Interview with Anna Hints, director of Smoke Sauna Sisterhood *This interview was made possible through pre-recorded zoom meeting between Anna Hints and Marianne Ostrat, with questions sent by WMWFF. Special thanks to the generosity and kind sharing of Anna Hints and Marianne Ostrat. Ｑ：Please briefly introduce the Smoke Sauna tradition in South Estonia. Smoke Sauna tradition is very old. It dates back to pre-Christian times. It is a sacred space for us in Southeast Estonia. But not only Southeast Estonia, it is also on islands. But in Southeast Estonia, the traditions are still preserved. You go there naked, not just body-wise naked, but also soul-wise naked. And it's a place where you can wash off dirt from your body, but also from your soul. It's connected with transformational and healing powers. Like my granny said, you go there and some part of you dies and some part of you is reborn. Going there, you can redefine yourself and regain your power. Ｑ：What was your motivation behind making this film? Why making this smoke sauna as the site of filming? I come from this culture. The heritage was passed on to me through my granny. I've thought about where the roots of the film are, they go back to one specific time when I was 11. My grandfather had just died and his body was in the house. And we went to a smoke sauna with granny, aunt, and niece. This is what you do exactly, go to purify yourself before important events. There my granny revealed that my grandfather had betrayed her and lived with another woman for a while. She confessed how difficult it was. It was Soviet time and she had four children to raise. She released all the emotions connected to that. She released the pain, anger, and frustration. We were there witnessing it. One smoke saunas session last for several hours. When we once went out, I felt that granny had made peace with my grandfather, so that next day we could bury grandfather in peace. This really stuck me. I came to understand smoke sauna as a safe space where all your emotions and experiences can be shared and heard. When we give voice to these experiences without judgment, without shame, then there is huge healing power. We are validating ourselves. We are washing off the shame and pain and anger. I wanted to transform the power of Smoke Sauna into an experience in the dark cinema hall and to give hope and encouragement for everyone who watches it. Find and create these safe spaces to be vulnerable. Ｑ：Can you elaborate on the filming process? In face of the humidity, the high temperature of the environment, how do you shoot? It was very challenging. I mean, when you talk to someone and say that you want to shoot in dark, humid, and very hot space, it is like a huge challenge! Speaking of the temperature, the average temperature was 80 degrees Celsius, sometimes higher, sometimes a bit less, but generally 80 degrees. We had to be really prepared. As a director, you must choose the right people around you who are not saying no to the challenges, but yes, let's find solutions for that. Like the producer Marianne, and cinematographer Ants Tammik And also Tanel, who was holding the boom. You can imagine it's not easy to hold the boom in smoke sauna. First, I had to make sure that nobody passes out. We had ice bags around the camera. Cinematographer and sound operator had wet cloth on their heads, dripping all the time. We must also make sure water is being drunk regularly. The cinematographer had gloves to prevent get burn because camera gets hot. Heating up the smoke sauna takes around six hours, sometimes more. We had to adjust the equipment to the environment. We had two lenses. One for outdoor shooting, the other for indoor. In smoke sauna, in order to let the equipment get adjusted to the temperature, we first put it on the floor. After two hours of heating up the sauna, we put it at higher position. And then after two hours, we adjust it to even higher position. We knew that probably we would lose some lenses, so we used very good but not too expensive ones. We lost two in the whole process. And the filming took seven years. Ｑ：Couldn't it have been shot then in cold sauna? Oh, no, definitely not. In order to have the smoke sauna magic to happen and bring out the essence of this very special place, you need hot smoke sauna. And darkness must be there because all is part of this magic. You start to sweat out the dirt from your body. From the surface level and then get deeper and deeper, dirt comes out physically, but also emotionally. It’s very challenging, but it’s also important to find the ways to shoot like this. I think it is also very important to talk about how we shot. In smoked sauna, this nakedness is very important. When you enter there naked, you put away not just physical clothes, but also masks that we carry. You enter this cosmic universe that holds you, nourishes you and keeps you warm. But another question is: how to shoot that nakedness? That was a challenge for me. Especially how this nakedness is not presented as objectified nakedness or sexualized nakedness. How to avoid male gaze? How this gaze towards women won’t lead to ideas of women being certain types? We paid a lot of attention to the presentation of nakedness. And we tested it with the cinematographer on our own bodies, on my own body and finding this key and also tested it with other women, talking about how they felt, etc. The result is really seeing everybody, and the bodies become landscapes. I'm very happy for the result, women wrote to me, and actually many men have written to me, saying they never know women's body can be seen this way. For me, one of the messages related to the visual choice or the language of cinematography, is to make you feel different way of being accepted. Ｑ：How did you find the protagonist or the sauna keeper, Kati? Yes, we call her a sauna keeper. She came on the second or third year of shooting. She's a friend that I know a long time. I had this thing that I should not persuade anyone to be part of the film. The process was very transparent concerning what level of intimacy and honesty I'm looking for. Only when people felt like joining it, they would be part of it. Secondly, to shoot this level of intimacy, we really need to have deep trust with one another. We agreed to the fact that they don't sign their releases before post-production, before they see the edit. Only after they say yes, we can continue. This requires huge vulnerability from the production side. But I think this film could not have been done otherwise. So it was really deep trust. Otherwise they would have been very self-conscious concerning what to say or not to say. But nobody can take their voice away. And the sisterhood continued after the filming. We didn't rehearse and we didn't go through what we are going to say in the smoke sauna. Let's go to smoke sauna and then things start to emerge. As you sweat, things come up. So Keiti came on shooting as a friend. Her mother had died. She heard about this project and really wanted to join the journey, this healing spiritual journey through the smoke sauna. Through this film, tackle some of the patterns that she wants to change and not to pass on to her daughter, and to heal the relationship between her and her mother. She later came on board and she was in all saunas. I think while talking about this film, it is also important to talk about how the whole process was like. As a director, what I believe in is not just about the subject matter but how we make films. It’s so important to understand how you can make bold, vulnerable, and powerful films, while being transparent and being open without abusing your power. It’s about including everyone. It's sisterhood that goes beyond genders. Ｑ：Absolutely. Next question is: As a singer in the electronic folk EETER, and one half of the composer for this film, how does your profession in music contribute to this film? And can you elaborate on the use of music in the film? I think filmmaking and composing are connected. Especially in editing process, how everything comes together, musical terminology is something that I use a lot. Music is something important and natural thing to do. It’s connected to smoke sauna and my heritage. My granny passed on many folk songs to me. When we think about what this film is about, you can say it’s about the whole experience of being born into a female body. How do we give voices to our experiences, how to give voices to all our emotions and experiences? From the start, it’s important that female voices are there. The band naturally comes in, because our band was made of three females, even though I define myself non-binary, but basically three people who are born into female bodies. Other part is from an Icelandic composer, Eðvarð Egilsson. I think this combination works very well. Our first meeting was in fact in a smoke sauna, getting naked. He flew from Iceland to Estonia. And we saw there is connection, in terms of deep connection with nature and sacredness in nature. We talked about where all the sounds come from: from the space, from nature, from the wood, from metal, from water, so that sounds from the space emerge together. Ｑ：What is the most important message that you want to deliver through this film? To really look into oneself. And not be afraid of the dark spaces, not be afraid of whatever experiences we have had. To give voice to all our experiences and emotions, to be the first one to start the sisterhood. In this kind of sisterhood, we are not competitors, we can support each other, give strengths to each other without judgment, without shame, and through that empower each other. I believe in this world where this way of being and being connected to each other and being also vulnerable with each other is possible. This sisterhood is going beyond genders. there is not an easy way to be connected. It means to go through the uncomfortableness and being vulnerable. Ｑ：For me, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a moment of radical self-acceptance. It's also somehow starts with accepting, yes, accepting yourself. Then you can accept the others. With all the illnesses and traumas and whatever we have been through in life. Now mentioning Women Make Waves IFF is getting 30 years old this year. What should we do about it? I think we should sing a song for all of you who attend the festival. There is this old tradition in Estonia of singing where one said a verse in the beginning and then everyone repeats [start singing]. We believe in our culture, the power of words. When you say something, you create that thing. When we do it all together, we create that bond and empower more. This is also a thank you song for this festival. What you have been doing is very important: empowering women. This is also what this film is doing. So I feel very warm feelings towards this festival. Thank you all. I really hope now that you can feel that smoke sauna and its magic and power in cinema. After you come out, some transformation has happened. Courage to be vulnerable, courage to voice your experiences and courage to redefine yourself. Own your body, own your voice outside cinema too.
Ｑ：To begin with Vever (for Barbara), it’s stated that the film grew out of abandoned film projects of Maya Deren and Barbara Hammer. Can you elaborate on how it all began? Barbara had received a grant from Wexner that she’d intended to use to finish a number of projects which she’d left uncompleted. But she became too sick to do that. So instead, she reached out to some artists, namely Lynne Sachs, Mark Street, and Dan Veltri, myself included, to see if we’d want to work with the material. She and I did not know each other, or not well anyways. We’d met once or twice over the years at screenings, but I was not a close friend like some other collaborators, so I was surprised when she reached out. It was surreal to see her name on the caller ID. She’s such a formidable figure. Her proposal was very open - she trusted me to do what I wanted to with the material. This was instrumental. I wouldn't have agreed to collaborate if the invitation was just about executing her ideas. Other people could have done that much better. Ｑ：How did the process go? We had two phone conversations which I requested to record. This was before I ever had seen any of the material, which was film she had shot on a motorcycle trip to Guatemala. She spoke about this trip, and how she was traveling just to move. She didn’t have any intention. There was no particular project in mind… but once she used up the film, she turned around and headed home. The material she shot was at a market in Chichicastenango which at that time in early 70s, was an indigenous market full of textiles. Barbara became very interested in the weaving and in the stories those weavings contained. In how those histories had been passed down between women for generations. She was curious to know if this tradition of women writing history had changed, if the markets had become globalized, if the women were still weaving or if everyone bought cheap imports now instead. She knew I had also been a motorcyclist and wondered if I might want to ride down there to film. But I’d sold my motorcycle by then, and as much I’d like to visit Guatemala and the market there, I didn’t want to do it right then. I felt working fast while Barbara was still alive was the most important thing. Besides, I liked the idea of not shooting any of my own new material, just working with the film she’d shot 50 years ago. I like limitations. And besides, once we had the phone conversations, I knew I could sonically include musings about the market changes. Ｑ：The film remarkably weaves together three filmmakers’ unique relationships to filmmaking. How do you perceive the Vever drawings that appear as superimposed illustrations throughout the film? After I had begun speaking with Barbara but before I started editing, I found myself re-reading Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen. This was a book that came out of Deren’s time in Haiti with the Vodoun culture. She had originally been there to make a film. But she abandoned that and wrote this astonishing book instead. Picking up that book just then was a revelation. Bringing Deren into the collaboration relieved the pressure I felt about doing justice to Barbara’s legacy through our dialogue. Once there were three of us, the project solidified. There were so many echoes between Hammer and Deren who were both working outside their own culture, and unable or unwilling to master their material. The Vevers in the film were taken from the reproductions in Deren’s book, which were drawn by Teiji Ito, her partner for a time. Ito also composed the music to Meshes in the Afternoon which sounds in the film a bit like a ghost. Familiar but displaced. Traditionally in Vodoun, Vevers are drawn on the ground in powder and danced over. The Vever becomes a portal through which the Loa (god) passes in order to ‘ride’ the human ‘horse’ or practitioner. The dancer is ridden, or possessed, by the Loa. I superimpose Vevers in my film to borrow the idea of portal, and the idea of being ridden… in my case by my filmic ancestor sisters, Barbara and Maya. Ｑ：Let’s talk about your latest film, Last Things. The film draws from philosophical themes and sci-fi tales. Can you elaborate on how these influences started to shape the narrative and themes of your film? Science-fiction has been an influence since I was a kid. It’s a remarkable genre, as so many genres are, for being able to speak to the socio-political present from an adjacent, but othered nearby. This has always been a philosophical place for me. Not just sci-fi, but the library in general. When I’m being troubled by an idea, like the 7th great extinction for instance, or the psycho-ecological territories it generates…I start reading. The kernels for the film were two JH Rosny stories: La Mort de la Terre (The Death of the Earth) and Le Xipéhuz. The Boex brothers were way ahead of their time. They co-wrote under the pseudonym Rosny before sci-fi was even a genre, and envisioned non-anthropic alien invaders that don’t necessarily come with any ill intent. They’re just following their own nature, which humans happen to be threatened by. I thought I was going to make more of a straight-ahead filmic adaptation of these stories, but quickly got side-tracked by the science surrounding evolution, and the incredible ties between minerals and life. So I started wondering what it might be like to have these two idioms, science-fiction and science non-fiction, share the same space. Ｑ：One of the amazing parts of this film is how sci-fi meets sci-fact, where rocks have their own narrative beyond the human experience. How did the mineral point of view come along in the first place? The mineral point of view was there from the beginning. In La Mort de la Terre, the encroaching alien force which will succeed mankind are the “Ferromagnetics” – a slowly advancing mineral life form that consumes iron for energy, including iron in blood. But the bigger catalyst was seeing an exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Vienna which described the theory of mineral evolution. It flipped my understanding of what happens on this planet. When earth formed, there were only a handful of minerals, but through exposure to pressures, atmospheres, and respirating biotic life, the number of mineral types exploded in number. Concurrent with the GOE (Great Oxygenation Event), when the first photosynthesizing cyanobacteria learned how to eat the sun and started outgassing oxygen… there was not only a mass extinction of anaerobes (creatures that live only in the absence of oxygen – which were the primary sort of creatures back then), but also this huge renaissance in mineral varieties. Life needs minerals. Minerals need life. We are intertwined. So I tried to figure out how to speak through the prism of minerals. How rocks as the active verbs they are instead of the static nouns we perceive them to be. How to posit rocks as our ancestors. Rocks as texts. Rocks as capable of time frames so alien to us and yet so utterly earthly. Ｑ：How did the focus on geological ecology and the extreme contrasts between macro and micro changes in time affect the editing of the film? Did the poetic approach to scientific subject matter present any challenges or spark interesting ideas? The poetic, associative approach is my indigenous editing language. I find it hard to speak in other ways, regardless of subject matter. I knew the film would contain a mix of macro and micro and I became interested in a conflation or mis-identification of scales. So that, for instance, the shot of a miniscule diatom (which is a photosynthesizing, silica-shelled alga) cuts to an orbiting spacecraft solar panel. Or when clusters of drifting plankton cuts to sedimentary canyon walls, we see in an instant what took billions of years to happen. Millennia of those little plankton drifting after death to the bottom of the sea and stacking up into what eventually become towering walls of biotic sediment. Or a Neolithic henge arrangement of boulders that materializes instantaneously, with a cut, from stars. Film is a good medium to address epic shifts of scale. In space or time. Ｑ：The film is remarkably shot on 16mm, which is sometimes unimaginable with things like a microscope in laboratory settings. How to capture all these wonderful images? Can you elaborate on your filming process? I’m curious about the edges of documentary. Where are they? Who defines them? When does documentary slip quietly into fiction, and when is the shift abrupt, declarative… I like working with 16mm because the process is slow, which seemed right for rocks, and because the medium itself is made of minerals. Light hits minerals suspended in the emulsion and etches them. So it’s a type of stone carving. Its materiality contains a knowing-through-feeling. Knowing through touch should be as relevant and authoritative as empirical, data-based knowing. These knowing-modes are echoed with the film’s narrators. One a geo-scientist, lecturing, reporting. The other, oracular, spinning her tale. The image sources are very diverse. I shot using a mix of cameras including an Aaton, an Arri S and a Bolex. For some of the chondrite images, we screwed the Bolex directly onto the microscope mount. But I also did a lot of re-shooting off computer monitors, microscope displays, books and existing archives. That’s why the image source credits are so long. Ｑ：Music and the sound effects in this film are truly remarkable. How are the sounds like mineral collisions or crystallization, futuristic signal sounds or microtonal soundtrack frequencies in the film produced or recorded? There are a huge number of sonic sources. In the rock taxonomy sequence, where the parade of mineral types is accompanied by comedic, alliterative sounds… those are all from a composition by Nicolas Collins who is playing a synthesized trumpet. The composition has so much personality. I love how those sounds are clearly electronic and yet there’s breath in them. In the sequences when the crystals are growing, the soundtrack there I made from mixing recordings of chafing river ice, glacial movement, squeaking doors and rubbing Styrofoam. Some sounds I record myself, using a variety of microphones, hydrophones and a geophone. I have a pretty big archive of sounds I’ve recorded over the years at this point. But many sounds are recorded by other field recordists and collected in archives where I find them, including space sound archives. And of course there’s all the composed music, which might sound a bit like sound effects as it’s primarily electronic. I’m an equal opportunist when it comes to sampling image and sound sources. Material quotations make meaning more dimensional, the way they carry their original use value along with them into the new context.
I can make this thing, and it exists!! Interview with Patricia Rozema, director of I've Heard the Mermaids Singing Q: I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing is now regarded as queer classics. Now looking back, what made you decide to make I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing? What drove you to tell an “unusual” story back then? I made I Have Heard the Mermaid Singing at the state of innocence and ignorance. Deliberate ignorance, actually. I was very keen not to imitate other movies. I wanted it to have its own voices, its own style. And I felt like a lot of movies were efficient vehicles of expected messages, and I knew that I was not a standard general issue type of human. I am queer and female in the film business which was much rare at that time. I was 27. It was 1987. 35 five years ago, my friends. So I wanted to have its own voice, and I didn’t expect a giant audience for it. I wasn’t opposed to it, but I really approach filmmaking that one might approach making a painting. You think: yeah, maybe people would like it, maybe I can do well enough to make another movie, but I don’t know. I was just very moved by the combination of narrative, music and a voice that was not compromised by the system or the business. I didn’t study film, I study philosophy and literature in religious context, so I came from a very unusual place for this kind of career choice. It wasn’t even about career, it was more like, “let’s try this.” I love all the parts, and wouldn’t it be amazing if I can make something that holds together. I love writing stories and telling stories. I just thought I would put it all together, and if people like it great, but if people don’t like it, there is still this thing there! I can make this thing, and it exists!! There is nothing like that outside. I wasn’t seeing what I wanted to see. Anything that has lesbian or queer have a bit feeling of tragedy or cautionary tales. But I just want to put queerness in the context of bigger life. It was not like here’s the story (with robot-like voice): human woman feels attraction for human woman. Will she be able to have this attraction fulfilled? Will these human lesbians together? No, that felt like diminishment of my experience, so I wanted to talk about many more things as well, because I think, one’s sexuality, one’s orientation is one of many many things. I am many many things, so I am not only those things, and I felt I want to embed it into a larger life and other questions about art making, confidence, authority in art and subjectivity. Q: It not only set an important milestone in both queer cinema, but also in the development of the Toronto New Wave, and the film was selected for the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Can you share about the experience back then? The time was kind of exciting in Toronto, Atom Egoyan was a friend, and there was Don McKellar, Bruce McDonald. But in fact we had a great tradition of writers in our country, like Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro. Michael Ondaatje, and Ann-Marie MacDonald. She hadn't started writing yet, but she was one of our greats I believe. So I do feel there was a new energy, and there was new money actually, to be perfectly frank. We are always a kind of documentary country and the Americans did the fiction, and suddenly there was new emphasis on doing new fiction films. And I just happened to be someone standing at the door with my hand holding my idea called, I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing. So I got some money to do it and submit it to the Cannes Film Festival. I filled out the form without telling anybody but my producer, Alexandra Raffé. I thought no one needed to know. We'll just fill this out and let it be held. We got a call, and had to send it there and off we go! And it was an extraordinary event, here we were stunned. Sheila McCarthy, Alexandra Raffé and I were there. We thought we were impostor syndrome on steroids. We laughed most of the time, my French was absolutely terrible. It's not much better now. And we kept saying, "quel fromage" which means "what cheese," which is all we could think of saying. Basically Pierre-Henri Deleau watched it, and said we're gonna program it. The giant challenge was to get our 16mm blown up to 35mm, because it couldn’t be shown at Cannes unless we blew it up, so that we have to figure out 50 thousand dollars or something. A good man Jan Rofekamp came to the floor and gave us the money. Suddenly the film was sold to 40 countries in Cannes. People were sending champagne and standing ovations. It was so moving for me. I felt like I was this weird, completely alone outsider. Just doing some sketches, and humming along, and that was my movie. Suddenly I was at the stage of one of the biggest film festivals in the world. People are laughing and crying, that is the stunning moment that I would cherish my whole life. To have your heart welcomed into the hearts of others, is a stunning moment in anyone’s life. Q: There were three main characters. Can you share with us what’s the idea of having these three characters? Was finding Polly a challenge back then? I made three character, and they are one side of me, the curator with more critical mind, Polly is more innocent and insecure and a bit oblivious mind, and Mary Joseph character (starring Ann-Marie MacDonald) is more like artist who is afraid to present themselves, and just want to make things, but confident in her own sexuality. I put them all in opposition to each other, as a strategy for creating authentic dialogue, and making sure that I take each voice seriously, like they are part of me, and at comfort as they were. But the conflict was I have seen movies, heard music, seen arts that are of huge impact for me. What if I can’t make it? I wanted it more than anything, What if I can't? Should I do it anyway? Should I just like trick and finagle, and like force myself into something so that I can still do it? Should I take the naysayers seriously? They don't get me as the fact of being a woman, which was much more rare at that time. And lesbian taboo, and coming from a Dutch Calvinist background. And I also have this idea of should I look kind of dark, super thin, kind of anguish, smoking and hunched over. I just have this image that I didn’t fit. I didn’t fit my own image. I wanted to be Susan Sontag actually, but I didn’t look like that. Anyway. So I thought, just make things that you want to see, trust the voices, trust that somehow debating within yourself is a worthy one. And have fun! I hadn't thought it would be a comedy actually, and the VHS or DVD (yeah back in those days) ended up in the comedy section, that kind of surprised me. I thought it was going to be sort of a gently amusing, thoughtful, magic-realist base, but anyway. Sheila McCarthy was gold. I auditioned for this character Polly for a long time, a lot of people. When she came, my memory was like, “oh my god, you are perfect.” Her memory was like I had an audition for five hours or something horrible (laugh). She was about to get fed up and walk out if I didn’t give it to her right away. And I did give it to her. We have remained friends. Actually see a movie called Women Talking by astounding filmmaker Sarah Polley. Sheila McCarthy played a very old woman, and she does so beautifully. The whole film is so extraordinary. And I don't think that they're unrealistic that this film will be getting some attention, come Oscar time. It's so specific to a place and time, and leaps with incredible confidence and presence to transcendent embodiment of the most important discussion right now. See Women Talking by Sarah Polley if you can. Sheila and I just dared to have fun all the way through. She had this fantastic sense of humor, we made each other laugh all the time. Like almost immediately, I can say things like, “Ok, cut, Sheila can you just act better?” And she would laugh. Doug Koch shot it. He had a great sense of humor and visual humor. And that's not given to everyone. When she goes to the curator's birthday party, she’s carrying this large box, and does everything wrong. Embarrassment is a lovely thing to play. The film touches upon many different aspects of art. And Embarrassment, one of the most fruitful realms of human experience. When we are embarrassed, we are actually changed in color. Like liquid coming out of a palm. It was a profound force for us. Very difficult sometimes to watch, and healing to see in others, because we all live in such a desperate grasp on our own dignity. When we felt it slipping away, we felt like ourselves were slipping away. I just stumbled on that as a state of being to explore. I think that might be one of the things people are responding to with this movie. Q: After around 35 years, how do you look at this movie now? It’s my first born. It’s my friend, it still makes me laugh. I cherish the freedom that I had in it. When I didn’t expect or hope for anything, it’s a lovely state of being to make art in. I love the camera monologue, because it’s intimate, you are looking at eyes. And I am proud of it. I hope you find it worthy with your time, and share it with your friend if you can. I send you good will to Taiwan, and send the festival good will. If there is anyone out there on the brink of making movies, hear your own voice, trust it. Get as much homework, do the homework, and listen to yourself, and work, and play. That's my advice to you.
“Did I have to make a movie saying: let’s all accept death? No!!” Interview with Jan Oxenberg, director of Thank You and Good Night and A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts Ｑ：In the early days of your career, you made a series of short films including A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts. Can you tell us about in what context you decided to make this film ? This film was made a long time ago, 1975. I have grown up with terrible images. If there was anything called lesbian or queer, you never heard about it, but when you did hear about it, it’s in very bad context. I remember when I was little, sitting on the floor, watching The Children's Hour on TV. Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn are business partners who owned a girl’s school in the film. One of the girls started to rumor that Shirley MacLaine’s character is a lesbian. It's not true, but for Shirley MacLaine, it’s true inside. She has never admitted to anyone. In one scene, she finally confessed to Audrey Hepburn by saying “I feel so sick and dirty.” And then in the next scene, she hanged herself. So this is my introduction to what life would be like as an educated lesbian. Even if you are very successful at your career, you’ll get to hang yourself. Years later, when I got to the film school and experienced the time of feminist revolution, everybody wanted to turn everything upside down, making thing right that have been so wrong. I wanted to really ridicule the stereotype of lesbianess. You know there were people saying, “please accept us, we are just like you,” which was good, but I wanted to make an entertainment for lesbians, and could be seen and enjoyed by anybody else. And the film would satirize the stereotypes of being a child molester, a wall flower, or becoming a lesbian because men rejected her, so on and so forth. That’s where it came from. Ｑ：Now looking back, how do you perceive this film and these stereotypes now? Concerning the social environment nowadays, if you have a chance to remake the film, what will you change or add? I saw this question, and thought it’s really provocative. Because at this time, we have been so many changes. LGBTQ+ people are somewhat seen as people who have a range of characteristic like anybody else, can be good person or bad person. But obviously the hate joke exists. In my country, hate or resentment of people who are considered “woke”. The idea of “you should be positive about LGBTQ+ person” is now used by the right wing to stoke resentment. The first thing came into my mind about what stereotype that I add now was a super “woke” queer person who “cancels” people or who has things to say about anybody who does wrong. And I realize that’s kind of scary. Because that’s what the right wing in my country is doing, to promote a very scary time. Speaking of Thank You and Good Night, it took 12 years in the making, and really stood out as an remarkable example of independent cinema, co-produced by James Schamus. Can you share with us how this project came together and what made you decide to make this film? Yes, James Schamus, the co-producer of my film, as you know, has worked with Ang Lee. They have worked together on a classic film The Wedding Banquet. But Thank You and Good Night is a film that has every buzz word that makes you not want to see a movie, like documentary, grandmother, starring a cardboard cutout, and yeah! It’s about death. And cancer. Let’s not forget cancer. So it doesn’t really seem a good idea to make a movie about that. But I didn’t know what I was doing, maybe that’s what makes things original. Because I wasn’t trying to make a certain kind of movie. It started when I found out my grandmother had cancer and I thought I would like to do a tape recording with her, so I can have that for myself. In my family, we have taken her for granted very much. She belongs to a generation of women who did not have a lot of opportunity to have a career. My mother was always rebelling against being like her, and I was always busy with rebelling against being like my mother. When I put a lot of attention on my grandmother, I discovered that she had ideas and this great sense of humor. And she was willing to talk about contemplating dying in a way that was very captivating. And one thing led to another. With a bunch of friends, film equipment, we shot a little bit of time before she died, and a little bit after she died with my family. I had no funding and I had no idea what to do with the footage. So I ended up writing the script over a few years after my grandmother died. A script in which I made a cardboard cutout figure of myself as a five-year-old girl experiencing these events. With the idea that, when someone dies, time kind of collapses. Every time that you know that person, it’s all the same. It’s all present. My five-year-old self, loving my grandma, was the one who was there feeling all the feelings, so intuitively I just made this cardboard cutout character, who will guide us through these footages, asking the big unanswerable questions that death brings up. Believe or not, there were some people who were sure that this was going to work as a movie. So I started filming some scenes when I got to receive some financing. Foreign television and some art organizations are really helpful. You don’t really want to hear what happened during the course of 12 years, do you? So long (laugh). I didn’t give up, that’s how it got made. Thanks to people like James Schamus, Lynn Holst, as well as Sandra Schulberg. The film was finally able to finish with American Playhouse and premiere at Sundance. I also have to say that I am incredibly lucky that Sandra Schulberg who was part of getting the film financed at the first place started the IndieCollect, started restoring films made on 16mm, 35mm in the early days. She was responsible for my films and many others, in order to get them revived and re-appreciated. Ｑ：How did the idea of cardboard cutout come along? I was influenced by this 7-hour film called Our Hitler by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, a meditation on how Germany got Hitler. It has all kinds of elements: drama, puppets, documentary footage, theater, etc. Seeing that movie, which was philosophical in a way, and Thank You and Good Night is a family movie that asks about a big subject, death and love. Because anything about death is really about love. I guess I was influenced by seeing that film. It all started out as one scene in the movie theater. She took me to see my first movie and felt like she was all around me. So to have all these cardboard cutouts, and I would be a cardboard cutout too. But looking back on it, the impulse partly has to do with the fact that a cardboard cutout doesn’t die. I portrayed myself as a child in this cutout character. Well, that’s the child inside me that is losing my grandma, and that has lost my sister, which also comes up in the movie. My sister never got older than 7 years old. It's also lucky for me to come up with this idea of having a cutout character, given how long it takes to finish this film. if I had an actor, who would be up for doing another job! My cutout character did not have another job (laugh). Ｑ：Can you also share about the filming process? Some of the scenes are really intense… First of all, very little footage was shot, so it wasn’t a situation where a large film crew followed the family for 24 hours. Every scene that we shot, there was a piece of that scene in the movie. We did film my grandmother when she was in the hospital in the last days. It’s tough to watch. I made the decision. It’s tough to be there. It’s hard to watch someone you love deteriorating. At that time, I felt like she didn't have any choice about being there. She was alive, and that’s what she was experiencing. The choice is either leave her alone, not be with her, or to find a way to be with her. The film was almost like a crutch for me, to be able to spend that time with my grandmother. Having a camera, having a “reason” to be there. And it gave her a chance to say goodbye. She said, “are you ever gonna take this movie out and show them, Jan?” She clearly loved the idea of being immortalized in some way, and I am sure she cannot possibly have imagined that one day I’d be able to talk about her to someone in Taiwan! She’d say, “how you gonna take this movie out and show them Jan?” (laugh). Ok, we are, grandma, we did! And she is an ordinary person. She is not someone who made a quilt that is 100 miles long (laugh). She had a family and loved her family. So that’s what I wanted to do. To make a tribute to everybody’s loved ones, everybody’s grandma. Ｑ：One thing I am curious about is that we truly see the strong bonding among family members, but we also see some of the really difficult questions asked in the film. So how did the family member take on that? My family is very lively. We talked and argued. I have a brother who turned out to be a philosophy professor at the university who asked philosophical questions in a very intense way. He was a little bit mad at me when the film came out, because I did the cardboard cutout character shooting herself while he was talking. I was sort of made fun of sibling relationship. I love my brother, and I am really glad that people who have appreciated what my brother added to the film, in terms of being willing to ask big questions. Anyway, he did feel mad at me for a little while, but now he is proud of it, and proud to show it to his son. Sadly my mom died three years ago, but she got to see the revival of the film. She was a big fan when it came out originally. She was there when the restored version premiered at the Queens World Film Festival. Richard Brody of the New Yorker gave this amazing review, which helped it get in The Criterion Collection, and get shown all over the world again. Since then, she passed away, which I don’t like either!! The film was a kind of protest against death!! It’s not like, “let’s all accept death…” I mean we have to accept death!! What choice do we have!! And I have to make a movie saying “accepted”?!! No, my movie is more like, “no!!! I don’t like death!” But then it’s kind of futile. But, after she died, I found in her condo, she had a full cabinet full of every review, now I am starting to cry. Every flier, everything written about my movies. She saved it all. Ｑ：Your first short film Home Movie and Thank You and Good Night are both dealing with family topics. Can you comment on that? It's true that my first short film Home Movie and first feature work Thank You and Good Night are similar stylistically, what you might call it personal essay films. Home Movie has me as a child, when my brother was born. He was an infant in Home Movie. And I am imitating my mother holding him. I had a doll, feeding the little doll. And then I looked at the doll and threw it across the room, and started dancing. And there was me being the cheerleader. I talked about coming out, about how I became a cheerleader so I can be with other cheerleaders. My mother wasn’t so accepting when I first came out to her, but she is trying to be a good sport. When I made Home Movie, I didn’t know about any critics. We made a flier for the film, and we need some quotes of review. So I asked my mother to give me a review. So she did, saying “Home Movie is sensitive and well-made. I think my daughter Jan is a talented filmmaker. I hope she will go on to other subjects.” Ｑ：That’s how you start the journey! It’s incredible all along the way, Home Movie is now regarded as one of the first feminist lesbian films. You also present the first kiss between two lesbian characters on American primetime television in Relativity (1997). How did you take the first step when there were not so many people doing that at that time. There are people who have been real pioneers doing what no one else was doing. I was able to do what I did, because I had a community. Back in the 1970s, there was a tremendous women’s community. Here I was watching Shirley MacLaine hang herself in The Children's Hour. But later I was among the community who shouted, “we are lesbian, we are queer, we are dykes!” Raising every word that has been an insult. Along with the feminist movement, that’s really the context of why I was able to do this. Even in terms of Thank You and Good Night, I was with a group of independent filmmakers in New York City who weren’t imitating the mainstream or Hollywood success possibly because it seems so far-off. And we all supported each other to do something different. Yes it did take courage to do all these things, but it really helps if you have a community around you, even if it’s just a couple of people.
Truly in the Present in order to See Interview with Jessica Beshir, director of Faya Dayi Ｑ：Faya Dayi is your first feature documentary, what drove you to make a film on khat in your home country Ethiopia? I grew up in the same town in the film, and had to leave at 16 years old due to the political turmoil. It’s a violent uprooting in a way, we had to leave in a couple of days, so naturally I want to make sense out of everything. When I was able to go back, I wanted to reconnect with my family, grandmother and friends who I haven’t seen for such a long time. Once I was there, I was shocked by all the changes. Some of the changes are not apparent at the beginning, but are visually manifested. When I drove to the town from the main city, all I saw was khat. I grew up with khat around me, but it’s visually shocking. The landscape has drastically changed. I had so many questions in mind, and that’s how I started. I slowly learned that khat has become a single crop economy and there was a huge problem of unemployment. A lot of youth were leaving across the borders. Climate change was also a factor. The famers were no longer relied on the cultivation of coffee for example, which used to be the most important crop in the area. A lot of the farmers turned to the cultivation of khat, which can be harvested four times a year, with a lot less maintenance. I also feel the urge to reconnect with the nation, the land and the people. The sense of time has felt like a huge vacuum and somehow I wanted to recover that. Ｑ：Taiwan also has betel nuts, which has become an economic crop, so it’s interesting to see how your film revolves around khat. Can you give us a little bit of background on how Khat manifests in people’s everyday life? Yes it really has something to do with human relationship with the sacred plants around the world. Sufi muslins chewed khat to help them meditate and pray for longer periods. That’s how this plant was used for a long time, but the practice tended to be limited to predominantly Muslim areas. Up until later, it started to become part of the culture, even a mainstream thing. Women, men, elderly and even children are chewing. For a lot of the youth, it’s a way to “kill time.” Because time is what holds an incredible amount of frustration. What happens when you chew is that it has different stages. The first stage is “harara,” the time for having the craving, so around noon everyone is at the market trying to get their khat. Around 1pm, everyone gets inside their houses or gathers with people chewing. Entering the euphoric states, it’s really a social gathering thing. People talk about politics, religion, love and everything. But around 4 pm, it’s like dead silence. As euphoric states pass, people tend to turn to introspection, that is “merkana.” It’s like entering a lucid dream. It’s also a time to liberate yourself from the tyranny of time. Ｑ：In your film, different segments are connected and arranged like a dream sequence. It’s also like a journey. It’s so beautifully shot that it makes you feel a sense of lightness, but again you also feel a sense of heaviness that ties to the characters’ inner world. Can you elaborate on the way you form your visual and experiment in forms? The way I construct my film is really under the influence of Sufi way of thinking, especially the way of seeing. About how to be in the present moment in order to see. We are often either planning the future or thinking about the past. Truly in the present is a difficult thing to do. So the Sufi meditation stresses on emptying themselves in order to see. Empty your ego in order to see what’s in the present. For me, filming is to capture that sense of present. The construction of film also echoes back to the effect of khat on us. The effect of releasing yourself from time, and of releasing from the tendency of being everywhere but not here at the present moment. I have put a lot of energy into the making of that experience. It's about finding people in their own spaces and environment, to see their relationship, for example the negotiation of the lights and shadows, the negotiation between fear and what’s the opposite of fear. Fear is a paralyzing force, so how do you confront your fear? And what’s its relationship to life? These are the essential things I have been thinking a lot about. I also want the film to be quite open. For example, the opening of a boy coming out of the fog or a boy trying to get a ride in the final scenes. You don’t know whether he is staying or going. That truly speaks to the uncertainty being felt. Ethiopia has this civil war going on right now, but even back to the time when I was filming, you can sense this uncertainty, you don’t know what’s gonna happen, just feeling there are a lot of things moving underneath. I don’t want to tie a nice ribbon to end the film. To shoot this film is to be open to what life is going to bring. Ｑ：It takes ten years of making. You are the director, writer, producer and cinematographer of this film, what's the biggest challenge along the way? And what’s the biggest rewards? This film taught me so much about life, about patience, about self-reliance. I just decided to go for it. The freedom of doing what I want to do also comes with a huge commitment. Especially financially speaking, it’s very difficult. And it’s a constant back and forth, with lots of doubts and fears, but at the end of the day, it’s all about what you really care about. Follow your intuition. It would be a huge regret if I didn’t go for it. It’s also very important for me to make this film in Oromo language. Oromo language is my grandmother’s language. But my parents and I don’t speak that at home. It also has to do with the Oromo struggle, as the language has been largely banned till 1974 (Under the dictatorship of Haile Selassie), and then all the way to 1991(when the military Derg regime was overthrown by rebel forces). Historically the Oromo people are the largest indigenous ethnic group in Ethiopia, but they have been marginalized and suffered a lot. So having this language at the center of this film is very important for me. In addition to Oromo language, Harari language is also included. These are the languages that I grew up listening to. With time, all these details in film acquire more profound meaning. It’s definitely transformational during this ten year span of making this film. What allows me to make this film is truly to spend time with people. Intimacy grew out of trust. A lot of them knew my father, naturally knew about me. So a lot of time it’s like being where I was coming from, it has something to do with my parents’ roots. I come back year after year, so it’s never like a one-time deal. The community really supports and inspires me to make this film. It’s communal efforts that achieve this sense of closeness. Feeling truly comfortable. Actually I had great fun filming, especially in the factory. It was such a fun time.
Challenging Archives and Unveiling the Hidden Love Story Interview with Magnus Gertten, director of Nelly & Nadine Ｑ：What leads you to make this film? In the beginning of Nelly & Nadine, you see a newsreel shot in April 1945, with survivors coming from the concentration camp. They arrived in my home town of Malmö, filmed in the moment of freedom. When I saw this newsreel in 2007 for the first time, I became so fascinated by the faces of these women. I dreamt about someday I could find out who they are. I ended up making two films before Nelly & Nadine concerning these faces in the newsreel. The second one is called Every Face Has a Name, premiered in 2015, where I put names to all these women who were standing there in the harbor. I thought I have done two films about the Second World War, and never more. But then I came to a big screening in Paris, probably the last screening for that film. In November 2016, just before I arrived there, I got an email from a farmer couple who lives outside of Paris. And they said we had a story that might be of interest to you, so I met the couple at the café. We drank some wine, and slowly they showed me some photos. In a way, they put this beautiful love story on my lap. And I realized maybe I really need to do one more film. Ｑ：What’s Sylvie’s take on this journey of unveiling family secrets? It’s not easy for Sylvie. When I first met her, she didn’t want to be part of the film, so I had to go back again, and that was the moment when she told me there were diaries that she wasn’t able to read. And they had an unopened archive in the attic. When I met her the second time, she said, “ok, I had to do this journey.” She is the one to confront this family secret: who was her grandmother exactly? What happened to her during the war? Sylvie was quite uncomfortable in the beginning, but when we had a premiere at the Berlinale. She went on to the stage, opened her arms and was so liberated, because of everything she went through. She felt so proud of being part of this beautiful love story. And it’s really Sylvie that takes the decision here. What I can do as a filmmaker is try to be there when things are happening. It’s Sylvie that decided to embark on this journey into her family history. Of course, there were moments when she did not want to talk about things or felt uncomfortable in some situations. For example, we had a meeting with American feminist writer Joan Schenkar. It’s a brutal scene in a way, and it was tough for Sylvie. It’s really a moment of being slapped in the face: didn’t you realize these two women were in love? But Joan Schenkar probably articulates one of the most important things in the film: “nothing is real, socially, until it’s expressed.” That’s one of the journeys of the film. Sylvie finally expresses it and embraces the story. Ｑ：It's amazing to hear Joan Schenkar talking about Natalie Clifford Barney. It’s also a neglected and oppressed history. So I am very happy that we found one of the very few existing live footage of Natalie Clifford Barney. It was shot in the sixties, but it’s definitely her. When I was in Paris to meet Sylvie, I was walking alone and I was trying to get into the house where Natalie Barney once lived. It’s closed and has no plaque on Rue Jacob that tells people that for more than sixty years it’s the one of the most important literary salons in France, and of international significance, for female artists that were so supported by Natalie Clifford Barney. It’s a history that needed to be told. Ｑ：Your journey begins with the archival footage, and it’s also the medium that you have been working a lot. Can you elaborate on your use of archival footage? I have three different kinds of archival footage in my film. First is the newsreel. But you don’t have to accept that, “ok this is the archive I have and I have to use it in the best way.” Instead, you can go deeper into your archive, challenge it and ask the most impossible question. Another gift comes from the 8mm films of Nelly and Nadine shot after the war. Most of that material is filmed by Nadine. You can tell there was some sort of relationship between the woman who held the camera and the woman in front of the camera. It’s love. It shows their everyday life they were able to build in Venezuela. People have been asking me why they had to go to Venezuela. I think we really need to remember the time. In Belgium, it was not illgal to live a lesbian life, but it was not easy. Venezuela was a booming state at that time. They ended up there and they also found their communities there. I also have this “poetic archive material,” the diary written inside the concentration camp. The challenge for the filmmaker is: what do you see when you hear a story from a concentration camp. We spent months working on this. We later found a documentary shot in Belgium during the war by iconic documentary filmmaker Henri Storck. In order to make this film, he had to make an agreement with Nazi government at Belgium at that time. So there was something dark, strange and mystical about the images, which we use to pair with the diaries. Ｑ：Nadine Huang is an incredible figure on many levels, but her stories remained largely untold even in the Chinese-speaking world. Can you comment on that? At some screenings, I encountered some young Chinese audiences that were quite affected by the film, saying that it is also a film relevant to Chinese audiences today, especially concerning your big neighbor where people are not able to express themselves freely. We were also in contact with some Chinese filmmakers. They were working on some documentaries about Nadine. She is the daughter of the ambassador of Madrid, and then moving back to China. But she is also a modern woman, who could drive a car, do sports, learn five languages, become a lawyer and work for the Prime Minister. She could have it all in China, but decided to leave for Paris, in order to live a life true to herself. The first time when I saw Nadine’s face in the footage, her face really stood out. She was liberated but she did not look happy. A sense of defiance even, seemingly asking the camera, “why are you here? You don’t know me.” We did know a little bit about her earlier life, but we did not have a clue about her life after the war. It really took a long time before we can have an idea. It’s also because Sylvie willing to embark on this journey with us. Nadine is of course the big mystery of this film, because we heard a lot from Nelly’s diaries. So I certainly hope that someone would investigate more about Nadine. She is really a super cool woman, unbelievably brave. But one of the sad things about the mini documentaries that you can now find on Chinese streaming platform is that they don’t talk about her lesbian aspect. They talked about everything else except this. Ｑ：This journey ends up leading to Latin America, meeting all these people, witnessing stories passing onto the next generations, what’s the most unforgettable thing for you? I have never imagined Venezuela would end up in part of the film like this. One of the amazing things of making this film is meeting their old friend from Venezuela, José Rafael Lovera, who spent a lot of time with Nelly and Nadine. He was not able to live in Venezuela now because of the political situation. He is such a beautiful person, but he also said something we wondered a lot about. After that interview, I talked to his daughter. She said, “my father was never able to express himself. To express who he really feels he is.” So he too lived in a shadow in a way even though he had a family. But again, she told me, “my father is fine with me telling those stories.” These are all very important. Because it's also a film about today. It’s not just a story about the end of the Second World War. And of course his daughter told us his story, and we were so looking forward to having him attending the premiere at the Berlinale. But unfortunately he died of Covid-19 in October last year. So he was never able to see part of his life story being told. That’s really sad. In fact, it has to be a film about today. It’s not made like an activist or political film, but it is a political film. When you try to finance the film, and travel with the film, you encounter many difficulties. For example, when we presented this idea to Polish National Television, and the representative said, “it’s a beautiful story but we can’t broadcast it in Poland.” When you travel around fifty or eighty countries around the world, you realize that these are not the rights widely respected. I hope it can be an inspirational film that can relate to your own life, your own relationship to love and how you want life and love to be. Ｑ：Your film has mentioned that Nelly and Nadine have once wanted to publish their journal, will their dream be realized nowadays? We often receive this question. During the Berlinale, Sylvie herself answered this question. She said that she is writing and collecting all the materials, including journals, letters, photos, etc. She is trying to read everything. She said she would write the book, and I really hope that she could do that. What we talked about in the film is just a small part of this amazing life story.
