WomenCinemakers, Special Edition, Vol.40 by WomenCinemakers

w o m e n DELPHINE WIL ELISA MILLER KATE VOET ADRIANA GUIMAN EFRAT RUBIN PAMELA VELAZQUEZ ALEKSANDRA NIEMCZYK WESSAM HACHICHO ANJINI TANEJA AZHAR DARINE HOTAIT

INDEPENDENT

WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CINEMA

Darine Hotait

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Contents 04 Darine Hotait

146 Efrat Rubin

I SAY DUST / Like Salt

CROWS

170

Anjini Taneja Azhar

Adriana Guiman

THIRD OPTION

IN BETWEEN

202

Wessam Hachicho

Kate Voet

234

Aleksandra Niemczyk

Elisa Miller

Den Som Ser

Les Homards Immortels

Baba Vanga

El Placer Es Mio

112

268

Pamela Velazquez

Delphine Wil

At half light

Memories of Missionaries

Women Cinemakers meets

Darine Hotait Lives and works in New York City, USA

Darine Hotait is a fiction writer and film director. She has written & directed a number of short films that screened at top international festivals and received multiple Best Fiction Film awards. Her films were acquired and broadcasted on Sundance TV, AMC Networks, BBC Channel, OSN & Shorts International. She is the recipient of the Literary Fellowship (IAP) at New York Foundation for the Arts and the Arab Fund for Arts & Culture Cinema Grant. She was nominated for a Goethe Award, selected among 10 screenwriters at the Cannes Film Festival International Scriptwriters’ Pavilion (Maison Des Scenaristes), and was a top 5 finalist at Hearst Screenwriting Competition and an EMMY Awards Blue Ribbon Finalist. Her interest in cinema came from her genuine fascination and devotion to literature. Therefore, her film work tends to bridge between literature and cinema by giving predominance to the science fiction genre. She has published numerous science fiction short stories and stage plays. Her literary work has appeared in various publications in print and online, as well as in curated art exhibitions in New York, Berlin and London. Darine holds an MFA in screenwriting and film directing from the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has mentored numerous screenwriting and film directing workshops at film festivals and institutions around the world such as the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York, Arab World Institute in Paris, Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Med Film Festival in Rome, Arab Film festival in Rotterdam, Mizna Literary Gathering in Minneapolis, Dubai international Writers’ Center in UAE among others. In 2010, she founded Cinephilia Productions in New York city - an incubator for the development of filmmakers from the Middle East and Africa through various initiatives that occupy the space between ideation and production. She has served as a jury member on several short film competitions at international film festivals like Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York, Cinewest in Australia, Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam. Her latest short film "Like Salt" premiered in June 2018. She is currently developing her debut feature film screenplay "Like Salt" that took part in the Rawi Screenwriters' Lab - a Sundance Institute initiative - in July 2018.

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

I SAY DUST is a captivating short film by New York

City based writer and director Darine Hotait: shot with elegance and inventiveness, her film bridges literature to cinema and offers an emotionally complex visual experience, demonstrating the ability to capture the subtle depths of emotions, addressing the viewers through a multilayered journey, to

explore the ever changing relationship between home and identity: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Hotait's stimulating artistic production. Hello Darine and welcome to Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would invite our readers to visit in order to get a wider idea about your work and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background: you have a solid formal training and you hold an MFA in screenwriting and film directing from the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California: how did this experience influence your evolution as a filmmaker? Moreover, direct the how does your trajectory of your artistic research? I am not a strong believer that film schools are a place to find your voice and identity as an artist, storyteller and filmmaker. Murakami said it perfectly â&#x20AC;&#x153;the most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be learned at school.â&#x20AC;? I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to go to one of the most prestigious schools in the country. I met some of the most incredible artists there. During my years of study, I was given an unlimited freedom by my professors to create and make mistakes and learn from them all on my own. I was given an unlimited amount of resources and tools and help from fellow filmmakers. This was pure blessing that made the experience unique and enriching.

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Women Cinemakers However, after school, working in the industry made me realize that all the comforts provided by film school is not the reality of how things work in fact. A lot of limitations are presented to you in the professional world and you have to navigate around them and use all the tools that you’ve acquired and those that you’re about to intuitively discover in yourself. What you learn from formal training comes in quite handy. But what I came to learn after all was that I had to rely on my acquired knowledge and on my intuition equally in order to create an art that presents my unique voice. My intuition is deeply rooted in my cultural foundation. I look inward to define your artistic trajectory. For this special edition of we have selected , a captivating short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and whose teaser can be viewed at . What has at once impressed us with your insightful exploration of is the way it walks the viewers through a heightened and cliché free narrative. While walking our readers through the genesis of , Could you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? The initial idea started from my desire to collaborate with my good friend and poet Hala Alyan. I didn’t know what kind of project we would do together but I knew a few things. I wanted Hala to play a role in the film and to perform poetry. I wanted the film to tackle about home and

identity and I wanted to have chess as one of the center elements that ground the geographical concept of displacement. So I started by asking Hala to send me some of her poems. I read them all and then chose one that was called Valentine. I started working from that poem. I made the poem the central element in the film and then constructed the narrative around it. It was a very interesting way to write a screenplay. I enjoyed that process so much as it had its own challenges that were far from limiting. The poem talked about the concept of

home and it was perfect to what I had in mind for a theme: Home is where you break. features stunning Elegantly shot, cinematography by George Lyon and a keen eye for details: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? One of the best things that happened in I Say Dust was having George Lyon as a DP. He is an extremely talented

cinematographer and has all the qualities that make a director feel comfortable. We make a really good team. We discussed the cinematographic language of the film extensively. He really understood the tone of the film very well which made me very confident about his suggestions and input. We both knew that this film needed to have a poetic feeling and that every frame had to be treated like a painting and that the spaces and the characters must be treated with so much delicacy and intimacy. Warmth was something we were going for

all the time even in the cool scenes. I wanted the camera to move the same way the chess pieces move on the board, very studied and very careful of the next step. When the camera wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t static, it was certainly moving in a strategized way. We shot on the Red camera. That was the first time I use digital for my work. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve only shot on 35mm film before so this was very different for me. Featuring compelling narrative drive leaps off the screen to develop an

between the viewers and the characters, brilliantly performed by Hala Alyan and Mounia Akl: what was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like or do you prefer to every details of your shooting process? Working with Hala and Mounia was beyond amazing. They were both very mature about the process even though it was Hala’s first time on screen. Mounia has done some acting before and she is a film director herself. What was great in this combination was that Hala’s talent in spoken word poetry and her experience reading was definitely a great asset here and Mounia’s experience as a director was also very helpful in making Hala feel comfortable inside the scene. I think the two were able to help each other a lot from within. I have done a few rehearsals with them but not more than 2 or 3. The good thing is that they are both my friends and that made everything so much easier. We needed that type of intimacy also I trusted them a lot in bringing in their own self to this and in putting their touches and personalities. I certainly leave room to spontaneity if it does not mess with the grand plan of a scene. You have to always keep in mind if the scene is still editable or if we’re still telling the same thing. It is great to improvise but it’s only great when you’re solid and not have to deal with issues. In this case we were solid. But we had very little time so the room for improvisation was not large. There were things that we did not rehearse like the kissing scene in the

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street. That we wanted it to be the spare of the moment and I am so glad we did that. So spontaneity has its good and bad. You just must be very prepared and solid with your vision and your plan for a scene before you allow space for play. If you own your vision then you can do anything fearlessly. With its sapiently structured storytelling imparts unparalleled to the narration, to highlight the power of the spoken word. We have particularly appreciated the way your film gives to the viewers the sense they are watching : would you tell how did you develop the structure script in order to achieve such ? Moreover, how does fuel your creative process to address your choices regarding the stories that you tell in your films? Each story that I write brings out a new storyteller in me. My creative process is head-on improvisational at the start. The initiation of my creative process always starts with strong intuition that I carefully listen to and let it guide the way. I let myself be taken by the moment where the narrative leads me instead of me dictating where it should go. In that way, I always find that my work turns out personal and I start seeing patterns. In I Say Dust, the spoken word was the driving force of the entire narrative. I wanted to leverage on that element by making it dominant and the only way to do so, at least for me, was by keeping everything else unspoken hence the

intense looks of the characters, the silence and observational moments, the studied cinematography, the quiet spacesâ&#x20AC;Śetc. Another interesting work of yours that we are pleased to : based on introduce to our readers is entitled the epiphanic journey of Hala, an Arab American female boxer in New York City, and Kendrick, an African American jazz musician, this extraordinarily moving film in our globalized explores still unstable societies as well as the type of alienation that unites its inhabitants in a constant struggle. How did you draw inspiration for this film and how did you structure its script? Like Salt was born from a lot of questions based on a personal experience of the time when I was in LA and the 2006 war in Lebanon broke with Israel. It was a devastating war by all means. At the time, my mother was visiting Lebanon with my little brother over that summer. They got stuck there and we couldn't connect with them for a few days. It was a terrifying experience for all of us to not know whether they were alive or not especially that they were staying very close to where most of the bombs were falling in Southern Beirut. So the idea of a girl consumed by a war overseas and trying to live a normal life in a place that doesn't know anything about her frustration. It all came together from there. So I really had to ask myself all the questions about why I wanted to tell this story and why I wanted to put it out in the world. It was a painful experience and I really wanted to share it. However, of course, for the sake of fiction, this is not an autobiographical film in any

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A still from

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Women Cinemakers way. It has elements or moments from the real story but the narrative is totally fiction. draws power Shot basically in New York City, from the beauty of its images and from the use of evocative urban and rural locations: how did you select and how did shooting in multicultural city as New York provide your story with a special value? Shooting ins New York is always a joy for me. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a charm in every location and an unparalleled identity. For Like Salt it was a real hassle to find the locations as they were too many and most to be shot at night time. We shot the jazz club scene at Cornelia Street Cafe, a beautiful cafe since 1977 in Greenwich Village Manhattan where a lot of amazing artists have performed and read poetry like Oliver Sacks and Suzanne Vega and Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues. So much history in this place! We also shot in a location in Brooklyn at Rollin' Studios and at the bodega and in Pennsylvania at The Lynnville Hotel where we also had access to a beautiful horse, Bacardi, that was in one of the scenes. I was really lucky to find all these locations and thanks goes to my amazing team of producers Erika Rydell, George Velez, Daquan Saxton and Tarek Yamani. I am also very stubborn about my choices especially when they are visually important. For instance, the bodega was really hard to find but I have seen the picture of this specific bodega online but never knew the address or anything about it. It could be anywhere in the city. I did research for a few weeks until I finally found the zip code.

So I used the magic of social media and posted the photo and the zip code. I was so lucky that some people were able to locate it. So I went there with the producer and we spoke to the owner who is Yemeni and he was happy to give us the location for only 2 hours from 4am to 6am. It was a very risky choice to agree to set up and shoot a 3 minutes scene in 2 hours but we were determined. We did it. I can tell you lots of stories about the locations and the scouting process as New York can be one of the most surprising cities to what it can offer aesthetically. features a remarkably expressive use of darkness to give contrasting shape to different lighting zones within the frame: what was your approach to lighting and movement to achieve such brilliant results? It all starts with having a great director of photography. On Like Salt, I worked with a brilliant DP, Autumn Eakin, who is a magician more than anything. I was lucky to have her on my side. She really understood my vision and why I wanted to do certain things in a certain way to the point that she was able to challenge me in places where I was starting to deviate from my vision to adapt to the circumstances. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when you know you have a good friend on your side. The script was written in a way where we follow the main character over an intense night out and end with her in the morning after. So the contrast of night and day is very much driven by the narrative therefore we can clearly see two sections in the film: An intense New York at night and a calm American countryside.

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Women Cinemakers During the New York night section, It was all approached with intense contrast but with vibrant colors. I wanted the raw feeling of the city. For me, New York late nights as much as they are jazzy and romantic, they are also quite dirty and unrestrained. I wanted to present my view of that New York on the screen. As much as we had handheld shots, we also had very studied steadicam shots. In that section, I did not want stillness. There’s constant movement whether it’s the camera moving or the characters moving towards or away from camera. In the second half, it’s the exact opposite. It’s a natural daylight. Calm and serene. The camera is either static or making very subtle movement on the dolly. With this choice, the intensity and attention is on the characters and no longer on the space, unlike the first half where the city is almost the main character. I am the kind of director who likes to play with lighting, movement and framing in an unconditional way and to treat these tools as characters. Cinematography to me is the one of the strongest reasons why I don’t keep my stories on paper. is an emotionally penetrating journey to shared daily existence and we have particularly appreciated the way you created entire scenarios out of : what are you hoping will trigger in the audience? In particular, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value? Like Salt feels like a ride. I hope whoever watches it to get totally immersed in that ride in order to experience the

psychologically charged moments. I don’t know how exactly my gender would provide my artistic research with some special value. I strongly believe that anyone of any gender or any nationality or any background when they’re telling a story that to them is important, they will make sure to present what’s important. So the value of the work becomes the value that you lodge in it. Like Salt inquiries into the condition of conflict that still affects Middle East. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once remarked that "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under": what could be in your opinion the role of filmmakers in our ever changing contemporary age? In particular, does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? You can’t avoid the fact that what is around you in one way or another will find its way into your creative process. You have to ask yourself why you are making the work and why you want to tell that particular story. An artist is not an activist in the politicized sense of the word but the artist is a catalyst of all acts of activism, the underlying initiator who can stimulate a debate that can take its own route to trigger the awakening and bring awareness to spark a change. Nina Simone said it best “You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.” I can certainly say that even when I am writing a work of science fiction within a futuristic context per se, I am

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Women Cinemakers certainly extracting a particular theme from the present moment and shedding light on it. The more the artist grows, the more his/her responsibility weighs, the more his/her work defines a moment in time and initiates change. Over the years you have written and directed numerous short films that screened at top festivals such as HBO's Outfest and you also received multiple Best Short Fiction awards: how much importance has for you that you receive in the festival circuit? And how do you feel previewing a film before an audience? I’ve been making short films for the past 10 years and it has been my medium to learn and experiment before I step to the feature film medium, which is where I hope to land in a couple of years. The feedback of an audience is crucial especially when you are experimenting with your growth and expanding your cinematic language. You start seeing a pattern in your own work and you also start seeing a pattern in the audience engagement with your work. The more the work is personal, the more you get feedback and intrigue from an audience especially at film festivals where the audience doesn’t have a lot of expectations cause they don’t know you like they know a name director with theatrical releases. The feedback becomes real and personal. That’s what I love about screening your film to an audience at a film festival. The first screening of a film is always the most exciting and also the one that makes you feel an enormous anxiety. You don’t know what to expect. You haven’t shared the film

with strangers. You’ve been working on it for a long while. You’ve lost your perspective and the freshness of the story. You don’t have that distance to evaluate. The audience response and points of engagement gives you perspective. You start appreciating again certain things you’ve done, and start noticing what people relate to. Sometimes you’d be sitting in the theater and then the audience laughs at something and your’e wondering “oh wow! They found that funny! They get it!” And at other points you have someone gasp in surprise of something that you have forgotten completely that it was going to make that effect cause you know of it. But the audience doesn’t. For the audience, it’s a discovery. For the filmmaker, it’s a rediscovery. You rediscover your work through the audience and the audience discovers you through your work. It’s what we live for as filmmakers. It's important to remark that you also founded in New York City, an incubator for the development of filmmakers from the Middle East and Africa, so before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on

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Women Cinemakers ? Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? The times are changing and the focus is changing too. I think now more than ever women are gaining their place in the entertainment business. What gives me this confidence is the solidarity between women creators. You see now more projects with women in key creative positions and it is becoming a conscious decision by many. It will only get better once we see more and more successful results. However, here I am talking independent film production. I haven’t yet seen much of that movement infiltrating the Hollywood machine and that’s obvious in the underrepresentation in major blockbuster productions. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Darine. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. I am currently developing my debut feature film project Like Salt and in the process of finding a producer and putting the financing in place. I am hoping that mid 2020 we will be ready to shoot. I am taking my career one step at a time. Now focusing on making my debut feature. I honestly don’t make plans as I like to be surprised by the next idea that’s going to hijack my mind and make me devote my time fully to it. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Anjini Taneja Azhar Lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA

see the dark world of . An inner struggle with only two ways out. I wrote film for a school project. I wrote it before I had even graduated high school.

. This is the way we to be a small-scale short

is a story about a young girl who lives, submerged in her dark world of an eating disorder. It is meant to be a journey, an exploration, of Ellieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s battle. I wanted to create a world that caused unease and worry with dark colours and slow, twisted camera movement. A world that would then relax the unease it had caused in the audience when a brighttoned resolution eased into the story. I wanted to create a story where unease was cured with hope. I wanted this to be a new way to bring forth awareness. At sixteen years old, I directed, produced, and wrote . It grew to be a large-scale short film, shot professionally with a crew of starving artists and a RED. Since then it had been officially selected for film festivals across the country such as the SOHO International film festival in New York City and won awards such as the Award of Merit (Best Shorts) at the IndieFest Film Awards in California. I am passionate that with everywhere

travels, it brings hope and awareness.

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

Ambitiously constructed and marked out with gorgeous cinematography, THIRD OPTION is a captivating work written and directed by actress and filmmaker Anjini Taneja Azhar: when walking the viewers through the epiphanic story of a young girl struggling to achieve perfection, her film provides the viewers with a moving

and emotionally charged visual experience, to explore the idea of vulnerability and unexpected turns in life. Featuring sapient narrative, THIRD OPTION, involves the viewers through mesmerizing narration: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Azhar's captivating and multifaceted artistic production. : Hello Anjini and welcome to before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would ask you some questions about

your background. You have a solid formal background as an actress and you have been acting for seven years, supporting in films such as, Star Trek Into Darkness and televisions shows such as, NBC's The New Normal and the HBO series, The Brink: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, what did direct you to start a career as a filmmaker? As a young girl, I was always fascinated with writing and storytelling, however the thought of creating cinema hadn’t crossed my mind- not even the slightest bit. I was always in love with films and stories, but I never connected the two. I always filled my spare time with writing and the exploration of storytelling; I wrote short stories, attempted scripts for fun, wrote storybooks, and more. I entered the mysterious world of Hollywood with curiosity; I wanted to understand the art of acting and the truth behind the stories we see on the big screen. Of course, as an eleven yearold at the time, it was also a way to meet new people and have fun. It wasn’t until Star Trek when I truly began to understand all the moving parts and little gears that go into the making of a film. I was privileged enough to work with JJ Abrams, and not only did I gain experience that was priceless, but I was inspired to create. Watching Abrams direct was indescribable, and for a lack of better word, one of the most inspiring moments of my life. One of my greatest fascinations has always been the way the human mind works, and watching JJ Abrams direct was fuel to this fire. To watch someone articulate the illustrations of their own mind and bring it to life so immaculately was when I finally thought, “ ”

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Women Cinemakers However, watching Abrams was one of many pieces of the puzzle that is my original motivation for becoming a filmmaker. On the set of Star Trek, The Brink, and The New Normal, I found this excitement on set that was directly tied to working in a team. Everyone is an artist in their own field, and bringing each and every artist together as a team creates one beautiful piece that includes so many different elements: lights, set design, sound, editing, acting, and more. I would always take a couple moments of my day to talk to gaffers or grips, or even sound operators to ask about their art. When working on such professional sets like Star Trek, NBC shows, The Brink, and more, I took to this environment quickly, and havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been able to tear myself away from it since. As I moved from set to set, director to director, and genre to genre, I fell in love with filmmaking. I fell in love with the life cycle of a story: from the mind, to paper, to camera, and then to the audience. I loved working with the camera to create visuals and using color, dialogue, framing, and more to create feeling for the audience. Moreso, I began to fall in love with telling stories that matter. Needless to say, after dipping my toes in the pool of filmmaking, I fell in love. I knew I wanted to be a director, and I had never found a passion that felt more solid. Throughout the years, working with directors such as JJ Abrams, Ryan Murphy, James Ponsoldt, and more, has taught me to appreciate the individual style of each filmmaker. Seeing their work on set and seeing how they communicate their vision to their cast and crew is another thing I became very interested in. My motivation to begin directing really truly came from fascination and curiosity to explore storytellers and storytelling. Curiosity has taken me through all these experiences and led me to those that come next. My background in acting has allowed me to feed into this curiosity and fall in love with the world of

Women Cinemakers film, piecing together my childhood passions that I never connected beforehand. For this special edition of we have selected , a captivating film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your clear approach to 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? was intended to be an open door for audiences to take a look into the life of Ellie, our main character. Ellie is the girl you see walking down the street after school, out with a group of friends, or even at the mall. She’s the girl in the corner of your eye that is just a normal person you think nothing of. As we follow Ellie’s terrifying journey, sends a message to our audience(s) that the girls and boys, men and women, you may see in the corner of your eye, or even friends/ family who seem perfectly okay may be struggling. It’s an important story to tell because there is no third option when it comes to eating disorders; A person may become fatally ill, or they may get better. Additionally, the story came from an authentic place. My partner in developing the story, Sophie, was open about battling an eating disorder herself. Hearing experiences from an organic source and hearing the healing process, ups, downs, and more inspired me to tell this story. Actually, I wouldn’t say is the type of film I see myself making for the rest of my career. Something with such a power message that requires a darker, more

contrasted psychological take on visuals. That’s something that is way beyond my comfort zone. I figured for my first film I wanted to challenge myself, almost to prove to myself that this was the right avenue for me. With the subject of the film, there was no getting it wrong, otherwise it would hurt others rather than help. It was ‘nail it the first time around or don’t release it.’ Although I was nervous about tackling such an important

and sensitive issue, made me realize my appreciation of films centered around the nature of human beings. This realization occurred throughout the shoot, and I used it to add layers to both characters and story. For example, Ellie’s mother was an accidental contributor to Ellie’s

insecurities, and Ellie herself packed away the outside sources that caused her insecurities in a box in her room; the things that made her feel so far from everyone else were kept so close to her. Playing on the idea of “options,” the rewind idea kicked in. Option one in the film was Ellie’s death. There was only one

other option, and the rewind in the film showed an alternate ending (recovery), the you could say, since there is third option. It’s similar to the idea of watching a ‘choose your own adventure’ scene play out, in a very real, significant sense. Brilliantly shot, features brilliant camera work marked out with sapient cinematography

by Noah Martin and a keen eye for details: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? My cinematographer, Noah Martin, is a creative marvel. The film needed cool tones, bold contrasts, and camera movements that made Ellie appear small when she was at her lowest, and appear large during intense moments,

Women Cinemakers biggest guidance for the audience as they journeyed through this story. Getting extreme close ups on facial expressions and getting wide angles on scenes that lead up to climatic moments were intended to let the story speak for itself rather than dialogue. It was also essential to get inserts of moments to cause frantic chaos or overwhelming concern. For example, between slower moments of the story where the rising action unfolded, we put in inserts that had a quicker tempo. Our inserts also told stories on their own. When Ellie’s mother plays with her wedding ring, taps her foot, or fights with Ellie’s father through the viewpoint of Ellie herself, inserts were used to give quick stories. They acted as inserts of information to give the foundation and reason to Ellie’s world. However, before even getting on set, Noah and I sat together and went through different aesthetics for the film by looking through multiple lookbooks that he created. We looked at shot styles, ideas for movement, colours, tones, use of space and negative space, and how those would all tie together to enhance the story.

signifying her internal journey. Noah was able to team up with me and capture it all. We filmed on a RED

With its brilliantly structured storytelling imparts unparalleled psychological intensity to the narration, to unveil an ever shifting internal struggle. We have particularly appreciated the way you structured the dialogues of your film: would you tell how did you develop and of your film in order to achieve such powerful results?

Scarlet X and treated our lens’ as the eyes and mind of Ellie. Because

was heavy on visuals and less on

quantity of dialogue, the cinematography was the

An eating disorder is an internal struggle with oneself, often triggered or fueled by outside sources. Therefore, our trick with dialogue was ‘less is more.’ We wanted to rather than what Ellie was going through in this film.

is a visual journey through Ellie’s world. The dialogue was an external way to show Ellie in the world. When developing the script, the first thing I did with my script development partner was plan the purpose of the film. What was the message we wanted to push to our audience? What was our purpose? These were essential questions that we asked ourselves throughout development process. They were also questions we hoped the audience could identify while watching the film. After the purpose, we built the universe. I heard the term ‘universe’ used in an article about screenwriting a couple years ago and have fallen in love with it ever since. This is where you construct the entire world (or universe) of the film: who the characters are, what they do for a living, their own purpose, their past, present, and future, geography, and more. Although more than half of the universe we created was not shown on screen, it was extremely helpful when giving characters dialogue and writing the actual screenplay, scene-by-scene. The universe is one of my favourite parts of writing for film (or for anything, really). I spent extensive hours on detailing the universe of . Following the universe came the moving parts of the story: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and more. We began stitching the script together scene-by-scene, draft by draft. It took multiple revisions to get the dialogue and details just right so that they flowed naturally. We have deeply appreciated your approach to narrative and the way you have balanced analytical research of your characters and the emotional aspect of the storytelling, in

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers order to capture : what was your preparation with actors in terms of ? In particular, do you like or do you prefer to every details of your shooting process? If there is one thing I have learned since the day I began acting, it is that authenticity is priceless, no matter how dramatic or ‘cinematic’ the feel of the film may be. Because of this, I like to create a final balance behind rehearsed and ‘real’ on set. That being said, I do not like to over-rehearse my actors. I believe in running through dialogue and getting blocking down about where smoothly. This way my actors don’t have to they have to move or what they have to say- it can flow naturally. Before directing at all, I always love letting the actors play the scene out during our first take the way they interpret it. Sometimes I find it valuable to have some fun on set and ask the actors to change the scene in any way they feel would be more appropriate, natural, or even compelling. I am always the camera by confident my actors are capable to work bringing their own taste to set rather than working the camera. When it comes to the nitty gritty details, I do like to have the should meticulously scheduled. While playing writer and director of , I was also the producer, so I became familiar with the crazy world and stress of planning a shoot. I always prefer having a clear structure schedule, even during the creative process, but with enough room to be flexible and ready for change.

watching

gives to the viewers the sense they are : would you tell how did

Women Cinemakers you develop the structure of your film in order to achieve such moving autenticity? Moreover, how does fuel your creative process to address your choices regarding the stories that you tell in your films? One of the main ideas behind is that anyone can suffer from an eating disorder, even if they may not “look like it” to you at first glance. In this way, everyday experiences in life are essential to the world of an eating disorder, because everyday life is exactly what’s affected. I wanted to show the most simple experiences in life, such as going out with friends or wearing makeup, and how they are affected by an eating disorder. Behaviour changes, the purpose behind these experiences change. Everything changes. Every ‘normal everyday’ experience is all of a sudden different. Featuring kinetic, rhythmic editing exploits the widescreen format's capability, to link characters visually within the frame and creating a complex mise en scène where everyshot vibrates with an intensity of colors and feelings: hat are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship? With the intensity of colours and camera movement, and twisted shots in the film including jump cuts during climatic can create unease and a wash moments, I hope of reality when it comes to eating disorders. As someone who hadn’t been as aware as I probably should have been prior to developing this story, I began to feel uneasy when learning about eating disorders. When realizing the behind them, I began to learn the complications involved. It’s not as simple as ‘feel better about yourself.’ It’s an inner struggle with

oneself that can often get worse before it can get better. I hope the way the film was shot compliments the feelings of its spectatorship; I hope the audience feels uneasy when the camera takes them through a difficult moment, and hopeful when the camera slows its movements and tones become lighter as the resolution comes forth. The intentions behind colours, framing, and camera movement, were for the camera to act not as a camera, but as a pair of eyes for the audience. The audience should feel as if they are looking through a window into Ellie’s world, getting an idea of what she feels and sees.

I hope can open peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes to the true and terrifying horrors of eating disorders that regular people struggle with everyday. I hope it can help people understand recovery is truly the only option, and everyone needs support.

behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on ? Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today?

We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a from getting century women have been

Cinema is a minefield for women. Why? I cannot say as I still do not understand. I have always been warned by teachers, mentors, many experienced filmmakers, both men and women, about the difficulties of the world of film as a female director. Nonetheless, I (one-hundred percent)

believe that it is harder for women artists to have their projects green-lit, and even harder to be given their respective credibility once theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve passed the point of a pitch. It saddens me to walk into a field where it is a significant milestone for a woman filmmaker to be nominated for a prestigious award or selected an accredited festival simply because there are so few women that have reached that point in the past. I will say, however, that we are currently living in a time where change is most certainly upon us. Women are coming together to create change and opportunities in cinema. I

have seen such talented women in film surpassing so many obstacles, inspiring myself and many others. These days women in film are proving that we cannot be taken be discouraged advantage of, we are capable, we from getting behind the camera, and that we are as talented with as much to offer as our male peers in the business. Women continue to push forward to fight for equality within cinema and everything beyond it. As they do so, some people will begin to feel uncomfortable. Change can often create that feeling. It is time to become comfortable with

Women Cinemakers monumental time for change. Cinema is art, and art is a language. I hope we treat it as such as time goes on. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Anjini. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you so much for allowing me to share my art and my processes! I am honored to be apart of such a beautiful publication. My biggest hope for the future is to work. I have just recently wrapped my second short film titled . It is a story about a mother and son, and their relationship as they battle the aftermath of a lost will begin shipping off for festival loved one. submission(s) beginning October.

being uncomfortable, because no great change has occurred by staying in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s comfort zone. The future of women in film is filled with struggle, rejection, and an uphill battle, however it is also filled with promise as both men and women are join the same team and advocate for change. The future of women in cinema, in my eyes, is certain. No matter how far in the future, women will be breaking boundaries in film with courage; Whether it be five years, ten years, or fifty years, we will be here. We will continue to stand up for our credibility and equality. I feel lucky to be entering the world of film in such a

Additionally, I hope to collaborate with as many people as possible and continue learning. With every experience on set directing, I learn something new about my craft and who I am. I hope to create pieces about humans: stories that help us understand who we are and why we are. Stories that inspire, sadden, and revelate. I want to create stories about humans and make films that help us discover and explore humanity- the beauty and ugliness, and everything in between. As I move to the city of Los Angeles I am thrilled to dive in head-first and begin collaborating with other filmmakers who wish to tell similar stories. All of my work and my journey as I explore the world of filmmaking and art can be found on my website that will be live on August 14th 2018: anjiniazharfilms.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Wessam Hachicho Lives and works in _________________________________

A couple Maria, and Jostein move to the countryside after Maria becomes blind because of an accident. They meet their new neighbor William who becomes obsessively in love with Maria. He starts to sneak around their house to be close to her. One day when he was creeping around her she felt someone in the room, William runaway to meet her husband outside of the house. Things escalate between the two men, and ends up with William killing Jostein. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Den Som Serâ&#x20AC;? is a short film produced by Westerdals Oslo ACT 2017. Written by Anders Borgersen, directed by Wessam G. Hachicho, producer: Silje Kristine Bringsli, photographer: SigbjĂ¸rn Rustand Lien, and editer: Robers Jota. Sound Designer: Liana Degtiar.

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

Captivating and refined in its balanced and effective storytelling, Den Som Ser is a stimulating a psychological thriller by Oslo based Syrian director Wessam Hachicho: featuring brilliant cinematography and keen eye for the details, this captivating film offers an

emotionally charged experience, to explore the themes of loneliness and obsessive personality: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Hachicho's captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Wessam and welcome to : to start this interview we would like to ask you some question

about your background. You have a solid formal training and you studied Film Direction at Westerdals Oslo ACT: how did this experience influence your evolution as a director? Moreover, how does the relationship between your Syrian roots and your current life in Norway direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Back home my desire was to study film, but I did not manage to do it because of different circumstances. When I got the chance to study film in Norway, the school was a space for me to think only about filmmaking, that made me learn more about myself, and what films I want to make. In addition to that, the school gave me the professional training to have control of filmmaking tools and visualizing ideas. As a Syrian woman who lives in Norway, I believe that moving to a new country with a different cultural, and social structure put me in a constant state of comparison between the two places, the differences, and similarities, that provoked me to think deeper into details as an attempt to understand the effect of the where on the why and what. I think this experience gave me a new perspective on life in general, and film in particular. For this special edition of have selected

we , a captivating

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers psychological thriller 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 sapient narrative is the way it provides the viewers with such an intense visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of Den Som Ser, could you tell us what did attract you to this particular story? Den Som Ser is written by the talented and promising scriptwriter Anders Borgersen, who is also a student at Westerdals Oslo ACT. What attracted me to this specific story is the raw feeling it has, the simplicity in the happening and the complexity of the human psychology. How to cover an aspect of the human behavior through only three characters throughout the film. And it is a plus for me that the film does not have a long dialogue which gives me more freedom and fits my visual style in storytelling. features stunning Elegantly shot, cinematography by SigbjĂ¸rn Rustand Lien and from a visual point, we have been fascinated with your clear and effective approach to narrative: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

First, thanks for the encouraging words. As I mentioned before, I have a visual style and that makes the cinematography a very crucial tool for the storytelling. Most of the preproduction time was spent on the visual aspect of the film. With the help of the talented and open-minded cinematographer SigbjĂ¸rn Rustand, we managed to achieve this, which was the result of long hours of analyzing, breaking down the script and camera rehearsals (without actors) to be able to decide every picture in the film including the

position, movement of the camera, and lenses in order to get the desired feel of each picture in the film. All that preparation work with SigbjĂ¸rn led to me not worrying about the camera work on set. We like the way you created entire scenarios out of psychologically charged moments, and we really appreciated your insightful inquiry into the themes of loneliness and obsessive personality: in this film you leave the floor to your characters, finding effective ways to

create a channel of communication with the viewers' emotional sphere. What are you hoping will trigger in the audience? The psychological aspect in us is a very vast and complicated subject. I think it's interesting and exciting to play around it in film and to see how people react differently to the actions of the characters. In this particular story, I wanted to create a confusion of feelings towards the

characters through out the story. For example, William's character played by Asbjørn Røen Halsten, even though he committed a crime I wanted the viewers to empathize with him and justifying his actions. On the other hand the husband’s character Jostein played by Gorm Alexander Foss Grømer, I wanted the viewer to not have as much empathy towards him even if his character was more within the normal psychological spectrum. And Maria's character played by Maria Mørkrid which is the most

problematic character in my opinion because of the mystery she creates; Is she aware of what is happening around her, or is she oblivious, and innocent. Let's say, in this film I wanted to leave the floor to the viewers, finding the way to create personal channels with the characters. Your approach to the research of the characters seems to be very analytical, yet your film strives to be full of emotion: what was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticulously schedule every details of your shooting process? My approach to work on characters with these talented actors in this film was by focusing more on analyzing the characters; their motives, their state of mind, and the backstory of each character which lead in the end to their actions. I used this technique during the rehearsals, more than focusing on the reading, this was my way of getting the actors to fully understand the characters by including them early in the creation process. After this kind of rehearsals in the preproduction phase, my answer is yes I like spontaneity and leaving the freedom for the actors on set. That doesn't mean not giving some tips about some details during the shooting process.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

Featuring brilliant storytelling, Den Som Ser 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? I think that I was lucky to have the chance to work on the script with the writer Anders Borgersen from an early stage in the process since the very first draft of the script was shorter which gave me the freedom and the flexibility to build up story, adding some details in order to help to enhance the characters, and defining the structure of the film. As a female director, I think it was an interesting experience to work with a male writer, it helps to balance the story and makes it feel more accurate by having both male and female perspectives telling the story. Let us not forget the important role of the editing process in shaping the final structure of the film thanks to the great personality and patient editor Robert Jota. I believe that fiding the structure of a film is contunuoes in the creation process ends only with the final cut. We daresay that the struggle between the animal could be within the rational side considered an effective allegory of human

experience: how does your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process to address your choices regarding the stories you tell in your films? As much as there is beauty in life, the pain is attended too. I use film as a shelter, by putting good and bad life experiences in a fictional frame trying to have distance from reality and look at it as an outsider. That gives me the chance to analyze my personal life events with a clearer mind, this helps me a lot to figure out my choices regarding what stories I want to tell. Filmmaking for me is a lifelong therapy helps me to understand life. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? think it is just about time to hear the story from the point of view of the other half of the population inhabits this planet. Since cinema is an accessible form of art for almost everyone, I believe that it plays a big

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers role in shaping the cultural future of humanity and having both perspectives equally (men, and women) to look at things is healthier for shaping this future. In the meanwhile, women should have more space and support to be able to tell stories... Maybe, maybe that will bring some change. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Wessam. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you for your time and effort. About my future project is still in the writing phase. I'm writing a story that has a lot of my personal experience in Norway, the struggle of understanding what happened back home. The story itself is not about me as Wessam, but the character shares some of my experience. Evolving, in my opinion, is a nonstop process, as long as life continuous we evolve and our work evolves with us to reflect our thoughts. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Aleksandra Niemczyk Lives and works in Oslo/London

Memories of the life and visions of the Balkan prophet Baba Vanga, who predicted the future of human kind and the world up to its end in the year 5079. Baba Vanga, as an older woman, tells how she lost her sight but “began to see”. Following an accident, ghosts of dead people came to her to reveal what would happen to the world. Some of her predictions actually happened, some didn’t, and for many predictions time will show. Aleksandra Niemczyk (b. 1977, Poland) is a former student of Béla Tarr, as part of the first generation of MA students graduating from his ‘film.factory’ program in Sarajevo Film Academy. She also holds a Master of Art degree in Fine Arts from the European Academy of Art in Warsaw (2001). Niemczyk began studying film directing at the New York Film School in 2007. Since 2001, she lives and creates in Oslo, Norway. One of her first short films made in Norway was selected and awarded in Locarno Film Festival 2009. Niemczyk’s roots in the fine arts manifest through the visual storytelling that drives her narratives. Niemczyk investigates memories, dreams, and paranormal characters or events, using a dream logic and poetic approach to the realization of her own distinct cinema. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Hello Aleksandra and welcome to Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we

would like to invite our readers to visit in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background: you are a multidisciplinary artist and after having earned your Master of Art

degree in Fine Arts from the European Academy of Art in Warsaw, you began studying film directing at the New York Film School in 2007. You later nurtured your education with an MA under the mentorship of Bela Tarr at his ‘film.factory’ program in Sarajevo Film Academy: how did these experiences influence your evolution as a filmmaker and as a creative, in general? Moreover, how does your direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Starting out in Fine Arts gave me an opportunity to develop my visual language so that when I came to film I’d already developed aesthetic preferences and principles, as well as practical skills to create my film universe in the context of art direction. My constitution as an artist and filmmaker comes also from my experiences and projects, moving my research, practice and life from Warsaw to Oslo, and then to New York, Sarajevo, Tokyo, and London. So my is framed in global and local contexts, and manifests differently in each location where I happen to live and work. If I were to highlight only one manifestation of my cultural and educational substratum, I think it would be a tendency towards almost non-verbal narrative that is characteristic to my films. I observe, become inspired, and create situations and scenes with images and sounds that carry the meaning more strongly than language.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

For this special edition of we have selected , a captivating feature film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and whose trailer can be viewed at . What has at once impressed us with your brilliant storytelling is the way it sapiently engages the viewers with a heightened and clichĂŠ free visual experience. When walking our readers through the genesis of , could you tell us what did attract you to this particular story? I am fascinated by characters and events that are mysterious and unexplained, so I bring those elements into each film as an undertone of a more realistic plot or as a subject in itself. When I moved to Sarajevo, I began researching mysterious stories from the Balkans and came across the testimonies of Baba Vanga, and her visions about the future and the end of the world. I was fascinated by the phenomenon of a person convinced about hearing messages from the dead strongly enough to decide to preach about them as predictions, gaining local fame and a wide range of believers. But immediately I knew that I was not interested in a conventional documentary biopic or sensational exploitation, repeating what has already been published in the press and on the internet. I was

interested in her as a person, as a lonely and tormented woman carrying this gift or curse. So I imagined her, instead of re-creating what is already conventionally known about her life. Elegantly shot, features stunning cinematography by Lukasz Zamaro: what were when shooting? In your particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

Lukasz is an extremely talented cinematographer with an amazing sensitivity for light, colour, and composition. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made projects together before, so we have an understanding about aesthetics and the atmosphere we are creating. Early in the process we made a small manifesto, a simple concept for shooting. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the optimal camera we wished for so everything else - light, scenography, choreography, colour - had to be thought through and well prepared, so the image

would be refined, regardless the available equipment. We decided to work with tableaux and a very contemplative camera, mostly static with exception where very delicate and sensitive movement of the camera would bring an emotional value into the scene. That created a strong and unified rhythm of the film. We were using mostly natural light, blocked if needed, which complemented the shadows in a very

organic way. The scenography was consequently controlled to get a saturated feel for each scene. As for lenses, we worked with three basic Panavision vintage lenses that gave a softness to the image. With its brilliantly structured storytelling imparts unparalleled to the narration. We have particularly appreciated the way your film

gives to the viewers the sense they are watching : would you tell how did you develop the structure of your film in order to achieve such ? Moreover, how does fuel your creative process to address your choices regarding the stories that you tell in your films? I am glad it came across as I intended. As I said, in this film I was interested in my character from a personal and intimate angle, not what was “newsworthy”. So I had to imagine that personal space and make it feel real. Rather than forcing a story in a linear sense with cause and effect and all the rules of a conventional script, I wanted to create an environment where I could give a chance to myself and the audience to spend time with my character, without rushing her to perform some story. So the structure came very intuitively with the choice to silently observe and be in her moment rather than to impose an action. Since I live and work for long periods in different places I often refer to local legends, stories, characters as a subject of my projects. But even if I make a film based on a distant memory or a dream, the local “every day” shapes my process, bringing physicality and tactility to my initial thoughts. Reflecting the tradition of Slow Cinema, features sapient use of long takes and a

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers keen eye for details, to create entire scenarios out of : would you tell us something about how your film reflects the influences of your experience at Bela Tarr's program in Sarajevo? My early film fascinations includes Theodoros Angelopoulos, Alexander Sokurov, Marguerite Duras, Chantal Akerman and of course Bela Tarr. During my study in Film.Factory I was impressed, among others, with workshops by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lav Diaz, and Pedro Costa, so contemplative cinema touches me deeply and that is reflected in my choices as I create my own films. Film.Factory was an amazing film lab letting us work with the most exciting minds of contemporary art film and develop our films under the personal mentorship of Bela Tarr. At times it was a struggle between taking advice from a mentor I admire versus defending my own vision. But in the end, they were my films, so we didn’t always agree, but we didn’t have to. Even if he had a strong opinion about the filming process, he always embraced my sensitivity and encouraged me to stay honest and personal. Above all the Film.Factory was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend two years making films, friendships, “magic” with a group of talented young filmmakers from all over the world. We are still connected through

our collective, Bistrik 7, supporting each other and collaborating on projects. http://www.bistrikseven.com/ leaps off the screen for its compelling narrative drive and especially the way you balanced the colours in order to provide its with such a powerful evocative quality: how does your work as a painter influence your choice of palette for your films? It is very important in my work to think about each frame as a separate image. In my paintings I work with a rich surface structure and I am a colourist painter. This instinct and experience translates into the art direction of my films in terms of the choices I make but also in actually physically building and dressing the sets. I create palettes of colours that complement each other for contemplative scenes, and break it up with a violent contrast of colour when the emotion of the scene requires. For example there is one scene in BABA VANGA anticipating a shift and looming tragedy that ends with a wide bright red square, covering the whole frame. That is one of the scenes closest to my abstract colour field paintings. is also marked out with subtle allegoric qualities capable of drawing the viewers into a multilayered visual experience: how important are metaphors in your practice? In

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers particular, what are you hoping will trigger in the audience? I have always been interested in dreams, in the logic of the dream world, the poetry of it and dream’s metaphorical qualities. Dreams let us all meet in between the reality and fiction. I don’t over explain or over inform my audience, but leave space for them to read into the meaning, so that my works are closer to visual poetry that the audience can perceive through their senses and feelings rather than rational understanding. I hope viewers will find, through my film, an open window to wander in an emotional space that recalls a dream. In your film you leave the floor to your characters, finding an effective way to walk them to develop with the viewers: what was your preparation with actors in terms of ? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticulously schedule every details of your shooting process? I was very lucky to have a ‘directing actors’ workshop with Juliette Binoche just before I started to work with my actress. So I used some amazing advice she gave, for example to make sure that an actress comes to the set already in character, instead of only to execute the scripted scenes. The preparations

were crucial because I worked with a non-actress without any acting experience. We took a few weeks, meeting every day on location as though it was her house. She even helped with building sets. So when the crew came for the actual shoot, she felt as if they were visiting her in her space. That gave her comfort and the confidence to be natural instead of acting or pretending. She brought her amazing physicality to my scripted character and her pulse made Baba Vanga very real. The period of â&#x20AC;&#x153;rehearsalsâ&#x20AC;? was more about experimenting and finding the choreography and rhythm, but once we were on set, it had to be more scripted and planned due of the pragmatic needs of a film production set-up. has drawn heavily from and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such powerful between the intimate qualities of ordinary locations and the atmosphere that floats around the story: how did you select the locations and how did they influence your shooting process? I look for spaces that have a story already within, one that echoes the story I am about to film. The other criteria is that a place should have a timeless feel to it, that situates my films in a non-specific time period.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers The choice of location will influence and frame the look of the film, but the shooting process is often influenced due to the limitations of given place, like natural light, dimensions, and such. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in several occasion: you short films and debut feature film have been selected for film festivals around the world including Locarno, New Horizons, IndieLisboa, and Sarajevo, and in particular, was selected to the 53th edition of Pesaro Film Festival: how important is for you that you receive in the festival circuit? And how do you feel previewing a film before an audience? Showing a film to the audience is part of the process of granting it an existence. Dialogue with the viewer gives me a lot of insight of what my work consciously or unconsciously communicates and triggers in people. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sometimes surprising and always priceless. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extremely rewarding to share something personal with strangers through the language of cinema. We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been

from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing: as a filmmaker involved in , what's your view on ? Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? There is a very positive wave of confidence between women filmmakers at the moment to keep creating their dream projects with conviction and strength. As in other professions, for example medicine or science, the previous inequality of numbers has begun to balance itself with more women taking education and proving through their career to show no difference in quality of performance. I am sure that’s also the future of “women in cinema”. However, in the mainstream industry at the moment it’s still not the case, with less financial support granted to projects generated by women. The promises of parity and equality from film funders and institutes and film festivals in many (luckily not all) cases are often politically correct and empty declarations without adequate actions and actionable support for women. Therefore lots of female filmmakers end up in independent cinema, where drive and passion can be more powerful than money. But yes, I think it’s still harder to get finances and a green light in place for projects developed by women.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Aleksandra. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? At the moment I am getting ready to shoot an experimental film “The Siren’s Scream” in France, through an artist residency at Bandits-Mages supported by EMARE, a European Union artsupporting platform and network. I’m parallelly developing and researching a feature film, “Lady Luck,” based on a true story and a strong female character. I suppose my work keeps evolving through themes connected to stories about women, their mysteries and secrets. In terms of the style of my cinema, I would like to keep developing and experimenting with visual storytelling dominating over verbal narration. But it’s hard to say for sure what the outcome will be, because above all I am open to experiment, and that can take my expression in unexpected directions. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Pamela Velazquez Living situations are bleak for children forced to do the dirty work of thugs, but slavery doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t keep Luciaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spirits from being lower than the basement she is living in. Her only connection to the outside world, a sympathetic Leo, realizes the only way he can be with his new friend is from within. Their future hides in the shadows.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier

order to get a wide idea about your artistic

and Dora S. Tennant

production. In the meanwhile, we would ask you a

womencinemaker@berlin.com

couple of question about your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly direct

Captivating and refined in its balanced and effective storytelling, At half light is a stimulating film by Pamela Velazquez: featuring brilliant cinematography and keen eye for the details, this moving work offers an emotionally charged inquiry into the theme of children exploitation: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Velazquez's captivating and multifaceted artistic production.

your trajectory as a filmmaker?

Hello Pamela and welcome to WomenCinemakers: to start this interview we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.pamelavelazquez.com in

poetry, painting and writing lover. Then, one day, I do

Hello, thanks for having me, it is a great honor to be here. Honestly until a few years ago, I had no idea what to do with my life. My problem is that I like so many things, haha! I have always been a music, stories, not know how or why, I realized that being a film director was a job and here I am.

Sometimes that's what happens in life, right? One day you get up and the universe gives you the gift of discovering your passion. I had always been alien to the world of cinema. Nobody in my family is dedicated to something related to what I do, and for my parents (although they support me blindly) this is not exactly a job, haha; that is why discovering cinema in this way was a wonderful gift that brought me great satisfactions and happiness. Could you tell us your biggest influences and how did they affect your work? I think the most important influence I have is reality itself. Every day I read the news, I talk to different people, I travel a lot and there are topics that interest me and motivate me so much that I want to talk about all of it. When it comes to creating my stories, reality is my greatest, most beautiful and most cruel source of inspiration. For this special edition of we have selected At Half Light, a surrealist drama film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and whose trailer can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your sapient narrative is the way it provides the viewers with such an intense visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of At Half lLight, could you tell us what did attract you to this

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers particular story? For me, the cinema is a very powerful communication tool that has the power to touch not only the intellect of the people, but their hearts and produce a whole series of emotions. My works mainly expose social problems. I do believe that making movies is something deeper than just entertainment. This particular story attracted me because as a social service, I gave classes to children of scarce resources and precarious conditions, which made me realize (although it is something that we all know exists but we do not pay attention to) that they are in vulnerable conditions, so vulnerable in fact, that anyone can do with them whatever they want without the authorities or anyone doing something to help. Finally, what triggered my interest in doing "At Half Light" was that in 2016, during a trip to Barcelona, we passed by a very big hotel and a friend told me that there were children and women held captive in that place, living in horrible conditions and that they were forced to prostitute themselves and sell drugs. I asked her "How do you know?", and she answered "everyone knows". By hearing those words I realized that I had to do something about it. In fact, that conversation is placed within the dialogues of our short film. Child exploitation is a recurring issue in all countries around the world and this work is my contribution to encourage reflection and actions to eradicate this problem. We are working to finance â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Media Luz" (At Half Light) into a feature film so that its message can reach more people. It is amazing to see how people make questions and show great

interest about this subject every time I present this short film, regardless of the country or the culture of the audience. The idea was to make a love story in a bad environment between Lucia, a girl that has a kind heart despite being abused, and Leo, the guy who is indifferent until he has the courage to do something. I firmly believe that love is always there as a solution. Nothing and nobody can take it from you. Life does not give us the power to decide what situations we want to live, but always, we have the power to decide how we want to face them.

Elegantly shot, At Half Light features stunning cinematography by Rhett Cutrell and a keen eye for details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? Rhett Cutrell is a young director of photography, extremely talented, creative and has great artistic sensitivity. He understands my vision and is truly involved with the story, something that is extremely important in any film. Rhett understands what I am looking for in each story, but at the same time, crafts his

shots to suite their own purpose. The relationship with the DOP is vital. Sometimes, as a director, you want things that are "impossible", that do not work or that simply can not be done. Especially when you have a reduced budget, like in this case. So, one of the most important decisions that must be made before anything else is to leave egos behind and allow each person to use their talents following the director's vision. I told him what I was looking for with each character and with each scene, what emotion I wanted to reflect and he, with his knowledge, proposed his ideas to me.

Most of the times, Rhett decided to use larger focal lengths on the lenses and move the camera further from the action than you might traditionally expect. This was due to the fact that we had very large and beautiful locations, so this was a great option to show the characters moving through their environments. Shooting in 6K resolution on a Red Digital Cinema system, we also decided to use the slow motion features because my story was sort of a dream. Like when you are in such a bad situation that you think it may not be happening to you. But at the same time,

like when you are in a dream where you are in love and you have the illusion of achieving something. We also used the dolly a lot because we wanted soft shots with movement but always with a stable frame. We like the way you created entire scenarios out of psychologically charged moments: in this film you leave the floor to your characters, finding effective ways to create a channel of communication between their epiphanic journey and the viewers' emotional sphere. What are you hoping At Half Light will trigger in the audience? I want the audience to feel as if they were there, to feel like one of the children... to observe without being able to do anything. I want to transmit to the audience the feeling of helplessness of our characters at the end of the short film and hence they can understand that the cycle is never ending, but also I want the viewers to feel the love that exists. In the end, there is hope even in the most frightening conditions. Lucia dies at the end because this is the way it happens with these children on many occasions, but she fulfills her goal of being free again and of being back in the light. Both are a metaphors of reality; Lucia of the victims and Leo of the people who try to do something but, because of corruption, are not able to do something. In the end, it is a great pain for both sides. I want the audience to feel the anguish expressed by our characters so that they are aware of this issue.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

As I said at the beginning, I really love music and, for me, it is always vital. Much of the creation of this atmosphere is thanks to the music created by the young composer Aldo Teomitzi that gives it "flavor", as we say in Mexico. Your approach to the research of the characters seems to be very analytical, yet your film strives to be full of emotion: what was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticulously schedule every details of your shooting process? This film was the first time that all the actors performed in front of a camera. I almost chose all of them after an audition and, from that point, we only had two weeks of acting preparation in which we developed each character. This is due to the fact that I like to work with non actors because the former are more spontaneous. This has pros and cons, but I think everyone did a great job taking into account that it was their first time acting, haha. I was a bit afraid, especially with the main characters, Tania CastaĂąeda (Lucia) and Rafael Urista (Leo) but in the end, their commitment and dedication, as well as that of the whole cast, gave us great results. I encourage my actors to participate in the process so they also become creators. I give them the freedom to tell me their ideas, if these ideas contribute to improving the story ahead, we embrace them. If they do not contribute with the vision, they are left aside.

There were 10 days of filming, there were many days when some actors did not have to film but even so, everyone would be there, on the set. It was important for me that they felt and identified the hideout location as another character, like their environment and that they could interact with it. For me "At Half Light" marked a before and after in my artistic growth but also in a personal level too. In how I should do things and how I should prepare them. This was a very low budget project where more than one hundred people volunteered to participate out of love for the art. Executing the project this way is complicated because you depend on many things and many people. But at the same time, it is very satisfying to realize that it is a job done with a lot of love, passion and commitment. Featuring brilliant storytelling, “At Half Light” 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? Once I have the topic, I ask myself, “what do I really want to express?”, and, after that, I add the characters and elements that I like, and arrange everything to make an interesting and emotional story. I like stories that have many hidden elements that are disclosed little by little. Because that is how life is. When things occur, they seem insignificant, but after a while,

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers you find the importance in all the little details. Nothing is accidental. "A Media Luz" has it’s plots well marked and almost all are resolved at the end, with some mini plots that are resolved almost immediately. Besides that, I decided to sprinkle flash forward images throughout the film that gave us an idea of things to come. In the first 30 seconds of the story, we know almost everything that will happen. I decided to do this because I think that even if you know what will happen in a movie, you will continue to watch it if it seems interesting. These flash forward / backward images were suggested by the editor Rudi Womack. I told him that I really wanted to experiment with this “dream state” and give the audience a surrealistic feel. Rudi’s talents as an editor really helped to tell this story the way I envisioned it. Honestly, I am not the kind of person that takes long to write scripts, within a week I had the script finished but I spent a lot of time working the story in my head and telling it a thousand times to my mom, haha. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". As a director particularly interested in cultures and social subjects, how do you consider the relationship between a political system and an artist's creative process?

I believe that the relationship is determinant. The political system in which we live influences you in a big way because it is something that you have grown up with, whether you like it or not, it is there, it has always been and will continue to be. It affects the way you think, which determines your philosophy, which shapes your creativity. Artists are not exempt from the political system. I doubt anyone can escape it, but I do not knowâ&#x20AC;Ś I have never tried, haha. I like to speak against the system, I like to be the voice of those who live in situations of injustice. Moreover, what could be in your opinion the role of filmmakers in making aware people of a variety of issues that affect our unstable societies? The cinema is powerful and we have seen its effects. For better or for worse, it has put on the table topics of great relevance and thanks to that, social issues have been investigated more. It has however, created myths and nourished the ignorance on certain subjects. Having said that, I think there is a great power we storytellers have and that we can expose topics in an attractive way in which society can be interested in. Currently, I see something curious, society pays special attention to problems that are "fashionable" and if they do not appear in documentaries, movies or social networks, then "they are not so important", that is why I believe that the role of the filmmaker becomes very important. And for me, it is a great responsibility. Over the past few years you have written and directed several short films that have been praised in different

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers festivals around the world: how important is for you the feedback that you receive in the festival circuit? Positive or negative feedback is always a great help and I personally love listening to people's good or bad opinions, because they have helped me to enrich my work and to grow as an artist. Although, I think you should be careful when listening to feedback because it can create doubts in your mind about your own work and what you should do. Some festivals may love your work and others may hate it. In the end, art can never be judged in an objective way. Of course, we also have to be very honest with ourselves and to be critical of our own work. We need to have the wisdom to choose what can help us improve and what can not. It is also important to identify what we are doing inappropriately and improve it. And how do you feel previewing a film before an audience? I highly recommend presenting your work in front of an audience, I did this with my last short film â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cagedâ&#x20AC;?. The feedback you receive is incredibly valuable and as I said, as an artist, you have to discern what helps you to tell your story better and what does not. All audiences are different, but human feelings are universal and that is what I try to focus on.

Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today? I think it is hard for everyone to make movies, it is not exclusive to men or women. This is something complicated that you really must love, like everything. I sincerely believe that it depends on the perseverance of people more than their gender. I am speaking for myself, since I have never felt that I am more or less than others or that I am given fewer opportunities just because I am a woman. In general, women are living in amazing times and many great opportunities are available for us, and cinema is not the exception. It is evident that there are more men than women in the industry, but, day by day, there are more open doors and, at the same time, more women are interested in being involved with this art form. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? It is very bright, creativity does not have gender, and as I mentioned, more and more women enter the industry and that is of great help because we are portraying ourselves as what we are and how we want to be seen. This will undoubtedly help the perception that societies have about women and this will change many things. As I said, cinema is a powerful tool. I am definitely very excited to see and to be part of this change.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Pamela. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Undoubtedly, every job I do is much better than the previous one and with an increasing unique identity because I am discovering my style as an artist. Although the projects are very different since I love to experiment, there are constants that remain and I am excited to identify them while testifying my own progress. In the same way, my works acquire greater emotional depth and I want to explore that world together with my actors and the whole team, since they are essential for the creation of the universe of the story that is being told. So far I have made several short films but it is time to move to the next level and I am in the preproduction of my first feature film called "Cazadora" (Huntress). Right now I have just finished a short film called "Enjaulados" (â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cagedâ&#x20AC;?), it is a story located in rural Mexico that addresses the subject of religious fanaticism and the abandonment and solitude in which many elder people live in those areas. The protagonists are CĂĄndido Acosta and Susy Recio. In addition, this work documents certain customs of the town, which little by little have been disappearing. "Caged" is ready to perform at festivals and I am sure it will get very far. In this work I think I took the leap to the

next level as a director and put aside the mistakes made in past projects. I never wanted to make a feature film without first feeling that I could do it well and, honestly, I had not found the perfect story that I was passionate about, that fit and as a first feature film until a while ago, one night I could not sleep and I came up with a story which I fell in love with. Having said that, we are currently working on my first feature film called "Cazadora" (Huntress). It is magical realism, a genre that I like a lot and that I will finally explore in this story and we will discover this world at the same time as the protagonist. It will be filmed in Mexico but spoken in English. We plan to start filming in December. As director of photography and producer once again Rhett Cutrell, the music will be by Aldo Teomitzi, who made the music of â&#x20AC;&#x153;At Half Light" and some actors and crew that will also be part of this new project, we are working hard, putting a lot of heart into it and I am sure it will be a very beautiful movie. Life always brings wonderful things if you are open to them, and I believe that creating stories makes your life and that of other people much better. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

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Women Cinemakers

Women Cinemakers meets

Efrat Rubin Lives and works in _________________________________

CROWS relates a dream about a family meal that takes place in a strange and estranged place. Gradually the dance and meal unveil complex and charged relationships, connecting between the familiar and repressed, identity and the blurring thereof within the family structure. The more charged the relations between family members become, the more their individual anxieties are foregrounded, symbolized by their transformation into crows. Due to their black color, harsh caws, and affinity for feeding on carcasses, crows have long been associated with death and dark forces. At the same time, their high intelligence have made them symbols of wisdom in many cultures. In Norse mythology, for example, Odin, the god of knowledge and war, is supplied information about the world by a pair of ravens, Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory, respectively).

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com CROWS is a captivating dance short film by Israelian choreographer and filmmaker Efrat Rubin: marked out with brilliant combination between choreography and cinematography, this stimulating inquiry into the

individual anxieties walks the viewers through such a miltilayered visual experience. Featuring gorgeous research into the grammar of human body language, CROWS is a successful attempt to create a captivating allegory of human condition: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Rubin's multifaceted and stimulating artistic production. Hello Efrat and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to invite our readers to visit

https://www.efratrubin.com 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 solid formal training both in Dance and in Art and you studied Visual Communication in Bezalel Academy of Art & Design Jerusalem and Contemporary Dance and Choreography in P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels: how did these experiences influenced your artistic trajectory? Moreover what did address you to focus an important part of your artistic research on the intersection between choreography and video? Dance has always been a part of my life, since I was a little girl, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been drawn to film and visual art. I spent much of my free time in movie theaters and exhibitions. My experience at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels was amazing. I was exposed to a variety of innovative directions in dance. Students of the school were enriched with a range of classes in the performing arts and stimulating theory classes like sociology and art history. It was already in Brussels that I developed a strong desire to study art, and decided to pursue my studies at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. During my time at Bezalel (Department of Visual Communication), I acquired additional skills in the disciplines of drawing, video and photography. I felt that these were excellent media through which I could express my thoughts and connect the body to space. As a student at Bezalel, I was already trying to combine dance and video in a variety of ways. I staged performances outside the framework of school as an independent choreographer. At first I created images that were screened as part of a performance and later, together with Osi Wald, developed performances that incorporated animation. Video and animation make possible particular scenarios that the theater stage in real time cannot.

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers Presenting a host of new possibilities, they can help to clarify the concept and intent of the choreography. Film introduced me to a new choreographic and movement language. As part of the Sisyphean task of creating animation, we divided the movement up into frames, or individual pictures in a process called pixilation. Inspired by this process, I developed a visual language in which the images and composition represent the initial stage and the movement comprises everything between. The movement between each picture and picture reveals the relationship between the performers, as it does in the film “Crows.” For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected CROWS, 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 film is the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with such refined aesthetics, inviting the viewers to such a multilayered experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of CROWS, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? The film “Crows” is based on a dance piece that I created called “Karov” (Relative). Inspired by the animated film “Family Portrait,” this piece reveals the inner workings of a dysfunctional family. The dance explores childhood memories and sensations through fast-paced imagery and sharp transitions from one fragment to the next, describing a surreal, hyperbolic world. The central story revolves around parents whose relationship is falling apart. The mother’s occasional bouts of rage only make matters worse for the family, and each of its members is desperate for a way out. In effect, they distance themselves from each other throughout the piece, retreating to their inner worlds, and transform into crows in the process. The story is told from the perspective of the dancer in blue, who tries to dissociate herself from her parents,

but eventually her struggle transforms her into an actual crow that flies out the window. Rich with symbolic references, and featuring goregeous and well-orchestrated choreography, CROWS initiates the viewers to such an heightened visual experience, urging them to challenge their perceptual categories to create personal narratives: what are you hoping CROWS will trigger in the spectatorship? In particular, how much important is for you the evokative power of symbols in order to address the viewer's imagination in order to elaborate personal associations?

Insofar as this is a dance piece, my aim is to provide a space for viewers of the film to understand and mostly sense whatever comes to their minds. Their proximity to the performers through the moving camera involves them in this tense family dynamic, underpinned by a constant sense of danger and discomfort. This is my primary objective regarding viewers - to draw them in and make them feel the discomfort and difficulty that plague this family. The strange image of the crow mask only heightens this discomfort, and may also provoke a sense of fear. This image is certainly significant for viewers, as each interprets

differently the change experienced by the dancers that motivates them to wear the mask. This process involves a particular loss of identity, alienation and estrangement. In Western culture crows generally signify darkness, death and vengeance, and yet it should be noted that crows are highly intelligent animals, which may just explain why we are so scared of them. As you have remared once, the beginning of your creation, regularly, starts with an emotional image in your head: 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 created â&#x20AC;&#x153;Karovâ&#x20AC;? (Relative), the dance on which the film is based, I created tableaux with the dancers, giving specific instructions regarding space and energy. The dancers improvised as I began to set their individual choices, and honed in on the emotional motivation for

each movement with the aim of bringing hidden layers more to the surface. This search for emotional, physical motivations was Sisyphean but improvisation was an essential part of this process. There are particular moments in the work in which the performers improvise, staying within the boundaries of their own characters, in order to heighten the realism of the scene. For example, the moment when Noa, the dancer in blue, has a fit. The others are given a certain degree of freedom in the way they respond to her outburst. The creation process of a dance piece involves a lot of back and forth between the dancers and me. I make suggestions and they try them out, I clarify things and they expand on them, making suggestions within new limitations. I introduce movement material and suddenly I may see an interpretation of a particular movement or phrase that I like and I decide to incorporate it. The creative give-and-take between the dancers and me results in a very dynamic, changing process. It's no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established with your performers 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 the collaborative nature of your work? Collaborating with my spouse Jonathan Katzman, who supported me throughout the entire creative process, was pivotal in the making of this film. An animator, Jonathan did all of the post-production for the film, and helped me find the location, which is the movieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s central image. Indeed, I was searching for a dilapidated house or abandoned building which I thought would strengthen the sense of alienation in the family. A now abandoned shopping mall, the space itself is filled with amazing artwork by anonymous street artists, which inspired me

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

a great deal in particular scenes, offering the possibility of making certain links between the dance and the wall paintings. My first collaboration with Daniel Pakes was as a performer in my work “Snake Toy.” Our artistic affinity led us to collaborate on this movie, in which he served as cinematographer. Working with Daniel was a very pleasant experience, as we shared a mutual understanding regarding the film’s visual elements. To my mind, the cinematographer’s role is to dive into the world of the director and present his point of view within that world. Our collaboration yielded new and interesting ideas for the film. Filming began only after meticulous storyboarding and preparation, but there were still changes and additions that we made together in real time. The dancers were extremely willing and devoted, considering the rough conditions. Eventually, collaborating will all those involved in this project was a fascinating and significant experience for me, and in fact our collaboration continues till today. CROWS has drawn heavily from the specifics of its environment and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful resonance between such an estranged place and the gestures of the performers: how did you select the location and how it affected your shooting process? I was looking for an abandoned house over quite some time. The idea was that this strong visual would underscore the family’s dysfunction, but the location was hard to come by. Eventually, I found the site with the help of my spouse Jonathan Katzman, who at the time worked nearby. The building was supposed to be a shopping mall, but construction was halted at some point and the building remained abandoned for years. Over time it served as a meeting point for artists who found inspiration in this enormous space.

The building is four stories and has a large underground parking lot, which allows top shot views between the levels. At the bottom of the building lies a pool of rainwater and trash, a somewhat apocalyptic image. After finding the location, I began planning the film on the basis of the dance. I filmed the location several times and took inspiration from the commanding space, which is effectively how I came to make the storyboard and prepare the shot list. I decided to introduce objects like a rug, dinner table and chairs in order to heighten the contrast between the space itself and memories of home. 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? Roughly speaking, dance is a sequence of movements that trace shapes or make trails in space, shown over a period of time to changing tempos and describing different qualities. The experience of creating movement is an abstract one. What guided the choreography was an exploration of identity, restlessness and complexity as these relate to myself. The movement is characterized by long, soft lines opposite sharp, broken and sudden movements that disrupt the flow. This is a particular abstraction of a mental state: Instead of using words to describe a mental state, movement can express it through the body. For example, when people experience anxiety their muscles tend to tense up and often they move in large, sharp and sudden movements. This a

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers familiar physical state. To my mind, dance expands realistic and physical situations into an abstract perspective built of many layers and dimensions. For me the process of creating the movement vocabulary for my pieces wavers between a realistic, physical and emotional experience, and an abstract drawing in space. The relationship between sound and visuals is crucial in your practice and we have appreciated the way the sound tapestry by Yonatan Albalak provides the footage of CROWS with such an uncanny 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? When working on the dance, Yonatan Albalak and I discussed the central theme of family memories, specifically the danceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opening scene - a family dinner. I looked for music that I called â&#x20AC;&#x153;free jazz,â&#x20AC;? the clatter of broken plates and fragments from a family meal. He suggested creating a musical collage, which would create a broken atmosphere of memories. He then sent me different musical directions and I connected them to particular parts of the dance. In the solo of the male dancer, for example, I asked Yonatan to use sound effects from old computer games, describing the dancer as a kind of kid who wishes to become a superhero but fails. Consequently, Yonatan composed a score made of old computer game music and a broken melody, and combined sound and dance throughout the piece. Over the course of the process, we recorded the dancers, my son (who was two years old at the time) and his toys. The use of sound and music in this piece is very precise, with particular images and sounds rooted in my personal store of childhood memories. Yonatan created a very rich and complex soundtrack, which is an inextricable part of the

haunting atmosphere that pervades the piece, as well as the fantasy and drama of the film. 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? I feel that the presence of women in the art scene is strong, significant and on the rise. In film, for example, I can always identify the female gaze, as it generally proposes a different point of view. There is something more complex, which exposes more layers. The latest film that I found captivating was “On Body and Soul” by Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi. The film’s gentleness and complexity moved me very much. I would like to see more narrative films directed by women. Generally speaking, I believe that women have a significant impact on visual art and dance. I am inspired by a wide range of women artists including Meg Stuart, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Chantal Akerman, Pipilotti Rist, Yasmeen Godder, Sophie Calle, Louise Bourgeois and many others. So that in this regard, I am convinced of the success of women artists and of their great importance to all fields of art. My experience as a multidisciplinary artist is always changing and certainly challenging. At times, it feels as though my unique artistic voice and interdisciplinary skills are acknowledged, while at others I experience unreceptiveness or incompatibility. Indeed it can be difficult for me to find a fitting category,

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers certainly when thinking â&#x20AC;&#x153;outside the box,â&#x20AC;? but ultimately I believe that it is important to persist and continue to develop my own artistic language and practice. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Efrat. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? At the moment I am working on two separate projects. The first is a performance that combines animation and live music, and the second is an experimental film that makes use of Augmented Reality (AR) technology. For this film I created a mask made from 40 self-portraits that I drew inside a calendar over a period of 40 days. I transformed the drawings into an animation that I then screened on my face as I explained about my art and my interdisciplinary practice. This is an exciting, new experimental language that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve discovered. In the performance that I am working on there is a large closet on the back of which animated videos of holiday trips are screened. Alongside the animation I perform together with musician and singer Yehu Yaron. The performance and film will debut in November as part of an exhibition I will hold at the Beita Gallery in Jerusalem. I continue to explore the subject of identity by using screens in different ways.

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

Women Cinemakers meets

Adriana Guiman I was born in Piatra Neamț, a small city from the North of Romania, in 1984. After studying and working for a couple of years in Bucharest, in 2013 I moved to Estonia in order to pursue a Master's degree in Crossmedia Production. I’m currently a 2nd year PhD student at Aalto University, researching film montage in the context of cinematic virtual reality, commuting between Seattle, US and Helsinki, Finland. I like embracing the overwhelming reality and maybe this is why I like the documentary style, both in film and photography. The camera becomes a brush, a trustful and honest one, catching glimpses of sincere life, and even if I use predetermined narrative structures for packaging and delivering the movie to the public, I hope and work towards the liberation of narrative form. I love connecting layers of reality discovered through light and color with the characters and their stories and the spaces they inhabit physically and culturally and I spoil myself using a film camera for taking photos. Documentary elements bring force to the narrative, in my opinion, and I liked playing with this idea ever since my graduation short film, “Hat of Stars”. I appreciate subtitle irony, sarcasm and their use in art, believing that serious themes can be approached in a digestible manner, when such tools are used and I followed this idea in the experimental short-film “Therapy of Happiness” mocking both the promise of happiness advertised by self-help books and the fear of commitment in a relation. Movies that are on the border of theater and film, that emphasize the relationship between actors and audience and that explore locations in the best possible ways are one of my favorite, together with absurd setting and narratives, referring here to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s avant-garde work. I appreciate collaborative projects where multiple artistic visions are used for approaching same theme or subject, especially if they are related to current social issues. I’m on a journey of discovering myself as an artist, grateful for every opportunity and experience both in traditional new mediums. I’m constantly wondering and researching how technology can surpass interactivity and allow participation further than a one to one experience, but rather at a social and cultural level. I’m particularly interested in virtual reality, this environment that transforms the screens in one surrounding experience and especially in the translation of classical film language into cinematic virtual reality experiences. Many times, I’m being waken up from this beautiful promise of an environment without rules, similar with a utopia of endless creative opportunities by the technical challenges of XR. The newest short piece I have produced is a short 360video experience during the March For Our Lives, Seattle: https://youtu.be/bqo10WQ2Lks I often find myself in the middle of a crossroad, generated mainly by economic factors, by the way the media industry is financed, a crossroad with three main options: working alone on projects that solely express my creative ideas, working on projects that have some degree of social impact or producing media for pure commercial purposes. The only thing I learn so far is that everything should be measured with a personalized unit.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier

we would like to invite to our readers to visit

and Dora S. Tennant

http://adriana.work in order to get a synoptic

womencinemaker@berlin.com

idea about your artistic production and we

Hello Adriana and welcome to WomenCinemakers:

would start this interview with a couple of

questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BA of Film Directing, you moved to Estonia to pursue your MA of Crossmedia Production: moreover, you are currently nurturing your education with a PhD at the Film Department of the Aalto University: how did these experiences influence the evolution of your filmmaking practice? Moreover, how your cultural substratum due to your Romanian roots and your travels in the US address your artistic research? Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this community. It’s a beautiful community and I hope to see it grow. To answer your question, I would say that I’m in a state of constant negotiation, between my cultural background and new social situations regarding the form and the content of my work. I was lucky enough to encounter amazing people in my academic journey so far, and this is what I value most. I value these encounters whether they happened in Romania, Estonia, Portugal, Finland and now the US. In the majority of cases these encounters fuelled my creativity, and I can express nothing but gratitude for all these experiences because they allowed me to sharpen my identity as a human being and as an artist. Being “among strangers” challenges me to reflect on my own identity and this reflection wouldn’t have been possible without leaving my home town, my country, my comfort zone. Romanian roots... I actually don’t know how to define them or how to identify some characteristics that are

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Women Cinemakers strictly Romanian that have influenced me. I was raised by my grandparents in a small town in North Romania, surrounded by secrets, and I received a strict education. I was taught not to speak without being spoken to, to be silent generally speaking and to go in my room when guests were present and to always leave a good impression, because when living in a small town you expect that people will gossip. I escaped when I visited friends or relatives. I loved looking through their things, opening drawers and discovering hidden things. Of course it was fun by the age of 6-7 years old. I stopped doing that when I started going to school, but a memory of that feeling is there when I’m working on a documentary. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected IN-BETWEEN, an extremely interesting short documentary 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 film is the way you have been capable of creating a combination between senses of intimacy and isolation, with such coherent unity, providing the viewers with such a captivating visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of IN-BETWEEN, would you tell us what did attract you of the situation you decided to explore? I travelled to Cuba to attend a documentary film workshop. The short- documentary “IN-BETWEEN” was a side project that we worked on, and it exists because some of my colleagues trusted the story and even though they were

working on their own projects during the daytime, in the evening they joined me in exploring this amazing building and complementing the idea with their amazing cinematography. First, one of the guides mentioned this building that was still inhabited by locals, even though it was situated between two famous hotels from Havana. I went in the building and started talking with its residents. I found amazing characters and I was overwhelmed by their generosity in sharing their

stories. From that point on, the footage fortunately survived a series of absurd experiences that involved flying frogs, the mysterious disappearance of a white chair from a guarded campus, one documentary project being censored by the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s management and many other small details that represent the absurdities of a closed political regime. I still donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know whether my hard drive with all the footage was stolen for the content or for the value of the device, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m happy that for the first time in my life I backed up all the materials on a second hard drive.

The residents had different stories to share, but the ritual that they followed each evening was watching the telenovela from 9 to 10. In my artistic approach, I used two distinct angles that are quite distinctive in the documentary. Through the portrait of the building, I tried to expose my own emotions regarding my journey to Cuba, and this is why I included shots of myself. There is a certain shyness combined with some drops of mystery, being amazed and--at the same time-- revolted. I tried to visually maintain the idea of a silent observer during the

interviews with the residents of the building, but I also wanted to offer the audience the chance to go through this ritual of watching the evening telenovela with the residents. I have personally perceived it as an intimate experience that sometimes replaces the family evening dinner. We have deeply appreciated your successful attempt to create such a a stunning work of emotional and political clarity, unveiling the channel of communication between historical

references and the viewer's personal sphere. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the system you’re living under". How does external reality and culture affect your artistic research? Moreover, how much artists can contribute to shape the Zeitgeist? It’s never easy to define or to pinpoint the Zeitgeist. We could talk about two perspectives: the insideout perspective and the outside-in perspective. As an artist, as a creator, I’m coming with luggage containing perspectives both artistic and social, and I always try to discover the situation put in front of me by reflecting on previous experiences and making comparisons. And sometimes that’s when a creative incident happens. Shaping the Zeitgeist from my perspective could be a consequence, not a purpose. Or the purpose could be declared and assumed and then the result would be an amazingly funny one or the best movies ever made. Elegantly shot, IN-BETWEEN features stunning landscape cinematography and rich colour palette with keen eye to details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

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Women Cinemakers I wish I had more time for this project. Given the nature of the project, I didn’t have many options to choose from. We have mainly used DSLR’s and, given their size, I think they were a good fit for this project that allowed us flexibility and a certain intimacy that couldn’t have been reached otherwise. We have appreciated the way your works and we daresay that you are elaborating such an universal kind of language in order to speak to a wide audience: so we want to catch this occasion to ask you a question about the nature of the relationship with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception? And what do you hope to trigger in the spectatorship? Emotion, emotion, emotion. Maybe they feel intrigued, maybe amused, but as long as they feel something when watching this short-documentary, I’m happy. While editing I had to make decisions that didn’t exactly follow my initial idea. I fell in love with the characters and this is why I used as much as possible from the interviewees, allowing them to share their thoughts. I only wish I would have had more time to spend with them. The relationship with the audience is complicated, because it’s not all about the content and it depends a lot on the medium of distribution. It’s a totally different experience if you see this short-film in a cinema or in front of your computer, so while I hope I will be able to trigger emotions, the issue of audience reception depends on many uncontrollable factors. Of course, I hope that IN-

BETWEEN will travel to some film festivals and that after some time that it will also be available online. I’m constantly wondering and researching how technology can surpass interactivity and allow participation further than a one to one experience, but rather at a social and cultural level. I’m particularly interested in virtual reality, this environment that transforms the screens in one surrounding experience. I guess for many of us, virtual reality is sort of a promised land, and we might still be under the spell of a new medium. Everyone if hoping that the liberation of narrative form will be possible in this new environment. The similarities with the beginning of cinema are astonishing, but I’m sure that VR, or better said XR (extended realities technologies) will not replace traditional cinema, but rather offer new types of cinematic experiences. We daresay that IN-BETWEEN could be considered an allegory of our unstable era, marked out with the presence of everchanging scenarios and cultures unable to keep pace with the speed of technical progress: do you think that the apparently conflictual relationship between the attempt of renovating and the firm faith in an ideology could be a metaphor of human condition? The building is indeed a metaphor for the political ideology that characterizes its inhabitants, but I’m not

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A still from

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Women Cinemakers sure how much it has to do with technical progress of Cuban society. Sometimes the technological development doesn’t include the development of the society. At the same time, I couldn’t state that it’s the human condition, something universal that characterizes all the people from Cuba, because I haven’t met all the Cubans. J It's important to mention a work-in-progress version of IN-BETWEENwas projected in London in December, part of a collaboration with other colleagues: could you tell us something about the collaborative nature of your approach? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between creative minds? The best part of experiencing Cuba was actually the people that I met there. We've been through some frustrating experiences, but this only brought us together as a more united team. I should mention here a long list of names. Rubin Whitmire, Gemma Thrope, Rich Broome, Mary Penna helped me with this project in Cuba and then Oana Muntean from colectiv.ro made possible my collaboration with Ioan Iacoban and Iustina Tomas, who have done an amazing job regarding sound post-production. Alden Hoot gave the final touch: color grading the film. INBETWEEN came to be an international coproduction, a collaborative piece, and that’s the part that I’m really proud and happy about.

Another interesting work that we would like to introduce to our readers is entitled Theraphy for Happiness and can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/216740439: this captivating experimental film is a successful attempt to approach with irony and sarcasm the promise of happiness and the fear of commitment in a relation. How do you consider the role of humour in your approach to storytelling? In particular, would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings? What do you hope viewers will take away from Theraphy for Happiness ? My biggest fear is that sometimes I use too much sarcasm that doesn’t translate so easily on the screen. Therapy for Happiness is a parody of a love story, exploring the cliché of a woman who wants to trap a man and a man who is afraid of responsibilities. But this short film means a lot more for me because it was the first silent movie that I made and it wasn’t easy. I worked with the composer Alexandru Col ea and he was the one who wrote the score performed live by a quartet during the Silent Movie Night at InnerSound New Arts Festival, Bucharest. Your approach to moving images communicates sense of freedom regarding the relationship

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers

between composition and movement and at the same time reflects a conscious shift regarding its visual unity: how would you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of the shooting process and the need of spontaneity? How much importance does play improvisation in your practice? It varies from project to project. I love that element of surprise that you get in a pre-set framing and I think that’s the beauty in an observational documentary, and sometimes that’s what I’m searching for in fiction films also. But in the end it’s about a tenth sense. Sometimes you feel that something is going to happen, you point the camera and the magic happens. Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovi once remarked the importance of not just making work but ensuring that it’s seen in the right place by the right people at the right time: as a researched particularly interested in virtual reality and to immersive visual experience, how is in your opinion technopshere affecting the consumption of art by the audience? Do you think that today is easier to speak to a particular niche of viewers or that online technology will allow artist to extend to a broader number of viewers the interest towards a particular theme? I hope this will happen in the future and I guess some artists change the medium just for the sake of new

Women Cinemakers

audiences. Sometimes it works and sometimes it’s boring if the narrative is weak. On the other hand the audience connects one platform with a particular type of experience, so changing their attitude is complicated. Maybe the presence of VR experiences in art galleries could be a start. The work of Marina Abramovic has always been provocative, so VR seems to fit her art like a glove since VR experiences have a lot in common with live performances and one-on-one experiences as well as with video games and film. We have appreciated the originality of your works and we have found particularly encouraging your unconventional approach. 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? The future of women…I would say future of individuals. We are being confronted with a degradation of human relations. There is a strong Individualistic culture promoted with some sort of narcissistic approach attached. We don’t listen anymore. We want to speak louder than others. We don’t pay attention anymore. We are not building human relations anymore, but when something goes wrong, we are sure to blame everyone

Women Cinemakers

except ourselves. Willingness to collaborate is the basis for making movies and the same concept applies to cinematic VR experiences, especially when everything is “indie produced”. Statistics say that we don’t have enough women in cinema, especially in creative positions. And this is a fact that should be changed by offering the same opportunities for men and women. Being professional on a film set or when you are involved in an artistic project should mean the same thing for women and men, although it is complicated to manage egos and communicate effectively. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Adriana. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you for this opportunity. My future work goes in two directions. I will continue working on some traditional documentary projects and of course I would love to go back to Cuba in a couple of years and revisit the same building and see how life has evolved. Also, I’m excited about the VR project that I’m working on; it is connected to my PhD studies and is called “Patrata.” An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Women Cinemakers meets

Kate Voet Lives and works in Brussels and Amsterdam

I do not necessarily consider my films to be my creations - I may have come up with and written a story and envisioned it audiovisually, yet, the true purpose of a director is to empower the group of people you work with. It's your responsibility to make them feel safe, inspired, appreciated and welcome to contribute intellectually and creatively - there needs to be a lot of room for this collaboration both during preparation and on set. The hierarchical organization on set works and is certainly necessary in the heat of the moment due to limitations in time and money. Yet, I don't believe in emotional hierarchy - everyone is valuable and I carefully sit down and think of who would be great to be in the team. It should be a group of people of which you're sure they'll take great care of one another. Then, you carefully invite that person ( whatever her or his role may be ) to be part of this project and journey. A collaboration is always about two individuals choosing one another - I don't believe in the idea of a director sitting in her director's chair and saying, ''I want to work with you, you and you'' and expecting the other person to be somewhat grateful to be 'chosen,' as seen in the traditional way we know casting. It always goes both ways, if you want your relationship to be truthful and inspiring, I think. For me, That should be the basis of every film. Therefore, I'm forever grateful to the Les Homards Immortels team for believing in the film, their creativity, hard work and kindness. It was such a wonderful experience because of them and so much fun to be with them. As a director you can only hope your team feels the same way.

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

particularly influence your evolution as a filmmaker and as a creative, in general? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your artistic research?

Hello Kate and welcome to WomenCinemakers. Before

I feel I somewhat have to browse through my entire

starting to elaborate about your artistic production we

journey to show where I come from. First, I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t born

would like to ask you some questions about your

into an artistic family at all, however, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been raised by

background: are there any experiences that did

my mother and grandmother who are both very creative,

adventurous and courageous women who always encouraged me to go out into the world and discover. After graduation from high school in Belgium, I travelled and worked across the world for about a year before moving to Amsterdam. There, at the University of Amsterdam I enrolled a bachelor in English Literature and Linguistics as well as one in theatre studies. During this period I also studied at the New School University - I took up my first classes in film and media studies here. Before that, I'd mainly been focused on writing - I had been drawing and writing tiny novels since I was a child! Another year of work and travel followed. Afterwards, I went back to university and enrolled in a masters program in Business management at the University of Brussels. At the time I worked as a business strategist for a creative agency in Paris that did image production for high fashion brands. That really excited me, but it all started at the New School in NYC where I made my very first films and fell madly in love with being a filmmaker and being creative rather than academic. Since then I still have been working various jobs in copywriting, marketing, business strategy. I debated a long time after that master whether I should or shouldn't enrol in another bachelor - filmmaking this time. By that time I had been studying for four years already, you know, and really enjoyed having a job and the independence that came with it. Yet, I gave in and did it - it was the best and worst decision of my life. In hindsight, I know I wouldn't have been able to study filmmaking so thoroughly outside of film school - it offered me great courses in film studies and really helped me build a network. I did often feel like I was living two lives at the same time though, which was a bit alienating. My experience at film school helped me accumulate everything I had been building towards since I was a child - things I had learned about psychology, sociolinguistics, business and financial management, literature,

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers narratology, creative writing and so on. Finally I could bring it all together. At film school you also learn about all the technicalities and practical skills. It's a safe environment where you can experiment, fail and grow. You learn to open up, trust people and work together. You make great friends and you become part of a generation - you're a dynamic group of people who love film, come together and help each other. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Les Homards Immortels, a captivating experimental short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and whose teaser can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/206725218. What has at once impressed us with your insightful exploration of the shifting relationship between mmemory and experience is the way it rejects any conventional form, to walk the viewers through a heightened and clichĂŠ free narrative. While walking our readers through the genesis of Les Homards I mmortels, Could you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? I wanted to make a film about a moment in time and the impossible desire to return to it - it's a portrait about two lovers who reunite after a crude separation. As with their separation, they both recall their relationship very differently - it's a story about how two people can experience something together very intensely. Yet, they will always envision it individually, recall it uniquely and deal with it differently. It's about the inescapable loneliness we're bound to be confronted with as soon as we commit to loving someone - the tender loneliness of the mind.I felt the need to approach the subject differently than I would if I would have had 90 minutes to tell it ( I would never have told this story when given the opportunity to turn it into a feature ). A

short film asks for an entirely distinct approach, structure, character arch and entirely different stories altogether - the subject did not permit me to rush things, these characters were not fit to be built into a story with a clear beginningmiddle-end structure. That's simply not what their lives are like at the moment. I wanted to take them to a very specific, emotional moment in time and capture their inner lives right then and there. I felt it had to be more of an audiovisual poem that pulls the audience in almost physically and intuitively. It's not meant to be understood rationally,

chronologically and structurally - it's meant to be experienced sensually. However, I always introduce the film as narrative fiction as it circles around two fictional characters, in a staged setting, within a larger story. We just don't get to see their entire story, we're pulled into it somewhere in the middle just like the characters are. Together with them we're overwhelmed, I hope at least. Elegantly shot, Les Homards Immortels features stunning cinematography by Victor Maes and a keen eye for

details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your c hoice about camera and lens? Those are lovely words for the cinematographer and his team and I cannot stress enough how wonderful it was to work with them - I cannot imagine making another film ever without Victor as cinematographer. He's my eyes through which I see these stories and we understand each other so well. It's so great to work with him, because he really

challenges me - he's trained as a film director as well so he doesn't simply look for ways to capture the film "beautifully". He's really searching for the best way to tell the story visually, and since he has a great understanding of editing and sound design as well he can really envision what his images will be like in the editing room. He's such a talented artist and kind person. We worked with a Sony F55 and mainly focused on finding the right form for these characters' inner lives and its

Women Cinemakers turbulence during this film. It's a portrait of two lovers balancing on the thin line between loneliness and establishing a connection - it's basically about two people who try very hard to make it work, yet, who feel very challenged to share their lives together. They are searching for that something that's missing. Victor and I were debating ways to visualise these experiences and these notions of solitude and distance - how do you translate two characters who attract one another and then pull away, continuously, to film? We focused a lot on gestures, their gaze and movement. We didn't want the film's image to objectively capture events as it rather focuses on tension and the characters' state of mind. The film centralizes the reunion of two characters, who in spite of wishing and wanting are faced with the impossibility of sharing their lives together. So we did not want to give too much space to the universe these characters physically inhabit in order to bring to life a moment in which they can dream themselves together. Specifically, we tried to heighten the feeling of their desire for one another by separating them in the frame throughout the film - apart from a confrontation in the middle of the story. For this, we were mainly using a 58mm lens which gives you a nice balance between integrating and separating characters from their environment. Characters are distanced from one another when in a lonesome top shot, for instance, or a sensorial dance. That confrontational scene I mentioned is actually the most intimate one in the film - the moment where they finally give in to their desires. In this scene we wanted to focus on the intimacy, physicality and the sensorial mise en scene as we stayed really close to the characters and used a 88mm lens. At the end of the film, however, we wanted to create an

Women Cinemakers extreme emotional distance between them. To do so we shot both scenes in very different lighting scenarios and on different focal lengths, once again to indicate the impossibility of their union which subsequently throws the viewer into a sequence of raging thoughts and emotion outside of the realistic realm. Almost the entire film is covered by night, everything is quite dim - as their situation is. The characters are sort of trapped in an emotional maze filled with confusion. It's a quite dark film, I guess! Featuring compelling narrative drive Les Homards Immortels leaps off the screen for its essential still effective mise-enscĂŠne: how would you characterize your cinematographic style? In general, I tend to search for ways to portray stories very sensorially and intimately - I like it when the cinematography is emotional in a poetic, mysterious and intuitive way. The cinematography needs to serve the story subconsciously and in a subtle way rather than by the book. I rarely work with just natural light, I love to create universes that feel recognisable, yet, somewhat surreal and otherworldly. The use of artificial lighting can play such a huge role in this. However, I also stress the great opportunity that lies in production design (and Pim Dinghs and Robin Hendrix did a great job for this film!). The cinematography and art directors should at all times be on the same page to create that unique universe. However, cinematography should always serve the story - and as each story is different, this will differ along the way up to a certain point I guess. So far I always sticked to the above, though. In this case, I'd say the cinematographic style is characterized by its minimalism and intimacy. We really wanted to shine a light on what's essential. We wanted it to feel very focused. These characters are confused, yet, very wrapped up in the situation at

Women Cinemakers the same time - we wanted the film to capture this feel of tunnel vision you have when you're under extreme, emotional pressure. Your heart's racing, you suffer from brain fog, yet, you're extremely focused on that one thing that's going on in your life - I'm talking about instances here. The entire film is about a very brief moment in time that we stretched out over time to highlight intensity. In Les Homards Immortels you leave the floor to the characters of Alba and Max, creating a bbridge between their inner lives and the spectatorship: what was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticulously schedule every details of your shooting process? Ideally, you embrace both - I'm a huge control freak (not proud of!) and I love to prepare everything in detail with previsualisation and countless notes and spreadsheets. Nevertheless, a film also needs to breathe and essentially it's a collaborative art form - you're not writing a novel. I do not necessarily consider my films to be my creations - I may have come up with and written a story and envisioned it audiovisually, yet, the true purpose of a director is to empower the group of people you work with. It's your responsibility to make them feel safe, inspired, appreciated and welcome to contribute intellectually and creatively - so there needs to be a lot of room for this collaboration both during preparation and on set. In terms of preparation, we didn't rehearse the scenes. Jan (Bijvoet) and Jill (Verhaeghe) and I did have script readings, in which we would go through the script together and make sure we were all on the same level about the dialogues, the scenes, the characters' world and motivations. Words are just

words, and you can understand and interpret them very differently. We talked extensively about the characters, the story and how it came about - also about our personal experiences and how we relate to the story. This was all during preparation leading up to the shooting of the film on set I'm really open for input, however, I'm generally really specific about what I want and that's usually what we've prepared (together) and set to do. It really depends on what the suggestions concern - I prefer to shoot the scene/shot a few times the way I envision it and subsequently we can have the cinematographer and the actors try out something new if there is enough time. For certain scenes, very intimate ones for instance, I do offer very long takes in which the actors can improvise in terms of movement, gestures and such. I definitely see it as dancing together, trusting and reacting to one another and bringing something larger to life. Improvisation in terms of dialogue is something I've never worked with, especially on set. I'm a writer at heart, and I really like to have my way with the words. However, during the script readings there's always room for questions and suggestions, but I'm not a director who lets actors improvise entire dialogues and scenes (which I can imagine could be very interesting and fun for actors). On set a lot of magical gifts are handed to you too spontaneous, unexpected things that just happen. You'd be a fool not to embrace them and it's your job to notice and work with it in the moment. Being on set is literally being in a room or space with a bunch of people - they all have their personalities, flaws and feelings, and we're all subjected to mood swings and chemistry among people. That's also something you have to work with as a director. You're not only directing the actors, you're leading a team - and it's your job to make sure everyone feels alright and can do their

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Women Cinemakers jobs to the best of their ability. I don't believe in manipulation honesty and empathy are key. And no - it does not need to take up massive amounts of precious time, as the haters would suggest. It's more a way of life than a strategy. In any way, Jan and Jill were so wonderful to work with - Jill's tender mysterious energy brought such great chemistry with Jan's calmness and timelessness. Jill has a very intuitive approach, perhaps because it was her first acting experience. She's such a natural talent - her eyes hold so many secrets to the world. She really dives into herself for such a performance. Jan, on the other hand, is very experienced and one of the greatest actors of his generation. His performances are truly transformative, he literally changes into someone else. Yet, he can also be very technical and practical. Both Jan and Jill have a great understanding of the technical aspects of making a film, which makes them really enjoyable to work with. Your film is rich of silent scenes and we like the way your sapient camera work and effective close-ups created entire scenarios out of psychologically charged moments: in Les Homards IImmortels you demonstrate the ability to structure the tension between perception and subjectivity to develop an emotional bridge with the viewers: how did you structure the script of the film to achieve such moving narrative? What are you hoping Les Homards Immortels will trigger in the audience? I'm very interested in that tension you mention, I search for the boundaries of how we define storytelling. I liked examining how I could portray my attention for physicality, intimacy and the unreliable narration within this story. I really wanted to experiment with the truthfulness of perspective as mentioned earlier in the interview. The film has a narrative approach but it doesn't follow a conventional structure with plot-points and such.

Women Cinemakers However, there is a beginning-middle-ending structure that's strongly mixed up with the suggestion of dream and memory. It heavily relies on the form of an audiovisual poem. I always love to experiment, but the main motivation to work like this was the limitations in duration - there's just not a lot of time to build both complex characters, atmosphere as well as a believable narrative in a short film. Therefore, I believed it to be more interesting to focus on a moment in time or a state of mind for this film - I don't always work like this though. Ultimately, I've written the script in a very conventional way - everything was there before we started to shoot. In regards to what I wished to trigger in the audience? We're all familiar with that feeling of loneliness and misunderstanding that we sometimes feel in relationships - with Les Homards Immortels I try to reach people by offering them a story that's very easy to identify with in a rather physical and intuitive manner. It's a film about wanting to rewrite the stories of our own lives and start over. I hope it draws the audience out of their reality for a moment and lets them feel. In turn, I hope that feeling can trigger thoughts and that it may be a way to bring the viewer closer to themselves as well as to others. Ultimately, you hope people will feel connected and perhaps less alone. If we want to uncover and portray stories that are meaningful we need to have to direct our attention towards whatever's physical, brutal, perverse and primary about what it means to be human. And I'm not referring to vulgarity or aggression - it's a delicate difference, I'm pointing at the realness, desire and suffering that steers and dominates our lives, against all of our best intentions and motivations. It's about our inability to control our lives and live up to those intentions. Marked with captivating minimalistic quality, the soundtrack by Senjan Jansen provides the footage of Les

Women Cinemakers Homards Immortels with such an aethereal and a bit unsettling atmosphere: how do you consider the role of sound within your filmmaking practice and how did you structure the relationship between sound and moving images? Senjan is such a special composer and sound designer. I'm blessed that I can say that I have not made a single film without him and I hope I never will - He understands me so well that I hardly have to explain what I want and what the film needs. Senjan and Victor are always involved in the earliest stages of screenwriting, even if it's still just a basic idea. As soon as I'm writing I start sending them sounds, music and mood boards to work with. Basically, I spam them every day! As mentioned before, both of them are trained as film directors so they make great partners to work with. They're not just creating beautiful images or designing sound, they reason and make decisions like directors do and really understand how storytelling works. As far as the relationship between sound and image in Les Homards Immortels is concerned, I feel that sound is such a meaningful force in film (and many directors don't make use of this!). Great sound design can bring such complexity to the story at large and really help create these unique universes in which everything takes place. Sound can really function as a character itself - in a way locations can do so too. For me, all great sound design is musical in a way - there's no distinction between the musical composition and sound design. There shouldn't be any palpable layers within a film's soundscape. If there are, I think it's a bit boring and meaningless and it usually means that music has been abused in order to force emotions upon an audience when it lacks in the right mise en scene. What's more interesting to me is creating situations to which an audience can relate and, therefore, make them experience rather than 'receive' emotions. It makes for a more stimulating viewing experience, I think, if you as a viewer have

Women Cinemakers more options as well as the responsibility to figure things out. You've got to take an audience seriously. Walter Murch has written very eloquently on the relationship between sound and moving image - it would feel silly to repeat it here! Everyone must read it, though. Many filmmakers have been inspired by him, so have I. He refers to 'speech' as 'encoded sound' and 'music' as 'embodied sound' - where speech follows certain rules or codes which we understand rationally and where music impacts our experience directly without needing a medium for translation. Sound has many functionalities (speech, music, foley,...) and it works more subconsciously than images do. In real life we rationalize what we see more than what we hear as well. All of these functionalities are equal and need to be given the space to expand fully and claim its meaningfulness in the larger whole of the narration. If you try to create a universe in film that gives meaning to an audience and you deal with sound and moving image in that way - both aspects don't only give meaning separately, they also broaden it and work together symbiotically. Sound expands the visual experience subconsciously - it makes the universe that's being created more realistic. Try to listen to your surroundings in real life, at a random place, and you'll notice a discordant, musical entity in which your focus is directed by chance and proximity. Sound really colours what we see and Senjan understands it like no one else - he has such a great sense of timing and a very tender, complex approach to sound. Les Homards Immortels has drawn heavily from the specifics of its ambience and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such powerful resonance between the qualities of the indoor l ocations and the intimate atmosphere that floats around the story: how did

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Women Cinemakers you select the locations and how did they influence your shooting process? What needed to resonate from the location and the mise en scene was this desire to belong - two characters searching for a place to feel safe, together. Do you know these relationships where you feel there's not enough space for two people? It's like that, their universe has become really small and cramped, yet, they do still feel for one another. There's three different locations in the film - dream sequences, scenes shot at their homes and this big, anonymous city. The dream sequences have this surreal feel to them and they needed to be scenes dominated by this easy, tender and harmonic atmosphere sort of an ideal form. There's only one scene in the film, the 'Garden of Earthly Delights' where they are together peacefully. I tried to make the audience wonder what's happening now, what's remembered and what's possibly just a dream - basically, what is real and what is not? This refers to this underlying idea of perception: we can both experience the same moment together, yet, we'll perceive and remember it differently. We can never truly understand how the other person feels. You can tell me how you feel, but I never feel your feelings truly - the most reliable way to understand each other is through touch, and that's why I let Alba and Max not touch each other in the film except for this one moment which feels like forever yet vanishes after a few seconds. It's the ultimate turning point in the film. This is what all the scenes at home revolve around - the intimacy, the desire, the doubts, them sort of moving closer and away from one another. There's a lot of gazing and figuring out what the other person might possibly think. Then, the exterior shots and scenes represent this big, outside world in which they never really found a place for each other and themselves.

We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been 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 g reenlit today? I do hope things are changing, and in my experience they are. I briefly (and very unsuccessfully) worked in the industry when I was 18. It was not a pleasant experience, to say the least. Now, however, as I'm starting off as a director, I cannot stress enough how encouraged I feel - and how I've been helped out by both men and women at film school, in the festival circuit and industry. Many people have been really generous with me without wanting anything in return. Personally, today, I don't (or not yet) feel that it's harder for women to have their projects greenlit or to land a job in the industry - please note that I can only speak for the Belgian industry. Many sets count more women than men these days, and even the "typical" positions that used to be reserved for men (camera department, sound department) seem to attract more and more women and they're incredibly respected in these positions. But yes, most (especially older) directors as well as heads of production companies are still mainly men. Perhaps discouragement is also something I refuse the moment I'm confronted with it - I was born into a different story. I was raised by strong women, who mastered their own lives and who were socially, emotionally and financially independent from men (and this does not mean they were not married). I was brought up with the idea that I should dream

Women Cinemakers big and be independent from anyone. Discrimination just didn't exist in that story - now that I'm older I hear about other people's stories and I understand that I'm (just) lucky to both have been brought up feeling empowered and to have met the right people along the way. By right I mean the people that worked with me, for me or against me - I think people underestimate how complicated relationships among women can be as well. We need to support one another, and we love to think of ourselves as this powerful sisterhood but that's just not always the reality of things, and it saddens me to see a woman who has a hard time celebrating another one's success. In short, I think it's important that we focus on what unites us - both men and women - and the power of tenderness. If we speak of the huge topic that 'inclusion' is, we also need to discuss the way we communicate, which in the past has often been aggressive, abusive, ego-driven. Women may have been pushed aside for decades, but men have also been pushed into certain attitudes. The problem is much bigger than having your projects backed or not. There's frustration and dysfunctional learned behaviour behind it - and we need to unlearn it! Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Kate. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you, Womencinemakers, for inviting me and offering me this wonderful opportunity to share some thoughts about my work! It's been a pleasure for me. In regards to the future projects, I'm currently in the pre-production phase of a new short film - we're scouting locations and such. And I've started researching and writing a feature film - it's a story I'm really passionate about and which I think (hope) a lot of

Women Cinemakers people can relate to as well. Apart from that, I do hope to at some point return to the fashion industry, which I'm still very passionate about and feel very connected to in a way. I'd never abandon my focus on fiction, though. I also have some ideas for a television series and a documentary - but first things first. As a filmmaker it's hard to tell how your professional future will evolve exactly - so much depends on your environment. It's a combination of getting opportunities and seizing them as well as creating them for yourself. I've never been the kind of person who sits and waits and considers which way could be the right one - you just make your own way. It's also tremendously important to be kind and generous, at all times. Reach out to others, help them grow as well. It's always better together! In regards to how the content of my work will evolve, I hope it will become more humane as I grow. I want it to be more about others and the audience. As you struggle and learn it's challenging not to focus on yourself, your own story and goals. As I'm starting to feel more comfortable as a storyteller, I'm less afraid to abandon my own interests. I also want to find more hopefulness in the darkness of these stories that I'm attracted to. I admire Ava Duvernay and how she approaches inclusivity and audience in a broader sense. She once mentioned, "if your dream is only about you, it's too small." That's such a straightforward and powerful message - we're storytellers because this is our way of serving the world. It's our way to give back, and it should not be about us and our stories. We have a major responsibility. At the same time, however, we often start from something very personal. It's a complicated tension we need to be mindful of.

Women Cinemakers meets

Elisa Miller Passionately in love and eager to live together as a couple, Rita and Mateo move out of the city and take refuge in the apparent tranquility of Mateo’s deceased father’s country house. Like every new relationship, it is all sex and fun in the beginning until Rita’s desire to become a mother, Mateo’s fear of commitment and an unexpected visit by Alexis, Mateo’s seductive cousin, come between them. Rita and Mateo’s differences surface, testing the shaky foundation their relationship is built on. Soon, a lack of communication and unrequited love unleash the violence that will inevitably spell an end to the couple. An honest portrait of sex as the driving force of our world, The Pleasure is Mine is a film that accurately reflects the sentiment of our younger generations. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Ambitiously constructed and marked out with refinied cinematography, El Placer es Mio is a

captivating work by award-winning film director, writer and producer Elisa Miller: walking the viewers through the epiphanic journey of Rita and Mateo, this elegant film offers an emotionally charged visual experience, inviting to unveil the ubiquitous

role of sex in our everyday life experience: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Miller's captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Elisa and welcome to : to start this interview we would ask you a couple of question about your background: you have a solid formal training and after your studies in English Letters at the UNAM, your nurtured your education at the Centro de Capacitaciรณn Cinematogrรกfica in Mexico City: how did these experience direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Moreover, could you tell us your biggest influences and how did they affect your filmmaking style?

At first I was very influenced by the french New Wave because I first started my studies trying Philosophy in France but could not concentrate in Kant or Aristotle but found myself at the Cine Club of the University and watching all the Original Versions of films from all over the world and got out of severe depression thanks to the films I was watching obsessively. So I came back to Mexico, still very taken by the teen angst and made the exams for film school (CCC) and national University for literature. I was then extremely curious of all I could read and watch. I made myself in to both schools and for two years combined both careers. Doing English Literature on the weekends

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Women Cinemakers and week days full days in film school. When I started film school I had all the times the feeling I hand´t watch enough films that I was way behind my classmates, who where for most of them brilliant and new all about strange russian names I could not pronounce. So I really forced my self to watch everything I could, and after school, still with some classmates we would go to la Cineteca and watch a contemporary film to finish up the day. It was awesome Films all day and new amazing brilliant intense crazy people, teachers and classmates… It was a great time. Also a lot of parties. And shootings. I had a great teacher then, who is an amazing womanCinemaker, her name is Maria Novaro. And many of my then classmates also great womenCinemakers: Natalia Lopez, Natalia Beristain, Jimena Montemayor, Yulene Olaizola, Cristina Juárez, Miranda Romero, all of them still working in film and doing amazing things. It was an intense crew. We did all of our shorts together, doing all kinds of roles in the others’ crews. We trained. At that time I remember watching films like: Chantal Akerman’s News from home, or Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIENAGA and thinking : Now there is something I relate to, things that talk to me. I can do my own thing then. Those kind of films really make me feel I could belong to the film world. That I had something to do in it. At that time too, Eimbcke’s Temporada de Patos played in the cinemas. And so I went. And it was the first

mexican film I felt the same as I felt with Akerman or Martel, or later with the brazilian VIAJO PORQUE PRECISO VUELVO POR QUE TE AMO (Marcelo Gomez and Karim Aïnouz). And I was always in love with Godard’s Le Mepris or his Pierrot Le Fou. Later I saw Terrence Malic’s Tree of Life and exploted. Or Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blond. Or

Cassavettes. And then came Reygadas’ Japon and that really trigger it. As a mexican we can do it. PUM. And at the same time in my literature classes I was also moved and touched by The Sound and the Fury, Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Rulfo´s Pedro Paramo. Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and then a full semester on

Shakespeare, after that I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make it anymore with the older english of the classics and started shooting. That is when Ver Llover was shoot, around that time. So at that point I left English Literature. My father still says I could finish it and get my degreeâ&#x20AC;ŚAll these got in the mixture, and some other things like life itself, I see them in some way or another in my work so far.

For this special edition of we have selected ,a captivating film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. We have been fascinated with the way your clear and effective approach to narrative provides the viewers with such an emotionally intense visual experience, enhanced by elegant composition. While

walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? In particular, what did attract you of this story?

The very first glimpse of idea was an image of a couple walking almost naked at dawn into the wilderness with a bittersweet feeling of being thrown out of (love). The magic was gone but had been there. So I started of as an “expeled from paradise” or “ the happy ever after des not exist” or these kind of thoughts. And made all kinds of version out of that idea. I was very heartbroken then (when I wrote it, at first) then it became like therapy or a way to get it out of my system. The road to make a film is so long that when it is finally finished I don’t really remember why or even who I was then when I started off. Because really when the film was finished the day of the print at the sound studio, I was really in a crisis of why did I want to tell such a sad story ,such a realistic sad ending… it made me puke even, the shock of what I have done. Because I realize who intense and sad it is. And I totally in another moment of life myself and don’t see life that depressing. But I knew it spoke of something taboo, something many of us go through and never talk about it with nobody. The

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers kind of abuse the film is referring to, is so terribly sad, but somebody has to say something about it. That is what interested me. Elegantly shot, El Placer es Mio features stunning cinematography and a keen eye to details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens?

Working with Matias Penachingo (DP) and Claudio Casteli (Production Design) was an incredible experience. They are both brilliant and committed to the project. In y mind the film was very green, we corked out the palette together with the visual team up to the end (color correction). Also the amazing location provided the aesthetic I had in mind. It was always thought as the house someone inherited with all the furniture of another time. The mood had to show in every frame. The decadence. The once-upon-a-time splendor now gone. And at the beginning everything looked brighter, shinier, better and as the story moves on also things start to look more real, worst, with time.

Time was at the middle of every decision in the film. How to see time go by without putting a sign â&#x20AC;&#x153;a few months laterâ&#x20AC;?. The conversations with the team, also actors, costume, make up, where all about the time passed, who to communicate that? The team was very generous, and from every department ideas where flowing. We were all putting in from our own personal failures, experiences, and honestly we all had one, we all understood what it was to be heartbroken, we all shared that in our own personal work on the film. It was like group therapy. And we where, all camping in the location. The realism was also there. Real people in real places. The set was illuminated with a fixed, very natural light, actors did not feel the shooting that much. Natural light was also in the core or the esthetic for the film. Penachingo and I shared that preference, and we looked for the best time of daylight to create that feel and look. Lenses where only two. I might be wrong but I thing a 50 and a 70. Nothing else. The camera always at the same height of the characters eye level. Every scene a Geometrical Frame and then some going around the scene hand-held. Except for the prologue and the epilogue that we took the liberty

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Women Cinemakers

A still from

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Women Cinemakers of plying with some toys, because they where dreams or visions. In you leave the floor to the characters of Rita and Mateo, creating a bridge between their inner lives and the spectatorship: what was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticolously schedule every details of your shooting process?

This was the oat rich and amazing proceses. The one I enjoyed the most. Working with these actors! It was a very fun casting and call back moment, very intense, Edwarda was the second to audition and I knew immediately she was Rita, my heart speed during her first castingâ&#x20AC;Ś but the road was longâ&#x20AC;Ś We did a workshops with at ors during the long pre production two times a week for readyng and discussing every detail fof the script and for playing around and now each other. To creat a bon and confidence. We became (the two protagonists: Edwarda and Fausto / Rita and Mateo) very good friends. we had very long personal conversations around the script and the core idea of the end of a relationship. We

talked about everything including sex and the sex scenes which was a very delicate matter. I had never shot a real sex scene and I wanted to do some explicit ones because sex was also part of the main matters in the equation of what we wanted to talk about. So we invented some kind of rules for those scenes, laughed nervously about them and then during shooting it was al talked over and there was a lot of spontaneity in the shoot. But there where some scenes that the actors wanted to say their lines from the script word by word. Other scenes where totally improvised in the set. It was a lot of fun. A lot of jokes. A lot of discipline. Every detail was talked over before hand so shooting was easygoing. We like the way you created entire scenarious out of psychologically charged moments: what are you hoping will trigger in the audience?

A mirror. try to make them feel less alone. Your film accurately reflects the sentiment of our younger generations and we have appreciated the way it highlight the role of sex as the driving force of our world: in this sense we daresay that

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers could be considered an allegory of human experience: how does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process and address your choices regarding the stories you tell in your films?

Everydayness is in everything i do and reflect upon. it was one of the main subjects of El Placer. It is also notorious the devastating effect on relationships in general and specifically in Rita and Mateoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. It is immersed in everydayness that I generate my ideas. And I think it is in that everyday life that we all relate as humans. With its brilliantly structured storytelling imparts unparalleled psychological intensity to the narration, to unveil an ever shifting internal struggle. We have particularly appreciated the way your film gives to the viewers the sense they are watching excerpts from real life: would you tell how did you develope the script and the structure of your film in order to achieve such moving autenticity?

Elipsis. Shooting scenes from way before the scene is written and let it linger, a while after the written scene is over. Let the actors be uncomfortable

without cutting when they expect. And working with them beforehand with improvisation exercises and as long as the shooting plan lets you do some new, everyday life scene in between very charged emotionally scenes from the script. Another interesting film that we would like to introduce to our readers is entitled , a portrait of acclaimed artist Sarah Lucas, who is part of the generation of Young British Artists. We have particularly appreciated the way you mix documentaristic style with emotional narration: would tell us what did fascinate you of the figure of Sarah Lucas and what did address you to start this stimulating project?

I was blown by Sarahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personality and charm, generosity and humble attitude being as famous and important as she is in the art world. I found a mirror to reflect upon my own questions about time, career choices, regrets, etc. And the project happened because she open up to me in such a personal and friendly way that it just flowed .

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers You are an established director and your short film Ver Llover was awarded with the prestigious Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival: so before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? Do you think it is harder for women artists to have their projects green lit today?

I think filmmaking is hard for everyone, and in fact it is even harder for a woman. But there are more and more women in film and some amazing directors, DPs, Producers, Scriptwriters, etc. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Elisa. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I am working on a next film but slowly. I am currently on mother leaf from my film career. Talking about harder for women, if we put motherhood in the equation it is even harder. But we will take the cinemas !!!!!!!

Women Cinemakers meets

Delphine Wil Lives n Brussels and works in Europe and Africa

Europe & Africa. All my projects have at least a link with my multicultural background. Past & Present. It calls me out how history influences our future even before our birth. Authority & Reaction. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m fascinated by personal itineraries of people confronted with a system. Through images, sounds, and a certain aesthetic I try to get people out of their comfort zone by questioning their convictions, by making them watch behind to think about whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in front. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Brilliantly constructed and elegantly photographed, is an emotionally gripping ethnographic documentary film by Belgian researcher and filmmaker Delphine Wil. Using an effective anthropological approach, she demonstrates her strength as a documentary practice, capturing the complexity of the

relationship between different cultures through a lucid and critical look at the Christianization of Africa: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Wil's stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Delphine and welcome to : before starting to elaborate about your film we would like to invite our readers to visit in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and

Women Cinemakers we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. As a selftaught filmmaker with a background in photography and journalism, are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as a filmmaker? Moreover, how does your due to your studies direct the trajectory of your artistic research? During my studies, I had not have the opportunity to go around video journalism. It was more focused on written and radio content. For my Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thesis in journalism in 2011, I thus decided to make a video report about press freedom in the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This experience was not far from a disaster. I went there alone and had contacts for my research, but I shot by myself and realized it was a nightmare doing this as a beginner in the streets of Kinshasa. The people who hosted me were overprotective. Moreover, I got sick whereas I had to continue working because my stay was limited in time. With the benefit of hindsight I notice that I did many mistakes. The result is not great. However, I learnt a lot from this experience. I began my career as a freelance radio journalist in Belgium. Meanwhile, I participated in creative workshops in Mons, Dakar, and Avignon. The project was called WebEAtv. The concept consisted in bringing together young artistic teams from Senegal, Benin, France, and Belgium to create photos, videos,

sounds about pieces held in performing arts festivals. I could test something more creative than journalism and I enjoyed it a lot. After that, I traveled in Africa and Europe and worked for media organizations such as and , producing reports and corporate films. I have always loved journalism, but I got more and more frustrated by doing it. Most media need huge amounts of daily content, few of them invest in longtime research. I felt that I needed more independence on the topics I wanted to investigate, on how I wanted to talk about them, and on the time I wanted to spend on them. I discovered my passion for cinema through various residencies. The first one was in June 2013 in BoboDioulasso, in Burkina Faso, the country where I was living. From then on, I knew I started a project that would take almost all my time and would last for a few years. It was the starting point of Memory of Missionaries, my first documentary film. As for the influences of my background I would say photography helps me to look carefully at the composition of the image, at the meaning of colors. Journalism catches my attention on facts. I try to double check everything before reflecting on what I think about a subject. Journalism also gave me a certain methodology of research and tools for leading interviews.

For this special edition of we have selected , a stimulating ethnographic documentary film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: what has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into is the way your research eschews any nostalgic or conventional direction, favoring documentary style to provide the viewers with a sensitive yet realist portrait of the situation. When walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us what did direct you to explore this theme? I was attracted by the theme for personal reasons: my grandfather was a Marist Father and became a missionary. He arrived in the Congo during the colonial period, in 1934. A bit less than twenty years later he quit the congregation, met and married a Congolese woman who later became my grandmother. The couple raised five children. My mother was six years old when my grandfather, her father, died. I was around the same age when my grandmother passed away. I did not know a lot about my grandparents. I asked questions to my mother but neither could she answer to all of those. My entire family did not really know the details about the past and they had never searched for them. So I started doing research. I firstly met people who have known my grandparents, I read a few books, and found information on the web. By

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Women Cinemakers

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Women Cinemakers telling around me what I was doing I realized many had a member of their family or knew someone involved in a similar story than the one of my grandfather. I thus had the opportunity to widen the scope of the enquiry. I interviewed former missionaries, colonists and governors who had worked in the Belgian Congo. I read more books, met old converted Congolese living in Belgium, discussed with historians, found archives in several libraries, made inquiries to catholic congregations and even to the Vatican. Little by little I had gathered enough material to make a documentary film. Featuring such stimulating enriched with sapient cinematography by Florian VallĂŠe, balances captivating storytelling and refined editing: what were your when shooting? In particular, how did you structure the editing process in order to achieve such brilliant results on the narrative aspect? During the interviews I wanted the old Belgian missionaries to be centred in fixed and tight shots. They face me, the audience, and above all themselves. They confide in the camera as if talking to a mirror. They tell and question their stories. The old converted Congolese tell about their relationships with the Belgian priests and about how their arrival changed the Congo. I wanted these interviews, which are not always of a personal nature, to be centred in wider shots. By this

Women Cinemakers way, the viewer detaches himself from the story of the missionaries. He moves from an emotional point of view to an observational point of view. I chose to shoot each interview in the living place of the character in order to make understand the current environment of each of them. The various testimonies are punctuated by snippets of life, reflecting the diversity of characters and places. Amateur archives (photos and videos) add tangible situations of the past to the film. Unlike traditional archives, often used in historical documentaries on the colonial era, the amateur archives show the daily life through familiar moments of relaxation and hobbies. I like the fact that most of the time there is no specific goal to shoot them except for personal documentation and memory. The film was shot in two countries, in two different worlds: the evangelising and the evangelised one. I wished the unique perceptions of these two places to stand out in the picture, the sound, and the editing. However, the editor SĂŠbastien Calvez and I took care that an aesthetic continuity prevails. The film had to follow a path that oscillates between these two worlds. The sound and music played important roles in this quest. The soundtrack of the film is composed by a lot of field recordings, a few traditional Congolese sounds, and contemporary electro elements. Sound and music are also of particular importance as they help blending past and present. Jeanne Debarsy, sound engineer, Aldo Platteau, composer, StĂŠphane GrĂŠgoire and Bertrand Le Roy, sound editors, sound designers, and

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Women Cinemakers additional composers, did a tremendous work on these aspects. I started working on a storyboard after the shootings in DRC. I printed the key footage and covered a wall with photos. I could thus easily change the places of the photos, reflect on the narrative and adapt again the story. SĂŠbastien Calvez, the editor, and I then worked with key sentences written on post-its, so we had two storyboards: the old and the new ones. The editing process took around eight weeks of intense work. We took breaks in between to come back and look at the work done with fresh eyes. My aim was to make an understandable yet poetic documentary that is harmonious in both style and substance. We daresay that could be considered an allegory of in our unstable globalised societies: how does your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process and address your choices regarding the themes you explore? I would say first that there is almost no boundary between my private and my professional lives. My partner himself is a filmmaker. The lack of barrier between the two lives surely has an explanation in the essence of creative documentaries. It is the unique way of the film director of looking at the topic she or he decided to develop. The decision on the theme depends on the encounters she or he makes, on the

stories she or he hears, but also on her or his personal background and path. Making documentaries is for me a way to enter worlds that are different to mine. I love meeting people at their home or in their daily life, see how they live, and understand how they think. It is a way to "live" various lives, as I do not have time myself to experiment everything. It is a form of curiosity, positive curiosity I guess. After having explored this otherness I have to confront all this with my own eyes. How do I feel regarding to this according to what I am? Actually, it rarely starts with an intellectual train of thought. It is spontaneous. It often fills in a personal, unconscious gap. The choice becomes considered only in the course of the research that follow. In the case of Memory of Missionaries the film confronts myself with some witnesses of the time who have similar paths than my grandparents and tell the reality of the past as they interpret it today. Directed with sharp eye, your documentary eschews any direct appeal to sentimentality, to imbue the narration with unsparing and at the same time realism, and to establish with the viewers: what are you hoping your film will trigger in the audience? The characters are the spine of the documentary. I selected them regarding to their capacity of being

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Women Cinemakers filmed of course, but above all according to their profile. I wanted "defrocked" priests and others who are still in the orders. I wanted open-minded and less open-minded personalities. I wanted different environments. The film reveals the behavior, the reactions, and the temperament of the characters. To me, the combination of all these elements is important for this project, because it deals with a theme that may be considered sensitive. In my opinion, seeing people at that age confide publicly already tells something in itself. They entrust their truth as they perceive it today with hindsight. Some reaffirm the prejudices of the time. Others are more critical. My desire was to transmit this ambivalence. In my view, it is necessary to listen to these elders despite what we might blame them, because whether we like it or not they illustrated history. I hope Memory of Missionaries will spur the audience to watch and listen to these seniors without judgment. I wish the theme will hold their interest. Then I expect them to build their own opinion based on conversations and on their reflections. The film is not made to impose my standpoint on the theme. I only wish to show that there is a necessity of dialogue between generations. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you try to get people out of their comfort zone by questioning their convictions: in this sense, your filmmaking practice seems to reflect German photographer Andreas Gursky's words, when he

Women Cinemakers stated that : are you particularly interested in structuring your work in order to urge the viewers to elaborate ? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? I believe the viewers themselves have to build their own train of thought. Documentaries are not made to entertain without having to think. Memory of Missionaries fits in two eras: the colonial and the current ones. To my opinion, it is very important to know and try to understand our past, even if it is behind us. We will not be able to change anything that happened at the time. However, by knowing and trying to understand it we can at least be aware of why and how certain historical facts happened. Almost everything can be explained - and when I say "explained" I do not mean "excused" - by economic, political, psychological, social or other contexts. It is then interesting to observe current society through these lenses. What has changed since this period? Why has it changed like this and not in another way? What has not changed and why? Are we doing similar choices today? Do I think it is positive or negative? Do I want to support this? These questions are essential to me. Asking them to yourself is a way of positioning yourself as an active individual in your society. It will have an impact on your choices and decisions in life.

Women Cinemakers You are concerned with social questions and for your Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thesis you made a report about press freedom in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once remarked that "

": as a researcher particularly fascinated by personal itineraries of people confronted with a system, what could be in your opinion in our everchanging contemporary age? In particular, does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? To me, the role of filmmakers today is to take a look at our society, may it be humans, objects or places. It is our duty to be attentive. I like to think that we contribute to know our society better. We will not change the world for sure, but at least we play our tiny part in it by considering it. What seems to me particular today compared to the past is that nowadays most people have no less than two origins, whether from several regions, countries or continents. The multicultural feature is obvious. We are thus all influenced by and confronted with not only one but various cultural, political, social and economic systems. I guess this is something that reflects our generation. This is probably to what my artistic research responds.

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We have been impressed with your stunning approach to documentary, that allows you to capture hidden emotional reactions with and at the same time with : what was the most challenging thing about making this film and what did you learn from this experience? Moreover, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with ?

world is very closed. The church tries to control what is said about it to avoid scandals that could weaken its institution.

A first challenge was to find interesting characters with such profiles who accepted to talk. The catholic

Despite this fact, it was necessary to take time to get to know each of them. I could not come and directly

The most challenging thing was definitely the age of the characters of the film. One of them passed away in the course of the shooting period. Others withdrew themselves at last minute because they did not feel fit anymore.

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film. We had to trust each other first, as what they would tell me then were sometimes very personal matters. I learned from this experience that creative documentary making takes time. Of course it is possible to make a film in one year or less, but it will never give the result of a long-term work. A lot stands on feelings, on an internal process. The idea needs to evolve, so do thoughts. Patience is a key word for the discipline.

My role as young woman was particular for Memory of Missionaries: I was the granddaughter asking elders how they experienced life. In a certain way my status as descendant of a former missionary reassured the characters and that is also why they accepted to answer openly to all of my questions. Another singularity is the fact that at their time a woman like me would probably not have been allowed or would not have dared to talk with them or asking them questions as I did. Once more, it shows the difference, yet the possibility of interaction between our generations.

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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 filmmaker? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? Personally I am committed not to feel any barriers. I usually do not question myself if I can do something or not; I do it if I want to do so. One should take for granted that artistically we are all allowed to follow our own path, even though it goes beyond expected standards or norms. To me it is the only way to achieve (self-)accomplishment. The future of women in the field is a future they - we - will shape. I wish this art scene to be open, free, original and to reflect society. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Delphine. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Women Cinemakers Currently, I write The Risk of Losing Oneself, a short fiction film about Fred, a young enthusiast African journalist who risked his life trying to reconcile his job and his ethical conscience. I am doing my first steps as screenwriter and I wish to direct the fiction as well. I want the film to be managed at least partly by an African-based producer, as it is important to me to remain rooted on both continents. I want the film to be watched on both territories. I co-direct with radio director and sound engineer Jeanne Debarsy a project called Under Water Tears of Fish Cannot Be Seen. It is an audio docufiction about my personal quest on the family story. It is an introspective work that has a link with Memory of Missionaries. I also develop two documentary projects, for which I do not yet have titles. I guess my multicultural background will remain a core feature of my work. It possibly explains my taste for eclectism as well. The focus on past and present, the process of questioning our current society through history is something I really want to develop further. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com