locations but that are worth telling for their relevance, diversity, originality and innovation. My biggest influences are Björk, Yayoi Kusama, Maya Deren, Ridley Scott, Katie Mitchell, Tamara Rojo, and Maya Angelou for their insatiable hunger for creating and discovering new narratives, and for surprising us and making us question reality. When I get stuck or when I’m not sure about what the next step is I become audience. I allow myself to visit other universes, their minds, interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview their narratives. Travelling since I was child has made my creative process all about travelling around different universes. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Box, a captivating experimental short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your clear approach to narrative and your inquiry into the nature of human psyche is the way it provides the viewers with such a multilayered visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of Box, could you tell us what did attract you to this particular story? I have been working with writer/actor Juan Echenique for a whole decade, both in theatre and in film. One of the things that draws me to his work is that he is always looking for new storytelling formats, for unusual sources of inspiration, and for ways to break traditional narrative structures. Back in November 2017, we started a new path in our work together, with the film . He approached the script with one single condition in mind: the protagonist was not to be seen until the very end. I immediately felt captivated by the story and the characters: two incredibly shy followers of a crazy UFO cult, who can't gather enough courage either to confess their love to each other, or to honour their suicide pact, all under the attentive gaze of their invisible and very real alien deity. The film was cute, original, and unique. It combined the best of both world: the writer's nuclear idea, and my creative vision of that idea. That film put us in a whole new artistic path. A few weeks later, Juan came to me with a new script: . It is probably the shortest script we've ever worked on. Barely half a page. A genuine headache in about twenty lines. The more I read those lines, the more I got trapped into the story itself. A box in a room.
The box IS the room. What I had in front of me was the chance to do something new, and that's one of the most exciting opportunities any director can get. The idea was to create an impossible space, a room without windows or doors, where the only exit is a small box, that happens to contain that same room. The main character is divided in two, a man and a woman. They are the same person, as the box is the same room, only they look, sound, and feel different, the same way the box and the room don't look alike. All dressed up as a "Quantum Horror" story. I started thinking about , and in the saga. A very strange marriage. I knew from the beginning that this was not meant to be an "easy" film, and that explaining and underlining the story would only detract from it. The goal I put in my mind was to create a memorable piece, full of inspiring images and tense pacing, where the audience could experience the same uneasiness and the same curiosity I felt when first reading the script. At some point in the process, I realised that my greatest challenge was going to be taking a very intellectual and abstract concept, and transforming it into something emotional, visceral. A story you need to feel with your skin, rather than analysing it with your head. That was the moment I understood I was trapped inside the box. That's when I decided I really wanted to make this film. Brilliantly shot with sapient use of whites, Box features essential cinematography and a keen eye for details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? The film talks, at some level, about the dualities of the human being. The idea of the Yin and the Yang popped into my mind very early on during the pre-production stage. Black and white. But the world inside the box is different from our own. Things get muddled there. The character is male and female, and they Women Cinemakers
can interact with their two natures in many different ways. The neat divide of the black and white is muddled, blurred. That's why I started working with a palette of different shades of grey. The story gave me something else, an intrinsic weirdness, something deeply uncomfortable. With that in mind, we twisted all the desaturated colours we had, and shifted to green, looking for an alien, unearthly atmosphere. Many films focus on telling the story by showing the audience details, objects, facial expressions, and other clear and concise pieces of information. In this case, however, that was bound to be a challenge. I could only play with a featureless white room, a cardboard box, and two actors with identical costumes. The only solution here was to take a different approach; instead of playing with "content" (props, locations, and wardrobe, for example), I decided to play with angles, with distances, with
framing. Whereas in a traditional story I could show a detail of the location, here I decided to show the action from different, unusual angles. Using the Sony A7S II with a DJI Ronin stabiliser and Sony 28- 135 F4 and Sigma Art 20mm F1.4 was what we had to work with. I don’t always have the luxury to choose the camera I want, however, I adapt my vision to what is available. In this case I had to research about the gear our DOP had so I knew our limitations. It gave me the perfect degree of dynamism and freedom to experiment on set, and to decide when I needed to follow the plan I had in my head, and when I needed to improvise. With its elegantly structured storytelling Box imparts unparalleled psychological intensity to the narration, to
Women Cinemakers unveil an ever shifting internal struggle. We have particularly appreciated the way the ambience of your film seem both natural and surreal: would you tell how did you develop the structure of your film in order to achieve such powerful results? What are you hoping Box will trigger in the audience? In this case, the structure is mostly the writer's concept. Juan Echenique is obsessed about structure, and about destroying it. His script, even though it was remarkably short, was detailed to the letter, explaining clearly what was happening at every twist and turn. We had quite a few conversations about this during the process, and one of the ideas that appeared most frequently was about Russian dolls. A doll that contains a smaller doll that contains a smaller doll, until there's an incredibly small doll at the end. The problem with that idea is that it becomes predictable, and that disengages the audience. The question here was how to tell a cyclic story, one that involves a degree of repetition, keeping it interesting and fresh. That's the point where artistic expression diverges from science: where science tries to approach experimentation with an identical clean slate every time, art needs irregularity, diversity, and certain degree of chaos to be interesting. In other words: We had to break the neat structure apart, in order to rebuild it in a more effective way. I worked very hard on finding ways of making the repetition contained in the story look like something new, even though it isn't. That way, the twist at the end becomes more shocking, as the audience is more engaged with what's happening in front of them. There's something I always want my audience to take away from my films and my plays: questions. I feel like I've achieved something when I hear the audience discussing the film after watching it, asking each other different questions. There's nothing more satisfactory than knowing that you've awakened somebody's curiosity.
Women Cinemakers We like the way your intimate close-ups created entire scenarios out of psychologically charged moments: in Box you leave the floor to your characters and your inquiry into their personal spherez 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, how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of a scene and the need of spontaneity? How much importance does play improvisation in your practice? With a background of theatre, I think rehearsals are essential for actors and for myself. I usually schedule a day or two for rehearsals with the actors so we can be clear about intentions, plot, character development, etc. I come into rehearsals with a few ideas to throw at the actors and they share their ideas about their character. We think “outside the box” and try different things. The majority of the times, they are so familiar with their character they come up with brilliant ideas that end up in the film. For there was this idea of both actors being the same person. I didn’t want to go for something literal. Your vision of yourself is completely different from the vision people have from you. The actors have different genders and ethnicities, which is something that is clear, but they are dressed exactly the same. We searched for movements that were similar in essence but not identical. They came from identical emotions but not identical gestures. I also do rehearsals because actors have 100% of my attention during the session. They’ve been able to ask questions, suggest interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers new ideas, talk about the film, and are clear about what I want them to achieve during the shoot. This way during the shoot I can dedicate more time to my crew. I think there is always space for spontaneity. During a shoot things can constantly go wrong or just in an unexpected way. From issues with the weather, lighting, cast, crew, anything can happen in a way you weren’t prepared for. I know what shots are essential to telling my story, but I like to allow some space for “magic” to happen. For , the day we arrived to the location there had been a concert and the space was in “post-concert” mode. I was planning on using all the space but ended up only being able to use a corner. On the spot, I made the decision of making the narrative more claustrophobic, closer to the horror genre. That genre had been there since the beginning, but I decided to fully embrace it the moment we arrived to our set. I had to adapt all the lighting, and the camera angles immediately. That resourcefulness is something that becomes second nature, when you work the way I do. During rehearsal we do a lot of improvisation, I love what actors can bring to the table! If I see an idea I like during rehearsal we transfer it to the shoot. However, not all scripts leave a lot of room for improvisations, and some improvisations, no matter how brilliant they are, don't really contribute to the story. Even though they may look great as something independant, my job is to keep my eyes on the big picture. Does this scene contribute in any way to the story or the vision? Often, the greatest sacrifices I do in the rehearsal room are the ones that have the biggest pay off when shooting the film. It's a constant balancing act, trying to get the best out of everybody's creativity, while being level-headed enough to evaluate what I receive in the context of the whole story. interview
Marked with captivating minimalistic quality, the soundtrack by Fraser Maitland provides the footage of Box with such enigmatic and a bit unsettling atmosphere: how do you consider the role of sound within your practice and how did you structure the relationship between sound and moving images? Fraser did an amazing job with the brief. We had so little time, and I wanted an original soundtrack. Initially, the brief I gave him was more electronic-classical but after shooting at location I asked him to turn it all into horror which he did very well. Sound is as important as the camera work, actors, lighting; composers are at the nucleus of the team. In my theatre work I use a lot of live music, so actors and audience are in constant communication with the musicians and feed from it. The majority of my films have original soundtrack. I work with composers, so they can make something specifically tailored to the story, they receive the same mood board as the DOP and are one of the first ones to receive the very first draft. We build the story together. The music and sound can heighten an emotion, or slowly reveal a plot twist, or it can be a key instrument to shock your audience. The relationship between sound and moving images should complement and enhance each other. Box was inspired by the concept of Schrödinger's cat: French anthropologist and sociologist Marc Augè once suggested the idea that modern age creates two separate poles: nature versus science and culture versus society. As an artist interested in the theme of perception, how would you consider such apparent dichotomy that affect our contemporary age? Women Cinemakers interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers We live in the era of the contradictions and the paradoxes. Politically, the world hasn't been this polarised for decades, yet the opposites are set in obtuse angles. Not fifteen years ago, young liberals were marching on the streets of London, protesting against globalisation and its impact on working class people's economy. Conservatives, on the other hand, kept on talking about the global market, and how it benefited us all. Fast forward to the present time, and we have a new batch of conservatives who preach nationalism and localism in the name of freedom, and a new wave of liberals who advocate for global trade as the solution to all of the world's problems. I've seen Catholic bishops marching on the streets of Madrid against the government, and Tory leaders in the UK madly pursuing an independence process based on a fantasy of a better future, rather than on facts and figures. There's contradiction between the people who rule the world, and the labels they have on their sleeve. The most important elected leaders in the world can blatantly lie on social media, in the press, and anywhere they see fit, yet their image as trustworthy men of the people seems unscathed by any fact checker. The dichotomy is more present than ever. We have evolved socially to the point where we are starting to see gender as something irrelevant, still we have to explain over and over again why gender inequality is one of the greatest failures of our society. We see over and over again how some of the most brilliants intellectuals of our time fail to grasp why the salary breach between men and women is a problem, and why it needs to be changed now. It's like seeing an Olympic runner exhausted after a walk in the park. Our everyday lives are now plagued with contradictions and dichotomies. Take for example our phones. They are computers I can hold in my hand. It gives me access to more information than what I could find in the greatest library on Earth. However, our writing skills decrease as we use them, replacing full words with abbreviations, and interview
complete sentences with just verbs or nouns. How can all the knowledge in the world be a source of ignorance? While scientists have been trying for a long time to get closer and closer to nature, to understand how we are a part of it, instead of being an external influence, the effects of the scientific advances of the last two hundred years are having a devastating impact on our environment. There's a beautifully tragic story right there, about people destroying the source of their sustenance just by trying to understand it. That ties directly with Schrödinger's thought experiment: the observer is always a part of the experiment. That's one of the fascinating things about . The audience is another character of the story. The film changes depending on how you perceive it. Your work offers a female, diverse perspective, in a way that is clear, political and most importantly, entertaining: do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value? The industry is starting to become aware of the lack of representation and female voices. There is an interest in watching films made by women which is a step forward. However, being a working class, non-white, immigrant, female in this industry reflects on all of my work. My work is, in some senses, charged with this frustration, anger, energy, unconventional tenderness and sense of humour which translates into surrealism, magical realism, and punk. I pay special attention to how female characters are portrayed. Do we have a classic meaningless girlfriend, Women Cinemakers mother, grandmother role? Is gender relevant at all to the story I’m telling? I like stories that break pre-conceptions, probably because what currently exists doesn’t represent me. Each of my films is, in one way or another, a way to give the middle finger to people who don’t believe there is a space for filmmakers like myself. We have 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 discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional filmmaker? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? As an unconventional filmmaker I make films in insane conditions. Zero budget, one day shoots, final cut in a month. I don’t do it this way because I want to, or I think it helps my creative process, I do it because my only other option is just complaining about not having funding, and not telling my stories. A few years ago I really wanted to start shooting films on a regular basis. I bought a DSLR camera that would shoot in 4K
and started making films. However, I found a lot of people who kept on telling me that the first step was to look for a producer, secure funding, hire a great camera, start raising funds so I could recruit people and pay to take part of the festival circuit. The amount of information was overwhelming and basically all the paths required a lot of money: there was barely any emphasis on storytelling, and that was just shocking. This made me understand why some big budget productions have such huge issue. There’s no emphasis on original storytelling. This lead me to a period of being incredibly angry and frustrated about the absolute lack of opportunities. Being a non-white immigrant woman was already limiting my chances of being able to share my vision. Now, being broke was apparently the greatest problem. One more thing to add to the list!
I created a Facebook group called Making Films where filmmakers are challenged to make a film in one month on a zero budget. If they reach the deadline I screen their short film no matter what. All the films we screen can be shot on a mobile phone, a digital camera, a tablet, or an Arri Alexa, anything really. Our focus is original storytelling. Unexpectedly we’ve already had international collaborations happen within our challenge. This is all organised by two people, Juan Echenique and myself. The uniqueness of our challenge is that actors and crew pitch directly to the writers. If they want to be part of the short film as an actor/director/camera/etc. they have to pitch why and how they will make the short film in a month. Writers decide based on who can actually get the project done. This gives a lot more power to everyone and it becomes a collaborative project, it’s all about of completing a film. Instead of the standard structure of having everyone waiting beside the phone. If you want to make a film you just make it! Making Films has become a bi-monthly film festival. What was initially supposed to be a small group of filmmaking friends has grown overwhelmingly. Since November we’ve curated and screened over 30 short films. We organise a networking session at the beginning of the challenge in London and once the challenge is completed we screen them. We do not make any profit out of this, but we’re stronger as a collective than as individuals and it’s a statement we make about filmmaking. Making Films has a 50% of films made by females and non-binary, 30% are made by BAME, 90% of the filmmakers consider themselves working class. Just by opening the door to more people diversity comes naturally. My experience as an unconventional filmmaker has made me create an entire festival and recruit over 1000 members to be able to screen my work because there was no place for people like me. Sometimes it’s been a frustrating and angry path, some other times it’s been inspiring and magical. The more female filmmakers we have reaching the top, the more visible they become, the more opportunities will be made. I hope that the generations after mine will see filmmaking as something a lot more accessible than what I’ve experienced. I hope they are treated equally as their male colleagues. I hope they feel free to Women Cinemakers
express their vision without the worries of failing because their work will be judged based on their gender. Being a women in the industry makes you be a lot more persistent, and forces you to think outside of your comfort zone. The very few women who are making a path for themselves are incredibly driven and self-sufficient. The industry hasn’t given them space so they have just created it for themselves and have become so visible they can’t be ignored anymore. I can’t foresee the future, but I can talk about the present. Women are challenging standard storytelling. Fairy tales are sexist and some classic films we’ve been brought up with are racist, misogynistic and homophobic... we have no option other than to break with these stories and come up with something different, incessantly make films and not load our shoulders with the weight of representing the female voice. It’s too much of a burden to carry. We should have the freedom to create things without any other responsibility than original, relevant and groundbreaking storytelling. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Fumi. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I’ve just shot a feature film in one day on a zero budget. It’s my first feature film and it’s called , we’re currently editing it and hopefully we will be able to screen it in autumn. We had a cast of 11 actors and 8 crew team members, now we’re in post so there’s a lot of professional filmmakers involved who have worked with us before and have agreed to make this crazy dream come true. In 2019 we will re-start Making Films. We’ve had to pause for the summer as we were working and this whole festival is run by just two people. We’ll looking to bring in more partners and collaborations with institutions to continue our work so hopefully we can help make more films and showcase their work. If any potential partners are reading, get in touch! I’m on social media @fumigoation Until then, I’m directing mainly theatre: a piece for East 15 Drama School from September and I’m working on a show for the Gate Theatre that will open in spring 2019. I don’t really think of my work as a whole. I go step by step and think about trying new things in each film. I am never in my comfort zone and I challenge myself in each film to do something I’ve never done before. Each film is a universe, and when I’m finished with one project I’m on to the next one as soon as possible. Ideally I’d like to be able to do theatre and film side by side and solely focus on directing. Instead of directing and producing. I know how to make a film on a zero budget, my next challenge is to make a film with a budget. I wonder how much of my creativity and storytelling has been determined because of always adapting and working with what I have without even thinking of what I could have. I would love to have that range of opportunities, I dream of what it would be like to not have to carry all my gear, props, wardrobe, on the bus and just be able to concentrate on directing 100%! To be honest, I just want to be able to make films full time, every day. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] Women Cinemakers
An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] Hello Heike and welcome to : we would like to invite our readers to visit in order to get a wider idea about the multidisciplinary nature of your practice and we would start this interview with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having graduated as a certified Anna Herrmann Gymnastic teacher in Germany, trained in dance at ArtEZ-Dance Academy (NL) and received an MA Choreography from the University of Leeds (GB) / Fontys Dance Academy (NL), how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist and a videomaker? Moreover, how does your direct the trajectory of your artistic research? My training as a dance artist has taken place in several countries, in vocational as well as academic environments. This exposure to different aesthetic perspectives and a range of practical skills have allowed me to develop a practice that draws from many sources. A key element for me is space and place, and the interchange between myself and the environment. Growing Heike Salzer Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in the South of England Krummi is a video installation based on the Icelandic poem Krummavisur-The Raven’s Song. The Nordic story tells the hard life during the cold Icelandic winters. Flying high above the landscape against the crisp sun, the ravens float above ice, rocks, steam, and bubbling geothermal water; a poetic visual dance.
Photo: Ingi Jensson Heike Salzer, Hellisheidi, Iceland 2014
Women Cinemakers up in the rural South of Germany and spending my youth outside, in the woods and fields has shaped my relationship with nature. There is a dialogue that takes place between ourselves and the place we are in, and ultimately this engagement informs most of my practice. In that sense, I consider myself a nomadic artist, not only from the point of view of spending time in different geographical locations, but also as somebody who is fluently moving between different practices, finding ways to communicate via interdisciplinary investigation and collaboration, for example the fusion of dance making and cinematography. From my formal training, I see that traces of the German Ausdruckstanz tradition and Gymnastik education with their humanistic perspectives and focus on authenticity and the belief that body, mind and soul are an interlinked unity are always apparent in my work. No matter if it is live or on the screen. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting a videodance installation that you created in collaboration with Ingi Jensson and that can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into the hard life during the cold Icelandic winters is the way it offers to the viewers a heightened and multilayered visual experience, to create an unparalleled vision of past and future. When walking our readers through of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? The idea originated when I received an invitation for an artist residency to create a piece for Merge Dance Company, at Texas interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers State University in San Marcos, USA. I wanted to choreograph a live performance including video projection. San Marcos has a humid and sub-tropical climate, it gets very hot and the Icelandic Nordic winter, an absolute contrast, felt an exciting theme to explore and bring to Texas, where many might have not experienced such cold or seen these amounts of snow. We travelled for one week through Iceland during February in the arctic winter, and filmed the moving elements of this untouched landscape, sometimes by temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius. The poem was our guide for capturing footage: it talks about the harshness and difficulty of survival during wintertime, and we wanted to capture this sense of existential fear that overcomes us, when nature is very demanding. Although the poem served as the initial inspiration we did not expect to be able to capture ravens, however we were very lucky when we encountered a group of them spiralling around a church tower. Inspired by the Icelandic poem Krummavisur-The Raven’s Song, sapiently intertwines elements from tradition and contemporary sensitiveness: how do you consider the relationship between tradition and contemporariness? Do you think that there's a conflictual relation or is there a synergy between this apparently opposite aspects? In particular, how important was for you to make , about a theme that you know a lot about? I think that the contemporary and tradition can be an enriching partnership. In fact, I often find elements of folklore very inspiring to the making of art. , which is a poem by Jón interview
Thoroddsen from the early 19th century, communicates the exceptional situation of winter via illustrative nature metaphors. The ravens in the poem are searching for food in the snow-covered landscape, a task that has little hope for success, however finally they find a dead sheep which they can scavenge on, securing their survival. This is a strong symbol that I found intriguing. It provides an image of the absolute desperation we can find ourselves in, when life circumstances are exceptionally testing. For me does not necessarily portray a personal experience, but offers the viewer an opportunity to reflect on his own experience when viewing this impressive landscape. Audience members have told me that they became aware of the vulnerability of the earth, thoughts about climate change and ecocriticism occur. In that way I believe, more than it being about my own connection, the work offers a surface to the viewer to reflect on their individual questions that arise. Elegantly shot, features gorgeous landscape cinematography and a keen eye for details, capable of orchestrating realism with : what were your when shooting? In
particular, how did you structure your editing process in order to achieve such brilliant results? Iceland has the largest area of untouched wilderness in Europe which means that you can still find landscape that lacks human interference, such as buildings, electrical posts, road networks etc. which usually are constructs that need to be negotiated when framing landscape. There is an expansiveness of the views which is most impressive, and which we tried to capture via long shots, and subtle panning. Furthermore, Iceland has strong volcanic and geothermal activity; here the Eurasian Plate and North American tectonic plates meet and form the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which runs across Iceland from the southwest to the northeast. The island is new compared to other areas of the world and is still forming. The steam and hot water that can be seen in are movements of this active nature. There is a big contrast between the freezing ice where almost no movement can be seen, and the bubbling of the extremely hot springs that are coming directly from deep within the earth. This underlying power is hidden beneath the calm snow landscape, and yet there is the possibility of geothermal forces exploding at any moment.
Women Cinemakers Oppositional states of calm and turmoil. It is this unimaginable strength and unpredictable activities of nature that are fascinating and I tried to portray via the contrasting features of the expansive and still landscape, to details of the moving elements of nature. For example, the long one frame landscape shots of the snow-covered field with very little movement in the beginning scene, which almost looks as it is a still, to the gradually increasing dynamic by overlaying footage with movements of the landscape in different directions, for example the clouds and the ravens. To then climax the ‘volume’, by using a triptych split screen with oppositional directional moving elements of water, steam, clouds and rocks and kinaesthetic camera movement, in addition to an ever-increasing development of the sound. When composing the edit, I use the memory of my embodied feeling of the places we filmed, the kinaesthetic awareness of being at the place. This sensitivity informs the way in which I compose the frames in relation to each other, and the dynamic and the overall structure. Deviating from traditional filmmaking, we dare say that your artistic research the notion of elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé, to highlight the ubiquitous instertitial points and between human interaction with environment. In this sense, draws heavily from the specifics of environments and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such powerful interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers between the location and the atmosphere that pervades the film: how did you select the locations and how did they influence your shooting process? The process that I use to develop my screendance work, is what I call the . We go on a journey without a pre-formed agenda, and stop at places that catch our attention, for example a view, expansiveness, light, colour, movement or simply an intuition. We were filming at places that viscerally intrigued us. That means that the choices for were driven by our emotional responses to landscape rather than rational decision making of ‘getting a good shot’. Although we travelled by car, and we were not wandern (hiking) by foot, our expedition felt like a hiking trip; spending time in nature with the chance to ponder about ourselves and world. This kind of self-reflection echoes themes of the Wanderlust movement of the Romantic era in the late 17th and early 18th century in Germany, which describes the strong desire of artists to explore the world. The experience of nature and the subjective emotional responses formed the stimuli for German romantic art, which was a reaction to the industrial revolution, and the concerns for humanity in that new technological era. Furthermore, the enlightenment period with its rationalisation had left little space for the transcendental and unexplainable. Romantic art today seems to me as relevant as it was then. These themes of the longing for deceleration and space for the unexplainable is something I am interested in. Also, today we live in a busy digitized environment, in socio-political interview
Women Cinemakers frameworks that are driven by rational judgement, productivity, and success. There is little space for contemplation and calmness in our lives, and spending time in nature is a way to re-connect and get grounded. Austrian-British historian E. Gombrich, writing in , talked about the importance of providing a space for the viewer to project onto, so that they can participate in the illusion: how much important is for you the viewer's perceptual parameters in order to address them to elaborate ? The personal association and the ‘placing of the viewer’ is indeed a key element in my work. Being in nature allows me to be in dialogue with a place, finding ‘myself’ in the world. Framing landscape in such a way that positions the viewer into the frame and editing the film rhythmically that suggests the dynamic of the movement of the space, the viewer might be able to connect kinaesthetically, feeling as being there himself, and through this embodied experience reaching moments of self-reflection. As much as the film is a work that portrays our experience, it also offers the viewer to enter his own imagination. There is a three-way dialogue here: We as artists encounter a place, the viewer of the art encounters our experience being in that place, and the viewer has an individual encounter with the landscapes in the artwork. Sound is a crucial component of and we have appreciated the way the sound tapestry that you created in collaboration with Jack Laidlaw provides the footage with interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers such an and a bit atmosphere: how do you consider the role of sound within your practice and how do you see ? Sounds play an integral part of my work. It communicates a sense of space in a direct sensory way. Rhythm is inherent in images and in sound, and this interlinked dynamic play between image and sound enhances the other. Jack Laidlaw and I worked closely together to develop the accompaniment. He used the harmony of the traditional song for the composition and the dynamic development of the whole is inspired by the above mentioned subtle quietness with the underlying forces of nature; from a serene calm atmosphere to a powerful chaos, and a gloomy yet hopeful end, when I imagine, that the lonely raven continues flying above the landscape. It's no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established under the name of are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Cinema and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that " ": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between artists from different disciplines? I have experienced the collaboration with artists from other interview
Women Cinemakers disciplines or cultural backgrounds as a very enriching one. The exchange of ideas and practices, which sometimes can be a challenging process due to different vocabularies or approaches, ultimately pushes my own boundaries further and the work becomes more than I could have achieved on my own. It demands a detailed reflection on my practice, which in one way helps to identify priorities and ‘musts’ but also questions the elements that might only be there out of habit and can be lost. Screendance, under which I like to categorise my films, aims to merge choreography and cinematography and as such the synthesis of different disciplines searches for new ways of making. When working in teams, it is important to me to identify working practices of openness, honest dialogue, curiosity and respect for ‘the other’, empathy and general positivity towards the process. Then I think collaboration can be an inspiring and satisfying experience. Under the name of Salts she collaborates with international artists and her screendances, installations and choreographies have been invited to numerous international venues and festivals such as the International Videodance Festival Burgundy (FR), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (US), Bang-VII Barcelona Videoart Festival, (SP), Athens Video Dance Project (GR), ATLAS Institute (US) among others. Over the years your works have been exhibited and screened in a number of festivals and venues, including the International Videodance Festival Burgundy (FR), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (US), Bang-VII Barcelona Videoart Festival, (SP). We have really appreciated the originality of interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers