WomenCinemakers, Special Edition, Vol.29 by WomenCinemakers

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Contents 04 Mehak Jamal

130 Mathilde Neau

Currency of Paisleys

UNBIND

156

Brune Charvin

Young Joo Lee

Sylvia

Disgraceful Blue

184

Ofra Levy Yehudai

Fanny Jemmely

Longing

Thanaterros

208

Mildred Rambaud

Gabrielle Lenhard

Paper Shakers

I Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Stop Eating

110

230

Jill Moshmann

Nina Rath

Suspiration: A Long Deep Sigh

ABUN-DANCE

Women Cinemakers meets

Mehak Jamal Mehak Jamal was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir in India. She studied at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore and graduated with a Bachelors of Creative Arts Film in 2016. Over the past couple of years, Mehak has been assisting on a few different features films which include The Sweet Requiem (2018), Chuskit (2018) and Behind the Trees (2019). She has also shot and edited short films for the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and been a Film Fellow at Dharamshala International Film Festival in 2016. Her shorts films have been selected and screened at the KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival (2017) , The Sylhet Film Festival (2017) and the Kashmir International Film Festival (2018). Mehak has written and edited all her short films in college, both fiction and non fiction. What draws her to film making is the engagement with the characters that one has through the process. Right from the inception when they are mere thoughts to when you visualize how they would move and what they would say is something she finds incredible. She seeks to find such characters in real life as well. She may or may not be a cat lady in the making.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Hello Mehak and welcome to : to start this interview we would like to ask you a couple of question about your background. You have a solid

formal training and you earned your Bachelor of Creative Arts in Film, that you received from Srishti School Of Art Design And Technology: how did this experience influence your evolution as a filmmaker? Moreover, how does your due to your Indian roots direct the trajectory of your artistic research?

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When I joined Srishti, I had no idea that I wanted to study film. It being a design college, I was initially drawn towards that. But a few years in I started experimenting with film making and it stuck. Eventually I ended up graduating in film, which wasn’t something I had perceived at all to begin with. Therefore I learned a lot about myself and how I look at films along the way. I was exposed to world cinema for the first time that opened up my imagination and I’m so grateful for that. Before that I had always seen films in the Bollywood and Hollywood context, and this was completely different and exciting. I have been inspired by film makers from different parts of the world but I’ve always tried to apply what I’ve learnt to the context that I relate with. Currency of Paisleys took a lot of inspiration from Kiarostami and Kie lowski’s work. But I think I tried to stay true to my cultural substratum as you put it. It is very easy to copy what you think looks pretty, but to actually justify it is difficult. I faced that issue a few times during scripting and even when I was shooting. So there are a few elements that haven’t been translated into the film exactly because of that. For this special edition of we have selected , a surreaist film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article

Women Cinemakers and that can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your sapient narrative is the way it provides the viewers with such . While walking our readers through of , could you tell us what did attract you to this particular story? Currency of Paisleys is my final graduation project. So it is the last film I made in college and more or less reflects my state of mind at that point. In a large sense it is a farewell to my time in college. The story follows Laila as she comes home in Bangalore to pack up her room as her parents are moving back to their homeland of Kashmir. She has been born and brought up in Bangalore and now studies in Bombay. So for her the whole trip is a way of bidding goodbye to her childhood. She realises that the next time she will return â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; it will be to a place that she has no idea about but somehow she is expected to belong there. So it is this inner dilemma that solidifies once reaches her childhood home and we follow her story from there. She goes down memory lane and the surrealistic narrative reflects her state of mind that is in a flurry. So we never really understand what is real and what is not. All this is facilitated with the faint presence of her childhood friend Amarantha who we never see but her presence is felt throughout.

I was in a similar place because I knew that I was going to leave Bangalore after studying there for four years. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to return home to Kashmir immediately. I wanted to remove myself from the comfort that home offers and try to see how I do. So essentially a lot of that thought is reflected in Laila’s mind as we follow her through the film. But mainly the story hits ‘home’, pun intended and it may be more deliberate than I

thought of it initially. But I’m not disappointed. Elegantly shot, features stunning cinematography and from a visual point, we have been fascinated with your clear and effective approach to narrative: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

So we shot all our films on a Canon C100 with Samyang lenses. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a choice as such with that, but I think it was pretty effective. In terms of camera movement and lensing, I chose to keep the camera very static and just let the frame evoke what it had to. Whenever Laila is interacting with her space and the people around her we keep our distance from her. But we go closer when she lets us, as if sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s telling us a

secret. A secret that only she and Amarantha know about. This is seen multiple times during the film, be it the jungle gym or the wind chimes. And at these points, the rest of the world dissolves, sometimes with the redness of the jungle gym or sometimes the shallow depth of the field of the camera. Most of the shots in the house are block frames while as she moves around her neighbourhood, whether jumping walls or

Women Cinemakers avoiding people, the camera moves with her, mirroring her state of mind. Again towards the end of the film, when she has almost forgotten why she had started out in the first place, we find her in a very intimate spot in the jungle gym where she seems completely at home. So essentially the film starts with her coming home physically and ends with her reaching it mentally as well. I feel the cinematography that was beautifully done by my classmate Karan Sharma really brings out the story, sometimes even a little better than I had thought it to be. Primarily I had chosen a colour palette of warm colours like yellows, oranges and red. You can see that red is the dominant colour throughout the film. It it so because these are the colours of fall or autumn. Autumn is the end of a whole season of bloomage, but it also leads us to winter that is like a clean slate in the scenery before the leaves come out and the flowers bloom again. So in Lailaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life as of now, the colours signify the end of something dear to her yet now she has the opportunity to paint something new on that blank canvas. Autumn is that brief bridge between the seasons and has always been one of my favourites. Spring comes in a close second but I have always enjoyed autumn more as it is beauty in decay. The slow change in the colours from yellows to reds to the final browns when the leaves shrivel up and fall is almost cathartic. So as Laila traverses this unusual gap between her old home and new, I felt that this metaphor of autumn fit very well.

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We like the way you created entire scenarious out of , especially using lines and excerpts by the renowned Kashmiri poet, Agha Shahid Ali’s work in this film you leave the floor to your characters, finding effective ways to between their epiphanic jurney and the viewers' emotional sphere. What are you hoping will trigger in the audience? I got pulled into the idea of using Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry when I read a line from his poem ‘Stationary’ in ‘Half Inch Himalayas’ which read: This was one of the first lines that intrigued me and I was compelled to build Laila and Amarantha’s story around it, with their letters and their lost friedship. There are several elements from Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry in this film, which have been interpreted by using them as symbols and metaphors throughout the timeline of the film. Some of the references are quite direct like the ‘Currency of Paisleys’ that is written as a clue on the letter that Laila gets from Amarantha. It is an excerpt from ‘The Country without a Post Office’. The chillies and mangoes which crop up through the film signify the same. The saffron comes from his poem ‘The Last Saffron’

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where he screams The saffron and the butterfly wing are signs of Amarantha that keep coming up through the film. But they also have something morbid about them, with the red of the saffron and the wing that mourns for its other half. As we do not see Amarantha in the film, we get a sense of loss with these objects showing up time and again. I essentially see my film as a journey. The letters the two girls wrote to each other marked their childhood and evolved over the years till they finally faded when the two friends drifted apart. Using the postman as a visual anchor as he weaves in and out of the story, I want him to be the one who leads Laila to Amaranthaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. I wanted to juxtapose Shahid lamenting the loss of his homeland as it was, to Lailaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s state of mind as she laments the loss of her home, her childhood and her friend. Featuring brilliant storytelling, escapes the boundaries of narrative, to inquire into an ever shifting internal struggle: would you tell how did you develop the script and the structure of your film? In particular, how did you edit the footage in order to achieve such brilliant results? My film is written in a linear manner but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tried to play with the form to make it a little dreamy and surreal. I have tried to do this by using symbols and objects that may seem out of place sometimes or may sometimes be very

A still from

Women Cinemakers basic, but they all have a hidden meaning. Taking lines from Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry I’ve used these objects as a way of interpreting the same. Also using sounds that are very specific to her memories I want to create an atmosphere that almost reflects what Laila is going through. The edit was a little different from what I had anticipated. The linear form wasn’t really working for the narrative, so I decided to tweak it a bit. Thus in the film we keep coming and going from two timelines, which are essentially very similar yet different, and that is what puts the viewers in a slight tizzy. So there are visual elements in the film that are surreal and unexplained like the mangoes or the red ball or the chillies. They are all hints and secrets from Laila’s childhood. These add to the mood of the film as Laila makes this journey of sorts and comes out on the other side, with a little bit of her younger self. In you leave the floor to your character of Laila, brilliantly performed by Anahita Ganjoo: what was your preparation in terms of ? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticolously schedule every details of your acting and shooting process? Honestly, I didn’t have much time to rehearse before the shoot. We were on a tight schedule and had to quickly get things done. That being said I somehow always wanted to

Women Cinemakers use Anahita as an actor in one of my films. There was something very mysterious yet calm about her and I felt that it would be very apt for Laila. As the film isn’t verbose, there weren’t a lot of lines to practice, which was good. Overall I think a lot of the decisions during the shoot were spontaneous and on the go and they supplemented the characters as well. Each character had a proper back story which helped me with their demeanour and presence on screen. Because I had that at the back of my mind, I knew how Laila would act or how Sadaf would be. That was something I discovered in my last year of college and though the stories might not be visible on screen, they did help mould the characters and contribute to the final product. I explained this to my actors so they could gauge the characters that they were playing. As there wasn’t too much dialogue, this was my way to getting my point across. And as both the actors who play Laila and her mother Sadaf, Anahita Ganjoo and Urvashi Jalali respectively are actually Kashmiri Pandits, there was an authenticity that I couldn’t have fathomed to get anywhere else. could be We daresay that considered an effective allegory of : how does your fuel your creative process to address

Women Cinemakers your choices regarding the stories you tell in your films? I didn’t want to oversimplify things and make them too obvious. Essentially ‘nothing’ happens in the film but a lot happens within Laila’s character as she revisits her home for what is most probably the last time and as she packs up her memories into boxes. I wanted to work with the form and visual narrative of the visit. I wanted to take instances from her childhood and taking the help of poetry, weave them into the story in a plausible manner. I wanted to work with her relationship with Amarantha and what special things they shared with each other. Why they felt the need to write letters to each other when they were only a few houses apart and when they actually needed those letters, they stopped. I wanted to grasp even a little bit of what goes on inside her head without being too direct. The film is not dialogue centric and essentially it is just Laila that we see in the frame as she interacts with what is around her. I didn’t want it to get too mundane of a walk also, so the things she discovers along the way and what she hears and sees are what build up to the end. Taking the example of this film where one of my main struggles was to not be too obvious and try to express through the simplest of human

Women Cinemakers experiences, I do think that is what I strive for in cinema. I am a huge fan of Iranian cinema and have always admired how they can take the simplest of topics in their day to day lives and are able to weave out intricate stories out of that. I think that has been a major factor in me trying to show ‘nothing’, yet make ‘something’ out of it. If a film looks so realistic that your characters seem effortless, as if they’re going about their daily lives, I think my job is done. Using a naturalistic style and well orchestrated camera work, has drawn heavily from to question the idea of home. We have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful between the environment and the story: how did you select the locations and how did they affect your shooting process? The shooting locations were places that I had interacted with in my four years of college. As I already said that the film reflects my state of mind at that point of time to a certain extent. So these sights and sounds that were so familiar to me also line the environment of the film. As a large part of the film is the walk, the location for that was the SFS 208 Colony where I lived for two years. As we mainly

shot the film during the onset of spring, we got some lovely foliage here and there. The houses belonged to friends, PG owners and classmates etc. who were kind enough to let us shoot in their premises. As the colour scheme also dictated a lot to the locations, the red jungle gym for example and the maroon floor of Laila’s room were big factors in me choosing those particular locations for the story. One of my favourite shots of the film is in fact the opening when we don’t see Laila for quite a while as the trees are reflected in her car window. Her face keeps going in and out. This juxtaposition of the natural and man made was something that set the tone for the film. It made me think about the permanence and impermanence of objects. These are the fleeting moments in Laila’s last visit home, yet the surety that they will remain there for years to come. We have really appreciated your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women from getting behind have been the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on ?

Women Cinemakers I don’t know where I heard this, in an interview or something, that we would really have gotten somewhere when women start making bad cinema. I found this statement very refreshing. Not that all cinema that women make now also is the best, but the simplicity of the statement brings out the truth of the age that we are in. And to see that changing is empowering. 2018 will always be seen as the Me Too year with so many strong women fighting their inner and outer battles and speaking out for themselves and others. I alongwith the million other females in the world appreciate it. One of my favourite films of last year was Lady Bird by Greta Gerwig. It was fresh and endearing and so wonderfully written. One of my favourite lines in the film is when Ladybird asks her mom if she likes her. Her mum replies, ‘Of course I love you.’ To which Ladybird replies, ‘I know, but do you like me?’ I have always been a fan of the beauty in mundaneness and Ladybird brought that out for me. The female perspective and how women see things is an enigmatic thing. Women craft images for screen in a different way than men. It may be subtle but it is certainly evident. If you want to find out, compare a love making scene which has been shot by a man and a woman. You’ll be able to see the intricacies. The dialogue in cinema is incomplete without the female voice, as is without the LGBTQ

community. Slowly but surely we are getting there. Women film makers have been here to stay for a while now and will continue to do so in leaps and bounds. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Mehak. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you for give me this platform to talk about my work.

So I have been assisting on a few different films over the past two years. It’s been really educational to see how different people function on set. I have some stories churning in my brain which I intend to give shape to very soon. I have mostly worked on shorter formats for my own work and intend to move past that to a longer one. More than anything I want to see if I will be able to sustain a story for that long. I’m curious to see where that takes me.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Brune Charvin Lives and works in Lyon, France

A woman named Sylvia will give in, in the space of a single encounter with a stranger, to an introspective session that will lead her to talk about her dad that she only met once.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com You have received a bachelor of art in acting. How did this experience influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due to your travel throughout four continents direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Training at in England taught me three things; how to speak with actors, decipher body language, and use a camera. The third part wasn’t a given – there wasn’t any cinematography curriculum. Early on in my training though, I struggled with being watched while on stage. Some days the weight of people’s eyes on me was simply, unbearable. It was a time of brutal frustration and wondering, which coincided with yet another one – the theft of my old camera in Scotland. I liked taking pictures - my

memory’s equivalence to that of a goldfish justified framing my life so as to not let it be forgotten. January 2009, my dad chipped in to replace my old camera and I got a Canon 7D. It took me months to realize it could also shoot videos. In September 2009, things came together – as they do. I had come to terms with not wanting to be an actor. Actors surrounded me. I had a camera. Actors love being on camera. Et voilà. A small group of us got together: Adam Newns, Daniel Kearns, John Andrew Cunnington, Abby Wayne and Joseph Lynch. We started making short films like we make bread. We didn’t know about technique – we didn’t care. Adam recorded the sound, I alone represented an entire film crew while directing up to 6 actors. What a joke! We were making stuff with the enthusiasm, naivety and good fortune of first time learners. East 15 framed my mind.

Brune Charvin photo by Neringa Greiciute

As for traveling, it brought to my consciousness an essential element of life, something more vital than power, fame, family, beauty and money, stronger than being smart, adored, admired: to . Why? Because when one feels understood, it takes away some of the unspeakable burden of wondering what we’re alive for. It is hard to be fully understood by others; first, one commits to identify one’s personal truth, which takes time – a lot of time – and discipline, integrity, and resilience. Then, one ought to with someone else, which implies figuring out what channel is best suited to share with, without losing too much along the way. Finally, the individual chosen as the receptor of the message must not only comprehend the channel one has chosen to convey the message, but also the content of the message. I traveled for 10 years, lived in 6 different countries (France, India, England, Senegal, Indonesia, Germany) and I speak 3 languages (French, English, Indonesian). Often being confronted with the absence of a similar verbal language, culture or religion, I had to find other ways to be understood. I have yet no proper answer to my infinite questions: “what is it to be a human?” “what do I have in common with all these people?” “does the human condition transcend national, educational and linguistic boundaries?” “can body language illuminate our commonality?” But brought me closer to a heightened sense of contentment to be alive, than expressing myself to a human being as distant as can be from me in terms of geography, language, culture, religion and custom and be understood. Because, through the few ways one finds to be understood by a foreigner, we actually discover some pillars of our . For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting dance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into is

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with refined aesthetics, inviting the viewers to such a experience: when walking our readers through the , would you tell us how did you develop the genesis of initial idea? February 2016 I was working as the filmmaker and photographer of , an educational initiative led by Kate Eberstadt, offering music and performance classes for children living in an emergency refugee camp in West Berlin. There, I meet Rahaf, a little girl from Syria with golden eyes. Rahaf has had her fingers, arms, legs and head burnt before leaving Syria. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s constantly being bullied by the other children at the camp. When I first meet her, she avoided my camera and me by any means possible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we represent what makes her suffer most. A few weeks later, I sense that she sees me behind the camera; she sees the human. Within six months, Rahaf gradually comes closer. After music rehearsals, in a Red Cross classroom a few minutes walk away from the camp, once the other children are gone, she stays with me to clean up the room and help to pack up my gear. Outside the rehearsal room, on the way to the camp, she sometimes asks me to take pictures of her; Rahaf poses with flowers, poses holding my bags (some weighing more than 3kg.) After weeks, Rahaf poses without anything. Her glance is at times ardent, at times soft. Somehow, I feel that we are called, my camera and I, as if Rahaf needed us to communicate; with the world, but especially, with herself. March 2017 As I am back in France, I decide to take this experience with Rahaf to other women. I am realizing that through the medium of the camera, I can create possibilities for these women to express themselves where otherwise there are, none. Over a six month period, I call on volunteers to participate in photography sessions, with the goal of leading them to introspection and self-expression. These volunteers

are chosen regardless of their age or social status. It is however crucial that:

between a moment, to another, threaded by the power of music and editing to form the short film

- We have never met one another - There is no monetary exchange - There isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any pressure to achieve results

Elegantly shot, features stunning cinematography: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

Thanks to the precious feedback of each of them, these women help me build a tight routine that becomes more and more elaborate, a series of exercises that lead the participant to trust, . As with Rahaf, the camera transforms to let go, to into a mirror that reflects what they are willing to share, and embodies what a verbal exchange cannot address. Finally, during the last session featuring Sylvia, I choose to shoot rather than photograph. My work does not focus on framing and freezing a moment any longer. It focuses on the transition

I used my Canon 5D (I worked five years with the 7D before switching to the 5D) and a 35mm, manual Zeiss lens. My work revolves around people, so this camera is discreet enough for them not to feel intimidated, yet powerful enough to produce high quality images. As for the lens, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perfect: myself, and the viewers, stay close enough to the subject, while leaving her some space to exist, some context, some matter and emptiness.

As a matter of fact, I started this project with strong ideas about aesthetics, most notably through the choice of space, which was an absolute key to the shooting process. Since I wanted an intimate environment to facilitate our exchanges, I needed to shoot indoors. I began shooting in my aunt’s apartment that I chose for its coziness, intimacy and stunning morning light. Yet, after a few sessions, the apartment felt too busy with furniture, personal belongings and colors. I had thought the – the flat – as separate to the , these women’s stories. As a result, I was set on an intellectually driven path that wasn’t what the project wanted and needed, but of what the project wanted and needed. I’m often confronted to this problem. It’s a life-long

exercise to always let the substance – the matter, the subject – shape the form; the form, being there as a result the substance. My dad suggested our tiny childhood home, hidden in a courtyard. We had lived for eight years in this 40m3 house, which was now empty – only remaining in my memories. I knew straight away. This space, this form, fit the substance. It was actually part of the substance itself: it contained my own memories while being empty enough to welcome the women to come. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and its tension with the surroundings: how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your

film and the need of spontaneity? How much importance does improvisation play in your process? It is indeed crucial to find this balance of preparation and spontaneity. I therefore work with two principles that aren’t very quantifiable: trust and emotional distress.

Trust is the very foundation of the work. Rahaf trusted me; that is why she decided to open up and share. But I had earned her trust over time – 6 months – time that I do not have for the portrait photography project with several women and from which I will not receive any financial compensation. Should I then work only with women who know me? They would be sure of my intentions and my integrity. But that disregards the premise of the project even in a short amount of time, trust must be built, earned, there must be a concept of ‘obstacle’ and then ‘overcoming’ for the session to be effective. So I play with the antithesis of trust generated over time: trust with a complete stranger, assured by the uniqueness of a moment with someone that you aren’t likely to meet again. I experienced it many times while car sharing: the confined space of a car, the road and a stranger whom you intuit is benevolent. This stranger does not belong to any mutual social circles and has little effect on our future. There is a very definite notion of time (until arrival), and a clear path (to the place of arrival). It is an ideal environment for confession and sharing, a system from which I drew inspiration in the construction of my sessions to provide a solid and simple structure.

Once the volunteer is found, we communicate via detailed emails about the plan for the session – the trip, the time, the goal. This requires patience, perseverance, emotional availability and clarity, bearing in mind that trust is at stake and may suffer from this type of communication involving distance.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers Despite this, on the day we’ve arranged to meet, the subject is clearly stressed out. First of all, she is not certain of my identity – I have told her of course, we have exchanged a lot of emails and she has probably looked my name up on Google, but doubts still remain; it’s normal. Secondly, in most cases, it is a first-time photoshoot, which is an awful confrontation for some. Finally, the person brings with her a very personal story, at worst never talked through or shared, at best already delivered off some layers of dust, yet still difficult to mention. In conclusion, emotional distress is such that it is palpable; it is however absolutely key to the success of the session, because it allows one not to think. The session is not meant to reflect. It is made to feel, to be present, in a framework of trust sufficiently worked on that the raw emotional energy is not a burden, a wall or heavy baggage, but necessary raw material. We have appreciated the way your approach conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to the grammar of body language. Sylvia challenges the notion of the physical form as discrete from the environment in which it exists and we have particularly appreciated the way your work reveals the tension between the idea of physicality of the body and its surrounding: how did you arrange the space and how did it affect your shooting process? To start with, I had placed a chair in a room, from a pragmatic standpoint: it’s nice to sit someone down when they first arrive, isn’t it? Gradually, as the sessions progressed and the feedback came through, I grew to understand the deep connection between the space and the person. What a person needed to be present, and to be safe in a space. As a result, three spatially defined units emerged within the space: the room, the chair, and the exit – that the person could freely move in and out of, depending on her needs and readiness. The room was the physical space of the memories that the person had come to share. A personal space, a space she could own. That I,

even physically present with her in it, wasn’t allowed to disturb otherwise. The chair was the space of direct contact and exchange: if the person decided to sit down, it was a signal that I could come closer to her with my camera – closer to her memory. That she opted to share something with me, whether directly or indirectly, in whatever form she chose. The exit was the adjacent room. At any time, the person could decide to move from the room we were in, to the other, without the need to verbalize – without needing my permission. Confrontation with memories can be heavy, as well as being photographed/filmed. The side room allowed her to get away from the physical space of memory and the camera, to rest without having to ask for my agreement. The certainty of an emergency exit was, for most, reassuring enough to not feel the need to use it at all. And so, as the session went on, space, and the person in the space, couldn’t remain two separate entities. The space and her use of space reflected the person. Featuring essential and well-orchestrated editing, involves the audience into a heightened experience, urging them to challenge their perceptual categories to create : what are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship? In particular, how important is for you to address the viewer's imagination in order to elaborate ? With this project, I want to create a safe space where the person who’s photographed/filmed can experience what most matters to me: being understood. During the session, there is time and space to understand oneself – or, at least, a chance to begin. There is also time to share whatever has come to one’s attention, through the body,

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Women Cinemakers

A still from

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Women Cinemakers through glances, through the simple connection to, and presence of, another compassionate human being. What is more obscure to me is the relationship to the viewer. To be honest, I’d be curious to know the answer: what is happening when one watches the film? What is most activated: personal introspection? Genuine empathy for another human being who is exposed, vulnerable and honest? Deeper understanding of the medium, film, as an effective way to convey emotions? Sound plays an important role in your film and the brilliant sound tapestry made by whispered voice over and chant by with such an Thea Synowiecka provides the footage of and a bit atmosphere: how would you consider the role of sound within your practice and how do you see ? Sound has a singular role in Sylvia: as music is said to speak the soul, the piece is taken from the world's musical folklore, different from the subject's original culture; aiming at associating what usually isn’t put together. Musical director Alice de Conti chose for Sylvia’s original soundtrack a traditional Belarusian song called “Out There on the Sea,” sung by Thea Synowiecka, a Polish singer.

Relationship between sound and movement is like sewing image to music. It’s choreography; each note provides a feeling that echoes in the movement, each movement generates a sensation paralleled in the music. They’re each the translation of one another. As this musical piece builds harmonies recorded by a single voice, the role of music changes over the course of the film; from a classic “third wheel” role - enhancing emotions, narrating the subject’s journey - to being the subject’s voice itself.

Music in this piece embodies a humanistic approach; at a very deep level, we are people. We are moving entities who speak the same language, that of emotions. We really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. Women are finding their voices in art: since Artemisia Gentileschi's times to our contemporary scene it has been a long process and it will be a long process but we have already seen lots of original awareness among women artists. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something ' ', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on in this field? I have little knowledge of what the future holds for us, Western female artists. Instead, I offer as an alternative a personal experience on the role of women in traditional Indonesian art, witnessed in the largest Muslim community of the world. I lived in Makassar, Indonesia, for three years, practicing and dance, which I am conducting research on the traditional currently putting together in a novel. In Pakarena, men and women have clear gender roles: women dance, while men play instruments. Here is an excerpt from the book, which plunges us into the wellanchored present of these women.

interview

Women Cinemakers

interview

Women Cinemakers

This principle of apparent duality, yet invisible unity, between male and female gender, here illustrated by the Pakarena dance, has been damaged in the West during the last decades. But every principle, idea, society, political system, only dies to be born again. The overshadowed femaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right, in contemporary art or other disciplines, will not fail at its rebirth nor at its height - thus joining the balance of genders Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Brune. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you for your relevant questions, as well as your interest in my work. I took a lot of pleasure in taking time to answer this interview. I want to develop my work using the camera as a therapeutic tool. To create a moment and a space where people can express what is difficult to express otherwise, in a language that anyone, anywhere, can understand in their most basic human condition. To understand myself, to understand others; to find sense. I found one day such an answer to the ultimate metaphysical question â&#x20AC;&#x153;what is the purpose of life?â&#x20AC;? Well, to find purpose.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

interview

Women Cinemakers

Women Cinemakers meets

Ofra Levy Yehudai Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Being an artist it is my conviction that it is not the new we should aspire to invent. It is taking the old and giving it a new meaning. By this I refer to the elements I work with. A music segment, a human movement and video art piece. For me each to itself, beautiful as it may be, are each for itself just what they are. A music segment, a human movement and video art piece. They each have its own original meaning and what lures me while working, is composing them together in such a manner they actually wear a whole altered meaning. It feels like alchemy.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Hello Ofra and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your

cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your artistic research? I was born in Tel Aviv to parents who immigrated to Israel from Bulgaria. My father owned a metal workshop in picturesque Jaffa and it was from him that I learned of the great beauty which lies in simplicity. When my father would come home from work, we would listen to classical music, during which he would elaborate on the biography of each

Women Cinemakers composer and the themes in their creations. At the same time, we enjoyed also listening to folk Greek music, as well as French Chansons. This musical tapestry evoked in me the appreciation for the different worlds of music, leading me as a creator, to use a variety of music in my own works. As child I had a wild imagination. I remember inventing games and stories on the Mediterranean beach when times were good, and creating an imaginary world when reality became too hard. I would also sneak into the Dance Studio beneath our house and marvel the dancers and so, with time, the many hours I have spent in my imagined world became the keystone of my ability to create. In my eyes, there exists always a world parallel to our reality and there is always that “Longing” for far away worlds full of beauty and tenderness. The subject of my first dance pieces were women. In my early twenties, I created a dance named “On the Tip of Hard Hills.” A piece that was awarded the “Shade in Dance” prize for young choreographers. The dance was dedicated for women from Spanish origin that lived in a Patriarchal society and suffered from a dissonance between their rich inner world and Self Realization. The music of the dance was lullabies in Ladino (Spanish dialect spoken by Jewish) that my Grandmother used to sing to me. My next work dealt with battered women. I combined the sweet song “Feed the Birds” from the movie Mary Poppins sung

by Julie Andrews with Hitchcock’s’ movie The Birds. Combining the sweetness of the song with Hitchcock’s scene, creates an uncomfortable feeling in the viewer and in my opinion is hinting to a hidden violence that many women suffer from men and yet they prefer to deal with it with sweetness. These works paved the path to my artistic world dealing with women and their world. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Longing, an extremely interesting dance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your work is the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with such refined aesthetic, inviting the viewers to such a multilayered experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of Longing, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? The initial idea of Longing was conceived out of the yearning for the beauty that fades over time. Women’s hair is a source of beauty and power. In the work, the repetition of the hand movement of the woman, resembles the harp player’s hand and along with the song “On the River of Babylon” the audience feel the loss. The hair that falls is the tears of the exiles from Babylon. The tears (hair falling) represent what no longer exist. Hair that falls from the head is dead, there is no longer any life. The work was created at a

Women Cinemakers time when I felt that I was exiled from my essence, from my creation. Just as the Babylon Exiles yearn for Zion, I am also Longing for Zion where Zion represents to me something primeval, whole and pure. The hand movement on the hair is like the fingers of the harp player, gentle movements that produce a sound that feels like it comes from the soul. We look at the falling hair, these are the tears, and put it next to us. By doing this process, we free ourselves from our previous image of oneself and can move forward. While creating this work I was inspired by works of Edgar Degas who painted bathing women, and Edouard Manet who painted naked women who stare forward to the spectators. These paintings made me â&#x20AC;&#x153;longâ&#x20AC;? for the natural beauty of women and their daring straight-forward look. In this work, I am Longing to a secret primal beauty that is disappearing. Featuring essential and well-orchestrated choreography, Longing involves the audience in a voyeuristic and heightened visual experience, urging them to challenge their perceptual categories to create personal narratives: what are you hoping Longing will trigger in the spectatorship? In particular, how much important is for you to address the viewer's imagination in order to elaborate personal associations? In my works, I want to expose my inner self. This truth is clean and honest. When this feeling of truth and

Women Cinemakers

honesty comes out, it meets each one of us in our own state of mind and therefore gives space for interpretation. The only way I can get closer to this truth is when I reduce the image to its purest form. The image of the woman moving her hands while her hair falls from her head is made in its purest form and it creates a feeling that is not manipulated and allows the audience to be truthful to their own feelings. In my work I try to stay away from emotional manipulation. Therefore, to reduce the feeling until it becomes abstract and not specific. By doing so, I allow the spectators to stay away, while actually, letting them get closer. The way I manage this, is by using a very specific visual along with matching music that together creates a secure comfortable feeling within the spectators that allows them to FEEL without fear. This combination of aesthetics, music and visual enables a creation of free and honest feelings. We have appreciated the way your approach to dance conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to the grammar of body language: how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your performative gestures and the need of

spontaneity? How much importance does play improvisation in your process? When I create a movement, it earns its place only if it conveys the feeling that I want to transfer. Sometimes, that feeling can be created out of multiple elements and sometimes by repetition of the same movement or element. What is most important for me is to remain loyal to the idea that the work conveys. I think that every movement in space is meaningful, therefore, I try to be very specific in each movement and to honor it. Often, I can improvise within the frame of the work and at other times, I arrive to the frame through improvisation. I try to keep the movement clean of feelings, adornments, and manipulations. The movement needs to stem from the idea that I wish to convey. The moment I find the right movement, I try to be very precise in order to remain loyal to the melting point where all the elements, in the right timing, create the precise emotion. For example, in one of my rehearsals for a different project, the actors were not tuned for just a single second to the music, and the feeling that we were trying to pinpoint did not happen. It could not happen. Sometimes I see the precise movement in my head, sometimes I explore it through improvisation. The

Women Cinemakers

movement can come from stillness or silence. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter, as long as the movement emerges in its purest form. The intersection between sound and gestures plays a crucial role in your practice and we have appreciated the way the soundtrack provides your performance with such an ethereal and a bit unsettling atmosphere: how would you consider the role of sound within your practice and how do you see the relationship between sound and movement? Music plays an important role in my work. It creates something new with the movement, video or the image that I am creating. It is the combination between the music and the movement that creates the feeling that I try to convey. As I mentioned in the previous question, I can be influenced from a variety of music. The main purpose of my creation is the fusion of the elements, which creates a complete new meaning. When all the elements come together, it gives a feeling that the music was created especially for the piece. When the music involves lyrics I need to make sure the movement or image is not literal. The words add a new dimension, therefore at this stage of my creative process I work with three elements (music, movement, images) Since the words of the song trigger the spectator to employ their rationale, I try to bypass it and create a connection where the

A still from

Women Cinemakers words get a fresh/ different meaning. Working with music with text is especially challenging because I need to overcome yet another obstacle. The movement needs to be even more abstract. Sometimes I can use a song that is very well known and with the movement that accompanies it, I change the obvious meaning and the song is completely changed. When I use instrumental music, I create visual text and this creates a story without text. I don't use music as background for the movement. I approach the soundtrack I create for a long piece as a story that has to keep the spectator intrigued. The precision of my work with music, makes it all more so challenging working with my actors. The actorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; natural desire is to express themselves as much as they can, whereas I work with them as a Choreographer/Director asking them to work against their instincts. The precision of the music is rigorous and they need to confine their expressions to the musicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time-line constraints. They must stay focused, attuned and be very specific and precise in their acting. Often times when I create, I visualize the sound and I paint the movement or the image that comes to my head or vice versa. The process remains the same: be it music and image or image and music they are always inseparable. What intrigues me

Women Cinemakers most as an artist is the convergence between the music, movement and the image. This meeting creates a new world that cannot exist by itself. A world that needs the combination of these three elements. If we discard one of these elements, this new world will acquire a different meaning. It will return to its origin.

came across the work of Hilma af Klint, a Swedish artist. Her paintings which sometimes resemble diagrams were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas. Seeing her work, I felt an immediate connection to the primal place from which creation starts. I was very impressed by her courage to transform the invisible to visible.

Both realistic and marked out with such a surreal quality, Longing reveals exquisite eye for the details, to walk the viewers into a heightened visual journey. We daresay that this video attempts to unveil the invisible that pervades our reality but that cannot be detected by our sensorial experience. Do you agree with this interpretation? Moreover, how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination playing within your process?

In my work, I search for a way to convey the beauty and the tenderness that cannot be detected by our natural senses.

I was very surprised when I read this question. I had a strong feeling that my work exposed another side of me. In my personal process, I took some time off from creating in order to nurture my spiritual growth. During this break I spent time in Findhorn, Scotland where I took part in their dynamic experiment where they work with the intelligence of nature. This period in my life was dedicated to a spiritual journey that enriched my world. This year, when I presented ANTS at the NYC Fringe Festival, I went to the Guggenheim Museum and

Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the ideas you aim to communicate and the physical act of creating your artworks? My physical acts stem from a sense of vulnerability. In order to be in a vulnerable state when performing, I pull together extreme concentration and inner strength. Being exposed, creates a bond with the audience. Still I have to protect myself and therefore, I train myself through meditation and like the â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Warriorâ&#x20AC;? I must focus on my stability, strength, concentration, along with flexibility and awareness to

Women Cinemakers be able to reach this state. I must be strong and vulnerable at the same time. Deviating from traditional filmmaking, we daresay that Longing highlights the struggle between perception and experience: how do you consider the role of direct experience as starting point for your work as an artist? In particular, how do the details that you capture during daily life fuel your artistic research? While creating, I am constantly influenced by images, situations and experiences that surround my life. The seeds of ANTS, my latest work, was planted upon accompanying a close friend to the hospital to hear the results of his tests. Deep inside us, we already knew the truth. Sitting there, in the hospital corridor, my friend pointed at a procession of ants and, suddenly I visualized a scene for my work. I tried to communicate this very complex feeling in its purest form. To transfer the sadness and the realization that life is changing and the fear that comes along with these feelings, and still remain committed to keeping the love and compassion. In ANTS, when I built the “hospital” scene, the actors are about to receive the bad news from the Doctor. I worked a long time to establish this scene to avoid over sentimentality. In the process, I had an idea that the big colorful shoes

of a clown can reduce the emotions from the scene, therefore, the actors were dressed as clowns. I asked the actors to refrain from expressing emotions, the only stage direction that guided them was to cross the stage diagonally. The clowns with their exaggerated shoes, known classical music by Bach and a projected Ants video in the background, all together, I was able to communicate the feeling that I was searching for without the sentiment. I created other works when I sensed that a period in my life was drawing to its end. When I felt a change of cycles, such was it when my son went through adolescence and tried to break all the rules, I felt like we were moving apart mentally and physically. This period made me think about a book that I read years ago, “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble” by William Steig. In this book a teenage Donkey is becoming a stone, remains as a stone close to his parent but they obviously don’t recognize him. The music of the performance was songs by the Beatles, music that I heard coming over and over again from behind my son’s closed door. In my present work, I am inspired by a demolition of a neighboring house. I am going to use images from the ruins of the building and correspond it with the fragility of life. As you probably understand by now, I try to use my own private experiences and turn them universal.

Women Cinemakers

We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? For many years, I tried to stay away from unconventional work. I believe that those years of attempting to belong to the main stream, prevented me from developing my artistic abilities and creativity. I believe that working within the main stream came from my education that a girl/women needed to stay home and please her surroundings. Fortunately, with hard work, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not there anymore. Creating interdisciplinary art in Israel, means presenting your work in Fringe theatres. I wish they were not associated with low budget but there we are. They are under budgeted and not by choice. But then again, what is the alternative? Create nothing?

Women Cinemakers I was fortunate enough, 25 years ago to be acknowledged by Ohad Naharin who gave me a chance to present my work at Ensemble â&#x20AC;&#x153;BatShevaâ&#x20AC;?. In this work the main image was of four dancers dressed in the spirit of the 19th century, each rocking a transparent stroller that contained a fish instead of a baby. It was an experience which allowed me to convey my image exactly as I wanted. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Ofra. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Well, ANTS is still running. It has been performed many times in Israel but it was only when I was fortunate enough to witness how well received it was at the 2018 New York City Fringe Festival, that it made me realize how universal my themes have been all along. So, it is still only a vision but in my mind it is already pretty well crafted. (I wish Fringe would not be so linked with low budget) but Like ANTS it corresponds with the inevitability of loss and the recognition of the violence that it produces. Tel Aviv, my home town, loves tearing up the old for the sake of the new. Houses demolished, and cranes erecting are a daily reality. A good image to start with. So my next work, is still untitled but it is about the violence of houses being torn inside out. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Mildred Rambaud Lives and works in London and Berlin

Paper Shakers is a new chapter in the story that unfolded between Rambaud and one of her co-conspirators: the aforementioned paper fan. The original object now bears the impressions, residues and injuries of a long and active relationship. This latest work is made in 16mm film, in which Rambaud appears with three female performers, (the object and its many lovers create something greater than the sum of their parts) highlighting the ritualistic aura that extends beyond the object and the artist, into remote time and space. on this occasion the moment was 2016 and the place was Brittany, in the grounds of a classic villa, the atmosphere reminiscent of Godard’s Villa Malaparte [Le Mepris] - an association reinforced by the formal relationship between rambaud’s concertinaed paper and those iconic steps. The embrace of film as genre, not only as medium, is felt in the cinematic quality and the tactile allure of the image – shot on 16mm the work is classic and seductively sensual whilst defiantly resisting nostalgia. hair, fingers and toes caress the paper folds, Etruscan figures are submerged in water as if through the surreal mirror of Un Chien Andalou (1929), a soundtrack of beating drums and discordant noises calls a shamanic force into play, human gestures and the material behaviour of the sculpture convey deep rhythms of a corporeal knowledge that transcends thought, to desire - a yearning of the soul.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier

regarding your background. You have a solid

and Dora S. Tennant

formal training and after having earned your

womencinemaker@berlin.com

BFA in Fine Art Media from Chelsea School of Art, you nurtured your education with an MA

Hello Mildred and welcome to

in Sculpture, that you received from the

WomenCinemakers: we would like to introduce

prestigious Slade school of Fine Arts: how

you to our readers with a couple of questions

did these experiences influence your

Women Cinemakers evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your artistic research? My years at art school were marked by experimentation, it was an inspiring time, I felt at home in a creative environment, met great people, and found friends and future collaborators. At the Slade a strong interest in the process of making developed, focusing on the journey towards, rather than the final result. My work varies across performance, film and sculpture and emerges from my fascination with the world. Personal encounters develop through intuition, into obsessions that dictates the form of their eventual manifestation. My sculptures are often charged by a relationship to the body and, implicated in my personal cosmology. It is very much in this not knowing that the potent space of imagination is nurtured. Motifs recur: lines, directions, triangles, folds and discs: platonic forms that are insinuated in mysterious narratives that are only ever partially revealed. Travelling and an admiration of ancient cultures and rituals can be witnessed through the art historical references and allusions of African, European and Indian civilisations, astrological gardens, temples and secular architecture,

sacred geometry just as well as symbolist and minimalist sculpture. Your practice is marked out with such captivating eclecticism and we have really appreciated the way your approach combines a variety of art disciplines. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://www.mildredrambaud.co.uk in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: in the meanwhile, would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select an art discipline to inquire into a particular area of your artistic research? Sometime I feel like a happy little stone skimming endlessly on the surface of so many disciplines. I love the encounter of new challenges, learning and discovering new modes of making but also accepting the lack of knowledge in a medium and making this a strength or a freedom to experiment and reinvent. One reason I love film is that it embraces beautifully so many disciplines, this gives me a chance to bring together many different aspects

Women Cinemakers of my work but also it opens space for collaboration. In this instance, I would like to thank Alexander Schmidt, Claire Keating, Keiko Yamamoto, Amira Ramirez, Joseph Walsh and Marie Roux who worked on ‘ for bringing in their ways and making this piece a little gem. I don’t have a strict approach, I enjoy working instinctively. Actually I am very interested in the instinct as a particular source of intelligence. Making art can be a way to experience this part of myself. At time, it is process that guides me, or sometime an encounter, an image, a sentence or a word that will echo persistently, circling in my mind, until their meanings are ultimately distilled into art works. Two years ago, in India, I climbed the Holly mountain Arnuchala, in this instance ‘tits and volcanoes’ emerged as a mantra, “tit and volcano, tit and volcano, tit and volcano”. Back in Europe, invited by the Zennor Project Space, I used a one month residency to create a new body of work. Roughly sculpted in black wax, the series Medallions, occupies a contradictory status between the provisional and the monumental, the precarious and the fortified. Appearing as relics from an era of mortal battle,

they allude to bravado, decorations of bravery, of pride and strength. Yet, rendered in this soft, precarious material, with aesthetic humour, they behave as provocations to such gendered power orders, honouring the female body and sexual energy as a sign of strength and fecundity, performing the function of protection through the symbolism of ornamental mammary glands. To accompany the medallions, I made an outdoor, freestanding three meter high sculpture made of wax and earth. The phallic sculpture is called: . For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Paper Shakers, to carry wax paper, an extremely interesting film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: when walking our readers through the genesis of this captivating film, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? Very important, on top of that is the influence of Butoh, a Japanese dance movement from the 1960’s. After my Masters, I went to Paris and there a strange course of events led me to meet the dancer and film maker Masaki Iwana, a

direct student of the Japanese avant-garde choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Ankoku Butoh, which translates to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dance of darknessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. It may all seem eclectic but somehow

there is a golden thread and things follow like beads on a chain. At the Slade, I was making very light and fragile sculptures out of waxed paper. Out of this technique, and my interest in dance emerged the

performance this led me now into the film piece . You see, I came a long way, starting at the Slade on a material based approach, continuing with

the performance – for the first time shown at Point Ephémère in Paris (2008) and multiple times after– , up to now where the live performance unfolded as this film.

Women Cinemakers We have appreciated the way you have provided your film with such a poetic quality, capable of establishing emotional involvement in the viewers: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting and what did you aim to trigger in the spectatorship? Moreover, how important is for you to invite your audience to elaborate personal associations? The sensuality of film draws me in like no other medium, there was no doubt, if I were to translate my performance into a moving image piece, it had to be with 16mm. The second important decision was to shift the performance from solo to group, the location was also very important and of course movement! A subtle dance to draw the spectator in. The rest is very much improvisation! Softening the gaze, bringing the spectator into a calm state, soothed. Pulling them into a dreamlike, mythical world, timeless, where they are able to drift and make their own associations. Their own dream-scape opens up, our dream worlds collide for an instant, turn into a dance â&#x20AC;Ś What has impressed us of Paper Shakers is the way it brings our relationship with our environment to a new level of significance,

Women Cinemakers unveiling the ubiquitous bond between the individual and outside reality. How does everyday life's experience fuels your creative process? Life is full of poetry and mysteries. I believe it is very much about the ability of seeing. Which layer of reality opens up to you, which layer can you see. They are days, where I am more or less receptive, I believe your way of life either enables you or disables your gaze. Maybe art at times helps one to remember to look at the world with soft eyes, in a different manner, with more sensitivity. Paper Shakers features essential cinematography with a keen eye to details and we have really appreciated your successful attempt to capture the resonance between gestures and the environment: how do you consider the relationship between space and movement playing within your artistic research? In particular, how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of the performance and the need of spontaneity? And how importance does improvisation play in your process?

Women Cinemakers My approach to movement in performance and in film comes from dance, we used to spend a lot of time dancing and improvising in nature. Nature is the greatest teacher. The landscape frames the body and one softens to its environment, pores open and sense the currents of the air, the perfume leads the space. My friend Marianela Leon Ruiz used to say, Butoh is when a dance moves space. I love this image. Improvisation and spontaneity are very important to my practice, this is how I usually start approaching a subject. Once I have collected enough material through improvisation, I structure it and from this I am able to improvise again, this is how I build a piece. The pleated paper moves between sculpture and prop, at times dictating the movements and at others being silently led, this combined with the possibility for movement inherent in the sculptural form and costume, creates a performance exploring archetypes and emotions. Within this set language we improvised again. The pool scene might remain my favourite, it was very spontaneous and so much fun! One might not pick up immediately on the edit, but three of us bounced on the diving board before one dives into the water â&#x20AC;Ś

A still from

Women Cinemakers Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": as a multidisciplinary artist deeply involved in dance, how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the concepts you explore in your artistic research and the physical aspect of your practice? I know the subject, I am the subject. To be fundamentally one with the subject, transcending an idea through the physical body, done in a certain way, it can turn into a ritual, act as a catalyst. I believe one understands better by translating through the physical. It is simple, take the example of drinking tea. One will only really understand what it means to drink tea, once one has gone through the act of drinking tea. We have appreciated the originality of your approach and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion

Women Cinemakers to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? Women have been censored, repressed, discouraged, and silenced, with their profound intuition and knowledge of life and nature being close to wiped out - a war line for men for centuries. Thankfully, we are finally witnessing a shift, the veil over women is slowly being lifted. My generation has already very much benefitted from the earlier fights of feminist movement and inasmuch, I can say, I have never consciously felt any restrictions or questioned my acts in relation to my gender. I have always worked regardless. I am reverent of our human oneness, but do not negate gender. I revere and recognise our differences. My work embraces sensuality and the mysteries of womanhood but I also need to explore other subject which might transcends my gender. We have to find the strength that will guide us back to our primordial intelligence,

Women Cinemakers not buckling under the influence or pressure of others, but trusting our intuition. Our innerknowledge is a genderless matter and the way to a harmonious society. We can witness change at the moment. Take Tate Britain for example. They have recently announced a rehang its permanent collection from nearly all male artist to only female artist, I am looking forward to see it! Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Mildred. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you, I really enjoyed answering your questions. Well, I am definitely fantasising about directing an aquatic ballet. For my 30’s, I built a beautiful rope bridge – from my bedroom window to the tree at the end of my garden in London, and now that I am approaching my 40’s, I have to top that gift to myself, so maybe indeed an aquatic ballet! An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Jill Moshman Lives and works in Central Coast, California

Jill Moshman is a choreographer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. Her work is primarily grounded in movement, while seeking to explore the intersections between dance, film, text, and visual media, and the ways in which movement can be captured for an audience. She is particularly interested in the influence of memory and physical landscapes on identity. Jill is a co-creator and co-director of JKL Collective, a multidisciplinary arts group based in processdriven creation that curates artistic exchanges worldwid

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Suspiration: A long, deep sigh is a captivating experimental dance short film by American choreographer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist Jill Moshman: exploring the interaction

between dancer and landscape, her work address the viewers to such heightened and multilayered experience. Featuring brilliant approach to choreography and unconventional cinematography, Suspiration: A long, deep sigh is a successful attempt to create a captivating allegory of human condition: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to

Moshman's multifaceted and stimulating artistic production. Hello Jill and welcome to : we would like to invite our readers to visit in order to get a wider idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training: you hold a BA from Middlebury College in Vermont, USA and you are currently pursuing an MA at Bath Spa University in Bath, UK. How did these experiences influenced your artistic trajectory? Moreover would you tell us what does aspect that address you to the marks out your artistic research? I come from a liberal arts education background, where there was an emphasis on encouraging an interplay between dance and other academic interests. This began my work in approaching movement from not just a dance perspective, but other influences as well. As I returned to a university setting to pursue a Masters degree after many years working professionally, I furthered my focus of exploring multiple art forms by creating work that often integrates film, text, and visual arts into live and recorded performance.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting dance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into is the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with such refined aesthetic, inviting the viewers to such a experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? I was interested in exploring the influence of landscape on movement, drawing from the idea of an introduced element that was foreign to the landscape- in this case the chair, and the body. Bath, where this film was created, has beautiful land surrounding it, and I wanted to make use of this, particularly the hills and the muted, winter landscape. We filmed in December just after sunrise, and the pale colors contrasting with the motion of the body were especially interesting to me. We have appreciated the way your approach to dance conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to

: how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your performative gestures and ? How much importance does play in your process? My works often begins from an improvisational place, especially as a way of exploring site. For this work, the dancer, Erica, had not been to the site where we shot prior to our filming day, and we had

several constraints as we were shooting in a public area on a cold winterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s day. I provided Erica with aesthetic movement instruction, such as yielding to gravity and weight, but did not have set choreographic material. I instead scheduled the shots that I knew I wanted, particularly the balance between close up and wide shots, and directed certain moments, such as rolling down the hill, but left a fair amount of time to play. I essentially planned to over-shoot a lot of material where both

the dancing and the camera movement was improvised, and make decisions later when editing.

you consider the role of sound within your practice and how do you see ?

Sound plays a crucial in your practice and we have appreciated the way features a combination between natural and added sound, providing the footage with a captivating mix between surreal ambience and reminders to reality: how would

I often have difficultly working with imposed sound; I tend toward the natural. I decided to layer both for to fill out the ambience more entirely. Because of the time of day and year that we were shooting, the ground was frosted and the sound of the footsteps and body on the grass was

a very satisfying crunch that I felt really conveyed a sense of place that was focal to the expression of the film. Austrian-British historian E. Gombrich, writing in , talked about the importance of providing a space for the viewer to project onto, so that they can participate in the illusion: how much important is for you the viewer's perceptual parameters in order to address them to elaborate ? I think the movement of the camera really helps to convey that sense of motion for the viewer, and that gives them an association when watching. Using the continual motion of the viewfinder directs the audience to experience the film more viscerally, to create an of falling and yielding to gravity rather than just an illustration of it. You are particularly interested in exploring in the influence of memory and physical landscapes on identity. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that " ": how

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers do you consider the relation between of the ideas you aim to communicate and of creating your artworks? It is important to me to create work that communicates a feeling to the audience, rather than one specific idea. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe that an audience needs to experience art in the same way as the person next to them, nor in the same way that I do, but by having some emotional response to my work, they are gaining something from it. So while Suspiration is based in abstract ideas, as long as the audience has a reaction to the physicality of the product, the abstractness of those ideas still manages to come through. It's important to remark that you are a co-creator and co-director of ,a multidisciplinary arts group based in processdriven creation that curates artistic exchanges worldwide. It's no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established with Samuel Boujnah are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about

this proficient ? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between artists from different backgrounds? I find that working with artists across disciplines effectively opens up ways to expand my process and pushes me to create work via different nodes than I might otherwise. For example, in working with a writer, ways in which they transcribe ideas and go through the editing process are drastically different than how I might, but by using those techniques I am able to create work that breaks new personal boundaries. By cross-creating work across all stages of the artistic process, I believe the results to be unconfined by just one category of art. We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something ' ', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers what's your view on the future of women in this field? I have been fortunate to have been part of forwardthinking institutions and communities that encourage the individual experiences of women to be promoted. I think with the mindset this allows is incredibly important going forward. Working in a multidisciplinary way breaks the traditional roles of artists that in the past women have had to fit in to, and by being able to create our own roles can only further this conversation. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Jill. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I am currently working on a live performance piece that includes film. I am hoping to find the balance between creating performance and film that work together for a product but can also stand separately as individual pieces as needed. I hope to continue evolving as an artist working in different media and grow my own process a a result of this. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Mathilde Neau Jim is a man of great stature, imposing, muscular, wild. His presence fills the room. The sound of his body, his breath, the space. We feel his anxiety and discomfort. A challenge to confront. His weakness is going to be revealed, and the pressure that surrounds him. He feels vulnerable. His blindness is an obstacle. He struggles with his goal and his self assurance. Through a fantasy, a memory, or the present.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant

how does your cultural substratum due to your work on french film/TV Series industry direct the trajectory of your artistic research?

womencinemaker@berlin.com Hello Mathilde and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you graduated as First Assistant Director from the ESEC, Ecole Superieure d'Etudes Cinematographiques, and you later nurtured your education joining Part 2 Diploma at Sydney Film School, in Australia: how did these experience influence your evolution as a filmmaker? Moreover,

I will always be thankful for discovering two ways of apprehending the film industry. I began with the french cinema which was confortable to me, following my culture i was digging in the possibilities of expressing a voice through art. Intellectually rich, i could sharp my eye and discover a wide world. Crossing another path in Australia tinged all of it for the best, to step back from my learning. I catched there a larger spectrum, discovering a constant energy to build things and making them grow, a real laboratory. It gave me a

hybrid approach and i believe it is necessary for anyone to take this step back from their initial education ; first to watch with delight all the benefits you are fed with, but also to shade your learnings. From there i faced the wild life of networking a career ; i choose to work for and with a group dynamic, bringing all the energies together to one direction, with this sense of accompaniment, i started following some directors and teams on all sort of shoots, from short films to tv series, commercials, music videos and progressively features. Assisting the mise en scene for a project and for a team feels right in any format. It means you are facing the human interaction, right in the heart of the relationship. A life mater. My creations includes this thinking, questionning the relation of people, the social report, the contact between individuals, the links constantly generated by our conditionned society. For my artistic research, i was mainly interested by exchanging with another language than words and all about the senses and the large spectrum of communication. I started real small lenght films, observing the bodies, following movement of any sort (HANDS EXERCICE ). I founded my first answer there, the intensity of the body language, the tacit report of expressing ourselves with movement. I directed three narrative shorts bringing some experimental piece in it, to test the audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s senses and reaction. But i discovered the narrative format was to linear for me, it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t using my understanding of expression, it was following too many normative rules. I felt in a good position to understand it and support someone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essence of it but another format felt better for my thoughts. With my thesis film, UNBIND, directed during Sydney Film School, i wanted to follow the hybrid perspective, starting cautiously, melting contemporary dance to film. Melting arts to get to this new level of transmission felt the right discovery.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers What i am aiming for is a real area of exchange, leaving the right space for every collaborator to evolve. For this special edition of we have selected , a captivating experimental film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/201701912. What has at once captured our attention of your insightful exploration of the themes of anxiety and discomfort is the way your unconventional and powerful narrative provides the viewers with such an intense visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of , could you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? From this point of crossing disciplines of dance and film, my objective was to find the right way to express senses. Through the body, the movement, the vision, the tactile, the sound, the visual and the edit ; all these posibilities to catch the closer to us. I was curious to stir what we are feeling. Where does it start ? From the view ? From the touch ? Our first education comes from observation, by looking at others. What if you can’t see ? How rich would the sound environnement be? What would be the relation to space ? Your goals ? There, the development on the visual experience started. I was about to tell with images, my rejection of the omnipresence of visuals, of our look in our generation. I put myself in the blind character who was going to build the film, a blind dancer. Diderot and his « Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient » - letter on the blind for the use of those who see ; followed this hypothesis experience. The film is a sequence moment of a life time. The character evolve in a room plunged into the dark, with no limit. The audience is

immersed in the depth of the unknown. As every starting point, we need to comprehend our surroundings. Hilton Denis - Jim - gropes the door, the wall, he is apprehending the place. He gets some answers of it with the touch, we get to see some of these elements. We appropriate the environment. Hilton is a professional dancer, his subtle use of his body

helped him to projected in the body of a visually impaired man. We never tried to catch the essence of what could a blind person feel or go throught, but to question the view as a benchmark. Jim stands. Starts the development of his battle, with discomfort. Anxiety emerges from the necessity to

confront this personnal issue. We translated with the visual and the sound elements what the character was facing through his exploration. As the tactile is not directly felt during a screening, we experimented another way to introduce it. With no dialogue, using movement of the bodies, the camera, the lights and the

sound, as several layers to get to it. The visual experience is an interpretation of the senses. Featuring essential and elegant cinematography, UNBIND is brilliantly composed and we have particularly appreciated the way your sapient use of close ups allows you to capture emotionally

Women Cinemakers charged moments: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens and how was the filming experience? The shoot was a living art. In immersion for a day in this absorbing dark stage, the actors, the crew and I went through this quiet and strong experience. The large set up began it – Andreas Torstensson with Rasmus Callmer and the help of the crew permitted a lighting that would not involve changing it during the whole shoot, to permit the continuity of the research. Immersed, Jim’s contemporary ballet began. Two cameras on set with a precise shot list permitted a steady advancement. The first and main camera, had a fix and structured setting, to get the closest elements ; his position would priorize the frame and the second camera. It allowed our presence and the audience’s view to be part of the environment. The other camera was more flexible adjusting to the circumstances, it was bringing fluidity and surprise to explore the distances that could enter between us and the character. Well surrounded at a point, improvisation could lead the set and we were there in action to react to it. It is a meeting. We discover Jim as he discovers the space, by fragments, close ups, to begin with the same material. We can’t have the whole painting at first. Progressively with the movement of the camera, the restricted space indices and the light structuring reminding a painting, transposes us in a static-attentive area. Jim leads the dynamic, bringing us in the spiral of his movement. We distinguish his feelings and emotions through his

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choreography which was elaborated upstream on crucial points only. We had to be close to him, to respect the distance to his wonder but close enough to watch the thin details of his expressions and gesture, to know him better. We were meeting, observing to get to understand. The choice for medium lens, 35 and 55mm mainly -as the view- permitted this human interaction. But he could push us back and the wide shots showed it. A technical element was contradicted this feeling, the ratio format, confining us with him and his struggles. From light to dark, the body moves scuplturing his state. The bodies dance the silence of his interior, leading the combat. The only presence of Jim and his partner, Natalie Debono, reinforce their materiality and symbolizing what can occurs. A body can tell more that we usually focus on, it only needs our attention.

where he evolves and the limited area that the frame and the edit gives him. His obstacles comes from the materiality of its condition. Those flux in the space of the room and of the medium of film itself interacts constantly. He is fighting against all of it. We wanted to give this power to the picture. As the sociologist Georges Balandier says ÂŤ the image is double, it is confinement and evasion Âť. A willing of a spatiotemporel journey, exploring the imaginary in a real or a fictional place. In our modern times, we face speed, less time, less space. He tries to deal with the environment and his personal issues. It needed to show the saving form of the other when we have to confront our selfconfidence, exploring it with a talkative body.

Using a refined editing and well orchestrated camera work, you have created such insightful resonance between the body and its surroundings: how do you consider the relationship between the body and the space?

We have appreciated the way your video conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to the grammar of body language: how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your film and the need of spontaneity? How importance does improvisation play in your process?

This relationship between the depth unknown darkness and the energic moving body generates a battle to confront. Resonance is a good way to describe the course of the body evolving in this tangible or imaginative area. It is a ballet of flux, showing the curves of the emotional state generated by Jim and the prensence of the camera eye. The conversation between movement of the physical and of the edit grows. The character is confined by this too large or to small space

The film was thought, we were talking a lot around the leading ideas. We were buildings the steps keeping a margin of freedom, improvisation was crucial to give space to spontaneity and incarnation. If you evolve in a well structured area, creativity can grow and built by itself strong foundations. It creates a confurtable place where to be free and embrace impulse. Everyone feels safe ; i had a very strict plan which made me reassured on the structure needed for the film, and when i felt i

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had all the material needed and achieved, unpredictable things would lead the set ; that way you feel anchored to react to them. When you are expressing about the body, the gesture and the imagination, you need to consider discovering new areas, unsual maneers of expression and of responding to it. You also need space, in time and in the area. Hilton incarnates Jim, i could trust him and direct him smoothly. Again, it seals in the exchange. We were inhabitating the area we were realistically standing in and the potential ones. Our commitment was total. Sound plays a crucial role in your film and the sound of Jim's body during his interaction with the space around him, provides your video with a multilayered experience. How do you consider the role of sound playing within your film and within your work as a director, in general? The role of sound is as powerful as image. I was considering it since the premices of the project, as a complete layer of expression of the senses that would be brought to the film the complementary approach of the visuals. As this black background, the sound has this deep silence, to feel this round feeling of emptiness, this disconfort. It can be also felt through music. I was closely working with Indira Elias, the music composer of UNBIND , she has an experimental approach of music bringing subtlety. She understands the sounds and makes them alive in a smooth mixed. She was there during the hole main shooting day. It had to express as close as possible the environment,

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Women Cinemakers this huge empty and suffocating filled place. If there where no image, if the film was completely in the dark, those feelings could exist and express the same steps we went through. It had to be a reciprocal langage and even interchangeable. Johan Freden, the sound recordist managed to catch this presence on stage. The collaboration between them two was crucial to the sound elaboration. For every project i need to surround myself with a precious translator to catch the right discussion. I currently work with Valentine Gelin, an interpreter of the sound ; a needed duo making us stronger. Through the whole process of the film, from preparation to the mix, this dialogue is primary, it has to follow the same path and continuity. We have been highly fascinated with the way you combine deep realism with captivating surreal atmosphere: in this sense, we daresay that UNBIND responds to German photographer Andreas Gursky when he stated that Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind: in particular, you seem to urge your spectatorship to challenge their perceptual categories to create personal narratives: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' perceptual categories in order to address them to elaborate personal associations? And what do you hope UNBIND will trigger in the spectatorship? What is behind reality has million forms, for this reason, it would be reductible to choose only one. It exists as much as we need it to; and i am desirous about all of them. I would

Women Cinemakers like multiple ones to get along together and new possible ones to happen. What an experimental form can bring is to transgress the norms established, to derogate from the expected precepts, making fall the enclosing narrative structure that it can bring. I want my viewers to be active, to feel triggered in their mecanism of reflexion. If I manage to challenge their perceptual categories, bringing their personal associations and their narratives, for them to be involved and to interact, I would acheive what I was searching for. Being open always get us further, because there is no right answer. Film exists to exchange, it is a dialogue and what a mervellous way to do it, with time, freedom and creativity. Video and film are for me a area of expression, as much as for the performers, the crew and the audience. The best outcome is to make it happen for everyonen to make them think about it, including it in their every days life. UNBIND had in perspective to bring the audience to the palpable environnement, to give them the attention of the senses, of this fullfilling other way of expression ; it also interrogate the space, where is this happening, and in time. It asks the audience to participate elucidate the mysterious points and the matters; it asks to share the experience, to remind to share. I had to follow a narrative progression for the character, it was my constraint, it permitted me to play with the limits of it and also to find my way for my latest projects. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body in their

Women Cinemakers creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract nature of the concepts that you explore in your artistic research and the physical aspect of your artistic research? My research is double, i find openings in theorical readings -sociological researches- and in materials -visuals, auditive discoveries, paintings, colors, moving images and bodies- a result of being attentive and an observer. Each of us can reach it to make it grow inside. I found the answer in practicing. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what i do with dance and encountering this expression. It gives me a way to connect to this body memory and to the concrete reality of exchange and expression. When you find an element, a feeling, it is right to respect the apprehension of this notion, to live if, to take time to digest it. It can also be complementary to add the questioning, to abstract it and not being affraid to bring others answers to it, which can remind us and reconnect us with our proper condition. The human being is complex, we can consider to play with all these approachs. I think it is necessary to keep a margin of freedom, to keep at each step all the values and the morality we carry, always following what we feel are the right moves. It is important to frame the project, to understand the environnement we are evolving in; from there we can grow and progress spontaneously. Our perception leads the conclusion, and for it we are several. David Le Breton says in La Sociologie du Corps - Sociology of the body â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that the other contributes to draw the outline of our universe and to give to our body the social relief he

Women Cinemakers needs ; the link to UNBIND is clear. To shape most of what we have, we can be interested in what and who surrounds us and what they have to bring to us. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing: what's your view on the future of women in cinema? Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be able to determine anything. What I know is that women are now involved in the mecanism, it has no doubt we are present. We are probably more considered than before and many of us are taking this opportunity to keep it grow as much as possible and not letting it go. It will be a matter of perseverance. It might be harder to green lit projects, to be recognized, valued for the same reasons than men but we have to remain strong, to follow what is meanful for us. We have the chance to be preceded by monuments like Maya Deren, who managed to express herself so strongly, this could only give us the example to follow. It is a fact, we have this gender, but it shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make any difference; so we will act as there is no difference. Just keep some strenght to face the

Women Cinemakers obstacles, as we always did. Affirm and assume our rights and try to surround yourself with people who value your skills. I feel the covenants always make the force. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Mathilde. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you for this exchange and for giving the voice to us, young artists. I am following my path in connecting and fusionning with other creatives minds, always developping projects as assistant director, first on short films, second on commercials and third on features. I am also currently working on the post-production of one of my projects named CORP US , a mosaic of portraits of dancers; since july 2017, nine of them gave us their physicallity, their texture following a red thread I was bringing them to. The process of it follows a development of a half-way between the dancer and the camera (+three members of our crew). Here a trio exists between the body in movement, the camera and the videographer. These facilities are central in my thinking for the right environment of expression. Another project in on track , with the use of the video and a sociological method, I am developping an immersion into dance and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transmission ; and it might take place overseas. My purpose is to continually gravitate around the human being, his movement and his interactions, and the benefit from it ! I wish you all of it.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Young Joo Lee Lives and works in Cambridge, USA

A daughter with blue eyes is born to an Asian woman. Her family neglects the newborn for having the blue eyes. The woman, in desperation jumps into the sea with the baby, which shifts the perspective of the narrative from the woman to the baby. The story depicts the journey of a heroine who is "the other" in a conforming society. She becomes part of the majority by hiding her otherness only to realize in the end, her inner "blueness" won't die, but it will only be born again in another form, in another generation. The soundtrack of the video was created entirely by the artist, mostly using voices and sounds made by her body. The idea of the inner journey came from the ancient Asian scroll landscape paintings. The landscape and architecture in this work are psychological spaces rather than representations of existing locations.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier

a BFA in Painting from Hongik Arts University,

and Dora S. Tennant

Korea, you nurtured your education with a

womencinemaker@berlin.com

Meisterschuelerin in Film from StĂ¤delschule, Frankfurt and with an MFA in Sculpture, that you

Hello Young and welcome to : we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned

later received from Yale University: how did these experiences influence your current practice? Moreover, how does the relationship between your cultural substratum due to your South Korean

roots and your current life in the United States direct the trajectory of your artistic research? I gained a broad palette of skills and perspectives on contemporary art, as I studied in the three art schools in three different continents. Because I got to try almost all “traditional” mediums such as oil painting, charcoal, printmaking, sculpture and mold-making, I can freely use them when I need them and also to think with my hands. For me, this is very important part of my artistic practice and research, even when I work a lot more on computers nowadays. I still cannot start something from scratch on a computer. Drawing is a way to process information and my emotions, and it feels like the bones in my works. I like it when I can still see human hand and gesture in the digital world. I am also interested in the shift between 2-D, 3-D and 4-D spaces, and the realm in between reality and fantasy. Animation gives an endless possibility to mix all these, and I guess that’s why it became one of the major formats I use in the recent years. Living abroad gave me the opportunity to study more about Korean history and culture, because once you are outside of your country, you become the representative of it. I think it deepened my interest in how history, politics and culture shape an individual’s identity. Living in the U.S. now is mentally challenging, because of all the political disputes that are going on ever since I arrived here in 2015. As a South Korean, U.S. used to be (and maybe it still is) the number one destination for higher education and there’s still the U.S. army base in South Korea that exists ever since the Japanese surrendered. The complex relationship between South Korea and the

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers U.S. sometimes works in favor for me to stay here as a foreigner, and other times it is challenging to think about what is my role as an artist living in this country. Naturally many of the works I made in the U.S. deal with my own identity as a South Korean woman and a foreigner. You are an eclectic artist and your versatile practice embraces animations & video, performance, sculpture and drawing to pursue multilayered visual results: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit https://youngjoolee.net in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select an artistic discipline in order to explore a particular aspect of your artistic inquiry? I have a different starting point for every work. Meaning, each work comes to my mind in the format it wants to be unleashed. I would see a still image of a scene or an impression of a moment which usually ends up as a drawing, while there are sequential impressions or narratives that become video, performance and animation works. These impulses are related to something I read or experienced before. There are always some things that become my obsession or bother me for a while, which kind of take over my whole thinking stream. I usually write them down or make drawings, to better see them before my eyes. From there, I do more research, or make more drawings or go straight into making a performance or a video work. Sometimes the research becomes an independent work. In the journey to collect materials for the animation work, Paradise Limited, I drew what I saw along the South Korean border of the Demilitarized Zone on a 25-meter long scroll paper. This became a scroll ink painting that became a separate work from the animation. This journey changed and

concretized what I had to say about the psychological war between the two opposing sides of the border in Korea. A new story was written from this experience, and the result is the animation installation work, Paradise Limited. For this special edition of we have selected Disgraceful Blu, an interesting video installation that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/156251716/864b6ce5ec and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once

captured our attention of the compelling narrative drive of the combination between images and sound is the way it provides the viewers with such a multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? Disgraceful Blue was inspired by a vivid dream I had a few years ago. I always have been an active dreamer and I practiced lucid dreaming for a while. I am interested in

dreams because they are similar to films, only that they are screened privately in the darkness of our own heads. I think dreams also inform a lot about our psychological status, wishes, anxiety and fear. Coming back to the dream that inspired Disgraceful Blue, I gave birth to a girl that had blue eyes and black hair. I showed her to my parents, but she was not approved by them because of her blue eyes. Blue eyes are never the physical feature of Korean babies, thus it implied that the father was not a Korean. Inter-racial marriage is not rare

anymore in Korea, but it still on some level is a taboo. My father in the dream asked me to choose between him or the baby. I chose to jump into the ocean with the baby, but when I hit the water, I suddenly became the baby, looking for myself. As I was ruminating over the dream, I realized that it is ultimately about my own fear and anxiety of being different, and being seen as somebody foreign in its native surrounding. This includes being a woman and being an artist. The father, mother and sister were not

my real family, but they were rather symbolically representing a society where I should be belonging. This is why I used my own body and face as masks to portray all the characters in the dream, because all the characters were reflections of my emotions. In terms of its structure, Disgraceful Blue is the first animation installation that I made using a long scroll drawing as a background. Initially, I was trying to draw a scene in the dream on a piece of paper. However, soon I had to add more because I started to remember the following scenes in the dream. In the end, the glued sheets of paper became a scroll, like a Korean traditional landscape painting. The purpose of such landscape painting is to provide an imaginary trip in an idealized nature. Disgraceful Blue is an imaginary journey following a womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience as an outcast from her own culture and identity. The omnipresence of a heroic figure in Asian and European religious paintings inspired the multiple appearances of the same character in one scene in the animation. We have been highly fascinated with the way you combine realism that comes from outdoor location and dreamlike atmosphere that pervades your artwork. In this sense, we responds to German daresay that photographer Andreas Gursky when he stated that Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind: in particular, you seem to urge your spectatorship to challenge their perceptual categories to create personal narratives: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' perceptual categories in order to address them to elaborate personal associations? And what do you hope Disgraceful Blu will trigger in the spectatorship?

interview

Women Cinemakers

interview

Women Cinemakers

The bodies and the faces of all the characters in Disgraceful Blue are from the same person, and just by their scale, clothing and hairstyle, they act different roles in the animation. The familiarity of all the characters are related to how I think of dreams as the mirror of our consciousness/unconsciousness. The blurred boundary between the interior and exterior space in likewise depicts the psychological space and time in dreams. The places are familiar locations to many people, like the ocean, cliff, beach, hospital and etc. These were not conscious choices, but I think they symbolize something to many people. I hoped that by mixing the locations that are familiar and unfamiliar to the viewers, they can enter into my world easier and get caught up in it for a while. I wish for the viewers to sympathize with the daughter with the blue eyes, and to recognize their own â&#x20AC;&#x153;bluenessâ&#x20AC;? or of the others around them, and to embrace it. is centered on the journey of a daughter with blue eyes born to an Asian woman, who is "the other" in a conforming society. As one the pioneers of feminist art, Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, the heroine of Disgraceful Blu not fall prey to the emotional prettification and in this sense seems to be a tribute to the issue of identity in our globalized still conformist societies. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artists' role differs depending on which sociopolitical system they are living in.' Not to remark that almost everything, could be considered political, do you think could be considered political, in a certain that sense? Since I lived abroad from a young age, defining my identity was an unavoidable task. Also, being a South-Korean, I get reminded often about the different value and social system people in North Korea are living in. In 2011, I worked on an animation introducing a

controversial book called Escape from Camp 14 for a German TV station. The story, regardless of how exact all

perception of who we are, and what we believe in. Thus, I am interested in what constitutes our way of thinking

the accounts were of the manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience in the labor camp in North Korea, I was deeply challenged to think about how much the system we are born in can alter the

and perception of reality. By telling a story that deals with my most intimate fears and experiences, I am

revealing the system that creates such fears and experiences. So, yes. It can be read as political. Sound plays an important role in your video and we have appreciated the way the sounds of the ambience and spoken words provide the footage of

Disgraceful Blu with such an ethereal and a bit enigmatic atmosphere: how do you see the relationship between sound and moving images? The sound and moving images have synergistic relationship in my work, because together, they enhance

the intensity and complexity of the narrative space. Sound occupies space beyond the screen. It creates atmosphere that immerses the audience immediately. It is physical/bodily, because literally it is vibration. Sound operates on the level of memory, of unconsciousness. Thus, it is a very powerful medium to set the mood of the work. In Disgraceful Blue, I created all the sounds using human body, most of them from my own. This was because I tried to create a visual/auditory space that is internal, intimate and psychological, which is what a dream space is to me. The theme of landscape is recurrent in your artistic production and we have particularly appreciated the way reflects the tension between the body and its surroundings. When introducing our readers to this stimulating work, that can be viewed at https://youngjoolee.net/paradiselimited, would you tell us how important is for you to create a work of art with allegorical features? All of my works are to some extent, allegorical. I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just how I understand and navigate through this world. Allegory is also a way to talk about complicated political, social issues and personal experiences. I often use autobiographical stories and mix them together with certain aspects of current issues and things I read about as I live day to day. As I try to make a sense of what everything means, I guess allegory comes in place for me to make connections between different ideas. I think our minds like to make associations but not be given the direct answers- and I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why we watch a work of art, for that aesthetical, intellectual challenge and associations that we are invited to interpret. For example, one of the stories that I remember well from my childhood is the story of Buddha and a pigeon. When Buddha was traveling around the country, he encountered a killing of a pigeon.

interview

Women Cinemakers

interview

Women Cinemakers He offered his own flesh to save the pigeon. Buddha put a piece of his thigh on a scale to match the weight of the pigeon. However, the pigeon was heavier than his piece of thigh. He put more of his flesh on the scale until his whole body was on the scale. Finally, the weight matched that of the pigeon. This quite moral and allegorical tale about the equality of man and animal was told in such an effective way to a six-year old child. I cannot erase that quite gruesome picture of the human flesh on the scale, and the little pigeon on the other side of the scale from my head. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes, as you did in the interesting , a captivating performance that can be viewed at https://youngjoolee.net/hair-tsunami. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": as a multidisciplinary artist deeply involved in performance, how do you consider the relation between the abstract nature of the concepts that you explore in your artistic research and the physical aspect of your practice? Every artistic practice involves abstract thinking and physical exploration of ideas. The medium can change, and performance is one of the medium that I use. I think using oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own body as an artist is a natural approach, because in order to explore an idea, I need to physically experience to realize what works and what doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. Sometimes this physicalizing of a concept can be much more challenging, because one has to deal with the space, gravity, technical problems, time and funding limitations. However, it can also be the most fun moment, because I get to see the ideas forming before my eyes, experience it, change it and share it with

someone. It becomes externalized. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like giving a birth in a way. The physical aspect can become a part of the artistic research, because I always learn something new from it. You are an established artist and over the years you have held solo and group exhibitions, including your upcoming shows at Alternative Space Loop, in Seoul, and Ochi Projects, in Los Angeles. Women are finding their voices in art: it has been a long process and it will be a long process but we have already seen lots of original awareness among women artists. Before leaving this conversation, we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century, women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in in this interdisciplinary field? I always wondered why there are more female students than male students in art schools, while there are more male artists in museums and galleries. It means that the situation changes for the female students when they graduate from art schools. It could be because of the family, getting a fulltime job or not getting enough attention and support from institutions that pushes them to choose a different path. I think it has changed a lot and it is still changing. There are many great women artists to be seen nowadays, at least in the big cities. The retrospectives of the women artists can greatly affect young women and future artists to believe in

interview

Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers what they do and to be able to project their career as artists in the future. I can’t name all of them, but artists like Laurie Anderson and Janet Cardiff inspire me, because of their works are sensual, intellectual, poetic and humane. There’s a notion of positivity which I seldom feel in most male artists’ works. So, it’s not only the number of women artists is increasing, but also there are different kinds of sensitivity being shown in the interdisciplinary art field that feels more inclusive and inviting. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Young. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Currently I am a College Fellow in Media Practice at Harvard University, teaching Immersive Storytelling using Mixed Media. I am researching on dream narratives and virtual reality that will evolve into a new body of work- it’s still in its infancy, but hopefully something will grow in the next few months. In the beginning of next year, I am going to travel along the border of US and Mexico to research on the human infrastructure and nature on both sides of the border. This is will be documented with drawings, writings and audio recordings. In addition, there are two sci-fi short film projects that have been in my head for a while now- let’s see how I can bring them out into this world. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Fanny Jemmely The versatile artistic research pursued since a decade engenders a variety of propositions such as moving and still images, three-dimensional objects and performative pieces including textual or musical aspects. It cherishes an holistic view of the human being as a starting point and inquires into the common core of our subjective experiences. The person is seen as entangled in multiple processes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; passing through many modes of being, being crossed by inner and outer forces modeling her, unceasingly shaping the relationships to herself, the others and the surroundings, taken into personal and collective becomings. The desire hidden into this practice is to light up fundamental components of those processes, whether parts of any existence or inherent to the artistic activity. Spreading as symbolic or abstract visuals, multimedia installations, rituals or participative dispositives, my works aim to reveal the human being as a subject in constant mutation as well as an initiator of changes. Thus, in various ways, many proposals out of my corpus sollicit the viewers to leave the supremacy of the gaze to deploy their own potentials of invention. An interview by Francis L. Quettier

solid formal training and after having earned your

and Dora S. Tennant

Bachelor in Fine Arts at the ECAV (Ă&#x2030;cole cantonale

womencinemaker@berlin.com

dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Arts visuels du Valais), you nurtured your education with a Master in Fine Arts, that your received from the

Hello Fanny and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.fannyjemmely.com in order to get a wider idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a

Institut Kunst, in Basel: how do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, does your cultural background direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Hi! Thanks for the invitation to participate to this edition

and to offer me the possibility of an interview. That is a first time! The cursus I followed in Fine Arts, first of all, gave me a lot of time to fully focus on the artistic research. So doing, the main themes still inhabiting my work today progressively became conscious as well as the reasons to dedicate myself to art, so to say. It is during those years that my artistic project found the particularities of its forms; I am yet referring to a “style” and to new medias like the videographic or the performative one. Now, about the cultural background… Despite the fact that I don’t feel particularly attuned with the western context it was given me to grow in and as my studies lasted quite a part of my life and as I ever been quite found of reading, that cultural background does probably play a tiny role (to quote one, amongst other influences, some authors of the French theory have been a source of inspiration!). After all, the notion of “cultural background” might be, in my eyes, more of an exploration’s process led by the successive directions taken by a personal curiosity unceasingly opening new horizons of toughts, perceptions, feelings and shapes. This individual research corroborates the more direct influences coming from the life’s experiences. - For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Thanaterros, an extremely interesting experimental short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://youtu.be/GtmLYhMd8Vc. We have particularly appreciated the way you explore the expressive qualities of the body, to walk the viewers to the interstitial point between the ordinary and the surreal: when walking our readers through the genesis of Thanaterros, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea?

interview

Women Cinemakers

interview

Women Cinemakers

Ahah!... There are reasons to be a little anxious in front of that inevitable question! However, as I definitely stand for outspokenness, I will unveil my truth for you. So, usually, the artistic propositions of my corpus are the fruits of reflexion (or a sudden idea popping up!); in any of those cases, they often begin with an initial “conceptual” phase of research on paper. “Thanaterros” is an isolated case. While its process of realization still contains mysterious zones to me, at least, I remember the striking conditions of its emergence. Years ago, sitting at my desk, on one evening, the phone rang and abruptly warned me of a tragedy, the suicide of a close friend. As I remembered having left his last message without an answer, I stood there even more horrified, with a weird guilt. Some minutes later, I found myself spontaneously engaged into a performance involving that red lipstick lying around… The aim of that improvised ritual was to plunge into those foul-smelling feelings and get rid of obstructive components. This series of actions occured without a break while it was being captured by my computer’s camera. In a second time, it was edited without interrupting or cutting the initial sequence. A fantasy whispered me later that my friend might have inspired this, that he probably has been taking great delight in having taught me something I ignored, a non-conceptual manner to realize an artwork! It still is a surprise to me how such an intimate operation, made out of an emergency and towards a real purpose, turns into a work whose significance oozes beyond the initial situation. Thanaterros mixes realism with fast moments of surrealism, where initial charming moments are suddenly turned to tragic vision, to stimulate the viewers' perceptual parameters and

allows an open reading and as you have remarked in the ending lines of your artist's statement, your work aims to sollicit the viewers to leave the supremacy of the gaze to deploy their own potentials of invention: how important is for you to trigger the spectatorship's imagination in order to elaborate personal meanings? What do you hope your spectatorship will take away from Thanaterros? Primarily, according to Umberto Eco and his essay about the “open artwork”, for an artistic proposition to be aesthetically relevant, it has to trigger into its spectators that personal

potential to attribute meanings. It then seems of a highest importance for a proposal to provoke this kind of reception, whether it would occure on a mental level or by solliciting concrete actions. In some cases, it can turn the spectator into a co-author as in a reflexive work done as a Master thesis in 2016. It took the shape of a participative performance called “Undefined I, undefined piece”. It presents a lone performer wearing an integral suit hiding any personal features and permitting the embodiment of a generic human. After a phase conceived as a “show”, the performance would reach a last moment

when the â&#x20AC;&#x153;undefined Iâ&#x20AC;? was expressing his intents to not let the running piece remain a spectacle. The audience was offered the opportunity to influence the acoustic piece, subject to unpredictable changes until its form and content. As the secret wish of the second skin was to be cut, the hidden desire of the undefined piece was to be defined by the outside. If no answer followed the call, the participation would have been, at least, evoked, lighting up a crucial choice! If, on the contrary, the performance triggered reactions, it acquired the potential to mutate each time of its occurences.

So, it would just not be satisfying if my artistic proposals would only be meant to be seen - as more or less glorious achievements. They find their purpose(s) while they awake further processes in the name of an emancipated, emancipating art. I wish the viewers - as any beings - to deploy their own creative potentials, as it is part of the roots of being well or, of a well-being. The relevance of this choice actually relates to serious political and spiritual concerns and engagements, the theoretical and practical necessities to reappropriate ourselves our agencies to influence the situations in which we are plunged, to act on the current states of the real.

In the time where “Thanaterros” was created, this secret mission of my work was not that conscious. However, directly revealing aspects of the creative process was already included in the artistic vision. Precisely, that one video points out the dialogic ambivalence and the proximity in between these impulses of life, of creation – recalling here seduction, breath, raw expression - and those other forces rather linked with terror and destruction. Sound plays an important role in Thanaterros and we have appreciated the way its soundtrack provides its footage with such a bit unsettling atmosphere: how did you create such captivating soundtrack? And how do you see the relationship between sound and movement? That sound simply is the random track running by chance on the computer during the spontaneous ritual. During the editing phase, the music was slightly modified by chosen digital effects. As previously said about the sequence of images, I decided to welcome the sudden spurt of the work as a whole and kept it intact as a faithful commemoration. In that case, due to the simultaneity of the sound and gestures, you could also consider this videographied performance a dance. In fact, this music probably influenced the entire action more than ever thought as it extraordinarily fits the situation, giving the proper atmosphere - solemnity and concentration - and the minimalist, enigmatic, porous space needed as a background.

interview

Women Cinemakers

interview

Women Cinemakers To emphasize the ubiquitous bond between everyday life's experience and creative process, British visual artist Chris Ofili once remarked that "creativity's to do with improvisation ? what's happening around you". How does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? With all that just has been told now regarding “Thanaterros”, you can easily make yourself an idea… Putting apart this particular case in which a piece of the everyday life (even tough, it is a very singular one!) is directly building an artistic proposition, the existence commonly occupies like a continuous parallel space, close, very close to the space of the artistic activity. Well… it is rather including it. Actually it seems like there is a dialogic relationship in between life’s experiences and creative processes, where elements circulate from one realm to the other and vice versa. Producing an artwork has then something from an encrypting action. So doing, some existential fragments get mentally, emotionnaly, spiritually processed, giving birth to reflexions, temporary knowledges; the ones considered relevant are likely to reappear into artistic realizations. Moreover, to build up on Chris Ofili’s statement on improvisation and the importance of “what happens”, I must add this… While “the existential fragment” is integrated, encoded into an object, some unexpected elements are going to interfere with the process, exactly like “what’s happening” by itself into the matter, accidents and stuffs… parts of the everyday life of objects and differenciated and/or combined materials. “Faking the move” is a good example of this. The diverse shapes taken by the organism in this stop motion quite

Women Cinemakers sculptured themselves. They often are more decisions of the rose paste itself than mine. An other evoking example can be found in the installation “Field of mutations” conceived for my Master degree in Fine Arts and exhibited at the Kunsthalle, Basel in “Every contact leaves a trace”, a group show curated by Chus Martinez. We find there a video showing the making of the red organic sculpture presented on a doric column. There, in an atmosphere of emergency, the sculpture is suddenly similar to a bleeding organism on a chirurgical table, putting up with the collapses of its own matter, changing, constantly having to adapt itself to new circumstances and crisis. Finally, even tough it is more a matter of therapy trough artistic means or “art brut” than of usual contemporary art, let’s not forget numerous cases where any life’s experiences are springing into artworks without being the artist’s conscious moves! Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes, as you did in the interesting Undefined I. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the ideas you aim to communicate and the physical act of creating your artworks? In the “Undefined I, undefined piece” in which I dwelled in the integral suit described before, the directness of physicality was used to show ideas in the most concrete way. The ideas of agency and becoming were presented in

A still from

Women Cinemakers action, trough the live raw music composed by the stepped rythms and the voice chanting a hammering theoretical poem. Auto-referential or “meta”, the lyrics were depicting the current running situation and referred to concepts which simultaneoulsy found there their concrete expressions, playing with saturation and redundancy. A similar and different play on representation’s mechanisms is again distinguishable in the “Field of Mutations”. This multimedia installation contains customized or original found objects, a cash machine roll of paper covered with fluxes, two sculptures out of clay and the video previously described, that one showing the making of the reddish organism. In this case, that “hyperimage” approaches the notion of representation by recalling us of its multidimensional aspect – an ever inherent difficulty or a sumptuousness - by simultaneously showing various elements as diverse formal definitions wanting to approach, to “glue” to a single blurry notion, the “becoming”. Tough, trough that variety of components, the “Field of Mutations” tries to avoid being a simple illustration of a concept or of an idea, perfectly aligned with it, as this would be taking the viewer as an empty vase ready to absorb a message. To take back this notion of “seeing” as an active part of the creation, let’s approach another kind of situation as it was given me to experience while I captured the images of “Fountain, in remembrance of B. Nauman”. Here, it is, at first, an aesthetic effect which found me into the real. Talking about a moment of contemplation as the origin of

a piece, the posture is different here; I am a spectator of my own aesthetic effect and the work is a capture of the situation provoking it, hoping that it can be unleashing feelings and/or reflexions in the mind of an other. If I dare to mention a drawing practice here, it is again a bit different if we consider the obsessive use of a pattern I like to call “fluxes”. Those fluid lines are often taking place for something invisible like thoughts, aspirations, affects, widely meant “economical”, libidinal impulses/exchanges, energies or melodies, etc. While tracing them, my mind is off and I draw without premeditations or expectations. This counts if I am not using the fluxes “performatively” to draw from a specific and almost incantative intent as in the “Magical interventions in the flowing”. In this last case, the realization itself is a ritual, like in “Thanaterros”. Following the impulses of the fingers, their intuitive moves, dynamic directions… using this pattern interests me a lot as it is able to shape different images into the spectator’s gaze, therefore putting him into a place or a state of activity. In front of this practice, as the author of it, I can be like a spectator myself, discovering the images after they have been drawn, seeing a face here, an entity there. We have appreciated the way your approach to performance art conveys sense of freedom and at the same time reflects rigorous approach to the grammar of body language: how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your performative gestures and the need of spontaneity? How importance does improvisation play in your process?

Women Cinemakers The performance “Undefined I, undefined piece” was supposed to be completely impovised as I have recently developped a passion for musical improvisation and mostly for the way that, in such exercises, the music is literally shaping itself trough time, from a wide spacy sauce to… something. I get even more enthousiastic when it is about dialoging, walking together towards that one sudden time of harmony or simply, that one sudden interesting combination. However, the stress linked to that first performing action ever - taunting me with a potential loss of any means engendered by this planned lack of system - pushed me to finally choreograph the feets. So, at one point, each tap dance rhythm had its particular passage to accompany while the intonation and the melody stayed free to spontaneous modulations. Of course, the end of the performance as the public was invited to take part was, as well, given to the realm of improvisation. The combination of some kind of a pre-set structure and improvisation surely presents, beyond contrasts, a challenging aspect. This specific mixture might just be at the image of life… Sometimes, you have a plan and then you actually have to improvise! There are some predetermined things and some others that you will have to see right at the time you will have to deal with them! Really, constraints can, in some cases, inspire something different, rise creative potentials more than steming them. We like the way your works provide the viewers with such an immersive visual experience, to subvert the

cliché techniques used within the cinema and developing the expressive potential of the images and the symbols that you included in your work: how much importance do play symbolically charged images in your work? Those symbollicaly charged images, to take back your words, play a considerable role throughout my artistic corpus. Independently of the chosen medium, there are reasons for which symbols often emerge. As some symbols with defined signification specifically refer to one’s particular cultural background, I would rather use that kind of symbols whose signification stays fluid and which, at the same time, are able to softly orientate the viewer’s interpretation. This mechanism could be described as an interaction with common

perceptions from an intuitive, collective unconscious mind while it provokes a variety of associations in one’s mind. It can almost be called a method. Even tough it stays fluid and sometimes even unconscious – it brings the viewers to weave their reflexions. Somehow it is also about producing metaphors recalling what we might existentially be sharing, reverberating some dilemmas or initiations that the daily life confront us with. The use of those symbols potentially understandable beyond the notion of culture is something fascinating to my eyes, a way to explore the human psyche as well as a mean to produce sense in a non-authoritary way. Cinema or the videographic medium proceed this way, in the most concrete manner… into actions. Like Thanaterros does, it captures a performance as a form of ritual making use of symbols.

In my current work, I am digging further this symbolic niveau in a new way, as I am drawing while constructing and relying on an abstract language. It is amazing all that can be evoked with shapes, colors and their composition! We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field?

Well, I guess your publication tends to put female artists out of a thick cover of darkness and give them a space to exist. Thank you! It has been and still is a pleasure to share those ideas about my artistic efforts and to see them recognized as such. It surely not has been that of an easy thing to advertise my artistic work or to show it until now. However, crucial points to overcome these difficulties are, among others, to keep doing it while nourrishing positive directions - detached from the common idea of success - and to simultaneously getting involved despite all into a series of actions towards visibility and acknowledgement. As it begins to be well known that most of the international exhibitions and contemporary art events are proposed and â&#x20AC;&#x153;inhabitedâ&#x20AC;? by males curators and/or artists, and that this fact makes this realm quite difficult to

penetrate for women even tough they might be as severely engaged into their art practices and ambitious as men can be, the question of the role that women think they do play is quite relevant! At first, it is important to me - without wanting to gender the art - that women persevere into creating what is naturally coming out of them, without trying to conform themselves or their artistic productions to the masculine predefined concepts (aren’t those frames also bothering some males as well?). Stubborn creation’s processes have to take place, even if they might not be fitting or yet considered. As in some other domains of the real - like politics or education to just name some of them - I believe the role of women can be to light up the possibility of otherness (some possibilities in contrast with the usual ways, views, current structures and systems yet into

places). Of course, this kind of official segregation should be exposed, analyzed in its mechanisms but I believe that it is not going to be sufficient here to stay theoretical. Without wanting to operate a simple reversal, concrete actions have to be made to change the situation… by women and men allies who want to imagine and set other kinds of concepts and structures. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Fanny. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Due to some circonstancial changes, I don’t have a studio at the moment so I mostly concentrate myself on some smaller scaled works – on paper or linen - adapted to this constraint of space. Lately, the “fluxes” took some colors

on and I enjoy experimenting freely with this pattern, augmenting its size, givint it significations to be deciphered, to carry like in the form of “scriptures” floatting on landscapes, letting it carry some special magic intentions for the personal and/or collective futur, relating it in a sort of shamanic/channeling way to natural elements etc. I want to explore more about engraving those thin lines into glas and exposing those surfaces to daylight. Those days, I also do think a lot about Nauman’s famous statement recalling us that “the true artist is an amazing luminous fountain”! In this way, he doesn’t really have to produce any other work than his constant self-actualization – process which is currently taking most of my time.

process of becoming an intermedial art-therapist along my

Furthermore, I am currently meditating on a new way to deal with my daily life and the concept of “work”. As I always knew, I am probably going to throw myself in a

new kind of human kings and godesses, caught in the act

own production of artistic works. Moreover, it would be a source of enthusiasm to develop “frames” in public or private spaces, initiating free, collective, “intermedial”, artistic operations. Ideally, those imagined acts aim to be empowering for those who perform them, for those who watch even, each time and for each person in different ways. They would push us to intersectionnally reflect and experiment on diverse mechanisms of power, empowerment, broad “poetry”, poïetic, etc. The development of this performative project could lead new subjects of painting. Those images to come would depict a of joy, confidence or awareness towards their own potentials, new axioms for a society.

Women Cinemakers meets

Gabrielle Lenhard Rude Ink. utilizes film to provide a complete sensory experience and physical journey for her viewers, inside a fully realized world. This process includes writing, set design, painting, performance, musical composition, costuming, digital arts, cinematography, and editing. The result mimics mainstream media yet calls the viewer to engage conceptually. Rude Ink. art plays with hyper sexuality and surrealism to examine societal constructs and our communication within them. Her work explores how our relationships reflect the social, political, and technological environment, as well as proposes alternative states of being.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com Hello Gabrielle and welcome to : we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid training formal training and you hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing, that you received from New York University: how did this

experience influence your evolution as a filmmaker? Moreover, how does your direct the trajectory of your artistic research? My screenwriting education informs the work that I do constantly. The program that I completed heavily emphasized craft and mastering the conventional form. The idea behind this being, once you know the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;rulesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; you can break them with more artfulness and purpose. When I began to make work on my

own, I realized that I felt bound by these rules. In order to release myself into a place where I could think freely and make work for myself, rather than an audience, I had to call my work something else entirely. This is why I make â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Video Artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Some of my pieces are far more abstract than others, but I have found ways to apply my screenwriting knowledge to all of them be it to construct a conceptual thruline or in echoing a filmmaking genre. It is my ultimate goal to make feature length Video Art pieces, and I feel that slowly I am moving back towards more linear narratives using the new visual language and tools that I have developed for myself. You are an eclectic artist and your versatile practice embraces musical composition, costume design, set building, painting, performance, digital arts, and editing to pursue multilayered visual results: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select in order to explore a particular aspect of your artistic inquiry? I would say that my writing for each film determines how I move forth with all other aspects of production.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers For some films the majority of my work is focused on costume design, while for others, like my film , I am mainly concerned with painting large scale sets. I think this is a result largely of my stubbornness with regard to realizing my ideas; I do not believe that anything is impossible to make happen. Therefore, I write without thinking of how something will come to be and task myself with figuring out the visualization afterwards. I think my multidisciplinary approach is very representative of me as an individual. Growing up, I painted, sculpted, played instruments, and studied dance. I believe that video art allows me the unique opportunity to utilize and practice all of my artistic passions. For me, there is no more satisfying feeling than having created the world inside of my head on screen, and being able to share that with other people. It may not look or sound like the world that we live in, but what do I have to offer differently from others, if not my individual voice? we For this special edition of have selected , a captivating experimental film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . What has at once

captured our attention of your insightful exploration of is the way your unconventional and powerful narrative provides the viewers with such an intense visual experience. While walking our readers , through the genesis of could you tell us how did you develop the initial idea?

I Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Stop Eating was triggered by a few separate instances and ideas. A friend shared with me an unboxing video on YouTube a few years ago. I am not an avid YouTube viewer, and the concept that people make videos of taking goods out of their packaging was initially shocking. This inspired me to delve deeply into the genres specific only to YouTube, and I itched to make a parody of them.

Secondly, I had been thinking a lot about my relationship with food. My dichotomy between excess and denial, how is that also represented in the image of self?

What were your when shooting ? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

I recently learned about the internet phenomenon of ASMR, and was excited to realize that subtly addresses it. The soundtrack is partially just me eating a piece of toast and drinking water.

are The form and message of quite abstract, and the film takes place in a sort of mixture between the online landscape and the domestic feminine landscape of the

bedroom, the dressing room, the bathroom. Each scene in was meant to represent a different, popular YouTube genre, as well as a different sex position.The first scene in the video, for instance, acts as a makeup tutorial. At the start, the settings are sparse, visual representations of places that we know. As the film progresses we enter a place of great abstraction, before returning to something closer resembling a natural reality, along with the main character. The filming of the piece was meant to be quite voyeuristic. The Canon E0S 60D was one of two cameras available to me at the time, and I felt it was the right choice to achieve the appropriate feeling of intimacy and the artistic quality that I wanted. When I am working with cinematographer Mike Petrow, as I did for this film, I largely trust his judgement regarding equipment. We used a variety of fixed and zoom lenses. In a few instances, these were held detached from the camera to achieve some of the extreme closeups, of which I am such a proponent. We have appreciated the way your approach to performance conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to : how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your film and

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

? How much importance does play in your process? Spontaneity and improvisation play a important role in my artistic practice. Typically, I like to intensely outline every movement of the camera and actors, ahead of time. When the day of the shoot arrives, I then largely avoid referencing or enforcing what I have written. I feel that the most important ideas stick in the mind, and the rest is then open to flexibility. Ideally, I create a frame for each scene that the actors, cinematographer, and I are able to play in. I can give specific direction when needed, but I would prefer to provide options and scenarios where the actors must make active choices and experience genuine reactions. As much as I plan, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t predict the individual magic and mood that each person will bring to set. I think this method of filming is both more fun, and a method to visually convey an authentic, nuanced experience. Your work explores how our relationships reflect the social, political, and technological environment: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, " ": as an artist particularly interested in the theme of

cultural identity, what could be in your opinion in our contemporary age? Does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? I feel that there are many different roles an artist can take in our contemporary age. Activism. Entertainment. Inspiration. Education. Wakefulness. Personally, my films each zero in on a particular aspect, practice, or opinion, of my cultural landscape and highlight that through a surreal, highly exaggerated visual exploration. In doing this, I hope to provoke thought and introspection in my viewers, to show rather than tell. I create with intention, but I do not aspire to induce a specific reaction besides questions and conversation. What my films mean to you has equal validity to what they signify in my own mind. Living in Brooklyn, NY, a particularly active and varied cultural environment, offers me a unique opportunity to represent many voices and viewpoints, to be current without being overly topical. We have been highly fascinated with the way you combine realism with surreal atmosphere: in this sense, we daresay that responds to German photographer Andreas Gursky

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A still from

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Women Cinemakers when he stated that : in particular, you seem to urge your spectatorship to challenge their perceptual categories to create : how important is for you to trigger the viewers' perceptual categories in order to address them to elaborate personal associations? And what do you hope will trigger in the spectatorship? It is my hope that by taking a very real idea and placing it inside a surreal environment, I am able to guide the viewer towards considering that concept in isolation. Outside of a specific cultural or emotional context, I believe that we can engage with content differently. focuses on the impact that internet marketing and web media have on our self image. But the film could also be boiled down to the concept of .

Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once

underlined that " ": as a multidisciplinary artist deeply involved in performance and costume design, how do you consider the relation between of the concepts that you explore in your artistic research and of your practice? When you have an artistic vision and believe in that vision strongly, at the end of the day, you are the only person who can see it through. I do not think of myself as a performer particularly or feel that I am a gifted performer, but I perform in my work frequently. At this stage, I feel that it is the right thing to do. Performing allows me to engage differently with my artwork, and therefore take more ownership of it. The abstract and often sexual circumstance of my films, I think, calls performers to be present in a way that is sometimes quite physically, or emotionally uncomfortable. How can I require discomfort from others, if I am not willing to go through that experience myself? We have appreciated both the originality of your artistic research and the of your works, so before leaving

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Women Cinemakers this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century from getting women have been behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? What's your view on ? My approach, as a woman, is to make work unapologetically. I believe that my artwork and my voice are of equal value to any other, despite the cultural reality that may indicate otherwise. By nature, my work is often very ill received, and that forces me to question constantly whether or not what I am doing is wanted, or needed, or of any value to society. But the reality is that I need to make art for myself. I need to take ownership of my body and express myself, and I feel that honest, genuine, available art will always find a place or an ear to listen. The fortitude of women will only continue to push our boundary closer to parallel. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Gabrielle. Finally, would you like to tell

us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I would like to highlight my most recent project, a multimedia installation titled that took place at Wild Embedding gallery in Brooklyn. This project was the realization of an American nationalist religion, in the year 2032 after all other religious practice has ceased. The first of 4 videos, is now available on Vimeo here (h ). I feel that my practice is moving towards a mixture of longer form, more narrative content as well as realizing more comprehensive installations, like Ch*rch of Murica. Both of these options allow me to create an even more detailed and immersive experience. My next ultimate goal, moving forward, is to make a feature length video art piece, so I will be working through the logistics and script for that, ongoing. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

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Women Cinemakers meets

Nina Rath Lives and works in Austria

Waltz with me through this human experience Dance with me the universal abun-dance Where nothing is yours and nothing is mine Yet everything moves in three-quarter time

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Hello Nina and welcome to

: we

would invite our readers to visit and

in order to get a wide idea

about your artistic production and we would start this

interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid background: you hold a Bachelor (hons) in Digital Media, that you received from the University for Applied Sciences, in Salzburg and you have just finished your Master of Screen Production at the Griffith Filmschool : how did this experience influence your artistic evolution? Moreover, how does your direct the trajectory of your artistic research?

I believe that the environment highly influences my artistic work, and to be 100% honest, nature has always been the greatest teacher for me. It was not the institutionalized knowledge that has given me a deep “inner-push” to create art, but more often then not it has been nature and silence and solitude and self-observation. When I did the Master of Screen Production in Brisbane / Australia, I was also living and working in a monastery (or you can also call it Yoga Studio) with two Hindu monks and I learned at least as much from their presence as I learned from the lectures at university or the Australian culture, if not more. But it’s a very silent way of learning. Your learn by cultivating a lifestyle of meditation and introspection to understand what you are doing, and why you are doing it. What really motivates you? What drives you? What kind of topics reoccur in your life time and time again? And why is this particular topic occupying your mind over and over again? The greatest tool for my artistic work is self-observation. If I can distance myself from my created “identity” or “habitus” – which is of course highly influenced by the I am observing my life like a movie in which I play the main role. I become “The hero with a thousand faces” to say it with Jospeh Campbell. His work has highly influenced me. But to get back to the education at universities. I am very critical about this. There are some people in these institutions that are “light-bulbs” and who are really interested in your personal growth. They keep investing their time to really push you to the limits and support and nurture and question you and your work. That’s wonderful. But this is not the majority. I think you can always sense, why people are doing what they are doing. Some do it just because it looks great on their CV. It’s great

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Women Cinemakers for their life but it adds very little to mine. And other’s do it because their really love to see young people get out of their comfort zones and scratch on the surface of the big box called “your full potential”. Whatever that looks like. But you can feel, when it’s a bit scary, a bit uncomfortable but still extremely exciting and you want to give 1000% of your energy. That’s what great teachers reveal inside you, cause they have lived their lives that way too. Two names I would like to mention here are: Mark Travis https://thetravistechnique.com/ and Elsha Bohnert. They have taught Masterclasses at Griffith Filmschool and their presence and toughness and love and dedication to their work and to see us grow to a new level of acting and directing was just mind-boggling. One lecture was called : “Telling your life story”, and each student had to present a personal story within 5 minutes in front of the whole group. Sounds simple. But you cannot imagine what kind of tragic, funny, heart-breaking and uplifting stories all these young students have gone through. First of all it was a deeply bonding experience for all of us, but furthermore it was a revelation to discover that each one of us had gathered a lot of wisdom, knowledge and life-experience and it was worth telling these stories, no matter how “small” they appeared to be. If you dare to go really deep, the whole group will go deep with you. If you prefer to stay “save” and shallow, so will your audience. That’s what I took away from the Masterclasses with Mark and Elsha. I highly recommend it to anyone. It will really shake up your life if you participate in their workshops. So these two people (and a few more) were my light-bulbs, but it total I would say that the filmschool itself was not really giving me what I was hoping for. I guess a lot of young people are looking for a structure, a place where they can unfold themselves to develop an artistic skill, and this was a major reason for me too. I was looking for some clear defined structure called “university” where I can improve

my talents and explore what I really want to do with my life. But as always, it is so dependent on your own energy, on your personal commitment and motivation. If you are willing to push hard, uni can support you with equipment and studios and knowledge and whatnot. But you can also do it without uni. That’s my conclusion. At some point I actually realized that you can never really “rely” on an

institution to uncover your full potential but in some ways it can actually hinder you from doing it. Cause it feels “save”. I live in a monastery and I mediate with the monks, I write my screenplays and shoot my films and go to university. That’s all save. If you would have to do it all without these external structures it would be much harder to cultivate self- discipline, to really get up in the morning

at 5 am and meditate and to step up to organize a crew and a budget and a make your film happen, in the socalled “real world”. That requires a lot of determination and inner strength and I just say that this is not depended on any external factor. But I would love to participate for example in a course of Werner Herzog. He has designed a very special training for film students. I

heard that one part of his “training” is to send people out into the forest for 3 days (like on a vision quest) and not do anything there. Just sit and listen and observe. Not create, write, act, do anything. But just sit and wait and see what happens on the inside and the outside. See what wants to emerge through you rather than what you create with willpower alone. I believe there is a big

Women Cinemakers difference in making something happen from a place of “ego” and effort and making something happen from an inner knowing or an inner vision. It might look like the same actions on the outside (script writing, planning, shooting, editing, distributing) but it’s a completely different process on the inside. It’s like an inner voice or intuition that says: “You should do this. You have to do this in your life. It is really important for your personal development and your life if you follow this particular stream of intention.” I had an experience like this with my first TV documentary. It was about “Community Supported Agriculture” in short CSA, and I have never produced or directed a TV documentary before but in this whole process I always had this inner knowing that I have to do it. No matter what. Even if it’s tough. And it was not easy. Four of five funding bodies declined our funding request and so we had to finance it through TV, sponsors and one funding body. But at the end, after it was done, it created a ripple effect in Austria and started a public debate about new forms of sustainable agriculture. I could talk a long time about his topic, but my main message it, trust your gut instinct. Always. we For this special edition of have selected , an extremely interesting dance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into is the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with such refined aesthetic, inviting the viewers to such a

Women Cinemakers experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? That is a really good question, because it allows me to share something I wanted to share for a really long time. So, as you have heard in the question before I am a big fan of mediation and self-observation. And I do believe in an intelligence, source, God or whatever you call it, that cannot not be reduced to some words or definitions. But it’s a field of infinity intelligence that I can connect with. And if I connect with it consciously, it’s like I am just the “tool”, or the “receiver” of a message and I have to be fast enough to bring it to paper. I believe that this is what artists, writer, athletes and inventors experience when they are in the “flow” state. It just moves through you. Yes you are an integral part of the whole process but the copyright belongs to this field of infinite intelligence. I have a personal story that I would like to share at this point to make it more tangible. Many people have heard about the law of attraction, and focusing on your dreams to make them real with vision boards. I did that too. I painted on a piece of paper exactly what I want to experience in my life. At some point I wanted to live in beautiful house, in the city, with a huge garden, and animals and forest around for not more than 150 € per month. And through some very weird circumstance I actually found this exact house I painted on my paper. Including all features: the second little house next to the main house, a round house on the top of the forest, a garden, animals and even the bicycles on the veranda. All was there. It was really spooky for me, when I found it and it made me think a lot about the connection between our inner worlds(visions) and our outer worlds (3D environment). It was so accurate, that it was really astonishing. Anyhow, so I kept painting these pictures about particular scenarios I want to

Women Cinemakers experience in my life. And after a while I had collected a whole stack of painting and visions. But then, one full moon night, we had an open meditation seminar in the monastery and after this meditation I had this strong urge to burn all my drawing and papers. So I went into the garden and made a fire and said: “Hey universe, Hey God, I am now burning all “my” wishes and I want that you show me exactly what it is, I should be doing in this life. What is my gift? What is my purpose? I will now give away all my “limited” perspective of what I want and make space for what wants to emerge through me.” And I burned it all, went to bed, and you cannot imagine what happened the next three days. I had such a flood of creativity and poetry running though my mind that I could not even cook, I could not even go to toilet or take a shower without having to write something down. This was the ultimate flow experience. And after these three days I actually said to myself: “Wow, this is a bit much, I think I can’t live a normal life if it keeps streaming and streaming like this.” And then it started to normalize again. But it does feel like the ultimate love affair. Like the most sexy and hot and loving and beautiful man has entered your life and turned it upside down. It’s hard to sleep, it’s hard to eat, cause you ultimately want to be in this connected stream all the time, and if you write a poem or not is not even relevant. It’s a vibrational state where you feel you are impeccable and you love everything to an extreme that it almost hurts. I started to get tears in my eyes when people just walked in the door to take some Yoga classes. I know it sounds ridiculous but I felt this extreme love for everything and everyone. And then I thought, there are not enough hours in the day that I can actively love 7, 5 billions people and 8.7 billion species in a

A still from

Women Cinemakers 1:1 way everyday. But I can put some of that love into my art. And it might not reach everybody, but at least I have a place where I can put all this energy. The problem with doing it 1:1 is that people start to confuse this energy with the 3D body. So they fall in love with me. But I am just the post-woman delivering a message, and you would never think that the postwoman has written the letter it brings to you. It is just a transmitter. And that’s how I feel. I am just the transmitter and I want to share this inner states with as many people I possibly can. And this experience has also taught me a lot. You know, with this law of attraction thing, people often want to HAVE something. I want to have this car, this lover, this job, this success, etc. But after burning my paper, I felt, WOW I want to GIVE this messages and feelings and experiences to as many people I possibly can. I already have everything, so I stopped to be a beggar in my mind. I felt extremely empowered and refreshed, knowing it’s really all here and I can go play. And so this is also how ABUN-DANCE came to life. These few lines popped into my mind. It came in portions. First just one line, then the second line and so on. And then I just went out into the city with a friend to dance with heaps of strangers on the street. Surprisingly 90% of the people I asked “Do you want to dance a waltz with me?” said yes. And the 10% who were not willing, were mainly kids. Funny, hey? Elegantly shot, features stunning cinematography: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? The camera (Sony Alpha 7M3) and lenses belonged to a friend of mine, Arron Millikin, a cinematographer. He was free one afternoon and I said, ok let’s go play. I wanted some medium

Women Cinemakers shots and some medium close up shots of me dancing with strangers, stabilized with a gimbal, but that’s about how much instruction I gave him. It was full improvisation – as many of my films are. I get extremely bored if I have to overthink things. Some people love it, and that’s really great, and professional and wonderful. But I like to do. It all happens whilst doing. Since I am also an editor, most of the work happens while editing. Sometimes I just sit and experiment for hours, and try how I could create a totally different meaning, just by changing the sequence. That’s a lot of fun. I have spend an incredible amount of hours over the last 10 years editing films and I am never bored by it. Never. Featuring well orchestrated camera work, has drawn heavily from and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful between the landscape and : how did you select the locations and how did they affect the performing and shooting process? The selection of the location was easy. That was the botanical garden in the middle of Brisbane. That’s one of my most favourite place in Brisbane. I love these gigantic ancient old trees. So we started to ask people in the park if they would like to dance. Since it all worked out so easily and almost everybody said yes, we were finished in about 4 hours with over 12 dances. To interweave these dances and gestures with the landscape shots wasn’t planned at the beginning. It just happened in the editing process. I love this idea of the microcosmos embedded in the macro-cosmos and how we are just a reflection or an image of God, but I wanted to communicate it in a subtle way. Sometimes I am too much “in your face” if I observe my work critically, and I think it’s nice to leave some

Women Cinemakers gaps for personal interpretations. That’s where the audience can really engage and create the missing link in their minds. I am working on becoming more subtle… Let’s see if I will improve. Maybe you know the feeling, when you have a personal realization, and you want that everyone can hear it and know it and applied it and realize it too at the same time. But that’s rarely the case. We are all on a very individual path and the magic happens when you realize it, not when someone comes screaming in your face: “Hey I have got the answer.” Personal growth is a very subtle and silent process. Oh… But I want to mention something about Muses here. You know that all the famous ancient painter, writer, thinker, philosophers, artists had their muses. Some elegant, beautiful woman that would ignite and inspire them to their most brilliant creations. And I discovered that it works the same way for me. If I have man in my life that I feel a strong sexual attraction to, a deep yearning to unite, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and I actually don’t sleep with them, and sometimes don’t even tell them, all the powerful sexual energy fuels my creative process. Because it’s energy. And as we know, sexual energy is one of THE most powerful energies in the universe cause it can create LIFE. But if I train myself to not chaise these man to sleep with them, and release all this energy in the sexual intercourse, I can use this energy to fuel me and my art. It was very obvious but still astounding to experience. So I would encourage everyone, to have a Muse. It’s so beautiful. And revel in the feeling. Let yourself be heated up to the extreme and let this energy move through you into your work, your art, your life. The magic is about not “owning” the other person. Like I said, I don’t even need to sleep with this or that particular man, I can just breath in his beauty and spark my imagination and let this fertile power move through my being.

Women Cinemakers In fact it does become more precious by not owning the person. By seeing them free and independent and alive and as a unique expression of beauty and divinity. And also woman can highly inspire me. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not limited by a particular gender. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more about their presence, their charisma and their way of being. And even further I can get really inspired by the erotic beauty of nature. Have you every watched a flower pop and really observed how she unfolds her petals. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s majestic. I can get some many inspiration and message from nature and to me this is the true meaning of ABUNDANCE. Where nothing is yours, and nothing is mine, yet everything moves in three-quarter time. We have appreciated the way you have provided with such a poetic quality, capable of establishing emotional involvement in the viewers, inviting them to create : what are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship? In particular, how important is for you to address the viewer's imagination in order to elaborate ? If there is something I would like to trigger with this little video, than it is an understanding; an inherent knowing that we are all interconnected with each other and the whole of creation. Even though it looks all really separated. I have started to research more and more about telepathic connection and sometimes I sing a song that the other person next to me just had in mind. Our thoughts are way less personal than we believe them to be. This can also lead to manipulation and it really concerns me to see how aggressive the online marketing industry is trying to analyse all digital data we produce, just to offer us more stuff to buy.

Women Cinemakers It is as if they could already read our thoughts and offer adequate products or information. Barack Obama said a very interesting thing at the World Leadership Summit in Köln I participated in a short while ago. Nowadays people are rather confirming their existing opinion with facts than to form an opinion based on facts. Something along those lines. It’s almost like the technology is mimicking what we also experience on a subtle level: The more you think about it the bigger it gets. Or the more you believe it to be like that, the more facts and information you get that “it is so”. A constant self-affirming opinion. And I have to mention that it can feel very scary if someone comes to question your believes and the things you hold very dear in your heart. Many of my friends in Brisbane started to argue with me about the question “Is there a God or not?” and we had long uncomfortable conversations. I don’t want to preach, I prefer that everyone will figure it out for himself or herself. But I know how unpleasant it feels to question everything you have ever learned about yourself, or life, or the world, or media. It feels much more powerful to have an opinion and good reasons for it. But to question it and take your own internal believe-system apart can be really confronting and refreshing at the same time. One night a friend of mine (who is a very successful businessman) and I were sitting at the Brisbane river, and we wondered: Imagine if we would let go of the thing that is most dear to us, for you it’s your believes about business, how to expand your vision of your company, and for me it’s spirituality and how I can get closer and closer to self-realization and then there was this beautiful silence, and we just looked at the river and watched the people passing and it was like watching life again with new eyes. Naked. Unprejudiced. Pure. As it is. With no concepts whatsoever. It lasted for about 1 hour, and this was for sure one of the most precious hours of my life. So what

Women Cinemakers do I want to trigger with the video ABUN-DANCE? Reverence, adoration, (self-) observation and the joy of being alive. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that " ": how do you of the consider the relation between ideas you aim to communicate and of creating your artworks? Like I said, I like the connection between the micro-cosmos and the macro-cosmos. Movement and dance can (in combination with the right sequencing and editing) communicate multi-layered meaning easily. That’s why I love dance. Cause there is a field of expression that I cannot reach with my words. Contemporary dance/movement practices, such as Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen's work with Contact Improvisation and Mary Whitehouse's Authentic Movement provide interesting precedents in this respect, being widely practised frameworks for embodied expression and playful exploration that relate closely to their respective founders’ own therapeutic bodywork methodologies (Bainbridge-Cohen, 1995, Hanlon-Johnson, 1995d). So, dancing can be healing. I am personally also practising Contact Improvisation dance, and I have had some real flow experience in the contact dance space with another person. It is as if you melt into one being. At the beginning, everybody wants to dance a “good dance” and do the “right movements” but very soon you realise that there is no such thing as the “right movement”. There is just a state of more or less connected and in tune with each other. It can be also

Women Cinemakers interesting if you don’t harmonize with the other person and the head starts to think – “Oh no, that’s so bad, how can I get out of this situation?!”. And then in a matter of seconds it can switch to a deep connection. That’s the magic of dance. We have appreciated the way your approach to dance conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to : how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of your performative gestures and ? How much importance does play in your process? Improvisation is everything. It has been a central element in most of my previous artwork. Though my future projects will need more choreography and the application of specific element and features. For example, I am working on a poetry short called “Thin Glass Rim”. It’s a love story between a man and a woman, which also refers to the Shiva- Shakti philosophy of tantric teachings, and in this particular short I will need a whine glass that is very well played by the dancers. I have a general direction of where I want to go, but the magic happens when the dancers or actors unleash something I was not particularly expecting. Something that emerged through the process and sometimes the actors can be surprised themselves about what just happened. I am eager to find this “sweet spot”. Mark Travis said in one of his Masterclasses, that the job of a director is to remove from the actor all fear. But how do you do that? When the camera is rolling and the director says “Action”, typically actors want to play their role well, they want to do a good job, and give their very best performance. But in many cases what you get is a great performance, and not a full authentic expression. It’s a performance, and you will see that,

Women Cinemakers especially on the big screens. I am still working on removing my fears so I wouldn’t dare to say that I am at the level of Mark Travis, but I am heading in this direction. It’s about exploring together how to bring the original vision to screen. I also play improvisation theatre myself, so I love the spontaneous creation of stories and meaning in the moment. It’s scary and uncomfortable. It feels naked when you cannot hold on to a script, to some well crafted words you are about to say, to some main plot you know you are following. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I believe, that’s why the audience comes to watch impro-theater. Because everyone knows, it’s all happening live on stage and we are all co-creating this experience. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something ' ', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional director? And what's your view on the future of women in this field? First of all, I rejoice in every success of a female producer, writer, director, actor, dancer or artist. The TV and film industry is still a male dominated industry and in my opinion this has to change fundamentally. But interestingly most of my colleagues in Australia have been woman not man. One of my closest friend was a female indigenous producer/ director and we were part of Women in Film &

Television Australia (WIFT Australia). This is a Not-ForProfit organisation dedicated to achieving gender equality in the Australian screen industry through research, advocacy, education and support for female-identifying screen industry practitioners. WIFT Australia also engages in research to uncover the nuances of gender inequality in screen, to develop the best strategies to address it and to advocate for change. WIFT Australia operates nationally with a presence in all states and territories and provides a number of programs, events and initiatives throughout the year. I have been part of a few of these events during my time in Australia and it was quite shocking to see how some woman have been discriminated by man just because having a family and raising children had an equal value in their life as having a career – if not higher. I personally don’t have kids, so for me it was not such an issue to work long hours and have weekend shooting schedules. And I have to say, in general I am not such a big fan of the woman vs. man movement and I know that might cause a stir in some readers, but what I am really interested to see is personal empowerment despite the gender. I love to see self-conscious woman and man who dare to follow their vision and bring it to life. At this point I want to refer to David R. Hawkins and his book „Power VS. Force – The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior”. Hawkins goes into great detail about the various levels of consciousness and he points out two turning points as most crucial. “On our scale of consciousness, there are two critical points that allow for major advancement. The first is at 200, the initial level of empowerment: Here, the willingness to stop blaming and accept responsibility for one’s own actions, feelings, and beliefs arises – as long as cause and responsibility are projected outside of oneself,

Women Cinemakers one will remain in the powerless mode of victimhood. The second is at the 500 level, which is reached by accepting love and nonjudgemental forgiveness as a lifestyle, exercising unconditional kindness to all persons, things, and events without exception.” (Hawkins 2002, 238). And in my opinion these principles still have to be integrated largely in the #metoo movement. Don’t get me wrong, I was really delighted to see what a thunderstorm this whole movement turned into and how it unmasked the hidden shadows and behaviours of so many man worldwide – from working class to the highest elite – but the ultimate step will be reconciliation. Nothing will change, if woman stay in they role of victimhood. The time has come to expose the dark side of the human soul and then bring it to light, and that includes as a final step radical forgiveness. Only then can we start to re-build a healthy society, where male and female energies can co-exist in harmony with each other, because they are mutually dependent. Everyone of us has a masculine and a famine aspect in our own personality. And the ultimate challenge is to bring them into balance within ourselves. The external worlds is just a mirror of our inner process. And to get back to your original question: What is my view on the future of women in this field? If we start collectively to think and feel higher about ourselves (not in terms of better) but higher in terms of capable, strong, loving, determined, forgiving, wise and bold and start to embody these principles in our personal lives, all victimhood will fade naturally, and woman will be inspired to reach even greater heights of their artistic expression. I want to mention Julie Gautier (with her

short film AMA for example) who I highly admire. AMA expresses extreme strength and resilience in combination with beauty and delicacy. To me this is a perfect example of the symbiosis of the masculine and the feminine archetype. And to close this question I would like to add something very important. One of my mentors and dear friends Elke Dürr, who is a wild life cinematographer, living most of the time outdoors in the wild, and has received countless awards for her films, once said to me: “You know, I also didn’t have any role model of a strong independent woman and filmmaker. And one day I asked – Holy Creator: What do you want me to be? Why am I here? What is my ultimate reason for this human experience? And then the answer was: To be a true woman.” To be a true woman. I am working on a poetry short right now, about what it means to be a true woman. It goes somehow along the lines of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and her book: „Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype“. And my deepest wish is that we all start to explore and discover what it means to be a true woman on a personal level. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Nina. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you for the interview. I was pleased to share some of my thoughts. I would like to summarize the future or my work with two quotes: “Be a voice not an echo” by Albert Einstein and “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that glows flowers, not thunder.” by Rumi. That summarised the essence of where I am going. It’s nice

Women Cinemakers and easy to write these two quotes on a piece of paper but to actually live it, is a totally different question. I have asked myself many times, how to be a voice and not an echo. You know, so many of our opinions are highly influenced by what we, hear, see, smell, taste and touch by our senses and of course by al the information that we are bombarded with every single day by modern media (TV, internet, smartphones, etc.) But I want to cultivate an attitude of deep listening and if you want “channelling” my words from a place of inner connection with my Divine Self. This is where I feel most compelled to go. To live and work in a state of flow. One of the most prominent representative of the Flow state is the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi [1995, 2000, 2006] from the University of Chicago. He calls this state the happy experience of a mental state of complete concentration and intense inner absorption into an activity that proceeds as if by itself. Conditions of flow may, under certain conditions, become hypnotic or in an ecstatic trance. Flowing is considered by some experts to be a trance state of total abandonment into a task. And the author of the book "Emotional Intelligence", Prof. Dr. med. Daniel Goleman ads: "Being able to follow the flow is the highest form of emotional intelligence. Flowing is perhaps the ultimate in putting emotions at the service of performance and learning. When flowing, the emotions are not merely dominated and channeled, but positive, full of suspense and aligned to the task at hand. Who is caught in the boredom of depression or the excitement of fear, is excluded from the flow. Flowing is an experience that almost everyone has every now and then, especially when performing at peak levels or exceeding their previous limits. It may perhaps best be compared to an ecstatic act

of love in which two melt into a flowing harmonic one.” And this is why I have chosen poetry (or poetry has chosen me) for my artistic work, as the main source of expression. I always say:“Poetry is God’s way of making love to me.” And sometimes it’s not easy to enter into the state of flow, especially when I start to work from a place of effort and controll. If I want to controll the outcome and especially if I want to create a “good” outcome it usually always becomes average. But when I have no personal agender anymore and just become available to inspiration when it comes to me, then I can write 5 pages within 10 minutes without changing anything afterwards. I have noticed that, to enter into the flow state has something to do with diminishing the ego influence. Sometimes when I am extremly tired and it’s 2 am at night, there is a flood of creativity moving through my mind. And then I go “Really?! Now?! Oh my God. I am so tired. I don’t want to get out of bed. Ok, well then, let’s do it.” And maybe because I am so tired all the self-critique is lowered and I just write and write and write like a waterfall with ease and flow. It’s funny cause sometimes I even start to have tears in my eyes when the next lines pop into my head, I know that sounds narcistic, but this is really what happens. I am very deeply moved by this conncetion and being able to “receive” the information, cause I haven’t logically planed to write it this way. There is still a lot of mystery to explore in the creative process, and like I said earlier in the interview: It really helps to have Muses. To adore and amire and love a particular person or a perticular expression of nature. It is the inner state of awareness that becomes fueled by this fire and I wish that we all start to create more and more from this place of flow, love and connection. Thank you.