Kumrije Hoxha, Yllka Gashi, Adriana Matoshi, Molikë Maxhuni, Blerta Ismaili, and Valire Haxhijaj Zene in ‘Hive,’ directed by Blerta Basholli
Born in Kosovo, writer-director Blerta Basholli’s documentary short about the representation of women on Kosovar television ‘Mirror, Mirror’ played at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2006 and her short film ‘Gjakova 726,’ which shows the most war torn town in Kosovo from the point of view of a 12-year-old boy, played at a dozen festivals including the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2009. She then attended the graduate film program at NYU. While living in New York City, she worked on several film and television projects. Her next short film ‘Lena dhe Unë (Lena and Me),’ a playful look at the arranged marriage of two immigrants in America, played at several film festivals, including the First Run Film Festival in 2011. Her debut feature film ‘Hive’ had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival where it won the audience award, grand jury prize, and directing award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section. It has since been selected as the Kosovan entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards.
Based on the true story of Fahrije Hoti, ‘Hive’ follows war widow Fahrije (Yllka Gashi) who fights against the patriarchal society of Krusha to forge a new life for herself and the other women of her village. Krusha was the site of some of the most gruesome massacres during the Kosovo War in 1999, with many of its residents missing and presumed dead in either unmarked mass graves or the nearby river. Tired of waiting for a husband who is likely dead, when the opportunity arises for Fahrije to learn to drive, she seizes it. Armed with her license, she starts a business selling ajvar to a supermarket in a nearby city, hoping the other women of her village will join her. A life-affirming look at resilience and the power of women, Basholli’s film is essential feminist viewing.
‘Hive’ is now playing in New York and Los Angeles.
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Director Blerta Basholli spoke to Moviefone about her new film.
Moviefone: How did you discover Fahrije’s story and decide it should become a film?
Blerta Basholli: I saw her story because she had started her business and a lot of people did TV stories about it. I studied film in New York and at that time I was living in Brooklyn with my then boyfriend, now my husband. He called me and said, listen to this story about a woman who got a driver’s license and started to work. So I sat down and listened to the story. I’m born and raised in Priština (the capital of Kosova), even for me, it was surprising. My father is from a village and I did regularly visit his village, so it’s not that I was disconnected from rural life, but it was still very interesting for me to hear her story. I was thinking what kind of approach I should take to this kind of story, because we went through a lot of difficult things in our lives. Before the war, it was a very long period of occupation and living in a regime and then the war and I just remember my family during the war would joke around. We couldn’t even turn the lights on so the police didn’t know there were people in the apartment; we were afraid that they’re going to enter and kill us. Yet, we will still kind of make weird jokes about the situation. So a lot of my films have this satirical approach to it because that’s how we lived. I guess that’s how we could move on living in that kind of situation.
I had worked with actress Yllka Gashi before and I wanted her to meet Fahrije, because I immediately really thought that Yllka should be the actress to play her, so we went to meet her together. When I got to know her energetic personality, her dreams, and the way she was talking about how she started with a business and what she had to overcome. She inspired me, and she keeps inspiring me every time I meet her. She just really keeps amazing me with how she deals with everything. Now she’s opened a big factory that employs over 100 women. I’m still really surprised how she did it all because she didn’t go to university. I don’t think she even finished high school. But she had these dreams, and she pursued them no matter what. So for me as a director I thought how do you make a superhero film? How do you make her story believable? So a satirical, radical approach was not an option. When I met her, I felt obliged to portray her strong personality on screen.
MF: Could you talk about working with Yllka Gashi?
Basholli: Yllka Gashi is a famous actress in Kosova. She was on a very popular TV series, but I’ve also seen her in some theater and some little feature films as well. While I was still in New York at NYU, I invited her to work with me through my friend who knew her on my short film. We shot the short film, which was satirical, and it was very much a funny film. I could see what I can do with her and how well we can collaborate. So in a way, I immediately knew it had to be her. She had taken a break from working, and I thought in that time she also grew up as a person and as a woman, and it’s going to help her portray the character. In terms of how crafted the character, it was really from the impression we had from meeting Fahrije in person and how she was so stoic and so strong in front of us talking about everything. I really wanted to portray that on screen.
We discussed how to portray the inner world of a very specific character in a specific village in a specific country, for which people don’t know much about. How do you portray that anxiety, that pain that she has? We tried to really understand how it is to be in her skin without having to explain too much. For me, it was really important that people understand how it feels to have to wait for somebody for so long, and to have to raise kids and then to have to deal with society at the same time. I mean, how do you feel, and how do you stand up and continue every day? Luckily we hadn’t lost anyone during the war, but we both were raised in Priština during the occupation, and we’ve gone through the war, we both had to leave our homes. So during rehearsals and preparations, we told each other what happened to each of us during the war. We even cried that day while talking about it. We really had to dig deep into our own emotions and how we felt about that period, to be able to understand and make decisions on how to portray Fahrije as a character.
MF: Did you shoot in Fahrije’s actual village?
Basholli: We didn’t shoot in the same village because her village has been reconstructed. Our military and the army burned the whole village down. People had to rebuild their houses from the ground up. So the village looks pretty new. It doesn’t look the same at all. We had to pick a village that looks like the way Krusha did right after the war. The village where we shot was a little bit abandoned. So the houses were destroyed and looked a little bit like a war torn kind of village.
MF: Could you talk about the cultural sort of importance of ajvar?
Basholli: It is a very traditional dish. People used to make that at home. My mom used to make it. It’s usually a winter food, because we put it in the jars, and then you can have it as a bread spread during the whole winter. Now people are making it a little bit less because you can actually buy in stores now. So it is quite traditional. For me, it is even more important that she chose that for her business because she chose something that the whole village could work with. These women did ajvar at home anyway for their families. They had no profession because most of them did not go to university. She knew that this is work that they could do. I think that’s really smart of her, that she got the chance she got and knew that these women need money, and they need to stay sane, because they need to work. Everybody was so sad. They were crying the whole time. So she tried to make them work because they needed to stay sane for their children as well. She worked with what she had, and she made it. She did it. She didn’t have to train these women to do something else and maybe fail, but she did it.
MF: How much impact do you think Fahrije has had for the women in her country?
Basholli: I think she’s done a lot for the women. First of all, I think for every woman and every person who hears her story. Because of course it is a patriarchal society, but the whole society was in a post-war situation. So it was a lot of post-war trauma, for men as well as for women and children. Then, these women had lost a lot of members of their families, and had to deal with prejudice as well. So it was hard to deal with all the trauma and prejudice and not having the man of the house. Everything was so complicated with these women, and that’s what I appreciate a lot about her. Besides being a businesswoman, I think she was a psychologist as well.
She knew when women gather together they could gather to cry, to dance, to laugh. Each time they would gather, one of the women would start to tell a story about how she lost their children or the husband or brother, or parents, and then everybody would start crying. So she would just play music and say let’s dance. Say we’re not gonna cry, we’re gonna dance. She knew they had children to raise, and they had to stay sane. So she was like, we could just sit down and cry all our lives, or we could do something. She gathered them together, and she made them sing and sometimes cry. Then she slowly asked them to join her and work, regardless of what the society says. She did that very delicately because she knew that was better than being aggressive. This is why I had bees as a symbol as well, because she really was able to bring these women together. Now they have a great community and there’s still a lot of them working with her. She helped these women cope with their reality and be able to move on. I really think she did more than any awareness campaign could do, or any other role model could do. She changed the mindset of her village, of her municipality, of the whole of Kosova.
MF: Could you recommend another film directed by a woman that readers should seek out?
Basholli: Oh, I like a lot of women filmmakers, and it’s not that I specifically choose them because they are women, but because I really first of all love their films and then realize there’s a woman director who directed it. So I really liked Susanne Bier’s films. I like Andrea Arnold’s films. I really am a great fan of hers. I like Lynne Ramsay films. I like Maren Ade’s films. They’re really a true inspiration to me.
MF: Is there a Susanne Bier film in particular that you love? I think she’s really underrated.
Basholli: Well, I love almost all of her films. ‘Brothers’ and ‘After The Wedding’ are both great, but ‘Open Hearts’ is the one that really made me a fan. I used to think that what is beautiful is to choose nice shots or to use technology and use composition. I did that in a lot of short films, I’ll probably do it again. But when you see ‘Open Hearts’, it looks like it’s shot with a VHS camera or something, yet it’s such a powerful film you don’t even care how it’s shot. So I think that was a turning point for me when I saw that film. ‘Open Hearts’ really changed the way I see working on film and how important it is to have a good story and unbelievable acting, and then how you shoot it is a matter of style. It’s very important, but the most important things are really the story and then the performances.
Mads Mikkelsen and Sonja Richter in ‘Elsker dig for evigt (Open Hearts),’ written and directed by Susanne Bier
Born to German-Jewish immigrants in Copenhagen, Denmark, filmmaker Susanne Bier studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, the Architectural Association in London, and the National Film School of Denmark where she graduated in 1987. She began her career directing music videos, commercials before her breakout hit romantic comedy ‘Den Eneste Ene (The One and Only)’. Starring her longtime collaborator Paprika Steen, the film won the Robert Award (the Danish Oscar) and Bodil Award (Danish Film Critics) for best Danish film of 1999, and it remains one of the most successful domestic films ever released in Denmark. Her films ‘Efter Brylluppet (After the Wedding)’ and ‘In a Better World (Hævnen)’ were both nominated for Best Forieng Language Film at the Oscars, the latter of which won the award. On her 8th film ‘Elsker dig for evigt (Open Hearts)’ she followed the Dogme 95 manifesto, which called for a more minimalist aesthetic and greater focus on story and characterization. Her 2018 Netflix film ‘Bird Box’ starring Sandra Bullock remains the second most-watched film ever produced by the streamer.
The Dogme 95 manifesto mandated that films must be shot on location, using only the sound you capture while filming, hand held camera, color with no special lighting, no filters or optical effects, set contemporarily, not within genre cinema, shot in Academy 35mm, and must not credit the director. Following these restriction, Bier’s ‘Open Hearts’ is also known as Dogme #28. It follows two couples (Sonja Richter, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mads Mikkelsen, and Paprika Steen) whose lives become intermingled after a car crash leads to adultery. One of the last films made in the traditional Dogme 95 style, ‘Open Hearts’ also won both the Robert and Bodil Best Danish film in 2003.
Julia Child in archival footage featured in ‘Julia’
Julie Cohen attended Colgate University for undergrad before receiving a Master’s degree from Yale Law School, where she was a Knight Journalism Fellow. Currently, she is an adjunct professor in the documentary program at Columbia University. Betsy West attended Brown University for undergrad before receiving a Master’s in Communications from Syracuse University. After working for three decades in network news, she joined the faculty at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Cohen had directed seven documentaries and West had produced countless documentaries for film and television before the two joined forced on the Oscar-nominated doc ‘RBG’ about the life and career of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. ‘Julia’ is their third collaboration together; their second documentary ‘My Name Is Pauli Murray’ was released on Prime Video earlier this year.
Combining archival research with new interviews with those who knew her best, and exquisitely shot food, ‘Julia’ is a crowd-pleasing documentary that brings the life and passion of Julia Child sizzling into focus. The documentary swiftly traces Child’s life from her upbringing in Pasadena, California to her time serving in WII to her passionate love affair with her husband in France, and how all of this culminated in her becoming the first celebrity chef. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will definitely leave the theater hungry.
Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West spoke to Moviefone about bringing her extraordinary life to the big screen.
Moviefone: How do you choose a topic for your documentaries, and how did you land on Julia Child for this one?
Julie Cohen: You know, we’re always looking to tell amazing stories about groundbreaking Americans. And the font, the question of how we choose very much has to do with the individual. When we’re looking at someone’s story, we’re thinking: is this person someone who really changed America in one way or other? Are they fascinating? Do they have a life trajectory that will work well, in a film? And the big question: is there the right material, you know, audio and video to tell this story with? Julia Child’s story fits the bill perfectly in many ways.
MF: How long were you working on sort of the research side of this particular film?
Betsy West: We worked for about a year getting everything in place, talking to the Julia Child Foundation, figuring out where all the materials were, reading the number of biographies and other materials, and then securing the funding for the film. So that was about a year in development. In terms of making the film, it was a little under two years to film and to edit it.
MF: How do you decide what the trajectory and arc of the story is?
Cohen: It’s a process. In our mind, the shooting process and the editing process and the research are all kind of melded together. It’s not like you do one then the next time the next. As we’re researching the story, we’re trying to think about what things we want to focus on. As we’re picking out who to interview, we’re figuring out what makes each interview subject and an amazing character, who doesn’t just feel like an expert, but really feels connected to the story. By the time we get into an edit process, we already have some ideas in mind about what the story should be. That’s when Carla Gutierrez, who was the editor of this film, and also had been our editor ‘RBG’ comes into the process, and then it becomes the three of us together figuring out of all of the material that we’re gathering and seeing what’s the stuff that sings the loudest?
West: I remember after Carla screened every a lot of interviews that we have done, and screened highlights of all of the archive that our archive producers had organized, we had a meeting, and we went over the story points, and we made little cards of what are the main scenes and the main points that we want to highlight here. Now, of course, that keeps changing as you go along. But you’ve got to start somewhere. Carla will start doing a scene, and then we work on that and one scene leads to another step by step.
MF: How does your collaborative process work as co-directors?
West: I’m sure it’s different with different people. But you know, for us, we make all of the major decisions together, we have a certain amount of trust now because we’ve been working together since ‘RBG’. I think once we’ve set a path, then we will often divide and conquer. So Julie will do one interview, and she’ll write the questions, and she’ll be doing the interview, but I’ll look at the questions. And I’ll often be there for the interview and kind of backstop her. And in terms of putting together scenes, we often will split that up and each of us will work on a section and then when we feel like we’ve gotten into a pretty good place, show it to the other person to get the feedback. It’s very much back and forth.
MF: What is sort of the most surprising thing you learned about Julia Child that you didn’t know before starting?
Cohen: We should say we did not come into this film as great Julia Child experts, so there were many parts of her story that felt like revelations, like understanding how she had involved herself in various political movements. We were fascinating by the story of how her view towards gay rights had changed, basically going from being homophobic to being a vocal, active supporter of AIDS research in a completely unapologetic way. That was very unusual at the time that Julia was speaking out for research to help people with AIDS in 1988. No one was doing that, let alone someone like Julia Child, whose fan base was middle America. So that really felt like an interesting part of her character and just an amazing, fascinating story to us.
West: I’ll say also, the love story kind of blew us away. We knew that she had a great, supportive husband. But I think we were a little surprised to find a nude photo in the archive and other evidence of just how much Paul child adored his wife.
MF: How did you decide what recipes to cook and frame the film that way? They really made you feel the way she felt about the food.
West: We worked with food stylist Susan Spungen, and talked to her about which of the classic Julia Child recipes would help us illustrate the various aspects of the story. Like how to show making a mistake and trying over and over and over again. Anyone who has ever made hollandaise sauce knows that it can curdle. That’s one example. It was Susan’s idea to do the pear tart to illustrate the love story, because it has so many cool parts, massaging the dough and the pears bubbling around. I like that you use the word feeling because that’s what we were trying to get at: what’s the emotion involved in preparing and consuming food together with the people that you love?
MF: Do you think there’s a direct correlation between Julia Child’s show and today’s internet food culture?
Cohen: Absolutely, I don’t think there would be the internet obsessed food culture that exists today if it hadn’t been for Julia Child. Before Julia, there was something embarrassing almost for Americans about loving food. They didn’t have that very French sense of like you should stop everything in the middle of the day and just savor and enjoy your lunch and some wine. It’s a fantastic experience. Americans were like food was just like something to get through. The whole idea that your food is beautiful, and something to not only share, but kind of talk about and show off. That’s part of what Julia brought to our country. At the same time, we do feel it necessary to say that Julia, according to really everyone who was a friend, would not approve of the notion of taking a photo of your food before you eat it. As we say in the film, when the food is placed in front of you, and it’s hot, you should dig right.
MF: When the film is over, what you’re hoping people feel coming away from the film?
West: We hope that we’ve conveyed Julia’s joie de vivre. We hope people come out of the film feeling happy, and perhaps have a little more appreciation for Julia Child and what she did for all Americans. And maybe they’ll be a little hungry too, and go out and cook themselves a great meal or go out to a restaurant.
Julie & Julia – written and directed by Nora Ephron
Meryl Streep as Julia Child in ‘Julie & Julia’
Born in New York City, Nora Ephron was the eldest of four children. After her parents relocated to the west coast to work as screenwriters in Hollywood, Ephron grew up in Beverly Hills. Graduating from Wellesley College in 1962, Ephron briefly worked in JFK’s White House before applying to work at Newsweek, where she was famously rejected as a writer because they “did not hire women” in that department. She took a job in the mail room, but also took part in a class action lawsuit against the magazine for sexual descrimination. After many years working as a writer, Ephron began writing screenplays, starting with 1983’s ‘Silkwood’. She received an Oscar nomination for her work on ‘When Harry Met Sally…” Altogether, Ephron wrote or co-wrote 14 screenplays and directed eight feature films.
Based on Julia Child’s book ‘My Life in France’ and Julie Powell’s memoir ‘Julie & Julia,’ Ephron’s final film is a portrait of Child’s time in France learning to cook and eventually co-writing her cookbook masterpiece ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking.’ This is contrasted with Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who is going through a rough time in her life and decides to start a blog project documenting her attempt to cook every recipe in Julia’s book over the course of a year. Meryl Streep received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Julia Child, and has off-the-charts chemistry with Stanley Tucci as her husband, Paul Child. Another film in which you better have some really great food at home, or make time to go out and something scrumptious to eat when it’s over. Trust me.
Drowning in too many characters, convoluted plotting and disappointingly bad visuals, Chloé Zhao’s ‘Eternals,’ based on comic book characters created by Jack Kirby in 1976, follows a group of immortal aliens who have spent the last seven thousand years protecting the humans of Earth from evil, primitive, animalistic creatures called Deviants. They seemingly accomplish their mission, forcing the Deviants into extinction. As the film progresses the group learns more about the true nature of their mission, the Deviants return, bigger and badder than ever, and the heroes must learn to face the most human of all traits: free will.
Zhao’s cast is filled with mostly character actors who finally get an A-list treatment. At the center is Gemma Chan as an empathetic Sersi who can manipulate matter through physical contact. Chan is an intriguing actress who often brings complex emotions to her characters, so the casting is apt, though unfortunately the film rarely allows her the time to feel like a true protagonist. Same goes for Richard Madden, as her sometime love interest Ikaris, who much like in Greek mythology can fly, but also harbors some dark secrets. Madden is all brooding looks, an immortal Superman-esque sadboy.
Much hype was made of Kumail Nanjiani‘s physical transformation as Kingo, who can shoot cosmic energy from his hands, and for the last hundred or so years, has built himself up as an acting dynasty in Bollywood. Nanjiani is the actor best suited for the witty banter that has become a trademark of the MCU, but much of his one-liners land flat amongst a cast ill-prepared to match him snap for snap. Bollywood mainstay Harish Patel often steals the show as Kingo’s manager Karun, who is effortlessly funny, yet also adds some much-needed poignancy to the film’s more emotionally urgent moments.
Brian Tyree Henry does the best he can as Phastos, a scientist and the MCU’s first openly queer character. It’s a pity that he has absolutely no chemistry with his on-screen husband, and is mostly strapped with fairly hetreonormative ideas of queer life. In perhaps the film’s most absolutely ill-conceived scene, not only does he blame his technology for the bombing of Hiroshima, Zhao shoots the sequence with him being comforted amongst the bleak, blasted remains of thousands of nameless Japanese.
Also, for a film touted as queer representation, Zhao’s insistence on pairing off all the Eternals into heteronormative couplings, as if the only outcome of spending thousands of years together is that the male-presenting and female-presenting immortal beings will eventually end up together, feels like a slap in the face. I’d almost rather go back to a sexless MCU than this aggressive heteronormativity.
The biggest disappointment in terms of untapped potential is Barry Keoghan as Druig, who can manipulate the minds of others. Keoghan is a once-in-a-generation presence on screen. There is currently no one doing unsettling like him, and you can see glimmers of what makes him such a beguiling presence on screen every so often. Yet it seems Zhao is determined to damper the unique energies of her performers, to turn down their shine until they all feel like a similar shade of bland.
Lia McHugh plays Sprite, a pixie who can project life-like illusions but is forever trapped in the body of a pre-teen girl. There’s an episode of ‘Highlander: The Series’ that is more nuanced in the way it explores what it’s like to be an immortal child, if you’re interested in seeing this story done well. We’ve also got the MCU’s first deaf character in Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), who can run really, really fast. That’s pretty much all we get to know about her. Also, she’s after some green tablet, but we never find out what its significance is.
Then there is Salma Hayek, at the helm of the group, as Ajak. She communicates with their leaders, the Celestials, and has hidden the true nature of their mission from the heroes. She’s also barely given anything to do beyond a few stern speeches to her team. How you waste a star like Hayek would be the biggest mystery in the film if it didn’t also star Angelina Jolie. How can you cast a star with her megawattage as Athena – here called simply Thena – the goddess of war, and make her so dull is truly one for the ages. Aiming for shell-shocked and wise, Jolie’s performance is undercut every time she begins to do something remotely interesting, as Zhao’s camera cuts away to something else. Even her connection with fellow Eternal Gilgamesh (Don Lee) is so undercooked it’s hard to see why he’d sacrifice anything for her, and later why she’d be moved to seek revenge for him.
Hampered by too many characters, the plot is equally underdeveloped beyond the major beats. After learning the true purpose of their existence, suddenly our heroes have a ticking clock set before the actual end of the world. This is where American exceptionalism becomes human exceptionalism, and the safety of our planet is weighed as more important than thousands of other civilizations waiting to be born. Okay. Sure. I guess that makes sense when all the terrible things humans have actually done to the planet, like the melting of the ice caps, are easily explained away by the Celestials’ actions. It’s easier to see us as better than we are when there’s a big bad out there in space actually to blame.
More disappointing than any of the ham-fisted plotting or underdeveloped characterization, is the filmmaking itself. The stunning compositions and natural light that permeate Zhao’s earlier films made with long-time cinematographer Joshua James Richards are rendered flat under the weight of the Marvel house style, mostly lensed by Ben Davis. Even the shots in South Dakota have none of the majesty we know Zhao and Richards have brought to the location in the past. How everything that felt fresh and unique and uncompromising in her earlier films is completely lacking in this film serves as a testament to how important the collaboration between director and cinematographer can truly be.
Ultimately, ‘Eternals’ is a story about how empathy is the greatest strength of all, unfortunately that lesson is hampered by the physical strength-based action set pieces on which the MCU has built its style. One can only hope this is a failure solely based on Zhao being the wrong filmmaker to work within the confines of the Marvel machine, and not a sign of things to come from her in the future.
Honor Swinton Byrne and Tilda Swinton in ‘The Souvenir Part II,’ directed by Joanna Hogg
Born in London, England, filmmaker Joanna Hogg started her career making experimental short films shot on a super-8 camera she borrowed from mentor Derek Jarman – the two had hit it off after a chance meeting in a Soho café. One of her short films won her a spot to study filmmaking at the National Film and Television School, where her thesis film ‘Caprice’ starred a young Tilda Swinton. After graduating, she directed music videos for musicians like Alison Moyet, as well as many episodes of television. Her debut feature film ‘Unrelated’ starring Tom Hiddleston premiered at the London Film Festival in 2007, where it won the FIPRESCI International Critics Award. In 2009, Hogg was nominated for the London Film Critics’ Circle ‘Breakthrough Filmmaker’ Award. Her next two features ‘Archipelago’ and ‘Exhibition’ also starred Hiddleston and received critical acclaim. Her semi-autobiographical fourth film ‘The Souvenir’ starring Tilda Swinton and her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was named the best film of the year by Sight & Sound magazine.
Set in the mid-80s, ‘The Souvenir’ recalls a passionate, doomed romance between film student Julie and a mysterious, older man named Anthony who supposedly works for the Foriegn Office. Following his death by heroin overdose, ‘The Souvenir Part II’ sees Julie back at film school as she works on her thesis film while attempting to process the impact of her intense relationship with Anthony. With the unflinching honesty of reflection, Hogg’s latest film finds inspiration in embracing growing pains, and opening ourselves up to truly feeling the weight of our emotional lives.
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Joanna Hogg spoke to Moviefone about her new film.
Moviefone: Could you talk a bit about how your style has shifted through the years from your thesis film ‘Caprice’?
Joanna Hogg: I don’t know how much I’m aware of it in a way. But you mentioned ‘Caprice’, and looking at that again, definitely informed how I certainly made the film within the film in ‘The Souvenir Part II”. It reminded me of the invention and the ideas that I had at that time when I made it and before that, and how I wanted to kind of catch that feeling again, or catch some of those ideas again in order to get a sense of that time period.
MF: In ‘Caprice’ Tilda Swinton plays a young woman who gets sucked into the world of a glossy magazine. How did you first come up with that idea?
JH: I was really interested in how a young woman thinks of herself, or the doubt about how she looks and how she appears. And then the contradiction in me at that time of really being interested in fashion, and fashion magazines. But also about identity and recognizing that when I read a fashion magazine I would always end up feeling a bit sick at the end of it from the experience of being confronted with different images of how women looked or should look, and how you want to look like them. That journey of ending up feeling like I wish I hadn’t read that magazine in the first place and looked at those photographs. I wanted to express that feeling of disgust and self disgust actually sort of journeying through a magazine meeting a magazine, but transposing that into her journey through the magazine.
MF: In the ‘Souvenir’ films Tilda Swinton plays the mother of Julie (played by her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne). Did you always plan to pair them as mother and daughter?
JH: I didn’t. That just occurred because I ended up casting Honor, which I hadn’t set out to do. That was by chance. In fact, when I first started thinking of the two parts I hadn’t thought of Tilda as the mother until later on. Thinking about it now, it’s kind of incredible that all those paths crossed in that way.
MF: What was the casting process for the role of Julie like?
JH: I was looking for someone who didn’t feel that contemporary in a way. I would meet actors, meet filmmakers, I’ve interviewed people in the street, and there’s obviously this preoccupation we have these days of FaceTime and all social networks. I wanted to find someone who was an earlier generation, almost innocent of all of that. It’s not like Honor doesn’t like social media herself, she does, but the was something about how she had grown up. She just reminded me a little bit of myself back at that time, and it wasn’t even that I was looking for a version of myself exactly. It’s hard to put into words, but I was very lucky to find her.
MF: The first film is sort of an idealized version of their romance, before its dark conclusion, and in the second film we step back and see those earlier events a little more clearly. How did you develop those two sides?
JH: Some of that happened on the journey of making the films. In the first part, Honor wasn’t aware of the story that she was within, she didn’t know where the story was going. So she wasn’t in charge of that aspect. On the other hand, there was the experience of making Part I. Honor was, unbeknownst to me, observing me making Part I, and observing our own feelings about it as well. So with Part II, she knew the story because I told her where Part II was going to go, that Julie was going to be making a film. I’d seen that she was at times quite frustrated with Julia in Part I, and was really longing to break out of that character. It was always part of Julie’s journey anyway, but I thought it would be really interesting in Part II, if Honor got the chance to become a bit more herself in that part.
MF: ‘Part II’ reminded me a bit of that Joan Didion quote, “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.” Do you think the several decades’ space between who you were when you went through the story that inspired the films and who you are as a filmmaker, if all of those reflections on the different selves that you’ve become helped you be able to see your earlier self more clearly?
JH: There’s no question. If I’d made the film, when I first thought about it in 1988, it wouldn’t have the layers and the experience that has gone into making it now. So I think, inevitably, yes.
MF: Tom Burke has such a strong presence in ‘Part II’ even though you don’t really see his character on screen. Was that a factor when you were casting ‘Part I’?
JH: I think you never know. I don’t do screen tests or auditions or any of that kind of thing. I just developed a relationship with Tom. There was a lot of research, and we discussed the character a lot. He’s an especially extraordinary actor. Someone I would really like to work with again. So I think it’s a credit to his incredible performance in ‘Part I’, that his shadow is across ‘Part II’ the way that it is.
MF: How did you craft the scenes where Julie’s struggling so hard to communicate with her film crew, even though she knows exactly what she wants?
JH: They were really fun to shoot. Honor was really impressive, because she’d observed me directing ‘Part I’ and picked up so many thoughts and ideas of how we might describe how to shoot the scene, or where to put the camera or how to talk to the actors. It almost felt like we were shooting a documentary of a film shoot making those scenes. I decided on the scenes that we shot in ‘Part I’ that I wanted Julie to reenact in ‘Part II’. Once I had cast them and worked out the kind of basic mechanics, the cast just took off in their own way. They were making a film. It felt palpable, very real.
MF: I loved the way that you use the soundtrack to evoke feelings, and then you cut it in the middle of a song right before really catchy parts. When did you choose the songs for the film?
JH: I’d worked out some of those songs in advance. The decision of where to cut on a song, I think that’s to do with rhythm. I think music can dominate a film so strongly, I sometimes don’t want to get too carried away with the song because then I think one could lose the sense of where one is in the story.
MF: Could you talk about the significance of the title and the painting that inspired it?
JH: My relationship with that painting started many years before, when I was in a relationship on which ‘The Souvenir’ is loosely based. I was introduced to that painting. I think when I first started thinking about the story, and when I first started writing notes back in 1988 of the two parts it wasn’t called ‘The Souvenir’ then. I hadn’t thought about that. I can’t remember exactly at what point I realized that was what I wanted to call it, but somehow that painting had made an impression on me. And it did seem very important for that person that I spend time with; I’m still unpacking it in a way I don’t know entirely what meaning it had for him. But it felt significant.
MF: What do you hope people will feel after they’ve watched ‘The Souvenir Part II’?
JH: I don’t know that I can prescribe that, but I do hope people can experience the two films together because I think that is an interesting way of seeing them. I don’t think they’re always going to be shown as a double bill, but I’m always interested if someone has seen the two films back to back, what they feel. I want to ask the question; I don’t know the answer. I always want to know how someone has experienced the journey.
MF: Could you recommend another film directed by a woman that readers should seek out?
JH: There are so many. A film I’ve mentioned a few times over the years is by a German filmmaker named Ulrike Ottinger called ‘Ticket of No Return’, which is one of the films I saw very early on as a young student filmmaker that inspired me. I’m always interested in highlighting the lesser known or less appreciated filmmakers. I love Chantal Akerman. I think appreciation for her is now growing. Barbara Loden also springs to mind. I’m glad that people have revisited her work.
Ticket of No Return – directed by Ulrike Ottinger
Tabea Blumenschein in ‘Ticket of No Return’ directed by Ulrike Ottinger
Born and raised in Konstanz, Germany, Ulrike Ottinger resided in Paris from 1962 until 1969, where she worked as an independent artist. Returning to her hometown, she co-founded the ‘filmclub visuell’ at University of Konstanz where international Independent Films, the New German Cinema (Neuer Deutscher Film) and historical films were shown. She shot her first film ‘Laocoon and Sons’ between 1971 and 1973, before moving to Berlin to pursue filmmaking full time. In 1979, she began work on what is known as her Berlin Trilogy, which consists of the films ‘Ticket of No Return’, ‘Freak Orlando’ (1981) and ‘Dorian Grey in the Yellow Press’. Openly lesbian, Ottinger has made over twenty films that push artistic and social boundaries. She was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who vote on the Oscars) in 2019.
The first film in her Berlin Trilogy, Ottinger’s vibrant ‘Ticket of No Return’ stars Tabea Blumenschein as an unnamed, yet incredibly chic, woman who travels to Berlin with plans only to drink and have a good time until she blacks out. A commentary on how women’s public actions are more policed than men’s, the woman’s every move is judged by a Greek chorus of commentators played by Magdalena Montezuma, Orpha Termin, and Monika von Cube. Keep your eyes peeled for German punk legend Nina Hagen amongst the film’s large ensemble cast of artists, writers, rockers, and drunks.
Actor-writer-director Wendell B. Harris Jr. as Douglas Street in ‘Chameleon Street’
Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s subversive landmark film ‘Chameleon Street’ has been given a proper 4K restoration by Arbelos Films. Written, directed, and starring the Juilliard-trained Wendell B. Harris Jr, the film recounts the story of real-life con artist William Douglas Street, Jr., whose antics were often the fodder for salacious newspaper articles. The titular chameleon, Street impersonated everyone from professional reporters, lawyers, athletes, students, and even surgeons. Without a lick of professional medical training, he purportedly performed 36 successful hysterectomies! Although the film won the Grand Jury Prize after its premiere at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, it struggled to find proper distribution and has long been considered a suppressed film. With its new restoration from the original camera negative under the supervision of Harris himself, the film is a must-see rediscovery.
Harris spoke to Moviefone about the film’s inspiration and legacy ahead of its run at BAM Film in Brooklyn.
Moviefone: What was so beguiling about William Douglas Street, Jr.’s story that you wanted to make a film out of it?
Wendell B. Harris Jr. : Well, I had been looking for years to find a vehicle for me that would provide a great acting role. I read the article in The Detroit News and I immediately knew that that was a great role. I immediately realized that Doug’s experience was going to address issues that are the part and parcel of this country that rarely get really addressed. The Doug Street phenomenon involves looking under the carpet for the dirt that’s been pushed and hidden there. Especially in regards to the interplay between Black people and white people, and the interplay between Black people and how they are permitted to live out their lives. The actual phenomenon of being Black in America is very connected to assigned roles. I don’t mean biscuit rolls, I mean acting roles. You are born into this country, and you are immediately given a choice of two, three or four roles. That was so evident in Doug’s story that the next day I began the effort of contacting Doug Street in order to get the rights for his story,
MF: Did you always plan to direct the film as well as act in it?
Harris: I was not going to be the director. Initially, the investors and my family and the Board of Directors of my company Prismatic Images, everybody essentially felt that for this first film we were producing we would get a director who had a track record. So we approached several different directors, including Marlon Brando, Melvin Van Peebles, Michael Apted, Stanley Kramer, in order to find an experienced director, and they all either turned it down. Brando didn’t even respond, but they all turned it down, or they demanded too much money. So finally, I ended up directing it almost by default.
MF: Did your skills as an actor shape how you wrote the screenplay?
Harris: Doug Street’s entire modus operandi is based on acting, all of his achievements are connected to acting. So as the film was being written over that three-year period, and as I was constantly interviewing Doug, that was as critical to Doug’s story as oxygen is to your breathing. I didn’t have to sit back and try to work out. How does performance play a part? Everything he did was connected to performance. Had he not been able to act, to perform, he would not have achieved any of those goals.
MF: What was it like finding a crew and filming in Flint, Michigan at the time?
Harris: Well, the cinematographer was Daniel S. Noga. And the second unit director was Bruce Schermer. And Bruce Schermer, while he was working on ‘Chameleon Street’ was also the Director of Photography on Michael Moore‘s ‘Roger & Me’, which was shooting at the same time. We found 80% of our crew in Detroit, because Flint, Michigan did not have a lot of filmmaking crew members. That was crucial. When you’re making an independent film, and it takes three years to raise the money, a lot of people tell you it will be a whole lot easier if you film the movie in 16mm. But I was determined from the moment I read that article, I was determined that this movie had to be made in 35mm. That meant getting a technical support group who knew what they were doing in terms of shooting a 35mm film. Initially we had agreed to hire a man who was a very experienced Director of Photography. He had shot ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ We shot several tests with him, but eventually we decided to part company because he would not follow my directions. That becomes a big problem. So that opened the door for Dan Noga, and Bruce Schermer. They were a dream to work with, and unlike that first camera man, they actually collaborated with me.
MF: Early on in the film, you denote the passage of time by saying ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ has gone off the air and ‘Mork and Mindy’ is now the top show. Could you talk a bit about the influence of ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ on ‘Chameleon Street’?
Harris: ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ is still very important to me, and played a huge part in my life for several reasons. I wanted to pay tribute to ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ in the script by mentioning it, although Doug was also entranced by ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.’ When I first went out to Hollywood, in 1977, I went out there in order to try and get a job writing on the ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ staff. That did not work out. They turned me down. A few months later, the show was canceled, not because they turned me down, that’s just what happened. I stayed out there for a year, going to audition after audition after audition, without an agent, which is extremely difficult.
Finally, I came back to Flint in 1978 and founded the studio, which is Prismatic Images. The whole point at that time was to put together an audio video film studio that would produce feature films. That was the goal. That was what I had not been able to even begin to achieve in Hollywood, with or without ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’. So I came back to Flint, founded the company and began the trek that led to ‘Chameleon Street’. We covered weddings and commercials and lotto commercials and all kinds of events. I worked on a radio series called ‘Black Biography.’ All of that led to finally producing ‘Chameleon Street.’ But your question about ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ strikes me because nobody else has ever asked it before. ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ was definitely an inspiration because of the ambiance that TV series promulgated.
MF: What do you think was so compelling about ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’?
Harris: ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ lasted for two years and nothing like it had ever been done before. The most successful year was their first year. It was a very delicate mix and the second year they began to lose it. Like that expression from ‘Happy Days’ when Fonzie jumped the shark. That’s the big danger for any TV series. It’s amazing the way Peter Falk was able to always keep his focus of ‘Colombo’; airtight, laser sharp, no deviation. Whereas another show like ‘Monk,’ which began and was so amazing, but most shows a fall victim to as time progresses, the other characters surrounding the main characters begin to act like the main character. Everybody in ‘Monk,’ after like three or four years, they all got Monk-itis. They all know they all became like Monk, but Peter Falk never let that happen to Colombo. He always kept Colombo adulterated.
The second year of ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’, I think, began to fall prey to that syndrome. The first year it was all focused on Mary Hartman and everybody else was in her orbit, but they were not mimicking Mary Hartman’s orbit. The second year, everybody began to get Mary Hartman-itus. They began to slightly lose their focus on Mary Hartman. I’ll tell you an interesting thing about Mary Hartman, which was on at the time I was finishing up at Julliard. The one thing that was constantly on everybody’s mind at Juilliard was acting. Acting was everything. Acting is all we talked about. And Mary ‘Hartman, Mary Hartman’, was such an inspiration to everybody in Juilliard, all these students, because Louise Lasser, she dared to on screen at the time, she dared to deconstruct the entire idea of a leading character in a sitcom or a TV series. She totally eviscerated the idea of a character going about whatever plot machinations they were going about. That was so inspiring to everybody at Julliard, and it certainly was inspiring to me. And it also plays a part when you look at Doug Street, because Doug is often deconstructing, moment by moment, the relationships that he’s trying to push at.
MF: I love the retelling of The Scorpion and the Frog myth at the end of the film. Why did you decide to end it on that note?
Harris: There’s a moment in ‘Mr. Arkadin,’ directed by Orson Welles, in which that story is used. It’s a story that has been around for a very long time. I first came across it in ‘Mr. Arkadin’. After meeting Doug, interviewing him for three years, and writing the script, then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting, it became obvious as a coda for the film. The one thing that everybody who actually dealt with Doug ends up experiencing is the sting of betrayal. The same betrayal that the frog feels is the same betrayal that everybody who was interfacing with Doug feels.
MF: Why do you think this film was so challenging 30 years ago for Hollywood to sell?
Harris: I think that white audiences have a different experience than Black audiences. Over the last 30 years, as this saga of suppression has gone on and on and on, I have talked about it more and more and more. After the first 10 years, I began talking about how ‘Chameleon Street’ is being suppressed, and then after 20 years I talked about it a lot more. After 30 years I’m screaming at the top of my voice, ‘Chameleon Street’ has been suppressed. But interestingly, whenever I have spoken with whites about that suppression. I never ran across anybody white who agreed with my assessment that ‘Chameleon Street’ has been literally suppressed. But I assure you, every Black person who sees the film and hears me say that it’s been suppressed, I’ve never had anybody Black say are you kidding? It’s not suppressed. Every Black person who sees ‘Chameleon Street’ knows that it has been suppressed and understands why. So when you ask about reactions, I first think that the reaction of whites is different than the reaction of Blacks.
MF: Do you think audiences are more ready for a film like ‘Chameleon Street’ today?
Harris: I don’t think that the audience has been the impediment to ‘Chameleon Street’. The audience was ready. In 1990, one of the greatest experiences of my life was seeing the reaction, that first reaction in 1990 and 1991. When people saw it for the first time, I got the most amazing reactions from white people and, and Blacks. Because, you know, they thought that ‘Chameleon Street’ was going to be like the harbinger of a whole new trend in movie making. That there was something about to happen that was fresh and vital and true, and not stereotypical. Not the standard fare that had been offered for like a century. Films are so powerful. I was so amazed because there was a kind of giddy happiness that I saw in people’s reaction to the film initially, before it dropped off the face of the Earth. Before it was removed from global television. People thought, hey, things are about to get better. Things are about to be wonderful. There was this optimism to the reaction which I’ve never forgotten.
Arbelos Films’ new 4K restoration of ‘Chameleon Street’ had its world premiere at the 59th New York Film Festival and is now playing at BAM Film in Brooklyn. Upcoming screening dates can be found here.
Director Liz Garbus’ documentary ‘Becoming Cousteau’ traces the life and career of Jacques Cousteau
Born and raised in New York City, Liz Garbus attended Brown University where she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history and semiotics. After taking some video courses and filming a short documentary while at Brown, Garbus interned at Miramax films where she began working with filmmaker Jonathan Stack. Their film ‘The Farm: Angola, USA’ was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Raised by a social worker and an attorney (“superlawyer” Martin Garbus), much of Garbus’ work focuses on issues of inequality and injustice, as well as explorations of identity and history. Her prolific career, which spans feature films, short docs, and television, includes dozens of directing credits and over 50 producing credits. In 2007 her film ‘Ghosts of Abu Ghraib’ won an Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special. She received a second Oscar nomination for her 2015 film ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ about singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Other notable recent projects include the miniseries adaptation of ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’ following writer Michelle McNamara’s quest to catch the Golden State Killer, and ‘All In: The Fight for Democracy’ a piercing look at the activists fighting against rampant voter suppression.
Using extensive archival footage and first hand accounts, her most recent project ‘Becoming Cousteau’ traces the life and career of famed explorer, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author, researcher and conservationist Jacques Cousteau. The film deftly uses Cousteau’s own journey from adventurer to activist to shine a light on how society’s current obsession with the sea must translate into direct action to save it. ‘Becoming Cousteau’ paints a complex portrait of a passionate, yet enigmatic man, and acts as a rallying call to arms to continue his legacy of conservation before it’s too late.
Liz Garbus spoke to Moviefone before the film’s presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Moviefone: Your documentaries cover a diverse array of subjects. How did you decide on making a film about Cousteau?
Liz Garbus: This was inspired by a night when I was reading a book to my young son about the undersea world and discovery. Cousteau, of course, was mentioned. It just brought to me these incredibly warm, fuzzy recollections of my childhood watching his TV show. Then it also made me realize that he was being lost to a new generation, even though they had been influenced by the imagery he had brought into their living rooms, with modern underwater programming and shark weeks. It’s all owed to Cousteau’s early work. So I began to dig deeper into his life’s journey. His message around conservation felt incredibly timely and important to discuss at this moment.
MF: This documentary uses a lot of archival footage. What was that process like?
Garbus: We had 500 hours to pour through. There were two stages there. One is the listening stage where my team and I were listening to his interviews, his narrative of his own life, trying to identify what are the important milestones in his own view. The next stage was talking to folks who knew him well, for that perspective. Then we organized a wish list of visual events in his life. For instance, he talks about the effect of World War II, and we were able to uncover footage of him diving to recover the corpse of a dead soldier. He talks about his early missteps in the way he interacted with animals and the undersea world. In exploring that we came to understand what his art was. It’s really a redemption tale so we looked at the archive with that in mind.
MF: One interesting quote from him was “I’m interested in the world outside me, the world inside me means nothing.” How do you go about finding the interiority of a person really even interested in that?
Garbus: That was certainly a challenge. I’ve certainly dealt with subjects or made films about subjects who were much more introspective. But in many ways, I wanted to respect that. He does talk about his flaws. He talks about his failure as a father and husband. He talks about his guilt about having interacted with animals and nature in the way he did in the early part of his career. So it’s not fair to say he never sort of looked into himself, but certainly by the third act of his life, and the third act of the film, he is not interested in signing autographs and being a celebrity. He’s interested in action to protect the oceans.
MF: When he launched his first TV show they didn’t know if they should sell him as a scientist, researcher, philosopher, inventor, or explorer. How did you decide how much of each facet of him to show?
Garbus: I think in his early life, it was really this hubristic notion of the male conqueror that dominated his identity. We must go further, we must go deeper. These were his mantras. We must go and see for ourselves. These were the things that he talks about, as his early mantras. Then as time goes on, he becomes less of that explorer and more into the realm of protector, and really siren for the peril that he was seeing. He was feeling the warming ocean temperatures against his skin. He was seeing the degradation of reefs as he had been documenting over decades. It’s really that evolution from adventure and explorer to caretaker. Of course he still led a very dynamic life, and you could focus on any one of those elements for much, much longer. But his journey from hubris to nurturer was the one that I felt was really important for kind of a metaphor for today, for where we as a society need to do.
MF: Can you talk a bit about his first wife Simone Melchior and how you decided how much of her to put into the film?
Garbus: She was a total surprise to me during the research. I found her to be a delicious character, salty and headstrong. They called her “La Bergère”, the Shepherdess, the one keeping all the herd from going over the edge. Her son says she was on The Calypso more than anybody holding everything together. I loved reading her journals. She writes, “I don’t have blood in my veins, I have salt water.” Her love affair with the sea was very, very pure. For a woman of her generation, the only way she could live a life on the sea was to marry a sailor, or marry somebody as dedicated to the sea as she was. This is how they made this match.
MF: Cousteau was so popular in the 60s and 70s, but I don’t know that his films or the TV shows are really even available.
Garbus: You’re right, they’re really not. Given the kind of technology we have now for showing children and adults what lies under the sea, they feel antiquated. I think what I was trying to do in this film was express the kind of magicalness of what it felt like to see them for the first time with a global audience back then. One of the things that I wasn’t really aware of is what an extraordinary filmmaker he was. I think so many of us grew up with this TV show, but his film ‘World Without Sun’, is really just a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. So I do think that they’re worth revisiting.
MF: How do you think Cousteau’s legacy is reflected in current underwater entertainment?
Garbus: His early work expresses a total love for the magic of the undersea world. He says you will only protect what you love. Which I think is certainly very true. I think that the idea that we might fall in love with the undersea world and therefore be more committed to taking steps to protect it is a very valid one. Underwater documentaries further our love for this world, then perhaps there’s some good, we just have not seen the connection between that love and actual action. Individuals may have paper straws and not throw their plastic into the water, etc., but we are in such a massive problem that it goes beyond individual action. It’s about government regulation and action. That’s the missing piece.
MF: How do you hope audiences feel after they’ve watched your film?
Garbus: I hope they feel angry that for decades that they’ve had these blank checks on their shoulders as their homes get flooded, or they see wildfires and how climate change is accelerating before our very eyes. But I also hope they feel the love and the wonder that connects us to this planet and wants us to elect people who are committed to protecting it.
MF: Are there any women whose films who inspired you to go into filmmaking or just that you love and think other people should seek out?
Garbus: There are so many! In the world of documentary, Barbara Kopple was the O.G. and is the O.G. ‘Harlan County USA.’ and ‘American Dream’ were extremely influential for me. Also, I gotta say my brain is all Jane Campion at the moment as I just saw her latest film ‘The Power of the Dog’ and all I can think about is my desire to see that film again. I want to watch it and find all the details I know I missed the first time. She’s just such an extraordinary master and has been doing this at a high level for so long and with both drama and beauty. Those are two people who I certainly have been thinking a lot about.
‘Harlan County USA’ and ‘American Dream’ – directed by Barbara Kopple
A scene from ‘Harlan County, U.S.A.’
Pioneering documentarian Barbara Kopple has won two Academy Awards for her work. The first was for her 1976 film ‘Harlan County, USA,’ which covers the 1973 Brookside Strike. Kopple follows 180 coal miners and their wives as they fight for fair treatment from the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine. She won her second Oscar for 1990 film ‘American Dream,’ which follows the unsuccessful 1985–86 strike against the Hormel Foods corporation. As we see a rise in labor strikes across the United States, both films remain as relevant as ever.
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‘The Power of the Dog’ – directed by Jane Campion
Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons in ‘The Power of the Dog,’ directed by Jane Campion
New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was only the second ever woman to be nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards for her 1993 film ‘The Piano,’ which was also the first film directed by a woman to garner nominations in both directing and best picture categories. Also for that film, she became the first woman to receive the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, with Julia Ducournau’s win this year for ‘Titane’ making her only the second woman ever to receive the honor. Campion went on to win the Best Original Screenplay for her work on ‘The Piano’. Her most recent film ‘The Power of the Dog’ has been playing the fall festival circuit since its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Thomas Savage, the hypnotic western stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee, and is set to premiere in select theaters on November 17th and on Netflix on December 1st.
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Fever Dream – directed by Claudia Llosa, co-written by Llosa and Samanta Schweblin
(L to R) Guillermina Sorribes Liotta and María Valverde in ‘Fever Dream’
Born in Lima, Peru, director Claudia Llosa studied filmmaking at University of Lima and Escuela TAI in Barcelona. Filmmaking it seems in her family’s genes: her uncle Luis Llosa directed the cult film ‘Anaconda’ starring Jennifer Lopez. Claudia Llosa’s first film ‘Madeinusa,’ which chronicled the coming of age of a young girl in a fictional, extremely religious Peruvian village, played many film festivals including Sundance. Her second film ‘The Milk of Sorrow’ examines lingering trauma on women in Peru through the lens of the folk belief that this trauma is passed to children through breast milk. The film was met with widespread acclaim, resulting in Peru’s first nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, although it did not win.
Released in 2014, Samanta Schweblin’s novel ‘Distancia de rescate’ uses elements of psychological fiction to explore the after effects of Argentina’s current environmental problems. The film adaptation, renamed ‘Fever Dream’ in English, follows desperate mother Amanda (María Valverde) as she works through a delirious state to find her daughter. Featuring a powerful supporting performance from Dolores Fonzi, Llosa and Schweblin have crafted an unnerving thriller that serves as both a damnation of Argentina’s lax environmental practices, but also a hymn to the supernatural bond between parents and their children.
‘Fever Dream’ is now streaming on Netflix globally.
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Claudia Llosa and Samanta Schweblin talked to Moviefone about their movie.
Moviefone: How did you come to work with Samanta Schweblin on this adaptation of her novel ‘Distancia de rescate’?
Claudia Llosa: I was lucky. A close friend sent me the book, telling me I should read it because she thought I would like it. I hadn’t even finished reading it when I already felt physically transformed. There was something in the novel that impacted me, not just emotionally, but also physically. I’m talking about intense emotions that have transformed me. I had this feeling of certainty that I wanted to do this, I wanted to adapt this for cinema. I’d never had that experience before. I never meant to adapt a novel. I never read with a view towards that. I normally read as a normal reader, not with the idea that I want to adapt things for cinema. There were a lot of components that I was familiar with, but also the structure was so different and so innovative. There’s this dialogue between Amanda and David that opens up the opportunity to explore within the architecture of cinema a completely new world. That would allow us to open up not just the timeline of the story, which has many layers, but also innovate with this off-screen voice, which gives orders and conducts a dialogue with the viewer. There’s a 3D level that is added on because of that. Then the idea of the rescue distance was such a wonderful concept. It is something that I could connect to, and I felt that many parents, mothers, fathers, children could feel close to as well.
MF: Was there any folklore or culture that inspired the initial story?
Samanta Schweblin: Folklore as such, not in particular. But the idea of migration or transposition, the idea of what happened in the greenhouse, the idea of a woman that can cure things that medicine cannot cure, which seems so far-fetched? Well, it is part of Argentinian reality, there are areas of the country in which medicine does not have a reach where that kind of alternative kind of thinking does take place. That is something that you see in a lot of Latin American novels, I grew up in a city, but I remember that there were all kinds of superstitions, like you needed to do a sign of the cross or otherwise x thing wouldn’t happen.
Llosa: Yeah, there were all these superstitions where you have to take an egg, and then you have to move it in front of your face. And then when you open that, if it was black, then there was a disease and the disease had been transposed to the egg. That kind of stuff.
MF: Can you talk about the film’s unique soundscape?
Llosa: It was an incredible experience working with that kind of sound. There were many sound layers. One is the actual sounds internal to the story, which is very rich. At the same time, there’s something which is a threat which penetrates to the pores and is very subtle. I wanted for that to seep little by little into the sound. We worked with [composer] Natalie Holt. She was so good. She manages to create this emotion. I wanted for this to build up and build up, to create this sensation of a mother who is capable of everything to get to her daughter. Then the third component was done by a Peruvian musician, Jamie Oliver, who lives in New York and teaches at NYU, and he was my neighbor when we were kids. And so I called him because I know that he works with musical instruments that he creates, that are torsion inducing instruments. He works with things that sound like birds, but they actually aren’t animals; it’s music. I wanted for him to help us to create that world, for example, when they get to the greenhouse. I wanted to create this feeling that is very intense. The mix of these three layers is very important.
MF: Could you talk about the significance of the story’s rural setting?
Schweblin: At a symbolic level, I think that Latin Americans, for a long time, we had this idyllic view of the countryside as very bucolic. It’s where you chill. It’s where you find beauty. Everything is so natural. Then all of a sudden, all those rural areas were industrialized and became poisoned and dangerous. We cannot really understand what goes on there. So it was important for me to think about this conflict.
Llosa: For me, it was very important for the story to be deeply rooted in this very specific universe of the Argentinian countryside, which is so bucolic, but I also want for people to feel that this could be anywhere. It could happen next to your house. It could be in the fields of California or in Spain. This is not a problem that can be confined to a specific place. It’s a problem that happens everywhere. This for me was very important. I wanted to succeed in creating this architecture, which is not politically connected to a specific place. Well, it is, it is deeply rooted to where it is, but at the same time, it could be anywhere else.
MF: How did you craft that story’s nonlinear structure?
Schweblin: When there’s a linearity, which then loses its margins, there’s a different way of tackling storytelling. There’s the intention of going over something that we already know, we’re going over something that Amanda has already seen many times, but now she needs to see it in a different way, entering it from a different side. So you see things in a different order, without understanding them or trying to understand them. There’s an anecdote that I remember with a lot of affection. When we got to a point, I got together with Claudia for a week, and it was very intense. We were deciding how to mix the past and the present. It became really exhausting. We moved all the furniture in the room. We were working all over the walls so that everything was free and everything was available to us. We put everything up there until we were super sure of the path that we wanted to follow. I never thought that writing could become something so intense.
Llosa: There was no other way to tell the story. It had to be done this way. We needed to understand how Amanda was going through this confusion with this fever dream that she’s trying to figure out. We needed to have a fracture in the space timeline. That fracture is the only way to understand how one needs to separate them and be able to unite again. We needed to do that. It sounds like a stylistic choice, but when you are so deep into this material, you’ll find it so intense, and you cannot articulate it in any other way. Then it becomes clear to you that it is the only path that one can follow.
Runoff – directed by Kimberly Levin
(L to R) Tom Bower and Joanne Kelly in ‘Runoff’
A former biochemist, writer-director Kimberly Levin’s feature film debut ‘Runoff’ is a blistering thriller about the cost of running a family farm in the modern United States. A Nicholl Screenwriting finalist and IFP Narrative Lab (now called Gotham Fiction Feature Lab) fellow, Levin’s film follows Betty (Joanne Kelly) as she tries to keep her farm afloat and family from falling apart. When her neighbor makes her an offer to use a creek on her land as a dumping ground for toxic waste, she must decide what lines she’s willing to cross in order to keep it all together. Shot on location on a real working farm, ‘Runoff’ shines a light on the economic cost of keeping this country fed and the harsh realities faced by our small farms in today’s economy.
As we head into spooky season, here’s a guide to a wide variety of new horror films from female filmmakers to get your skin crawling. With such a rich crop of startlingly original titles from filmmakers with bold visions and unique points of view, there’s bound to be something for everyone’s particular penchant. Whether you’re looking for mind-blowing body horror, creatures like vampires, witches or ghosts, or just good old fashioned blood, guts and gore – something wicked awaits you.
Adriana Barraza in ‘Bingo Hell’
The fifth installment in the anthology Welcome To The Blumhouse, Gigi Saul Guerrero’s film stars Oscar-nominated actress Adriana Barraza as Lupita, the lynchpin of a group of elderly persons living in the slowly gentrifying enclave known as Oak Springs. When the owner of the community center mysteriously disappears and the bingo hall is taken over by a huckster named Mr. Big (a wonderfully slimy Richard Brake) promising suspiciously big payouts, Lupita rallies the group to fight back. Filmed in New Orleans, Guerrero’s gruesome, wry film is perfect for fans of ‘The Outer Limits.’
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Asjha Cooper, Frabrizio Guido and Mason Beauchamp in ‘Black As Night’
Written by Sherman Payne, Maritte Lee Go’s addition to Welcome To The Blumhouse follows awkward teenager Shawna (Asjha Cooper) as she tackles body issues and battles vampires over one fateful summer. When her mother falls victim to a gang of vampires preying on the most vulnerable residents of New Orleans – drug addicts and the unhoused struggling after Hurricane Katrina – Shawna vows to not only avenge her death, but put an end to their bloody reign in the Big Easy forever.
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Zena Grey, Erika Cimino, Carlson Young, Brianne Tju and Alice Carroll Johnson in ‘The Blazing World’
Loosely inspired by Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 satirical, proto-science fiction of the same name, Carlson Young’s fantasy horror-thriller had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Young stars as Margaret Winter, a self-destructive young woman still reeling from her twin sister’s accidental drowning, who returns home only to find herself in an alternate dreamlike dimension where her sister may still be alive. Udo Kier, Dermot Mulroney, Vinessa Shaw round out the film’s impressive cast.
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Lauren Beatty in ‘Bloodthirsty’
Co-written by mother-daughter team Wendy Hill-Tout and Lowell Boland, follows indie musician Grey Kessler (Lauren Beatty) as she battles her anxiety while working on her sophomore album. When mysterious producer Vaughn (Greg Bryk) offers his mansion and services, Grey is elated. However as his abusive process pushes her into the darker recesses of her psyche, she finds herself transforming in more ways than one. Shot on location in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the result is a unique, transfixing, and gore-filled twist on the werewolf genre.
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Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in ‘Candyman’
Co-written with Win Rosenfeld and producer Jordan Peele, Nia DaCosta’s entry into the Candyman franchise, first adapted from by Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden” in 1992 by Bernard Rose, picks the story back up twenty-seven years after the events of the first film. Chicago-based visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) finds himself drawn to the urban myth of Candyman and the Cabrini-Green housing project. Little does he know his connection to the lore runs deeper than just the power of artistic inspiration. Although critical reception was split, after its initial release DaCosta became the first American Black woman director with a number one at the box office.
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Niamh Algar in ‘Censor’
Set at the height of the Video Nasty controversy in the early 1980s England, Enid Baines (Niamh Algar) works as a censor for the British Board of Film Classification. Years early Enid’s sister went missing and is presumed dead, but when Enid discovers an old exploitation film that parallels the events of her sister’s disappearance, she becomes obsessed with finding the woman she believes may be her long lost sister. Shot on a mixture of 35mm, Super8 and VHS, Bailey-Bond’s film is a visceral and disquieting debut.
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Fear Street Trilogy – directed by Leigh Janiak
Ted Sutherland and Sadie Sink in ‘Fear Street’
Set in 1994, 1978, and 1666 respectively, the trilogy relates the twisted relationship between the communities of Shadyside and Sunnyvale as it unpacks the curse of Sarah Fier, a witch who was burned at the stake. Inspired by the iconic book series by R. L. Stine, director Leigh Janiak infuses a fresh new point of view by centering the films on a queer love story, while mainting plenty of gore.
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Cecilia Milocco in ‘Knackningar (Knocking)’
Directed by Frida Kempff and written by Emma Broström, the film stars Cecilia Milocco as a woman named Molly who is recovering from a nervous breakdown after experiencing an extreme loss. After checking out of a psychiatric ward and moving into a new apartment complex, she begins hearing mysterious knocking sounds. Paranoia sets in when no one in the mysterious complex believes her.
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Brea Grant in ‘Lucky’
The life of self-help author May (Brea Grant) spirals out of control when she finds herself battling a mysterious faceless assailant night after night. When no one seems to notice or care, she is pushed to her physical and psychological limits as she attempts to rid him from her life for good. Kermani and writer-star Grant’s incisive look at the terror of just being a woman in this world will linger in your mind long after its flashy finale.
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Barbara Hershey in ‘The Manor’
Also part of Welcome To The Blumhouse, writer-director Axelle Carolyn’s gothic thriller stars Barbara Hershey as Judith Albright, a woman who moves to Golden Sun Manor assisted living after suffering a mild stroke. While fighting for her agency, she begins to believe there is a sinister presence haunting the residents of the manor. Teaming up with fellow resident Roland (Bruce Davison), the two attempt to escape their confines rather than succumb to the evil forces surrounding them.
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Kiera Thompson in ‘Martyr’s Lane’
While living in a remote vicarage with her parents and surly older sister, 10-year-old Leah (Kiera Thompson) meets a strange girl in tattered angel wings while playing in the woods. Each time the girl visits Leah finds new clues to an old mystery that may cause her family’s fraught dynamics to unravel completely. Although she doesn’t quite stick the landing, with this film writer-director Ruth Platt offers a unique twist on the ghost story genre.
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Martina García in ‘Phobias’
In this anthology film each director brings a unique phobia to graphic life. Using a frame narrative to connect the five entries, their stories cross paths at a government testing facility where a crazed doctor attempts to weaponize fear. Watch out for a chilling performance from Macy Gray.
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Rose Williams in ‘The Power’
Set during power outages caused by a miners’ strike in early 1970s London, the film centers around Val (Rose Williams), a nurse in training. Spending her first night working in the East London Royal Infirmary in near total darkness, she begins to suspect there is something sinister lurking in the walls.
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Jennifer Ehle in ‘Saint Maud’
After a critically praised debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, writer-director Rose Glass’s psychological horror debut finally hit stateside earlier this year. Having recently converted to Roman Catholicism, hospice nurse Maud forms an unhealthy obsession with a former dancer in her care (Jennifer Ehle). Featuring a shocking finale, Oscar-winner Danny Boyle is among the film’s most ardent supporters, calling it “genuinely unsettling.”
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Romane Denis in ‘Slaxx’
In this horror-comedy, co-written with Patricia Gomez, writer-director Elza Kephart tackles the real life horrors caused by fast fashion. As a possessed pair of jeans goes on a killing spree inside a hip boutique overnight, new hire Libby McClean (Romane Denis) fights to escape the denim demon.
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Najarra Townsend in ‘The Stylist’
One day a lonely hair stylist (Najarra Townsend) who works from home snaps and kills a client (Brea Grant), leading her down a path of continued bloodlust that changes her life forever. Praised for its sharp comedy and stylish kills, Gevargizian’s film is a welcome entry into the slasher canon.
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Agathe Rousselle in ‘Titane,’ directed by Julia Ducournau
In this Cannes Palme d’Or-winning flick Alexia, a showgirl (Agathe Rousselle) at a motorshow with a titanium plate implanted in her head from a childhood crash, gets impregnated by a Cadillac and goes on a serial killing spree. On the run from the cops, she impersonates the long lost son of a fire chief named Vincent (Vincent Lindon). Equally as tender as it is disgusting, Ducournau is the reigning queen of body horror with heart.
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Amanda Seyfried in ‘Things Heard & Seen’
Based on the novel “All Things Cease to Appear” by Elizabeth Brundage, Berman and Pulcini use the philosophies and mysticism of Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian and scientist Emanuel Swedenborg to put a new spin on the ghost story genre, while also exploring the dynamics of a fatally toxic marriage. The impressive cast includes Amanda Seyfried as Catherine, James Norton, Natalia Dyer, Karen Allen, and F. Murray Abraham.
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Madeleine Sims-Fewer in ‘Violation’
Playing both the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, this Canadian horror-drama follows Miriam (Madeleine Sims-Fewer), a traumatized woman on the edge of divorce who returns home for the first time in years. After her estranged sister and brother-in-law betray her trust, she seeks revenge in a most deranged and vicious manner. Praised for its rage and intensity, Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli’s film is a bold take on the revenge genre.
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A sink test scene in ‘Witch Hunt’
Set in a version of contemporary America where witches are real and witchcraft is illegal, a teenage girl (Gideon Adlon) faces her own prejudices as her mom (Elizabeth Mitchell) begins offering assistance to the orphaned children of witches seeking asylum in Mexico. While the metaphor isn’t always in the best taste, Callahan’s film continues the tradition of using the witch genre as a mode to express cultural criticism.
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Maritte Lee Go (center) talks to Asjha Cooper (right) on the set of ‘Black As Night’
Filipino-American filmmaker Maritte Lee Go received her MFA in Film and Television from USC. She has either directed or produced dozens of film projects. She has been a Project Involve Directing Fellow, won the HBO Visionary Award in 2018 for her short film ‘Remittance’ and participated in Women In Media’s CAMERAderie Initiative. Earlier this year, she directed part of the anthology film ‘Phobias’.
Her latest film ‘Black As Night’ is part of the Prime Video anthology series ‘Welcome To The Blumhouse’. Each year, Blumhouse partners with Prime Video on a four film horror-thriller anthology with a shared thematic vision. This year’s theme is “institutional horrors and personal phobias.” Directing a script written by Sherman Payne, Go’s film ‘Black As Night’ follows Shawna (Asjha Cooper) as she navigates both the horror of being a teenage girl while also defending her neighborhood from a horde of bloodthirsty vampiresv.
‘Black As Night’ is streaming now as part of this year’s ‘Welcome To The Blumhouse’ anthology on Prime Video.
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Maritte Lee Go spoke to Moviefone about her new horror movie.
Movifone: How did you get involved with ‘Welcome To The Blumhouse’ anthology?
Maritte Lee Go: Well, it’s always been my dream to make a Blumhouse movie. I watch every single one of the films that come out and just always dreamt of making my own movie. I was actually pitching a movie with Amazon, I was pitching another horror film that I had been developing. And although that one’s not yet been picked up, they were looking for directors for this slate of films and sent me the script I absolutely loved. It felt like it was something groundbreaking that I’ve never seen before. And I knew I had to be a part of it. So I pitched it and luckily I got it.
Go: No, actually, Sherman Kane, the writer, he wrote this over 10 years ago, it was one of his first scripts he had ever written out of film school. It took place in New York. The script had been bounced around to like every studio in town. Although they loved the writing, it just wasn’t the perfect time for it to come out. So much has been happening in our country that this subject matter was on the top of everybody’s brain. So they picked it up. This slate of films was being shot in New Orleans, so he reformatted it that location. Honestly I think it made the movie even better because there’s so much history embedded in New Orleans. To be able to pivot and add that extra layer of New Orleans really strengthened it.
MF: Can you talk a little bit about the location scouting in New Orleans?
Go: When I put together the pitch and was thinking about the locations I wanted, I Googled what I thought was a New Orleans mansion, and that image I used in the pitch packet became the real location in the film. That was a cool manifestation. But there’s so much amazing history in New Orleans. Everywhere you look, the trees are weeping. They’re so beautiful. The architecture of every building. Many of them are centuries old. When you’re able to use the real locations that are written within the script, and not build it on a stage or a set, it adds so much authenticity.
MF: Were there any challenges in making this with COVID restrictions?
Go: We shot half the movie before COVID and then shot the other half after four months into the pandemic. There were already so many challenges to begin with. It’s not a huge budget film, and we’ve got stunts and effects and VFX. We really, really pushed it to its limit, and then you add a pandemic in there, and it becomes nearly impossible. The second half of the movie we were on such time crunches, we only shot this movie in 17 or 18 days. It was a really short turnaround, but by the time COVID was here, we could only do I think a maximum of 10-hour days, and then only with a quarter of our crew. We also shot through lightning storms. With the COVID protocols, you’re wearing face masks, and you can’t even be close to each other. There were scenes where they had to kiss or bite, and we had to do countdowns, like 3… 2… 1… now don’t breathe! Angle your head! And then pretend. There were so many challenges, but all in all, I think we got everything we needed.
MF: How did you find Asjha Cooper for the lead character of Shawna?
Go: When I saw her perform, I couldn’t tell the difference between her as Asjha and as Shawna. She just is her. I couldn’t see the difference. When an actor embodies a character, and I can’t tell the difference, I know that’s them. She’s such a talented actress. She doesn’t have formal acting training in it, but she has so much talent and skill inside of her. She can go from comedy to crying to screaming within moments. She’s an amazing actress and I just know that she’s gonna explode and do so many bigger and bigger projects.
Go: For his role, we needed somebody who has a name. So I created a list, and he was number one on it. One of the first movies I remember seeing him in was ‘Requiem for a Dream’. His voice terrified me. He just has this presence. He’s so powerful. What I see on screen and what he has been able to accomplish is so iconic, that only an actor like him would be able to play this character and give it so much life. I’ve just been a huge fan of his forever, so to be able to work with him was incredible.
MF: What do you think this film adds to the tradition of films about vampires?
Go: Vampires are a staple of horror. Sherman Payne, the writer, did such a great job in creating something new out of something that we all have seen done a million times. To be able to tell a story with a deeper conversation around all the issues that are happening within this country, through the vampire lenses I feel is so exciting and new. I hope audiences will watch and feel like there’s something familiar, but something was so fresh about it.
MF: Were there any visual references for the look of the film?
Go: Specifically, I had been looking at ‘30 Days of Night’ and ‘Interview with the Vampire’. Those are my favorite vampire movies, so I looked at the way they structured tension and their use of shadows and light. This helped me figure out how to make sure the audience is also experiencing these vampires when their victims are experiencing it. I also looked at ‘Kill Bill’ for the animation sequences. Our villain has a very complicated past that got him to where he is now, so I wanted the audience to experience the pain and the anguish that got him to this place of rage and anger. I wanted them to really feel for him so that you could almost understand why a person could go this dark.
MF: Could you talk a bit about collaborating with cinematographer Cybel Martin?
Go: Cybel is amazing. She is also obsessed with gore. We were always talking about what we were watching, and what’s the next new scary thing. She was very much in line with what I wanted. It was really fun to create the shotlist and storyboards with her. She’s really great at communicating with her crew how to accomplish her vision while also translating my vision. Now she’s shooting ‘American Horror Story’, which is so exciting. Her career continues to grow, which makes me super happy because she’s very deserving of it.
MF: How do you hope people feel after the film is over?
Go: I want people to have a great time. It’s a roller coaster of emotions. You will hopefully understand and empathize with the character of Shawna, and feel what it feels like to be a young woman of color, who is experiencing all of these things. The beauty of filmmaking is that you can empathize through these characters that you would never otherwise experience their life. I want people to walk away with the experience of what it would be like for somebody who comes from an oppressed community, but also feel the excitement of slaying vampires. I want people to have a really good time, but also think deeper about the issues that are happening in this country.
MF: You went through Women In Media’s CAMERAderie Initiative. What was that process like?
Go: Oh, it was amazing. I had written the script I submitted to the contest – ‘Illipino’ – about two weeks before. I loved the script that I had written, but I wasn’t sure if anyone ever wanted to see this movie. It was very close to me, based on my own experiences growing up. When they chose me as one of the finalists, it validated my voice and my life experience in this world. They really supported my vision. They’re trying to change the industry in a very positive way and get women’s voices out there. They’ve really uplifted me as a director. Being able to make that short film has actually helped me get my next movie, which is a musical. So I owe them so much gratitude. I love seeing organizations that truly understand that there is this glaring issue of inequality in the industry, and are really pushing for more women directors. I’m thankful for them.
MF: Is there a film directed by a woman that you think people should seek out?
Go: I love Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Strange Days’. It feels so advanced for its time. It’s such an epic film. She did it so beautifully. It’s scary, and it deals with the same kind of social issues that we deal with today. It’s about escaping your own personality to live another person’s life. I think she’s incredibly talented and so smart. She’s really been this kind of shining beacon of what women can do and how they can push the limits of this industry. I strive to be a director as talented as she is.
Strange Days – directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett in ‘Strange Days,’ directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
From a screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, Kathryn Bigelow’s now iconic sci-fi-thriller ‘Strange Days’ was a box office bomb. Hot off the financial and critical success of the surfer-set actioner ‘Point Break’, this genre-defying science fiction noir received praise from critics like Roger Ebert, who gave it a coveted 4-star review, but only made $8m off of its $42m budget. Set on the last two days of 1999, the movie features Ralph Fiennes as a black marketeer who sells recordings that allows people to experience the memories and physical sensations of others. One of those recordings shows a sex worker he knows being murdered, leading him try and discover the indentity of the killer. Despite its lackluster reception at the box office, the film garnered the Best Actress award for Angela Bassett at the 22nd Saturn Awards, and Bigelow became the first woman to win the ceremony’s Best Director award. Of course, Bigelow would break that glass ceiling again when she became the first woman to win the Best Director award at the Oscars for her 2009 war film ‘The Hurt Locker,’ which also became the first film directed by a woman to win Best Picture.
Jaboukie Young-White and Francesca Reale in ‘Dating & New York’
Cuban-American Maria Rusche grew up outside of Boston and began her work in film as a gaffer and lighting technician. Based in Brooklyn, she has a degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she was also an adjunct professor of cinematography from 2018 until 2021. Her work shooting on location in New York City is beautifully demonstrated in the film tryptic ‘Milkwater,’ ‘Shiva Baby’, and most recently ‘Dating & New York’. Rusche spoke to Moviefone about her work on feature films and past, present, and future for women cinematographers in the industry.
Moviefone: How did you get into filmmaking and specifically cinematography?
Maria Rusche: I got interested in filmmaking when I was a kid. I would make movies with my friends. Usually comedies or mockumentaries. That was what I was drawn to at the time. I had a cousin who was an editor, so I thought maybe I’ll go to film school and be an editor. I think people on the outside don’t have a sense of what other roles there are in filmmaking. When I got to film school, I realized what a cinematographer does, which translates a script into a visual world with the director and the production designer. What’s specific about this role, is you are then decimating this information to an entire crew of folks who have to work together to make that happen. I played a lot of team sports growing up, so I felt very at home with that part of the process. I started shooting in film school and then went with it from there. I did a lot of lighting work as well. Coming up, I was a gaffer and electrician, which helped me with experience in lighting.
MF: Did you have any mentors?
Rusche: I have been lucky enough to have a number of women who have been supportive and helpful along the way. A friend of mine, Dagmar Weaver-Madsen, who shot ‘High Maintenance,’ is a really talented DP and very generous. I met her when I was still in film school. I ended up gaffing a few projects for her. I think that kind of support and mentorship is really crucial, especially for cinematographers. It’s hard to get a foothold in the industry. As a second child, I learn really well from someone else work, so to see someone else who looked like me doing that job was really inspiring.
MF: Can you talk about your collaboration with director Jonah Feingold on ‘Dating & New York’?
Rusche: When Jonah and I first met, which was in Washington Square Park and feels very apropos for this movie, we talked a lot about loving rom-coms. He’s really a ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ kind of guy. I definitely felt very embarrassed in film school talking about romantic comedies. It was such a breath of fresh air to talk to someone who also loves these movies and realize there is as much depth in a romantic comedy as there is in a drama. We really bonded over a lot of shared movie references. ‘(500) Days of Summer‘ felt stylistically very appropriate because of the way that they incorporate elements of magical realism and surreal, fantastical moments. The cinematography supports that tone. Jonah is really great at creating an environment where you can really try anything. That’s how we approached the script in pre-production. We tried to push ourselves past the first thing that came into our heads of the standard way to cover a scene, but rather how can we build a romantic, surreal version of New York that it feels like when you’re falling in love with someone. That was really how we approached the blocking and shooting of each scene.
MF: This film was shot over 15 days in 20 locations across NYC. That feels like a lot.
Rusche: Yeah, I think pre-production is crucial for making that kind of schedule work. We were really diligent about our location scouting and pre-production. We would go through the script scene by scene and talk through exactly what the point of each scene was, where it fits in the story, and what we were trying to get across. Having that sacred understanding of each beat we were trying to hit, in addition to having our shot list going into each scene, we were able to pivot easily and move very quickly. If we had to cut a short or two, we knew what we needed to get across. I also had been lucky enough to work with my crew for a long time, and that helps with being efficient communication-wise.
MF: Were there any happy accidents in terms of locations or lighting in the locations as you were shooting?
Rusche: Jonah was really open to new ideas that popped up, because he was not married to anything, that gave us the opportunity to really embrace things that would happen on the day. One of my favorite scenes was the ferry scene. When you set a scene in such a visually interesting and evocative location, you are able to find ways to capture that romantic feeling of being on the ferry with your friend and living in this idyllic moment. We knew what we wanted to get across with the scene, so we were able to adapt with the conditions on the ferry, which was totally chaotic.
MF: ‘Shiva Baby’ has a very different feel and much fewer locations. Can you talk about working with Emma Seligman on that film?
Rusche: Again, focusing during pre-production was really crucial. Because it was just the one location, it did give us an opportunity to be so well versed in the space. Emma and I were able to spend a ton of time at the location and see different ways to cover people in the space, how to block people in ways that helped move the story forward. The danger of a one location movie is that it can be boring. We had to figure out how to build tension and still feel like the story was progressing despite being in just one location. We did that through lighting. The shiva starts out more of a cooler feel, the windows are open, and the feeling in there is that it’s a little somber. As Danielle (Rachel Sennott)’s intensity and anxiety increases over the course of the shiva, we wanted to exaggerate the warmth that builds throughout her experience. We built that into the lighting plan as people light candles as the shiva starts and culminates in a climatic moment where Danielle finally loses it.
MF: Morgan Ingari’s ‘Milkwater’ was also shot on location in NYC, mostly in a brownstone. How did you develop its look?
Rusche: The look for that film was definitely rooted in New York and in Brooklyn. We were really focusing on performances for that film, since Molly Bernard is so brilliant and we wanted to give her opportunity to shine. We definitely had a similarly warm, somewhat romantic look for that movie as Molly is coming out to her family.
MF: What do you think is so compelling about location shooting in New York?
Rusche: I feel like if you’re not cramming into a bathroom in Brooklyn, did you really shoot in New York? I think that there is something a little bit magical to shooting on location because it gives you a little bit of authenticity. You never know what you are going to find in these locations. It’s hard to replicate the quirks of a real brownstone on a stage. There’s a special feeling of the city that you get from being able to shoot on location.
MF: Do you have any advice for women who might want to pursue work as a cinematographer?
Rusche: Spend time developing your own voice is really important. There is so much competition to become a cinematographer. There are tons of people who are skilled who can do the job and want to do the job. What sets you apart is your perspective and your taste. Also, don’t try to fit too hard into what you think you are supposed to do.
MF: Can you recommend other films shot by female cinematographers for our readers to seek out?
Rusche: I really like Autumn Durald’s work. She most recently shot the new ‘Loki’ series. I think her work is really smart and evocative. Zoë White shot the most recent season of ‘Westworld’ that was really incredible.
MF: There’s a lot more women working as cinematographers now, and I’m wondering if you think that it’s gotten any easier for women in the industry?
Rusche: We’ve definitely increased the number of women, but I still think we have a ways to go. I noticed that in terms of jumping to bigger budgets, there is still somewhat of a hesitancy to give an opportunity to shoot those projects to a woman. I think in some ways, men are still judged for their potential and women are judged on their resumes. I think that it’s exciting that there is a lot of new talent coming up and that there are more opportunities, and we can see a lot more women working, but I’m even more excited to see those women be given the top-tier jobs. That’s what I’m looking forward to.
‘Dating & New York’ is in select theaters and available to rent online now.
