Cin Wom ISS015016 Art Cinema

ANITA ROJAS CARROLL SALLY CLONINGER VANDA CIUBAN SERBAN SARAH BELLIN ALINE BENCHEMHOUN D’TURA HALE LAURA MIRANDA DANIA BDEIR NATALIA LOPATINA

> WAC c�n�ec�

CINEMA DOC THEATRE VIDEO ART DANCE

cinéwomen/15

Building on the success of the fourth edition, CinéWomen continues showcasing video practice from around the world. As the ultimate mirror-medium of our times, video is all around us. Despite the proliferation of mainstream cinema, independent films continue to be made –radical, poetic, and dreamlike films, whose directors work on the edge of the mainstream film industry, never restricting themself to any single field, yet inviting the eye and the mind to travel further. Cinema is no longer the monolithic system based on large capital investiment: in the last decade the technological advances have dramatically changed the economic conditions of cinema production. Revolutions arise from obstinacy.

It is not by chance that today one of the protagonists of the digital revolution in cinema is a talented and courageous woman director, Elle Schneider, co-founder along with Joe Rubinstein of the Digital Bolex Project, who after developing a cult-camera harking back to 16mm film aesthetic -a significant leap towards the democratization of technology- is now promoting an application process for a grant for producers employing women in their camera troupes.

Only eight percent of 2015's top-grossing films were directed by women: it's time to reverse this trend. However, cinema is not only technology, but ideas, experimentation, and above all dialogue, networking, interaction. Creating and supporting a fertile ground for innovation and dialogue does not necessarily require compromise. Honoring the influence of women in video art and cinema, our womenartconnect.com editorial board is proud to present a selection of powerful and surreal visions from seven uncompromising outsiders.

In these pages you will encounter details on a new wave of filmmakers marching away from the Hollywood stereotype, with films like Kaleidoscope by Dania Bdeir; the excellent cinematography of Natalia Lopatina ;Anita Rojas Carroll’s Unwritten, a true gem of cinema inspired by Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, and much more.

editorial womenartconnect.com

CinéWomen Board

cinĂŠwomen/15

art-house

>

wac TOP Still from Anita Rojas Carroll

LEFT Still from , Mengxi Rao

COVER Still from Anita Rojas Carroll

Edition curated

wac* VIDEO ART CINEMA THEATRE DANCE

cinĂŠwomen/15

natalia lopatina Queen (Russian Federation, 2015)

e

independent cinema

Natalia Lopatina deploys elements of classical aesthetics in the service of a cinematic modernism. Her music video displays an unparalleled visual style, using spatial perspective and unexpected camera angles to create an original portrait of a modern . The result is a music video of languid beauty, notable for its almost Jarmanian, visionary imagery. Natalia, how did you get into filmmaking?

First of all, I would like to thank you for such kind and warm words about my music video «Queen» and my style! It’s so pleasant to receive such praise for my directorial debut. As for your question, the story is the following: when I was 16, I fell completely in love with analogue photography, I started to collect various old Soviet 35 mm cameras as well as modern lomo cameras. I even learnt how to develop film by myself. Then I realized that the world of moving pictures was even more charming: I helped my friends to shoot a music video to take part in one contest. Later I learnt how to edit videos and took part in

another competition where I needed to re-edit one movie trailer and my work was screened at one of the main cinemas in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the same time I began to watch good movies and got inspired by some great films. Then I went to Helsinki to take part in a kino kabaret called Kino Euphoria and collaborated with some talented people from different countries while filming some shorts. At last I realized that filmmaking was much more than just a hobby for me, so I began to study music video direction at the Academy of Communications «Wordshop» and at the moment I’m working at another music video. The video «Queen» was created in terms of another kino kabaret called KinoLAB Moscow. I guess it’s a long and thorny path of merging into the world of visual art full of discoveries and constant revelations.

Can you tell us something about your experience at the Academy of Communications “Wordshop” in Moscow?

The academy itself as well as our faculty

is such a place that in all senses has opened my eyes and taught me to see something I have never even thought of before (and no wonder the Academy’s slogan is «Change your head»). As this is the second education, we have only a few disciplines, that are the following: History of Cinema, Scriptwriting, Film Editing, Direction, Acting. But still the knowledge we receive is so deep and profound that after a year of studies I began to experience utterly new feelings and emotions while watching any type of visual art. I used to believe that filmmaking was a kind of miracle and it was so hard to create a movie or even a music clip. But now I’m sure that there is nothing impossible - the only thing you need is a huge hunger for filmmaking. I suppose the Academy has evoked such hunger.

Queen is marked by a deliriously extravagant cinematography and

mise-en-scène. Can you tell us something about your eye-popping photography? What were some of your aesthetic decisions?

Thank you so much! When we were shooting this video I wanted to create an atmosphere of unconscious vision full of vivid spots as well as accurate black and white geometry. I experimented, even behaved like a hooligan somehow.

But I would not be able to shoot this one without my wonderful crew and I would really love to thank each of them. My DOP and editor Valeria Grachova helped me to strike life into this work as she suggested a lot of aesthetic principles and special technical features - for example, the usage of violet defocusing, long exposure, acute angles, different speed of shooting and many others to create the elusive world that is at your fingertips as you can feel it, but cannot

cinĂŠwomen/15

grab it. The actress and model Maria Volkova could identify herself with 3 completely different images. The makeup and hair artist Maria Yakovleva created these images. Another "member" of the crew was the location itself (we were shooting in the famous VDNH park full of places of different cultures and epochs). All these things were like parts of a kaleidoscope, completely different individually but forming the whole together.

structure that has no beginning or end.

No doubt this clip is allegorical that is why there was no intention to shoot a story with logical structure. This is more about post drama that you need to feel at first and then to understand, but not vice versa. But still there was some kind of the Queen’s development in time and space as there were 3 images, 3 logical phases. And as this story is moving us to the imaginary world of unconscious dreams, all the images are mixed.

We have been deeply impressed with your editing style too. Did the overall structure unfold before the camera, or were you already aware of these various pieces of the puzzle?

Even the music is a kind of mixture of different parts of different tracks. I would say that the overall structure was approved still after shooting, we decided to shoot much of different stuff and then try to mix it somehow.

Before starting the production of this video Valeria and me were well aware that the editing style of this work would be improper, not linear. I would say this work is like a part of some endless

Your film is an elegantly crafted, tautly choreographed study. How did you choose the character of the Queen for this work?

“ ”

cinĂŠwomen/15

I tried to develop and study those borders of her character that I was familiar with, that fascinated me. Her character is discrepant, she is fragile and reckless, sharp and tender, bright and monochrome - just as any of us, women. And our development is just like pendulum, sometimes we need to wear this mask of coldness and rigidity just to save our delicate soul.

The Queen has a mysterious aura, you define this character at the same time "fragile and reckless". Can you introduce our readers to this fundamental concept of your work?

Just continuing my answer to the previous question I would say that Queen is a girl, like me or any other girl without a particular name or nationality, who is searching for self-esteem, high selfconcept and love towards herself. It’s common knowledge that if you don’t love

yourself you won’t be able to sincerely love anybody else and build harmonious relations with others. She is trying to find this love towards herself through a game – she is pretending to be a queen, a fake toy plastic queen. But her attempts fail so she starts rejecting these games and chooses to destroy herself, to merge in black. Her fragility and childish tenderness lead her to violence and destruction. But at last the girl regenerates, gains completely new forms and starts a new phase of accepting herself and her inner world that may seem weird and odd, but still this is her world, her true face, her real identity. As only being herself the girl can become a real queen.

And every woman is a queen, just by right of birth. But undoubtedly it takes much time to realize this fact, that’s why the girl in this new and brainsick image is running away in the end.

This surreal, exaggerated, reckless and a

cinéwomen/15

bit crusty story is a total reflection of my fragile and vulnerable inner world in search for self-esteem. I’m just starting this long journey of accepting myself and this music video is the first step. It’s interesting that after shooting this video I decided to jump from "free fall tower" though I'm really afraid of height. I guess, this act was also a kind of overcoming barriers on my way to selfesteem.

Can you describe the shooting of Queen?

As I have already mentioned, the music video "Queen" is my directorial debut.

Before this I had never created any videos independently, all of the works were collaborations with other directors.

"Queen" was created within 3 days during the KinoLAB Moscow – from the idea to the screening. I took a song of my

friend, electronic musician Sergey Buruhin. The song’s name was "Q".

I thought it would be interesting to come up with ideas of the music video for this song quite by chance; so I just took the first word beginning with the letter "Q" that I had come across in the dictionary.

The word was “queen”. Here the story begins. You may know that Kino Kabaret is a type of innovative film-making lab where invited artists from different countries meet and create films in a mindset of spontaneity and collaboration.

We had only half of a day to gather the crew, to write some kind of a script, choose the locations, the cast and the equipment. I met the DOP and the actress there in the KinoLAB, I’d never known them before, we just felt that our minds were attuned. We had only one day to shoot all the scenes within the bounds of one park - from the morning till late night. And then only one night

cinéwomen/15

was left for editing - my editor Valeria didn’t sleep at all! The following evening our works were screened in one of the local places. It was a quick, but amazing adventure.

You have worked as editor in Priscila Alegre's Dema, a beautiful film featured in our CinéWomen Edition. Can you tell us something about your collaboration with Priscila?

Priscila and I met during Kino Euphoria in Helsinki. She told her idea during the pitching and I became very interested, I immediately decided to collaborate with her somehow. Priscila chose me as her editor and I would like to thank her for that once again! It was such a pleasure to work with her and our brilliant crew from other countries.

Priscila herself is from Spain and that was one of the reasons why it was such a pleasant experience for me to

collaborate with her - I studied Spanish at the university, and as her short was in Spanish with English subs, I could edit different parts of the film just in the appropriate way. I understood the sense and felt the necessary editing tempo. I really loved the result and hope that I could justify all Priscila’s hopes. What’s more, I created a small teaser for that short. I would like to collaborate with her again and shoot something in her home town Barcelona that is one of my favorites.

We have previously mentioned Derek Jarman, who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

There are so many artists and directors who inspire me and give me food for cinematic thoughts and the list is constantly increasing. But I can definitely highlight the one that I’m obsessed with and the one who has

cinéwomen/15

inspired me to study direction.

This is a young Canadian director Xavier Dolan. I admire his colors, his usage of music, his relevant hommage towards his idols, his doubts and experiments and the way he builds his unique cinematic world tenderly but emphatically enveloping his audience.

What's your view on the future of women in cinema?

I suppose that women have completely the same rights in cinema as men - I would vote for women’s emancipation in the world of visual art! - I even believe that women have a huge advantage in comparison with men in cinema (and I tried to depict it in my work and in the description above).

Women are more irrational, more discrepant, more sensible and sensitive, but at the same time they are and have to be strong and enduring in this men’s world in order

to survive. But this crazy mixture of qualities undoubtedly provide women unique opportunities to create great cinema.

Thanks for your time and thought, Natalia. We wish you all the best with your filmmaker career.

What's next for Natalia Lopatina?

Have you a particular film in mind?

Thank you so much, I've spent great time while answering your questions and reflecting on various topics. As for the future, I’m dreaming of filming a full-length movie sometime, but at the moment I’m working on another music video for young Russian electronic musician. We’ll see!

cinĂŠwomen/15

dania bdeir Kaleidoscope (Lebanon, 2015)

e

independent cinema

present Dania Bdeir for this year's CinĂŠwomen Edition. Dania, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

Kaleidoscope is a film rich in textures.

Here the director, though just as skilful at getting emotion on to the screen in a way few others could even contemplate, explore the story of Amer, a 7-year old boy living in Beirut. Any plot description fail to convey the true strenght of the film, which delights in an accurate cinematography: Dania Bdeir's short film is a visual and arousing cinematic experience, one that deserves repeated and in-depth viewings. We are glad to

I've always been drawn to filmmaking. When I was younger, my ultimate dream was to be an actress. I'd constantly re-enact scenes from films in my bedroom with stuffed animals and I'd practice the acceptance speech for my inevitable Oscars. After all, it was only a matter of time before I got one, or so I believed. When I was 15, my father got me my first video camera and it was the beginning of a love affair. I would film anything and everything and then edit the footage on Movie Maker on my computer. When it was time for college, however, I couldn't find a film school in Lebanon that got me excited, and to be honest I didn't have the courage to enter this field. My mother encouraged me to pursue something safer that had more promise of economical stability so I ended up getting my undergrad degree in Graphic Design. The Graphic

Design program at the American University of Beirut is very much rooted in the community. For almost all of our projects, we had to get out in Beirut and work on design that matters and that is relevant to our city and the people. These four years really opened my eyes and made me explore Beirut, speak to its inhabitants and really breathe in the complexities, subtleties and charm of its streets.

I discovered so many characters and stories. I was fascinated and addicted especially that there are so many untold stories from the Middle East in the world of film. In my third summer, I visited New York City and made it a point to visit the campuses of both NYU and Columbia University's film schools. As the guides were showing us around and telling us about the writing and directing programs there, my heart skipped a beat. I knew then that this is where I needed to be. I came back to Beirut and my only goal was to go back to New York and get my MFA at

NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Graphic Design was great and it gave me the maturity and growth I needed to really understand my community, ask the right questions and observe the details around my everyday life. I learned about composition, efficient visual communication and critical thinking but I knew that I never wanted to spend a minute on Photoshop designing a logo or a magazine layout. I wanted to make films and tell stories. When I got accepted to NYU, I was ecstatic. Just one month after receiving my BA in Graphic Design, I was on a plane excited to embark on a new adventure and finally following my dream.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Kaleidoscope?

What attracted you to this topic and how did you research it?

On my first summer back to Beirut from New York, I was excited to come back to

cinĂŠwomen/15

everything I missed: my family, the food, the Meditterannean. I was greeted however with burning tires on my way home from the airport. Every other day, I'd be driving happily blasting loud music on my way to the beach and would find thick black smoke rising through the air and would find yet another blocked road.

I, as well as all my friends just complained about the state of the country and the barbaric and violent act of tire burning.

After a few days, I understood why these men were burning tires. They were contract employees at Lebanon's Electricity company; some of which have been with the company for over 20 years. They were demanding full time contracts so that they get better pay and proper benefits. They started by organizing themselves and doing it the bureaucratic way and they were approved by the parliament. Shortly after, the energy minister went on record to revoke that decision fearing that if all of these employees were to be given full time contracts, there would be a sectarian

imbalance at the company. When I heard this story, I figured "no wonder these men were livid", they were being denied basic rights and privileges because of a stupid detail. In a country like Lebanon, doing things the bureaucratic and correct way can more often than none, blow up in your face. How else were these men going to express their anger? Burning tires was their way of forcing the government and the people to hear their voice and acknowledge their existence.

I felt bad for judging these protestors. I realized more and more that in Lebanon, we're stuck in a vicious cycle: the people are let down by the government and are made to feel like they don't matter so they are forced to react with violence thus teaching their children that this is the only way to go. I started imagining one of these men as a good father trying hard to make ends meet and to provide for his family.

I imagined following him on the moment that he decides to stop being a nice man

“

”

cinĂŠwomen/15

and to give in to his extreme frustration, then I decided to try seeing that same moment from the point of view of his son, a dreamy imaginative boy who is forced to grow up too soon when faced with the flames of reality.

The character of the boy, amer really fascinated us. Did you base him on someone you knew?

Amer wasn't really based on anyone I knew, but I wanted to portray a small boy with a childish and vivid imagination, someone who saw the world around him as a magical and colorful place. I wanted us to see that his father sheltered him and always tried to make him feel like everything was going to be okay. This way we'd feel it more strongly when he loses his innocence. In a way, I feel like every Lebanese person is Amer and our relationship with Lebanon is similar to his experience in the film. Lebanon is an incredible and magical place that we keep trying so

hard to believe in, an ideal that we speak of to everyone we meet but then, reality hits us hard.

Your film is marked by a clear storytelling. What about preferences as far as shooting? Do you go fom beginning to end?

As far as shooting goes, I worked a lot with my very talented DP Karim Ghorayeb. We decided to try and always keep the camera from Amer's point of view. We tried shooting from a low angle so we can have the audience experience the story solely through his eyes.

The settings you have chosen for Kaleidoscope are expansive, while the stories that you film are very intimate.

It is as if you were searching constantly for a confrontation between the exterior and interior of things. Can you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of your film?

cinĂŠwomen/15

I think this came about from the choice of shooting the film from Amer's point of view.

When you're a child, you live in the adult's world, you see the same things and you hear the sounds, but you're really mostly living in your own world. Amer's experience is very intimate. He's in his world, focusing on a few specific elements during every step of the film.

How long was the project?

I worked on it for almost a year. I wrote the script in the summer and then workshopped it and did some pre-production in the fall at NYU. We took a couple of months off as production period but during that time, we were all crewing on each other's films. I shot mine in January and unfortunately couldn't fly any of my classmates over to Beirut with me. I then spent the rest of the school year attending classes and editing.

We have been deeply impressed by your cinematography, in particular your use of color. Can you describe your approach to lighting?

We decided against using too many lights and having beauty shots. We wanted to stay true to the story and the rough environment they inhabit which is why the image is dark a lot of the times. When Amer sneaks out with his father, Beirut is dark and scary. The only "beautiful" moments are when we are in Amer's imagination.

What was the most challenging thing about making this film?

Shooting this film was extremely challenging but I learned tremendously from the experience. The most challenging thing was shooting in Lebanon. I couldn't use a lot of the things I learned at NYU because Lebanon had its own set of rules or lack there-of. Shooting the tire burning scene was especially a disaster. We got shut down

cinĂŠwomen/15

the first time we tried shooting it because it turned out my producer hadn't gotten an actual permit but a verbal promise from someone at the police station. Since it was the middle of the night, there was no one we could call at that time so we had to cancel that day.

I proceeded by spending the next couple of days running around the city trying to get all the necessary permits for the tire burning scene. Every time I'd get one permit, I'd be informed that I now had to go get another type of permit from someone else. The other stressful moment was when we had to shoot a scene in a Hizbullah run neighborhood because our initial location had a power cut and then Hizbullah showed up telling us we should have taken a permit from them, apart from the one we had from the city. They wanted to take our cameras and we still had more to shoot so that was extremely stressful. Thanks to the negotiating skills of my producing team and my crew who was more experienced shooting in Lebanon and dealing with such situations,

we were given our cameras back and allowed to continue shooting.

For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decaded there are signs that something is changing. What is your view on the future of women filmmakers?

Women make up about half the population of the world. They're also half the audience. There is absolutely no reason why women shouldn't be behind the camera telling stories. I am so happy that the situation is starting to change but we are still way behind. I believe cinema is an amazing way to connect people from all around the world. Any personal story can have a universal layer to it and it is the most beautiful way for anyone in the world to relate, feel something and realize they're not alone. It is also important for those who don't relate to experience that world for 90 minutes and leave with a different perspective and have a new

cinĂŠwomen/15 cinĂŠwomen/15

understanding of the world. Cinema really brings people together. Women's voices simply cannot be left out from such a beautiful global exchange because then we'd only be getting half the truth. Some opportunities have been coming up such as grants and scholarships specifically aimed at female filmmakers and I think it's great. The only way we can change the currents situation is by giving women the encouragement and help needed so that nothing stands in her way from following their dreams.

Thanks for sharing your time, Dania, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Dania Bdeir?

I just finished the first draft of a feature film which I'm very happy about. The story deals with some of the internal change that inevitably happens within a person moving from the highly collectivist Arab world to the more individualist culture in New York City. It deals with a

character straddling both worlds belonging to both and none. It's also about how educated, liberal and progressive one can be but how all of that can regress back to tribal reflexes whenever the issue of marrying the "other" is brought up. It's a very contemporary story set in our hyper connected world taking place in both Beirut and New York to further emphasize the difference between these two worlds. However, before I venture into the world of a feature film, I want to start by shooting a short film inspired from that feature as my thesis film for NYU. I believe the short could serve on one hand as yet another way for me to practice my craft and use all that I learned from making Kaleidoscope and on the other hand as a way for me to show a glimpse of the world and tone of my feature film. Hopefully it can generate interest and curiosity that would help me fund the feature. www.inwhitefilm.com www.facebook.com/inwhitefilm

cinĂŠwomen/15

laura miranda Ana (USA, 2015)

e

independent cinema

With its audacious narrative twists and terrifying images, Ana is an uncompromising vision. Laura Miranda's talent as director shows itself in the elegantly structured storytelling of Ana: each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall structure. We are honored to present Laura Miranda for this year's CinéWomen Edition. Laura, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

I never thought cinema was something I would do in my life. In fact, I didn´t even know that was an actual career one could study. However, now that I think about it, I realize I wasn´t that far away of it. I cannot say that my love for movies came from my family, I didn´t go to the movies very often and we didn´t watch almost any back home.

However, my dad likes photography and he got me my first camera for a school trip. I took pictures of everything (I had the 36 exposures film) and ever since I felt the need of continuing doing so. I got a video camera for my birthday and every summer I would play with my friends and shoot some horror short stories and similar things.

I studied Philosophy in university and it was only there that I realized I needed to overcome my fear of working with others (and have my job depend on my communication and ability to work with others) and try Cinema. I remember that, during my classes, I would think of stories I wanted to tell. I really liked writing, but I knew that I wanted a job that would take me to a lot of different places around my country and the world, as much as meeting a lot of different people and subjects. What I also like about cinema (and what challenges

me a lot) is the need of being able to take in consideration a lot of different aspects such as the story, the image, the sound and make them all work for the same end.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: what attracted you to this project?

The script was written with the idea of transmitting “an emotional truth”. I though very much about what I wanted to tell and I ended up deciding it wasn´t so much about the story but about the way the main character felt and what she was feeling; which was something I felt and thought intensely during a period of my life. I thought there were different ways to express that, so the story changed, but always guided by the clear

idea of the feeling I wanted to transmit: that of being prisoner of one owns mind, of one fixed thought or, in other words, taking something from the outside world that hurts you and interiorize it in such a way that it is you which is in fact hurting you. My main goal was to be able to transmit that feeling to other people (I had tried with words, but I never felt I could really communicate it with them), to see if there was someone who could relate to it or at least see how it was like.

We have been deeply impressed by your imaginary and minimalist language, how did you develop your filmmaking style?

I can´t really say I have something such as a definitive filmmaking style: I like to think of this short film as an opportunity

cinĂŠwomen/15

I had to experiment with some things, see what worked and what didn`t. I think a filmmaking style is something in constant development which nourishes from the films you see, the things you read and even about what you live. I think there are stories which sort of tell you which style is the best to tell them, and it also affects very much the time and money you know you´ll have for the project. In this particular case I wanted the challenge of being able to tell a story using no dialogs. The rest of the elements were though having in mind the main feeling I wanted to share with it.

Ana features a stunning editing work. What were some of your aesthetic decisions?

For the edition I worked with a classmate, with which I had a good communication. We left out of the final cut a

short sequence which at the end we considered redundant and we changed a lot the part of Ana reacting, at the climax, to what she just saw at the window: originally I wanted to include more point of view shots to show the chaos inside Ana´s head from a more subjective point of view, but it appeared to make the story difficult to understand.

At the end, the idea was to achieve a balance between both aspects, giving preference to the intelligibility of the story when we needed to choose.

You shot Ana on 16mm: shooting on film is getting more and more rare, can you describe this amazing experience?

Working with film is a very different experience to using digital video. For me it is a very valuable experience since it demands to have a lot of rigor from

cinéwomen/15

“ ”

every area of the team and that, for me, is one of the most important things during the learning process. The photography has to be precise, one needs to be clear about what one wants to get. The blocking with the actors, the synchrony when there are some sort of VFX needed to be perfect because film is expensive and we didn´t have much. We had 800 ft., so we knew we could shot each scene only two times (three times for the most difficult ones). In this film the walls were supposed to degrade progressively, parallel to the character, and in the end I was very afraid to discover that the film hadn´t been exposed or had focus or exposition problems, because I knew we didn´t have any money left to repeat anything. Luckily, we had none of those problems.

What challenges did you face while making your film?

This was the first short film I ever did in a serious way, so the main difficulty was, at first, to be the head of a team and working with actors. Besides the lack of experience we also had the problem of a very limited budget, which made us things of a lot of different ways to get what we wanted with no money or limited equipment. Another big problem was the fact that we were unable to found a location like the one the script required: an apartment with a big window in front of another apartment. We solved it by avoiding shoots were it would be evident that in front of our apartment was nothing but trees and using fake walls in order to create the feeling of an apartment in what in fact was a big living room.

cinéwomen/15

Your cinematography reminds us of Bruno Dumont's imagery. How did you conceive the visual style of your film?

The first thing I was sure about was that I wanted the film to be shot in black and white, which constitutes, from the very beginning, a first degree of “fictionalization” of reality . I didn´t mean to make a realistic representation of the world, but to set certain distance from it: we see the world the way Ana does and to slowly approach to her subjective point of view is what I was aiming for. I wanted to avoid colors for another reason, too. Ana can´t see the world in its richness and variety, she´s locked inside a thought, a memory she focuses on. I wanted to give very few colors to the viewer to see, I wanted to make him focus on something the way

Ana does as much as that was possible.

There were a lot of scene we couldn´t shoot the way it was planned or the way I had imagined because of lack of equipment or knowledge, but in the process of trying we learned a lot.

Ana emotionally penetrating journey to the darkest corners of the human mind. What do you want people to remember after seeing your film?

I would really like to know if people relates to the feeling of being prisoner of one self, of one owns mind. I think that a lot of time it is one self who can be scary the most: what we think, the way we hold to memories, to things we make even more painful. I like to explore the processes in which the mind doesn´t follow the “normal, regular path” because I think that there is a lot

cinéwomen/15

to be discovered on the other path.

What can an obsessive mind show us?

What does the “deviations” from the human mind can tell us about human being that the “normal way of being” doesn´t show us? How can memories take over most of our life and change the way we live? How can people deal with unpleasant, painful memories?

Can not being able to “function” in a normal way for society show us something deeper about human nature?

We have previously mentioned Bruno Dumont's cinema, yet your filmmaking style is far from what is generally considered academic.

Who among international artists influenced your work?

In an international level Chris Marker is one of the filmmakers that I admire the most. The subject of memory and

it´s configuration is one of the most interesting for me and the way he approaches it is, for me, great in a lot of ways: the reflection about memory and history goes all the way to even question and ponder about cinema itself, it´s possibilities and even play with it. Not so long I watched a Mexican film, “La Danza del Hipocampo” (dir. Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba) which is also something like a cinematographic essay CINE about memory and the configuration of one´s own identity. It surprised me a lot because it´s something I don´t see very often in Mexican films and made me want to approach the memory subject from a fictional and also from a film-essay way.

For more than half a century women have been discouraged from

cinéwomen/15 cinéwomen/15

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 had never felt so much the differences that society makes between men and women, the preference they give to men and related conflicts until I started to get involved in the cinema world. I found that men are often more respected, taken more easily in serious matters, and it´s easier for them to get a job.

I´m not saying it is impossible for women to get the same things, but I do think we really need to work harder to get that. I don´t like that, as well as I don´t like how they tend to judge an opinionated and strong women like “hysteric” whereas they

consider a men who does the same like a completely normal one. Even if I do think that there is a progressive incorporation of women into cinema, it´s not something that simply happens, but that requires effort. In other words, I think there is a struggle for women to get recognition, to be trusted and respected and considered just as capable of man for roles in cinema industry and we cannot forget that we need to give visibility to the special difficulties and the subtle (or plain, open) discrimination women still get in this industry to either get a job, to be paid the same as men or to be respected when they need to be authoritarian. If we don´t, there´s a great danger that it might never change.

cinĂŠwomen/15

anita r. carroll Titolo che inizia(USA, per Unwritten

2015)

e

independent cinema

ith her unconventional approach to narrative, Anita R. Carroll captures the pain and alienation of a young woman with emotional depth, offering a psychogically penetrating meditation on the

notion of identity. Unwritten is a fascinating look at a woman lost in her own mind, a work of both great beauty and vivid darkness. We are pleased to present Anita R. Carroll for this year's CinéWomen Edition.

Anita, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

I’ve always been enamored with storytelling. Even before I knew how to read or write, I would tell stories in my head and construct these internal universes.

I started off as a writer; I always have been and always will be. Humans shape narratives as a way of surviving, of understanding themselves and the people and world around them. Though literature was my first passion,I always loved film, but it wasn’t until my college years that I truly fell in love with the cinema.

My college studies explored narrative as a means of constructing and manifesting identity, and alongside my classes dealing with literature, history, and art, I discovered Cinema Studies. It

wasn’t long until I decided that I couldn’t merely be an observer and analyzer of cinema, and felt the need to create films of my own. I am fascinated by what words themselves cannot articulate; I am interested in the gaps between word and meaning, image and sound, and I believe that film attempts to fill these gaps. There were certain stories I wanted to express that couldn’t be adequately portrayed in my writing. I wanted to craft a universe that people can see and hear in front of them on a screen, can live and breathe alongside.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Unwritten?

Unwritten was inspired both by personal experience and by a work of literature that has influenced me both intellectually and personally: “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments,” by Roland Barthes. Published in 1977, A Lover’s

cinéwomen/15

Discourse is composed as an accumulation of fragments, some of which are drawn from literature and some of which are derived from philosophy, linguistics, and the writer’s personal thoughts, of a lover’s point of view.

Barthes calls these fragments “figures”gestures of love at work. I was inspired by this genius portrayal of the rich interior life of someone in love- all of the psychological and emotional anguish and observations of a lover.

Though abstract, I believe that this work heavily draws on the idea of image-making (referring to Barthes’ vocabulary: figures). We create images of ourselves and of the ones we love by writing an internal narrative. Due to some personal experiences that were occurring in my life at the time, I was inspired by this book that I had loved for a long time, and I wanted to tell a story from a lover’s point of view, from a very interior, solitary, and fragmented point of view. The actual circumstances of the main character’s story are not a

direct reflection of what I was going through, but the themes and thoughts that were expressed closely mirrored my own, and I hoped to create a universally appealing narrative. I started writing, and there it was.

Unwritten is marked by an elegantly structured storytelling: we have been deeply fascinated by your enigmatic approach to narrative.

How did you develop the script for this film?

The structure of the story is almost directly drawn from A Lover’s Discourse. As previously stated, the book is a composition of “fragments” instead of traditional chapters. Each fragment represents an idea or emotion that one who is in love experiences. The fragments I chose for this short film were: 1. Absence 2. Remembrance 3.

Why? And 4. Waking. I took creative liberties and interpreted some of these fragments in my own way that diverge from Barthes’ interpretations, but these

cinéwomen/15

cinéwomen/15

“ ”

videofocus/15

in particular seemed pertinent to the story I wanted to tell. I also wanted to parallel the idea of fragmentation in a lover’s life; it is a non-linear narrative, the one we tell ourselves when in love. We become fragmented and both gain and lose certain aspects of ourselves. We view the world differently, we view ourselves differently. And when we lose a love, the fragmentation persists, and we have to mitigate these various identities within ourselves. I started off just writing the monologues, also known as Charlotte’s internal narratives, and then later perfected the actions and imagery around them—what was going on when she is having these thoughts, what does the world look like in that particular moment in time?

With little dialogue to use, Eve Del Prado does a terrific job. Did you rehearse a lot with the shots you prepared in advance?

We actually didn’t do much rehearsing in the traditional sense. I have known Eve for a few years now, and because of my friendship with her and the work that I have seen, I knew instantly that she would be perfect for this part. I think it was crucial that she understood the heart of the script perfectly; we talked about the ideological components behind the screenplay as well as the character’s motiva tions and her interior life.

I think that because Eve is such a talented actress and because she both understood and connected to the script, she was able to portray this character perfectly.

With its gorgeous widescreen compositions, Unwritten features a very expressive cinematography, marked by an elegant use of closeup shots. Can you talk about your creative relationship with Sheldon

cinéwomen/15 cinéwomen/15

Walker and how it has evolved through your work together?

Sheldon and I met through my need for a cinematographer for this film, and soon became good friends. I think it was crucial that I told him everything I envisioned, down to the last detail. He also understood the driving forces and ideas behind the script, and the emotional and psychological aspects I strived for. We spent a lot of time creating the shot list together and took into account each movement, each setting, each emotion that was being expressed. He has a superior knowledge of cinematography and lighting and was able to make my story come to life because of this. I think the fact that we became friends through this project definitely added to our sound and symbiotic working relationship.

What challenges did you face while making Unwritten?

Thankfully, there weren’t very many challenges. I had a small crew but all amazing people: friends and friends or friends. It was a bit difficult trying to juggle the pre-production for this film with the process of applying to law school as well as the general nervousness of doing this the right way, but it was actually an extremely helpful creative outlet for me at the time.

Production went rather smoothly; on the last day, there were a few exterior shots we had planned to do that we cut out because we were running short on time, but in the end, they weren’t essential to the film and everything worked out the way I hoped it would.

How did you develop your visual style?

I really wanted the style to reflect the themes of loneliness, fragmentation, and deep introversion, and had in mind many close-up shots and some split

screens. Originally, I wanted to shoot anamorphic, but decided against it. Yet, I still wanted to maintain this soft, natural style. I told Sheldon my ideas and with his expertise of the technological, we developed the style together. I wanted this film to be voyeuristic, and make the viewer feel as if they were sitting or laying down right beside the main character. I wanted to establish this paradox of being so close to her and yet making her intangible, very alone.

When we watched your short film, we immediately thought of Bruno Dumont's cinema. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

I really love the Italian neo-realists, such as Roberto Rosselini and Federico Fellini, as well as some of the French new-wave directors, such as

Marguerite Duras, Eric Rohmer, and of course Godard.

Slightly diverging, I am also heavily inspired by Latin American and Spanish cinema: my favorite director of all time is Pedro Almodovar, and coming in a close second is Alfonso Cuaron‌ one of the first films I fell in love with was Y tu Mama Tambien. Some other favorite directors of mine include Sofia Copolla, Woody Allen, and Wes Anderson.

In terms of individual works: La Dolce Vita, The Great Beauty, Birdman, Volver, City of God, Annie Hall, Almost Famous, and The Dreamers mark styles and techniqes that I aspire to incorporate into my own work someday.

For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera,

cinéwomen/15

however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema?

people of color to pursue their dreams, to take leadership roles represent ourselves and others like us both on and behind the screen.

I am fairly optimistic about the future of women in cinema. To this date, we are still vastly underrepresented, especially women of color.

Yet, I think that a huge part of this has had to do with the opportunities given to women of previous generations, and I see this changing for the women in my generation.

Thanks for your time and thought, Anita R. Carroll. We wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Anita? Have you a particular film in mind?

Yet, I think that we need to, as an industry, and as a society, make a concerted effort to do so. We need to show previously marginalized voices that we too matter, that we too can create stories and have not only the right but the obligation to share them with the world. We can’t just sit back and hope it happens.

We need to encourage females and

Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I am currently embarking on a journey known as law school, but I do not plan to abandon my filmmaking, though it might be put on hold for a Little while. I have recently completed a semi-autobiographical documentary entitled “Homebound” and I have a script in development called Manny and Lola. You haven’t seen the last of me, I guarantee it.

cinĂŠwomen/15

vanda ciuban serban It’s A Kind of Magic Turtle (Romania, 2015)

e

independent cinema

Written and directed with clarity and passion, It’s A Kind of Magic Turtle is a psychologically penetrating film, one that deserves repeated and in-depth viewings. With beautiful cinematography, and a highly sophisticated use of cutaways and temps mort, careens from the humorous to the surreal. We are glad to present Vanda Ciuban Serban for this year's CinéWomen Edition. Vanda, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

I think that every artist tries to express himself in many different ways. Of course all arts are interesting and charming and usually one is not enough for an artist.

While studying painting in high school I realized that being a painter requires lots of work by yourself unless you’re extremely talented and you get it right from the first try. Otherwise you need hours and hours of hard solitary work. I normally think of myself as a solitary person but after I got involved in theatre I noticed that I actually liked much more to interact with people when I worked on an artistic project. Experimenting with your emotions and the others’ is more rewarding and it makes you feel much more alive than creating art on your own.

At the age of seventeen I was involved in a big theatre production where I met Alex Pop who became my trusted partner in theatre and literature. I started to work with Alex only because of my whimsy ways. Since we were at the beginning of our love story I loved to challenge Alex to spoil me. He was planning to direct a theatre play he had written before and he thought of giving the main character to a friend. Then I came with the idea of changing his main character - Prometheus - into a female since the woman was the one who fell into sin. So he changed Prometheus to Promethea and offered me the part.

I was just a kid and I didn’t really mean it, I was only playing psychological games with my boyfriend and I won or he let me win. We started the rehearsals and it was during the first show we had with it when we felt our energies melting together perfectly at a theatre festival in Botosani, an eastern Romanian town. Months before we had participated to The International Theatre Festival in Sibiu with the previous play we were in together. There we got involved in a workshop class and we went together on the stage and with nothing we created an impressive scene that awed everybody including us. People there said “Of course you could do that… since

you’ve been working together for a long time”. But, God! We only had two months since we met. But we did feel our energies to be very special together. That experience lead me to write this poem, later published in our poetry book “Random Joys”:

in the first line.

They watch the show Wonderingly.

The scene tear itself to pieces, The scenery glidely disappears The green, green, green woman emblazes the camp fire Rhubarb

On the top of your head My palms were set on fire at the very first touch.

The orange air lined itself up like a window in the middle of the desert.

The moon carves the green darkness.

On the pyre, the last wishes rip the Universe.

A body of a woman gets through from the column of shadows, a body having a green, green, green skin.

The actors freeze in their acting and take seats

After performing with Alex in a series of theatre plays in Romania, we emigrated to Montréal, Canada. While I was taking an

cinéwomen/15

acting class with an extremely talented Danish teacher, my husband started his studies in film production at Trebas Institute. My experience in theatre helped me understand myself better by pushing my limits and my energy out of my body.

I learned to pay attention to my partners’ feelings as well. I always saw theatre as a very strong form of art. Theatre is happening right there in that moment and for eternity only in the audience`s memory, while the film is made to rest a certain time. As a film actor you have the right to make mistakes because you can retake it but in theatre that’s not acceptable. In our modern times people don’t go too much to see theatre plays, they are more interested in watching films, therefore we moved towards cinema ourselves. Cinema have become the most accessible and affordable art these days and also perhaps the most lasting one. My husband graduated in early 2012 and months later we founded our film production company “Porcovete Pictures” which we use for all our films in all phases

of film production from development to distribution.

It’s A Kind of Magic Turtle a moody work that delicately weaves fantasy and reality, imagination and perception. How did the idea for this film came to your mind?

I wanted to make a love story, a complicated one because our lives seem to be rather difficult to manage, especially when we’re talking about couples. And it’s so hard to understand the human brain!

People need and wish for love, right? But when they achieve it they easily let it go.

When couples have children they use to think about that as a simple, natural fact in a family but on the other hand for those who can’t have children because of whatever problems, having them is a blessing, a miracle. Rightfully so. Other than the theme of children in the life of a couple, I wanted to introduce this character of a writer who writes his own life scenario, who writes something he will

“

”

“

”

cinĂŠwomen/15

live or he already lived. It was an experiment trying to figure out and present the way everybody sees his own life. I was questioning the idea of fate, is it a path everybody is somehow forced to take or actually the opposite - assuming the free will and inventing their own life depending on how they feel and what they want? And because dreaming has a deep impact on people psychic, I introduced it as a combination of reality, imagination and desire. I wanted to talk about the intense work of artists. Some say you have to be a little crazy to create but I strongly believe that when you create the craziness of your art starts to shape your personality. The more you create the more interesting you become. Art helps you reach unlimited worlds you cannot reach by just living.

The film’s strength lies in its plot. It’s a beautifully told story that succeeds in raising important questions about

our inability to come to terms with reality. How did you conceive the characters of Nina and Jim? Characters created themselves around the storyline. I didn’t think too much of them when I was writing the script. I gave them their age, their clothes and emotions while re-reading the script and preparing for the actual shoot. And of course during the shoot. In my opinion, characters come to life with the actors, not before.

What do you hope viewers will take away from the film?

I would love to make people think more about their relationships and about how they treat their partners. I want to urge them to love and not fight their significant others because in fights only one wins while the other loses. Love is one energy made of two. I would like people to be able

cinéwomen/15

to understand the ones they love and have empathy for them. Film is a mix of poetry, dreaming, life and creation. It can and will have more than one meaning and that’s what I love about it, when the audience can create their own version of the film based on their personal life experience. In other words I try to tell the audience that love is the real power and I won’t miss any opportunity to emphasize this. Peggy’s line to Elvis Presley’s character “Don’t be afraid to love!” in “Jail House Rock” is one of my favourite quotes about love. I wish people would never forget this line, this would help them live their lives surrounded by love.

Can you talk about your creative relationship with Alex Pop and how it has evolved through your work together?

Working with Alex is sometimes more

complicated than I’ve imagined. I see art like a natural spontaneous thing, while for him pretty much everything has to be planned and scheduled. That’s why we spend a lot of time arguing on how to create our films, because even if we have mostly the same vision we really feel different when it comes to putting our words in scripts and shooting the film. I’m more visual and have a wild imagination, I always have new ideas and I want to change the script and the setup on the fly and that makes him angry. He is focused more on shooting everything in time and feels more comfortable with a rigorous schedule. What he needs is exactness and seriousness which is great but for me any restriction is death of creativity. I could easily stop the shooting and change the lines or the shooting angle, whatever would cross my mind. Which I did many times. Well, maybe that’s the magic between us and I won’t let it go. I love this

wild thing we form together in art or in real life, as much as I hate it on set.

Can you tell us your biggest influences in cinema and how they have affected your work?

I always considered that other works and artists should rather inspire more than influence you. One of my favorite films, Christoffer Boe’s first feature Reconstruction, is definitely a film that made me wonder about how people understand cinema and how filmmakers present real life in such a way that it looks fantasy.

Milos Forman is a model in cinematography for me, a master who blends music with film, poetry, color, dancing perfectly. I truly believe that Milos Forman brings all the arts into film and expands their meaning. You feel you’re there in his story and if you can’t get in this becomes your strongest desire.

Of course I’d love to share a cinematic experience with Woody Allen, a director who lets the actors romp around and recreate their characters on set. There’s many artists who inspire me, but I think they only make my art better, not affect it at all. I don’t have any big influence, the inspiration comes from everywhere. My muse could be a verse or a song, an entire movie scene or just a line.

You are an ecletic artist: your work ranges from poetry to cinema. You are the author of two books, (with Alex Pop), and (with Gavril Ciuban), can you tell us something about your literary work?

Because my father is a writer I wanted to discover myself by doing anything but writing. So I only tried to use literature as inspiration not medium to express myself.

Of course I coudn’t resist writing even if I didn’t see myself as a writer, but more a

cinéwomen/15

visual creator. I think all my good writings came out after I met Alex.

He’s my muse in a way, as well as many others. The two of us played a lot of games and one of the strangest was the one in which he said he would accept to publish his books only if I was going to publish my poetry. And that’s how our poetry book “Random Joys” came to life in early 2006. “Stratinerii” is a book I didn’t know about until one day I found in the mailbox a diploma of the award I had received for my debut in prose.

I haven’t written poetry for a while but I couldn’t keep from writing about my dreams I had dreamt during the night.

They were so surprising, they had lots of colors and a strong plot, very visual and alive. I still write letters to my parents, I mean real letters on paper and knowing they love reading them I was sure they would totally enjoy my writings. Well, my

father was very excited about those texts so he included them in his own book. And I really appreciate this present he gave me. Isn’t it so wonderful? Having two books with the two men in my life, books that otherwise I would have never had.

My father was always impressed by how I put my emotions on paper and he always encouraged me to write. But writing is not very easy for me because I would never force the words on paper if they didn’t ask for it. I guess Jim Morrison felt the same when he said “I always wanted to write, but I always figured it’d be no good unless somehow the hand just took the pen and started moving without me really having anything to do with it. Like automatic writing.” (Jim Morrison - “Wilderness“) I’m currently working on a biographical book about Jim Morrison and it gives me a lot of strength and will to live.

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 believe in women as well as I believe in men in both life and arts. It’s amazing to try and understand both views, to discover these fantastic but so different creatures that men and women are and their ways to create art. I don’t agree with the concept of man and woman as equals, a man will never be the equal of a woman and nor the opposite, but they must be equal in their freedom to create exactly as they feel. I don’t think any of them is stronger, more beautiful or more capable than the other.

There are men who are more beautiful than women and also women who are stronger or more intelligent than men. I hate prejudices like «It is obvious this was

made by a woman» that are still happening in all the arts. It would be such a pity to keep women from expressing themselves as they feel and share their vision of the world, because it had happened so many times for women artists to try and mimic men’s style, techniques or way of working only to have a chance for «acceptance» between the recognized artists. The whole point of arts is to express yourself free with no restrictions set by you or by the others. I think the women in cinema have the mission to fulfill what men can’t, won’t or don’t know. Women complete the art by bringing novelty, sensuality, poetry, even childishness. I actually think that without women poetry wouldn’t have been created.

Now as I’m thinking about the role played by women in arts I remember watching “The Cabbage Fairy”, a film made in 1896 by the first woman filmmaker. There’s nothing there but pure simple primitive happiness. I find it fascinating that even

cinéwomen/15 cinéwomen/15

being so different men and women are the same species: human beings.

Thanks for sharing your time, Vanda, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Vanda Ciuban Serban and Alex Pop? Have you a particular film in mind?

We have lots of new projects but not any certainty we will finish them as envisioned now. Making an independent film it’s not very easy and our financial situation is not so good to be able to fully finance a film.

Also, it is known to be a bad idea most of the times. One of my projects is a biopic of the legendary lead singer from The Doors and especially the poet Jim Morrison. I have no idea how feasible my project is but I keep positive, I’m sure I’m going to make it regardless of how impossible it seems to be right now. If there’s a will there’s always a way. Another project is a funny post-modern take on the myth of

Prometheus, the forementioned play written by Alex. We’re working on the script right now and we plan to start filming it next year. Dreaming is my best way to live.I sincerely appreciate having been selected to be featured in your magazine. I don’t care too much about awards but it is such a great surprise when you receive one.

For an artist is a beautiful way to feel appreciation for the work he made.

The award gives you a feeling similar to receiving applause on stage after the play is over. Because we’re not very well educated to focus on the positive aspects of art, people will usually see the not-soperfect aspects of your work, they would rather criticize and minimalize your work than congratulate you for the effort. That’s why I feel honored and very lucky to have been considered and now included in your publication. Thank you so much!

cinéwomen/15

d’tura hale Away From the Montain (USA, 2015)

e

independent cinema

answer came to me it was writing stories and creating videos. So in 2012 I transferred to Columbia College Chicago to study film and start my journey as a filmmaker.

Away From The Mountain is a “postmodern fairy tale.” How did that concept develop, and who were some of your chief influences?

D’Tura Hale 's cinema reveals an intense psychological realism. Her refined film Away From The Mountain deals with characters suffering from intense emotional states, yet they rarely express themselves - which is the ideal condition for an effective temp mort. We are plased to present D’Tura Hale for this year's CinéWomen Edition. D’Tura, how did you get into filmmaking?

I got into filmmaking at an early age by recording myself and friends dancing and singing. At home I would get my Tyco Cam and record myself talking about random things as if I was Oprah. My Barbie dolls and stuff animals would be my audience and comfortably I would sit there talk. I loved to write stories and make up characters. I would entertain my friends by telling them my stories. When I got older I went to college for Sales and Marketing and I had to force myself to pay attention in class. I didn’t like going to school. One day I had a conversation with my mother and she asked what is it that I would enjoy doing during the worst stomachache and headache. I had to think about it but when the

The concept is based on my beliefs and experiences with homosexuality. I grew up in a religious household where I was taught being gay was wrong. Growing up and even my time spent in college I met so many people that were gay and I didn’t care what their sexual preference was. What I cared about was how good they made me feel and the way they made me laugh. I felt like a hypocrite because I still had my beliefs that I grew up with but I was hanging out with people who believed something different. In film and television the stories that are based on homosexuality are shown as it’s right or it’s not right. There isn’t anything in between that explores the concept of accepting someone for who they are in order to coexist.

Did the story unfold before the camera, or were you already aware of these various pieces of the puzzle?

During pre-production I met a guy who allowed me to interview him about his experience coming out to his family as a gay man. This helped me decide which pieces needed to be put together.

Away From The Mountain show characters who are at a key moment in their lives, in a period of crisis. Escaping from a mere melodramatic approach, your cinema does

cinéwomen/15

“ ”

not focus on characters or feelings but more on the existential absurdity of human relationships. Can you introduce our readers to this idea behind Away From The Mountain?

We have appreciated the balance between dialogues and temps mort in Away From The Mountain. We have been deeply impressed by your cinematography. How did you develop your visual style?

The idea for Away From The Mountain was to make people think about what is really important and how much do you really care about life itself. The mountain is a symbol that represents the level of intensity and severity of the situation that the characters are forced to deal with. When Terrence and TJ come face to face at the kitchen table to talk that is the two walking away from the mountain. That is something that a lot of people fail to do is learn how to walk away from the mountains in their life.

For my visual style I didn’t walk on set with a plan. I was more focused on my actors. When setting the lights and making sure my actors looked good in the frame I would watch on the monitor and once I was satisfied with how that frame looked that’s where the lights were left. Some scenes are different than others when it comes to the color. It’s almost as if each scene tells the audience what mood the characters are in through the lighting and shots.

In a digital age where the omnipresence of communication exponentially increased, any momentary lack of communication is anathema to people.

You have studied both in Milwaukee which is your native city- and in Chicago, where you study Cinema Art at Columbia College Chicago: moving to a different city has had an impact on the way you produce art?

cinéwomen/15 cinéwomen/15

Absolutely, when I moved to Chicago I was so impressed and humbled at how people embraced being an artist. It motivated me to study harder and continue to polish my craft.

It helped me become more confident in my decision to be a writer and a film director.

Let’s speak about influences.

Stylistically, the film owes much to the world of Pedro Almodovar. Have any directors from the older generation inspired you?

Luc Besson, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee are the directors who inspired me and continue to inspire me when I watch their films.

Do you think it is harder for women directors to have their projects green lit today?

I do think it is harder for women directors to

get their films green lit if they are not willing to get paid for writing the project and have someone else direct it (that would eventually be a male director). For those female directors who pitch their screenplays to studios and want to direct their projects it is much harder then going the independent route. If studios would increase the percentage of women directors they pick to direct films in Hollywood they would be surprised how many more hits the box offices would get.

Thanks for sharing your time, D'Tura, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for D'Tura Hale?

Have you a particular film in mind?

I am writing another short film that I want to direct at the end of the summer. It’s a sci-fi and its based on my imagination of what I think is out there in space. It reminds me of The Fifth Element and The Never Ending Story combined.

cinĂŠwomen/15

sarah bellin Redlight District Bar(Switzerland, 2015) e

independent cinema

Filmed with an exquisite detachment reminding us of Yorgos Lanthimos's early cinema, Redlight District Bar is a work of both great beauty and vivid darkness. With grit and sensivity talented director Sarah Bellin offers a mind-bending meditation on coming-of-age and sex. With its beautiful cinematography, and a highly sophisticated use of static shots, Sarah Bellin's directorial debut is a visually rich and emotionally captivating journey. We are proud to present Sarah Bellin for this year's CinĂŠWomen Edition. Sarah, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

From as far back as I can remember I was always a storyteller. Observing and interpreting the world around me, understanding how people and relationships work as well as collecting

and dreaming up interesting stories has long been my passion. It was only recently, however that I began storytelling through the medium of film. As a trained violinist, I spent my youth reinterpreting compositions by the 18th and 19th century masters.

Later I worked professionally as a stage musician, and discovered my love for the theater and directing.

After completing my MFA from the New School for Drama in 2010, I moved to ZĂźrich Switzerland where I have been living and working as a freelance director. To remark about my 'trajectory' as a filmmaker is a bit hard to do, as I view myself as at the very beginning of that curve. Every film I make hones my storytelling craft, and ultimately shapes my vision and approach to filmmaking.

What I can definitely say is that film's potential to reach a wide audience is what has compelled me to make films.

I am interested in telling stories that contain universal principles that make audiences think, feel and reflect about their own lives. I want to tell stories, which will inspire my audience to live life to the fullest.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: can you tell us how you come up with the idea for Redlight District Bar? The concept for this film originally spawned from a bigger project idea. The initial impulse was to produce an episodic film centered around the theme of "buying love" and set in Zürich, Switzerland (a city which is known for it’s legalized Prostitution scene). Together with author Marina Guerrini, we developed the story of a young girl who gets lured into an unfamiliar world of money, sex, and alcohol. Although the episodic film didn’t get realized, six

powerful short films on this topic were created.

We were deeply impressed with your original approach to narrative form.

How did you develop the 'script' and structure of Redlight District Bar? The basic structure of the film can be seen as a linear narrative following the protagonist “Bébé.” What I think is most interesting in the film is her interactions with the people she meets along her journey. As a basic roadmap for the story, the settings and stations that Bébé stops at were fixed plot points within the dramaturgical structure. Once we had this roadmap in place, it was more about figuring out how she moved within the scenes: Her motives, her impulses, as well as her obstacles and emotional status. Most of the film was shot based on scripted dialogue, however the big opening bar scene was all created

cinéwomen/15

through improvisation with the actors and camera.

Redlight District Bar is marked by a sapient use of static shots. Your cinema reveals a sense of rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking. How did you develop your filmmaking style?

As I noted earlier, I came to film through the theatre. Speaking strictly from an audience perspective - theatre is a ‘static’ medium as we only experience one picture at a given time - the audience has the freedom to “zoom-in” on whatever they want - but the big picture mise en scène is always present and in view. My transition from theater to film has been a lot about ‘zooming-in.’ I think that truly good filmmaking is about vulnerability.

Characters presented on a larger-than-life screen have the power to touch an audience deeply. To catch this

vulnerability is a very person thing. I am constantly active about working on such introspectiveness.

We have previously mentioned Yorgos Lanthimos, however your cinema is rich of references ranging from Chantal Akerman to Theo Angelopoulos. Who among international directors influenced your work?

My first love in cinema was Ignmar Bergman. I’ve probably seen all of his films at least twice, and my favorites in his canon definitely several times (Wild Strawberries, The Hour of the Wolf, etc.).

I have always been influenced by his ability to create potent dialogue and a strong core ensemble. His chamberensemble pieces which focus on strong acting and storytelling have shaped my idea of filmmaking.

What was the most challenging thing

cinĂŠwomen/15

cinéwomen/15

about making Redlight District Bar? There are two things that come to mind when I think about the biggest challenges we faced while filming RDB. The first hurdle was time. This is something that comes up during every production, however during this particular film we had an extreme time crunch because of the availability of our shooting locations, combined with the actors’ schedules. We ended up shooting the entire film in 3 summer nights (note that in the summer we get about 3 hours less of darkness than in the wintertime!).

The second biggest hurdle was the last scene at the end of the movie. I knew that this would be a very tricky scene going into production, because sex scenes are always awkward. This scene was even more delicate because we were dealing with a very young actress who was required to be nude in a room with a crew full of men. Ultimately we

were able to overcome this problem and I believe that Bébé’s vulnerability in that scene was heightened due to the actress’ emotional state during the shoot.

Your film features excellent performances, how did you come across those actors and how did you work with them?

I was searching for very specific character looks for this film. I held rigorous casting sessions for the piece but ultimately ended up casting many of the main actors based on a pool of nonactors that I had met via the artistic director of the Maxim Theater in Zürich (an amateur theater company). I liked the idea of working with non-actors, as it gave me the chance to really highlight their own unique characters and bring them to life on screen.

You shot Redlight District Bar on Arri Alexa. How did you conceive the

cinéwomen/15 cinéwomen/15

visual style of your film?

The emotionally charged beginning of my film brought me to conceptualize an over-saturated, almost dream-like atmosphere for this story. I wanted the textures to be vivid and in your face. My protagonist is entering into a new world for the first time and we are experience this through her eyes. The choice of locations for the film, as well as the studio build for the room were carefully planned together with my production designer based on our vision of this world.

For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting into filmmaking as well, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema?

The presence of women in leadership positions is on the rise in all fields,

including film. There is a lot of stigma about being a woman director, but I believe that now is a very exciting time for women in this field. There are so many opportunities opening up and so many beautiful films, which are telling very important stories are being created by female directors. I am very optimistic about the future of women in cinema.

Thanks for your time and thought, Sarah. We wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Sarah Bellin? Have you a particular film in mind?

I recently finished shooting a short film under the international title OPPOSITES, which I will be promoting on the festival circuit in the coming months.In addition to that I am working with my writing partner on my first feature length film entitled ‘Live Links’ – a based on true events film that details the life and times of a wild young woman bound to her unfortunate circumstances.

cinéwomen/15

sally cloninger LIVING IN THE MEDIUM (USA, 2015)

e

independent cinema

A wonderfully unique work from the talented American director Sally Cloninger, LIVING IN THE MEDIUM functions on multiple levels. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, audacious editing, and a highly sophisticated use of on- and offscreen sound, Sally Cloninger explores the boundary between art and life, leading audiences into a terrifying subjectivity. We are pleased to present Sally Cloninger for this year's CinéWomen Edition. Sally, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

When I was just starting out, I was most interested in theatre and studied directing and acting. By chance, I took a film class and was astonished to learn that I had a natural feel for cinematography. I left theatre and pursued film studies in a program taught by an all male faculty; I was often the lone woman in most of the classes. At that time women were not really encouraged to become directors and certainly most did not consider the highly technical areas such as camera or sound design as a career option.

I wanted to do something about that and became a professor, first at a traditional American university and later at The Evergreen State College, an alternative and experimental liberal arts college that emphasized interdisciplinary studies and praxis. This decision informed my filmmaking in a substantive way in that I was always more drawn to experimentation and mixing genres than continuing with a single

approach to the medium. My trajectory has been multi-faceted in that while I began as a documentary filmmaker (my first film was about penguins in the Galapagos Islands), I continued to explore very diverse working styles including installation, structural filmmaking, media activism, experimental ethnography, and memoir. I believe that film is the most interdisciplinary of all the art forms and my love for theatre, music, visual arts, movement, and the camera could be expressed in this wonderfully complicated and demanding mode of expression.

Living in the medium was inspired by the Taos art colony of the 1920s. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: can you tell us how you come up with the idea for Living in the medium?

The original seed for LIVING IN THE MEDIUM was the unearthing of a few rolls of 16mm film that I shot in 1983, essentially scenes from a home movie featuring members of the Taos art community in the 1920s (including DH and Frieda Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe, Mabel Dodge Luhan and Dorothy Brett). I had completely forgotten about the “home movies” and realized there was something still resonant for me in these few scenes. I began shooting landscapes in the Anza-Borrego Desert (California) and the Valley of Fire (Nevada) in 2009 with an idea to use these iconic images of an American west as a visual motif. However, I struggled to find a structure that could accommodate the many threads of my work, including my interest in the Taos artists, my

desire to open up my own writing and design process, and my growing interest in the nature of consciousness until I discovered JG Bennett’s book, Creative Thinking. I followed his advice with the structure of LIVING IN THE MEDIUM, letting the images and story unfold as an experiment with “spontaneous thinking” as well as an investigation of the act of filmmaking.

We have been deeply impressed with your enigmatic approach to narrative form. How did you develop the 'script' and structure of Living in the medium?

I do think that Living in the Medium is difficult to classify. Is it an experimental narrative, a documentary, a visual essay, all of the above? I attempted to suspend my own expectations for the film once I recommitted to a new approach in 2009.

Because of my readings and studies about creativity (specifically by studying JG Bennett and attending a workshop offered

by Lynda Barry, “Writing the Unthinkable), I made a very conscious choice to work with a kind of ambiguous, open-ended structure that was not predetermined. I made the decision to attempt a film that in

part illustrated the process of thinking.

Over the course of two years I wrote and edited my material sequentially, returning to Taos in October 2014 to shoot the final scenes, not knowing even then how the film would actually end. Because I not only directed this project but also did the cinematography, I could excavate visual ideas from my own visual archive.

Typically, I film a lot of material without having a clear sense how I will use it. In this case my stop action animation of myself walking a labyrinth that I introduce early in the film became an important structural element and perhaps informs the structure of the entire film.

LIVING IN THE MEDIUM is a highly layered work, what challenges did you face while making this film?

Because one of the chief features of the film was a meditation on time, the layered imagery and even the layered geologic landscapes were used often to visualize or refer to time. "Time is not just a matter of duration but something having reality in itself." However, when I think about my use of layering, I believe that my approach to sound design was even more central.

One of the early elements that I selected was a suite of music by composer, Gretchen Langheld. She generously allowed me access to this material, which I edited as freely as my own visual images. I have always maintained that when possible the sound should lead the picture but given the structure of LIVING IN THE MEDIUM I created the sound and image sections simultaneously, employing lots of ambient processing, snippets of other musical motifs, field recordings, and of course my voice over.

Can you introduce our reader to you personal reinvention of the visual identity of the American west?

From the beginning I have been fascinated by landscape cinematography and have sometimes used the landscape as a visual metaphor or motif (such as in my film Going to My House where I employ landscape as a metaphor for healing/time travel). Growing up as an American, I shared our problematic fascination with the West. By problematic I mean the troubling combination of masculine cowboy heroics, the shameful history of Native American genocide, and the beautiful open

skies and red rocks that are still an enduring the image of the West. Also, because I grew up outside of New York City but relocated to the Pacific Northwest 35 years ago, I naively had no trouble with the idea that the Western desert landscape could be interchangeable. Additionally, the DH Lawrence home movies were shot in Washington because the cast was available there and some of them had uncanny resemblances to the original members of the Taos arts colony. Later, I realized that Tenino, Washington really could stand in for the Lawrence ranch in Taos. Soon after I began to collect images of red rocks, mountains, big skies, and the passage of time in Borrego Springs, California, the Valley of Fire, Nevada, and of course Abiquiu and Taos, New Mexico. Some audiences will recognize the liberties I took with the landscape; others may perceive the film as a coherent representation of New Mexico. But this American west resides fundamentally in my imagination.

We have been fascinated by the way you are able to mix different shooting format, which immediately reminded us of Alina Marazzi's cinema. Can you tell

“

”

cinĂŠwomen/15

us something about this peculiar aspect of Living in the medium?

LIVING IN THE MEDIUM is also about the process of filmmaking and in my case chronicles my engagement with the changing media landscape of the past 30 years. I combined many formats in the piece including S-8, 16mm, SD video, HD video, GoPro time lapse, stop animation and the ubiquitous iPhone. The various formats in their original state are a crucial component of this film but technically having to wrestle with the various aspect ratios and resolutions posed a big challenge for me even though conceptually I was committed to retaining their unique archival appearance (with the scratches, the blown out pixels, different frame sizes etc.)

Nonetheless, until I saw the film projected in a theatre, I was never sure that the liberties I took with combining so many different formats would hold together and be visually compelling.

What do you hope viewers will take away from the film?

Hope. Hope for the future even though the present seems very hopeless. A desire to learn more about being present. A recognition that the process of aging and change can be beautiful. And finally an

invitation to ponder how each of us thinks about time. Could a different point of view be hopeful? Helpful?

We have previously mentioned Alina Marazzi, yet your visionary imagery is closer to Guy Maddin's filmmaking style. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

For LIVING IN THE MEDIUM one of my prime cinematic influences was Federico Fellini (not in style particularly but definitely in attitude, structure and use of self-reflexivity). When I was just beginning the post-production, I happened to screen Fellini’s Intervista (1987) and was intrigued by his mix of past and future, the contrived documentary form as a strategy, the autobiographical element and especially his symbolic use of sound. I borrowed a few of his strategies including the director’s megaphone, the overdubbing, the use of foley (which I performed) and I even attempted an approximation of the Fellini wind sound that he apparently produced with his own voice. That experiment did not make the cut. Some other filmmakers who have influenced me are the American experimental filmmaker Chick Strand for her daring combination of autobiography and ethnographic material, Agnes Varda who sustained my hope to become a women

director with her early creation of a female cinematic voice and later showed me the possibility of a filmmaker’s productive evolution in her more recent non-fiction experiments, and both Jean Rouch and Woody Allen for their diverse experiments with a reflexive, self-referential style, one in service of social change, the other in service of comedy.

I suspect I will soon add Alina Marazzi to this list as I was just introduced to her work in this interview and am intrigued to learn more about her films.

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 have been working for many years as an educator and a consultant in the United States and Asia with a goal to inspire more women to step behind the camera. I do not mean only as directors or writers. For example I believe that the cinematographer makes an extraordinary and distinctive contribution and that is why I shoot all of my own films (with some help from second camera operator when needed). Of course, on a large production my artisanal approach to filmmaking is impractical but I believe it is still very important for women to have exper-

tise and feel comfortable with all aspects of the technical process. Sadly, there are still so few women directors in Hollywood as well as in international markets. While many experimental and documentary arenas certainly have been more welcoming, I notice that representation in festivals still favors the male filmmaker. This is a bias that a publication like the cinewomen web magazine is clearly addressing. It will take concerted and continued efforts to encourage and support women filmmakers until we truly have equal representation behind the camera in all aspects of production. I am a feminist and clearly, without equal representation, we really are limiting the possibilities for change and innovation on a deep social and political level.

Thanks for your time. Sally. We wish you all the best with your filmmaker career.

What's next for Sally Cloninger?

Currently, I am beginning the postproduction of Halo-Halo/All Mixed Up, an experimental memoir that spans 50 years of American/Filipino relations with specific focus on gender, sexuality and identity and of course lots of mixing of legacy formats and archival footage with a very eclectic sound design.

cinĂŠwomen/15

aline benchemhoun BSB-GRU-EZE (Brazil, 2015)

e

independent cinema

BSB-GRU-EZE is an intricate tapestry of parallel narratives.

Aline Benchemhoun's remarkable use of architecture lend an atmospheric intensity and beauty to the film. An elliptically simple film, BSB-GRU-EZE is a poetic travel between three airports (Brasilia, São Paulo, Buenos Aires), which reveals Aline's ability to fracture space and time , estranging the narrative almost in a Brechtian way. We are pleased to present Aline Benchemhoun for this year's CinéWomen Edition.

Aline, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?

I’ve started working with photog-

raphy and collages. Back when I was living in Buenos Aires, I once tried to take a picture of three guys who were talking and moving in every direction. At that moment, I felt that photography was too fixed.. This experience was interesting because right when I told them “can I film you?” they changed their conversations and positions. I wanted to capture a moment through film but when I started to shoot, the moment had changed. The two first short movies were about filming people to see the influence of the camera and my presence on them. I filmed strangers without asking any questions. Lot of them started to sing in front of the camera. One person told me that in movies, it's better when somebody sings than talks.

These two short movies Doxa and Serenata de Pompeya were about the others and conceived by them.

BSB-GRU-EZE is a visually lovely investigation of three different places. First of all, what attracted you to this film?

I’ve been living in Brasilia for two years now and I was living in Buenos Aires before. After one year in Brasilia, I went back to Buenos Aires, feeling that it would be something important and that required a rite of passage. The travel lasted 4 hours. Plane travel doesn’t help feeling the change. You experience absolutely no change of landscape and

temperature. You arrive at another airport which is the same that the one you've left. You lose notion of time and space. You can leave at 4pm and arrive at 4pm. The rite of passage was making this movie.

How did you develop the structure of BSB-GRU-EZE? Did the overall structure unfold before the camera, or were you already aware of these various pieces of the puzzle?

During this travel and others I’ve collected lots of frames in different airports. A lot come from France and Portugal but these images could be Buenos Aires’, Brasilia’s or Sao Pau-

cinéwomen/15

lo’s. The use of acronyms emphasizes the similarity of one city to another. The short movie has a direct link with Brasília, an airplane shaped city. The video is inspired by Jacques Tati's movie Playtime.

American tourists have opted for a travel formula: a capital per day.

When they arrived at Orly, they realized that the airport is the same as those they have already visited.

BSB-GRU-EZE is based on a music of Brasilio Itabarê, can you tell us something about this fundamental aspect of your work?

it. I thought that it was the work of a Polish or Hungarian compositor.

To me, it looked like Liszt or Chopin.

When I learned that its name was Sertaneja and that it was made by a Brazilian compositor Brasilio Itabere (diplomat by the way), I’ve seen an analogy with Brasilia. Brasilia, apart from its name, do not really look like Brazil. It could be a polish city full of diplomats, with tropical trees. I was charmed by the different rhythms of the music. When you are in a plane you feel a rhythm. I wanted to make a movie between three airports, with different waves.

When I heard this piece for the first time, I immediately fell in love with

From the first time we watched BSB-GRU-EZE in the morning we

“ ”

cinĂŠwomen/15

cinéwomen/15

were impressed with your film’s radical style and content. Sharp details punctuate the film, and architectures are presented in a refreshingly naturalistic style, reminiscent of Sharunas Bartas's films. What is your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal?

There’s no rehearsal. Everyone in this movie are strangers. Most of the time, they don’t know that they were being filmed. I chose to film just a shadow or a part of the body, nothing very personal. The place that I film could be everywhere.

And it’s the same thing with the characters, they could be everyone.

What do you hope viewers will

take away from the film?

I hope that the viewer will not see the travel and the moment in the airport as a dead calm or waiting time, but as a moment disconnected from time and space, as a freedom zone.

We were deeply impressed with your narrative style. We have previously mentioned Sharunas Bartas, can you tell us who were your chef influences?

My chief influences amongst many others are Dziga Vertov, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and more contemporary Chantal Akerman, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Miguel Gomes, Juan Pablo Rebella,

cinéwomen/15

Pablo Stoll.

What was the most challenging thing about making BSB-GRU EZE? This link between the music and the image. I couldn’t edit without hearing the music.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

I used to write my dreams thinking that someday I would find a link between them. I have a similar process making a video project. I start to shoot, put all the images in a folder and there’s moment when I can see the idea amongst them. At this moment I start to write.

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’m not thinking about the future of men in the cinema and I'm not thinking about the future of women in the cinema. I’m just thinking about the future of cinema.

Thanks for your time and thought, Aline. We wish you all the best with your career. What's next for Aline Benchemhoun?

The next project is a short movie that I’ve made in Brasilia. The title is “not so far to Brazil”, with the theme “how to feel Brazil in Brasilia”.