After an evening of showcasing exciting new documentary ideas
at Hackney Attic – the trio of female documentarians were grilled on their
views of the genre, on the creation of their projects and on what we can expect
from them in the future.
Why did you choose
documentary as a genre for your projects?
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| guardian.com |
Jackie:
We started our own documentary obviously, we decided to make a film about
children coz we work with kids and we thought that’d be easy. But of course, it
wasn’t. And it was the young man who is a film-maker who helped us make the
film who said, it would be much more interesting if you made a fly on the wall
documentary about making this film. So, we fell into it and it was such a good
experience in the sense of getting a good product at the end of it, that we
stuck with it. So we’ve done 7 now and our next film is not going to be a
documentary.
We’re building up to a feature which is based on a true
story, so it’s not quite a documentary but it’s a true story, and we found that
we needed to learn how to work with actors before you actually do the feature,
otherwise it wasn’t going to work.
H: But your first
film was still a documentary though, so you must have decided at one point to go
that way?
Jackie: Yeh I mean, the one we’re doing
at the moment is a scripted piece which is complete fantasy and that’s only so
that we can practice those skills. But the features that are coming up are
actually based on true events, which you can’t document in the way you’d want
to in a documentary because people don’t want to be filmed, they’ve got a great
story. The first feature that we’re doing is about our son’s wedding and he’s
married a Turkish Muslim girl, whose family completely did not understand our
relationship. So, you know, that’s very funny, it was very difficult and very
funny but they were never going to be in the film, you know, they just
wouldn’t. So we have to script it…so it is documentary but not quite.
Victoria: I don’t
know, I just kind of fell into it coz I just want to explore. I don’t know, I
prefer to explore other people’s situations than pretend that I already know
what’s going on and write a script about it because I just know I’m never gonna
know as much about a situation as much as someone else, and entering people’s
lives, or forcing myself into people’s lives. But also, I hate writing so yeh.
Probably another reason I couldn’t have the dedication to sit down and write a
script. To come up with ideas and stalk people, I’m better at so that’s why I
went to documentary.
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| yourworldview.org |
Asmita: Actually
I was very introvert and very shy and film-making is kind of journey for me to
understand myself and it’s a kind of good way for me to get exposed to people
and get connected to people. I find it very healthy for me myself, to know
myself, how I can get to know humans. So that’s why I choose documentary as my
first choice but I do like others as well. I do write scripts.
I am still a visual artist but I think it took me about 6
years to get into the films so, now I know I want to make films, and that’s
what I want to do for the rest of life. So, it’s kind of a big journey for me.
What are the biggest
challenges you found working in the genre?
Jackie: For us
it’s that we have very big jobs, we’re full time and some, trying to find the
time to do the job properly and outside of that it’s very hard. I think that’s
the biggest challenge. Money is difficult to come by.
Host: Did you find the skills relatively easy then?
Jackie: we are
project managers in our job so, it’s another project that we’ve had to learn
different skills and we’ve had to acquire them quickly. But you know, there’s
so much available on YouTube and books and the filmmaking community have been
immensely supportive. We’re lucky to work with people who are very famous right
now and helping us do our next things.
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| arcticdiary.wordpress.com |
Victoria: I think
for me, my biggest challenge is access because I’m incredibly stubborn and if I
want to make a story about something, I have to make the story about THAT thing
because I need, I have an urge, a deep inner urge to explore that thing but
usually that takes a long time to build up trust or I don’t know. The case of
the Roma family took 8 months of convincing. Now I’m making another film in
Russia, trying to convince the ex-KGB to let me into this closed city or I’m
doing another film now on Mauritanian slavery and all of a sudden, everyone
said yes they want to appear or no they don’t want to appear so, there’s a lot
of access issues but to be honest, being quite a perfectionist, stubborn
Neapolitan, I kind of enjoy that challenge of forcing people to let me into
their lives. It is definitely a challenge, where you have to morph and be these
different people. I was always myself but you have to be different people in
different circumstances and learning how to do that for me, was a challenge.
But a nice challenge.
Asmita: I’m still trying to learn films so that’s my whole
challenge, understanding films.
(To Victoria) How
much did you direct and how much did you step back? Who made decisions over
costume etc?
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| makeshiftcinema.wordpress.com |
Victoria: So the
deal was that Dudek would direct this and the deal was that Dudek would choose
everything that went in but I’d guide him along which scenes I’d like to have.
So, I definitely wanted a scene where they were all singing together,
definitely wanted a scene where – he explained certain types of transactions
and I knew there was a horse on the campsite – so the scene about buying a
horse. Certain scenes I knew that I wanted. What, we had building tents,
sleeping in them at night but we didn’t use them right.
He decided what they would wear, what they would eat and how
they would eat it and all of those kinds of things. And then he’d direct his
family, I wouldn’t say anything. I set up the device, I set up the campsite and
told them that we would just observe them and that’s as much as I did. But he
chose a lot of the things. He wouldn’t have wanted to have in the film the bits
where he’s observed because he didn’t realise he was being like that but then
we finally got over that. Yeh he knew he was being observed and he largely
directed the scenes.
I mean, it was mean to recreate old Roma gypsy lifestyle.
They all had the costumes, they perform in those costumes because they’re
musicians so, they choose those, I didn’t ask them to wear that.
There were a lot of
public in the films, do you always get release forms from all of them?
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| b3media.net (Asmita at TalentLab 2014 - 3rd from left) |
Asmita: Yes I do.
For all the characters you mean, I did a sign from the English class, the
organization that is organizing the whole class so, I had a release form from
each of them that appears in the film.
Victoria: I did
everywhere apart from Mexico City. But hopefully they won’t find out
Jackie: We got
all of the releases except for 17secs of a song. And that took us a lot of time
and it turns out that the people that wrote the song normally write for choirs,
churches and schools. And they just ignored our request of permission for the
17secs so we decided to just do it anyway. We have 17secs of other music ready
in case anyone ever criticizes that and we can slip it in yeh.
Asmita I wanted to
ask you, how did the people particularly in the English class, show did they
react to being filmed? Were they aware of the camera?
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| anahatsvisionsandfilms.com |
Asmita: They
didn’t even care that I was there. They just see me as a little girl who was
just filming. I’ve been shooting that for a year now so, when I am in England I
regularly go there. Now they are just cringing their faces when I show them and
they don’t really care that I’m there anymore so, it’s fine.
I’ve been there for ten classes now, I’m still going, I’m
still going there. It was meant to be an installation documentary actually, so
there was no dialogue, just expressions and how they’re trying to communicate
with each other or just trying their struggle. I really tried to tell the
story, the history, the past and the present and the future through the class
only and through their expression but we’ll have to see, it’s still in the edit
suite.
What do you hope to
do with your films, or what do you hope they will say, or change?
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| vimeo.com |
Victoria: I do
hope that, well, my aim is to screen them as much as possible right, and in
that way manage to change people’s minds, especially in the most recent films.
, the ones about more social issues like the Roma gypsies where there’s not a
lot of things about Roma, or at least that aren’t as, subtle. I feel that I
want to tell their stories more and just to get people used to it. I don’t know
if I want to say something with it but just get people thinking about
representation is what I’m interested in anyway. With that and other films
about social issues. And just like, get the audience to have a good time and
have fun. I think that’s my aim, I want it to be fun. I think that’s it really.
Jackie: Well we
wanted to go to film festivals, and we got there. Yes, we’ve been all over the
world. These two films in fact got into frameline, which is the number 1 LGBT
film festival in the world. And we went and had this Hollywood experience which
we couldn’t’ quite believe and still can’t quite believe and met all these
people. There’s an international community on our Facebook now and they come to
London and stay with us and one day we’ll go back to San Francisco and stay
with them. It’s just been an incredibly shallow experience really.
But now that we’ve thought about it a bit more, we can see
very much so, that the LGBT history month and all those sorts of things. I mean
we’re very committed to that community. We’re not very interested in other
things although we love to see them, but actually there’s so many stories in
our community that that’s where we’d like to stay.
Mark was just saying that somebody we were about to film as
part of his journey died recently, because so many of those activists are of an
age where their health is precarious, their understanding of what’s going on
might not be quite so good. We’re quite committed to recording that, those
histories.
Asmita: I think
maybe to give them something to think about, for the audience. If it touches
them emotionally. That’s my aim. And also I do festivals.
How do you make your
subjects comfortable in front of the camera?
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| vimeo.com |
Jackie: I’d like
to start by saying, we’ve never cracked that. The children wouldn’t talk
remember. Well we went from children to Mark who is a performer so he was fine.
Our most recent short is women’s arm-wrestling and that was very interesting
because we filmed it at a gay club and it’s a women’s arm-wrestling night and there
were people in the queue who wouldn’t be filmed. Being out is still a problem.
I had this one woman who said ‘I can’t be filmed because my parents don’t know’
and all this stuff, ‘so only film me from the back’. So we had this
arm-wrestling woman like this imitates awkward camera angle). Then I saw
another one in the queue outside and she said ‘oh no, no, no you can’t film me,
my parents don’t know’. I said ‘oh aren’t you out’ and she said ‘no, they don’t
know I smoke’. So, it’s different for everybody, we’ve just got to find out
what it is.
Victoria: For me,
there’s a lot of negotiation involved but also I’ve made films where they don’t
want to appear on camera at all and I’m just going to have to find a way out of
it. But then again, I find that as really fun, and challenge how do we use film
to tell their story without seeing their faces, through various techniques.
But yeh it does take a lot of negotiation. I mean I was with
the Roma family for 8 months trying to convince them coz they wouldn’t appear in
the film, they were really nervous about that. S that was through an agreement
almost. It depends on every person you meet, everyone’s so different.
So yeh, I guess, I made them feel comfortable by spending so
much time with them, drinking vodka and eating steak tartar which was great and
attempting to play the violin.
[Anesthesia] in that case I couldn’t recreate the moment he
was telling me anyway coz I only had this rubbish recorded, recording his
voice. I recently did one about Romanian migration to the UK and none of the
people on the bus wanted to be filmed. Which was, well I wanted to film the
people on the bus. But, that didn’t matter because I took all their interviews
and filmed scenes from the bus and then gave it to an actor who then took all
of the interviews and acted them out, with projections of the bus ride. So, I
mean I go around those kinds of problems trying to find solutions, which will
sometimes work, sometimes.
Asmita: I think,
just be honest, that’s it. I try to be honest with my characters and so, just
try to be good friends with them, don’t lie to them or anything, just be honest
and they’ll understand. Even after they watch the film, I mean with aunty,
she’s more than happy to show it to others, with her crying. We are quite close
actually.
Host: You didn’t plan
for her to open up like that, that must have been hard to film…
Asmita: No, Yeh I
was crying myself. It was very hard for me, very difficult for me but yeh I try
to be honest, just be yourself in the situation.
How do you feel that
documentary as a genre could evolve any further?
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| vimeo.com |
Victoria: It’s so
exciting right now. I find the documentary genre, so exciting, and they’ve just
opened a documentary cinema at the Curzon Bloomsbury. So yeh, oh my god.
Documentary is becoming so exciting right now, especially with hybrid
documentary. More documentaries are being put in the cinemas now than a couple
of years ago. I think it’s a super exciting place to be where the genre is
being bent and people are thinking of going to the cinema to watch a
documentary. That’s really cool so, I think we’re in the right moment to.
One of my things is to create a boundary between fiction and
documentary. I like to play with that and there’s a lot more to play with in
longer form. I don’t know there’s so much to do right now.
What would you
classify as a documentary?
Victoria: I don’t
know. I think, whatever you think it is then that’s enough. I mean there’s
films that I think are documentaries that are mine and people are like actually
what, so you’ve scripted that and that’s an actor, why’s it a documentary? But
its real life represented through something. Yeh so I guess documentary is
really, based on real life. But then you have a drama documentary. It’s a
constant question isn’t it, what is a documentary? I just think there’s a lot
more to be done and it’s really exciting.
Asmita: I think
documentary exist when there is a camera and there is a character, and the
character is aware there is a camera. So I don’t know if that’s documentary or
fiction or... there has to be confusion of whether it’s a fiction or a
documentary. But in terms of hybrid documentary, I’m not really, I don’t know
about hybrid documentary but I do, do installations and projections so, that
could be. There are lots of possibilities. You can work with reality, whatever,
however you like.
Jackie: I cannot
understand why people need to make stuff up because real life is so crazy. You
just document stuff that interests you and as you both said, you get access to
people who are amazing and their stories are amazing and you just film that and
that’s fantastic… why do you make stuff up?
Victoria: I
agree.
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| rainbowfilmfestival.org.uk |
Mark Bunyon:
There is a difference, watching footage about children taking three hours to go
to school… if you see that on the 7 o’clock news it’s just news footage and
there’s a split second where you go that’s amazing and awful, and then you
forget it. When you come to the cinema and actually watch something, because
I’ve been watching documentary programmes in film festivals and I’ve been made
to watch films that I wouldn’t have actually chosen to watch. And then I’ve
been really, very moved by it. I mean, the idea of taking three hours to go to
school , and three hours to come back, is something that would just pass you by
on television but when you’re stuck, in a seat, watching a documentary film, it
has much more weight.
I’m curious because
you do a lot of different styles, how do you constantly switch styles and to
different audiences? How do you cater to audience?
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| vimeo.com |
Victoria: I
consider myself to be, first and foremost, a traveler. Right, traveler through
genres, traveler through people’s lives. I’m not an expert on anything but I
simply travel subtly through genres, styles, techniques and people. So, my
curiosity in diverse things, drives me.
My curiosity in diverse techniques or in diverse stories and ways of
telling stories, topics, that’s what drives me, I can’t help it. All of my
stories are just absolutely crazily different. I don’t have a style per say,
just because I’m too interested in everything and you can’t do everything all
at once so, that’s really annoying but yeh, to just travel through these things.
I do think about audiences as well but first and foremost it’s my curiosity
that drives me.
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| queer-streifen.blogspot.com |
Jackie: We’re
very committed because we’re at the other end of our lives, you’ve got so much
more to come and we’ve got, what we feel, quite a short time to get a lot done
if we’re going to do this. So, we’re very very focused on what we want, which
is LGBT stories, and older people. We’re appealing to ourselves and those
people that we know who reflect our own interests. Women film-makers are a
great minority at festivals, 3% of film-makers are women, so that in itself is
a challenge. Then to be focused on the queer community is a challenge. I mean
we wouldn’t want to do anything simple. So, we’re doing it for ourselves and
other people like us really but there’s not enough time as Victoria said,
there’s not enough time to do everything.
Almost leading on
from that, I don’t want to make it a focal point but I don’t think that we can
ignore the fact that you’re all women sitting here tonight:
Audience:
YAYYYYYY
Most of the
submission that we had, a lot of documentary makers were women. I just wondered
if you’d found that.
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| flickr.com |
Jackie: No, nowhere. I don’t know why. We’re constantly
having to resist men… in the film-making sense. Not in a bad way, it’s not that
we don’t want to work with men or anything it’s just that certainly when our
first film was made, our young man who was the film-maker, he made it and
completely missed some of the female and gay stuff, because it wasn’t his
community and we then decided that we wanted to work with lesbians
predominantly, to make sure that our understanding of our lives is reflected in
our films. Because we didn’t want to fight somebody’s, it’s not ignorance
exactly, aesthetic thank you.
So it’s for that reason really. I think we feel that we have
to be very niche, very targeted.
Victoria: I know
a lot of women documentary directors and at documentary festivals I tend to see
a lot more women, than at mixed shorts festivals where there are a lot of men.
But obviously in departments like, camera, sound… I mean all tech stuff. And
also I work as an editor mostly, and definitely in that field, there’s a lot
more men than women. I realise it more in the directors I mean, I don’t know,
my experience recently I’m meeting a whole load of female directors but less in
the more technical aspects.
There’s still more work to be done right, there’s loads more
work to be done.
Tell us more about
what you’re doing now and what you’re working on…
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| unidocs.org |
Asmita: I wrote a
script for a small ten minutes film, so it got selected for [VERSAILLE??]
international film festival. So I’m going back to my country again, to Nepal
and shoot the film for ten minutes. It’s going to be premiered there which is a
great opportunity for me so I’m exploring film-making more into the fiction
now. And also I’m sticking also to non-fiction, and researching now climate
change in the Himalayas and how it’s effecting the local communities there and
yeh, that’s it. For now I’m trying to do more fiction and non-fiction and also
experiment. I done two fictions before and this will be my third.
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| frescocollective.com |
Victoria: Well yes, one of my projects is trying to get into
this closed city which they (KGB) don’t seem to be happy about letting me into.
They will, one day. They won’t have a choice. Besides hat, I split my time
between hybrid documentary films or which I’m working on about 3 or 4 right
now, and also, another project that I’m really interested in is bringing
classical music to the forefront
in the
perversion of classical music videos . So yeh reinterpreting contemporary
classical musicians, and giving that a view because I think there’s too much
other kind of music and that doesn’t have enough prominence. So these next few
months are being hopefully travelling working quite a lot on strange hybrid
docs in different places which is really exciting. And a commission as well
which is great, that’s the dream.
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| whirlygigcinema.com (Angie) |
Jackie: Yeh,
we’re working on two features actually. They just burst out of us and we bump
into people at other film festivals and you know, you start swapping stories
and you say ‘I’ll do this’ and before you know it, they’re on the phone saying
‘I couldn’t get the story out of my head, let’s do it together’ and all this
stuff. So, we’re working with somebody in Canada who is in the number 1 hit
lesbian film in the world, one true love, and we met her at the London LGBT
festival so we’re collaborating with her and another chap in Spain so, that’s
pretty exciting.
Are you in
development?
I don’t know what that means still, but we’re first draft, 2nd
pass of our script, whatever that means.
We’re simultaneously working on the funding and scenes and actors and so
on. I just want to say, that I’m having
lunch with Lorraine Chase tomorrow, which we’re dead impressed about. The next
star in our next short!
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