Altyazı Cinema Magazine writer Aslı Özgen takes a closer look at a film screened at the open-air cinema at Beykoz Kundura as part of A SUMMER NIGHT FESTIVAL: “The Red Shoes.” Adapted by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, the Technicolor musical “The Red Shoes” offered audiences enchanting scenes on the big screen.
Dating from 1948, immediately after the Second World War, The Red Shoes turns its lens not on the destruction of everyday life but on the power of art, at a time when Europe was struggling to heal the wounds of war. With this choice, it stands out as an almost anachronistic work. 1948 was the year the Marshall Plan came into effect, the year when, along with American capital, cultural propaganda and cultural products began to dominate the European market. It was the year Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette) was shot in Italy. It was a period when the devastation of war and poverty, and the wounds they inflicted on bodies, minds and souls alike, were increasingly portrayed on screen. Now imagine The Red Shoes amid such a bleak state of mind. We find ourselves in a veritable belle époque universe: luxurious, opulent interiors dominated by warm colors, crowded parties, flamboyant stage performances, the dreams of art-loving characters, a fairy-tale romance kindled on the French Riviera… It is hard to find a trace of the devastation of the Second World War in any frame of the film. The film’s directors, Michael Powell and Emerick Pressburger, as if wishing to keep the story’s timelessness alive as they adapted this Hans Christian Andersen tale, set the film itself in a kind of timelessness: no clue is given as to when the story takes place. Is it really the belle époque, the aftermath of the First World War, the years before the Second World War, or another time altogether… We don’t know. The film’s timelessness makes it appealing to today’s audiences as well (when The Red Shoes returned to movie theaters in 2009 after being restored in a big-budget project, it was received with great enthusiasm.)
The film begins in London, opening with a group of idealistic young people flocking into a large theater to watch the latest performance of the Lermontov Ballet Company. While the students can’t stop singing the praises of their conservatory teacher, the composer and conductor Palmer, a couple sitting next to them (who speak with a slight accent, perhaps hinting at Russian origins) interrupts: “Who cares about Palmer? We came here to see Irina Boronskaya; she’s the real star.” In the moments that follow, we do indeed witness Palmer’s godlike image crumbling piece by piece, and we gradually grow curious about Boronskaya. Palmer has in fact stolen the ballet’s music from his talented student Julian Craster. Disillusioned, Craster leaves the theater. From the very first moment, then, the film whispers that the men who have made great names for themselves and been idolized in the world of art and show business are not to be trusted. The young talent Craster, who moves to the center of the story, and Lermontov, the director of the ballet company, will also emerge as devilish figures later in the film.
At the center of the film is Vicky Page, an ambitious and passionate young ballet dancer. Vicky first strives to catch the attention of Lermontov, director of the most prestigious ballet company. But her real chance comes when Boronskaya, the company’s prima ballerina, decides to marry. Believing that art and love cannot go together, Lermontov dismisses Boronskaya from the company and makes Vicky an offer in her place. He hires Craster to compose the music for the ‘Red Shoes’ ballet he is preparing, and sets his sights on Vicky for the lead role. As the ballet is readied for the stage, we watch Lermontov turn into a perfectionist, demanding taskmaster. Shutting themselves away in a hotel in Monte Carlo, they work tirelessly, without pause. Lermontov on one side, Craster on another, the choreographer Grischa on yet another: Vicky is suddenly surrounded by men telling her how to dance, how to behave, what to eat and drink. Insults and humiliations are a dime a dozen. “You’re not a horse … You must take flight like a flower swaying in the wind, like a light bird,” Craster pontificates in one scene. Vicky, for her part, voices how heavy the body is, and how no one realizes that, even though it may not look that way from afar, dance is very heavy and hard.
This crowded, claustrophobic and chaotic universe comes to an end with the premiere of the Red Shoes ballet. Lasting about 17 minutes, the ballet performance is extraordinary and possesses an aesthetic richness rarely matched in the history of cinema. So much so that describing and analyzing this intricate richness in a way that does it justice could fill pages. On the one hand, this section functions almost like an “intermission,” a break, and is positioned in the film as a sequence independent of the plot. After so many chaotic, crowded, noisy, dialogue-heavy passages, here we can breathe a little, surrendering ourselves solely to the image on screen and letting ourselves be carried by its flow. We become so light that we get caught on the hem of Vicky’s billowing tulle dress as her body is swept from one side of the frame to the other. The camera, too, works almost as part of the dance choreography. With wonderfully fluid and dynamic camera movements, at times we follow Vicky, at others we slip between the dancers like a ghost drifting across the stage. It is not only the camera that imitates the dance; the editing, too, lends an extraordinary rhythm to this sequence. Long takes in which the camera glides along are suddenly cut, here and there, with a static close-up, and in this way we touch the shifts of emotion on the characters’ faces, in their eyes, in their bodies. In the dynamism of the sequence, it is impossible not to feel French Impressionism’s passion for rhythm and the musicality of the European avant-garde. Indeed, a kind of “cinema of attractions” aesthetic, which was itself a source of inspiration for the European avant-garde, unfolds before our eyes. Here the boundaries between cinema and ballet blur. Just as ballet is an art centered on visual language, so is (silent) cinema… Body, rhythm and movement are key to conveying meaning and emotion. This sequence builds its language by drawing on what these two arts have in common.
The Red Shoes ballet sequence also works as a kind of meta dimension that adds a further layer of commentary to the film’s story. In this sequence, we move away from the third-person narrative perspective used in the rest of the film and enter Vicky’s mind for the first time. Again in a way reminiscent of French Impressionism, we touch, through Vicky’s subjectivity, her experience, impressions, affects, dreams, fantasies and fears. In a sequence that begins in a realistic (objective) register, the boundaries between reality and fantasy, dream and hallucination gradually blur. Within the dance and the music, Vicky surrenders herself to the fairy tale’s world of imagination. One scene dissolves into another, one body vanishes into another; in place of the audience a rolling sea appears, in place of the dancers a flower, a bird. Amid these hallucinations, in place of the dancers who haunt her and symbolize the devilish curse, Vicky sees now Craster, now Lermontov… These two men, who made her life unbearable while she prepared for the ballet, take shape in Vicky’s mind as devils. In the sequence’s rich symbolic world, such fantasies also work as foreshadowing. In other words, through the sequence’s impressionistic narration we both see, for the first time, how Vicky experiences the world of the film and witness a prophecy. For, just as in the Red Shoes ballet, Vicky too will lose her life on the path down which the red shoes lead her. Lermontov, symbolizing ambition, on one side, and Craster, symbolizing love, on the other, will drain the life out of Vicky like a pair of incubi.
Film writer and scholar Ian Christie notes that the gender politics of The Red Shoes are generally overlooked. Yet one of the film’s important layers of meaning is the portrait it paints of male and female roles. For Christie, The Red Shoes in this respect reflects the gender politics of the post–Second World War era quite faithfully. In this period, an increasingly conservative discourse about women’s place in society becomes widespread: a woman’s place is in the home, with her family. Christie points to statistics showing that in this period, especially in Britain, many young women stopped working after they married. This is the real crux of tension in the film for audiences of the time: will Vicky choose her career or her husband? The film’s final word, too, wavers between these two poles. The early flirtation between Vicky and Julian Craster has a fairy-tale romanticism. After she defies Lermontov and leaves the company, however, we see them one night trying to sleep in separate beds: the bedroom is in icy dark blues and grays. We are far from the passionate romanticism with which Monte Carlo’s warm colors set the screen ablaze. Craster has followed his dreams, stepped into opera, which he believes to be a higher art form than ballet, and composed his first opera. A few scenes later, we hear that Vicky has drifted far from her dreams and no longer dances.
Aware of Vicky’s passion for dance and of her unhappiness, Lermontov offers her the chance to come back and dance the Red Shoes ballet once more. Vicky accepts, since she sees no contradiction between dance and love, but Craster expects a sacrifice from her: that she give up the stage. In these final sequences, as the film increasingly turns into melodrama, Vicky is portrayed as the victim of a struggle between two clashing men. Vicky wants to follow her passion, to dance, to be a successful ballerina. But Lermontov sees her as a “project,” and what really matters to him is his own personal ambition. Craster is no different. For the sake of his own personal ambition and pride, he expects Vicky to give up her dreams; he sees her as his property and doesn’t even ask what she wants.
In the film, the red shoes also symbolize these two poles. In the Red Shoes ballet, for example, they represent ambition, glory and the desire to be admired. In this respect, they become a symbol of the international fame and success Vicky longs for. To dance is to live; to stop dancing is to give up on life. Being seized by an insatiable ambition on this path can bring ruin. In the film’s final scene, however, the symbolic meaning of the red shoes changes. Preparing to go on stage for the first time after a long break, Vicky is torn; Craster has left her because of this choice. Just as she is about to step onto the stage, the shoes this time mindlessly chase after love (here Vicky’s feet move backward involuntarily; one could even infer that love is presented as something that holds her back, that stops her in her tracks). She runs swiftly toward Craster. In the end, for Vicky, trapped between the two roles cut out for her, existence becomes impossible. Vicky’s death at the end of the film with the red shoes on her feet, just as in the ballet, can also be read as a symbolic death. The film’s last word is almost an existentialist statement. With her last breath, Vicky says, “take off the red shoes”…
Altyazı Cinema Magazine writers Engin Ertan and Ali Deniz Şensöz discuss the films “The Red Shoes” and “Black Swan,” screened at the open-air cinema at Beykoz Kundura as part of A SUMMER NIGHT FESTIVAL. In a selection that pairs Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s enchanting Technicolor musical “The Red Shoes,” adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, with Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” music, which strengthens the reality of the story and is one of the greatest elements of the sensory experience of cinema, also plays the leading role in the 2021 program of A Summer Night Festival.
Kundura Sahne‘s interdisciplinary and international concept and practice development program in the field of performance, held for the first time this year, PerformLab, is bringing together artists from Türkiye and the Netherlands at Beykoz Kundura from May 29 to June 6. Ten-Question Conversations will host these artists, and the first is performance artist, theater maker, actor and writer Khadija El Kharraz Alami
Interview: Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel
Art Unlimited – 10-Question Conversations
***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE
Realized by Kundura Sahne in partnership with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam and with the support of Dutch Performing Arts, the PerformLab program will give artists from Türkiye at different stages of their careers, selected through an open call – Barış Arman, Dilan Onay, Doğan Can Serinkaya, Filiz İzem Yaşın, Halil İbrahim Aygün, Nadir Sönmez, Nursev Irmak, Onur Karaoğlu and Selen Gürmen – the opportunity to share and develop their work over the course of a week, together with the artists from the Netherlands. PerformLab will also be accompanied by artist İlyas Odman as its Art Fermenter, bringing a new perspective to artistic processes through the concept of fermentation. This approach, which proposes using fermentation as a tool for looking at artistic processes from a new perspective, will form the backbone of PerformLab.
The artists joining from the Netherlands are dancer and choreographer Benjamin Kahn, Amsterdam Fringe Award–winning dancer and performer Cherish Menzo, actor and performer Khadija El Kharraz Alami, and Green Room Award–winning educator, artist, theater maker and director Samara Hersch. The first of the artists we will host in Ten-Question Conversations is performance artist, theater maker, actor and writer Khadija El Kharraz Alami. El Kharraz Alami is a ‘storyteller’ who draws inspiration from everyday events, relationships and people in her own personal life, and who is interested in human beings in search of identity and in the futility of that search. Her performances emerge at the end of long research processes, and she allows them to keep transforming even afterward. In performances shaped by a feminist perspective, she invites her audience on a journey, one they undertake together and that the process continually transforms, into the realm of womanhood and toward how one might move beyond it.
What do you think is the essence of performance? How would you define performance today?
Setting out to move beyond established, old ideas, recalling them and expressing them; trying to explore the unknown. An ongoing inquiry into how the clash of different times can be fruitful.
What new perspectives do you think interdisciplinary production in the arts offers artists?
It keeps artists’ curiosity alive and allows them to gain broader perspectives on the meaning of craftsmanship.
What specifically (which performance, process, etc.) will you share with the PerformLab participants?
The attempt to mentally and physically “take back space” (reclaim space), and how our first encounter, in the midst of the unknown, can allow us to share, exchange, confront and move beyond this attempt.
***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE
The Feminister traces the years that Margot Wallström, Sweden’s former Minister for Foreign Affairs, spent at the center of world politics as a feminist woman minister. Wallström, who introduced the concept of a ‘feminist foreign policy’ as soon as she took office and whose rhetoric and actions sparked controversy both in Sweden and around the world, is one of the most intriguing figures on the recent international political stage. Viktor Nordenskiöld, who followed Wallström closely with his camera for four years for this film, has a background in journalism covering foreign news. He moved into documentary directing as he became interested in stories too deep to fit into newspaper reports. The Feminister is one of the works in which the director successfully carries his journalistic experience over into cinema. Above all, Nordenskiöld’s background in journalism must have played a major role in building the relationship of trust needed for Wallström, a seasoned politician, to agree to being followed by cameras for years.
The Feminister builds a narrative structure that moves forward by marking time: it first counts back from day 1,461 of the ministry of Wallström, who served from 2014 to 2019, to the very first day, when the government was formed. It then moves forward, marking the major turning points of her term on the calendar. In this way, while reminding viewers chronologically of important recent developments in the world, it interweaves this tableau of well-known historical events with its protagonist’s journey. We follow a series of developments, from the Charlie Hebdo attack to the US presidential elections, the tensions between North Korea and the US, the MeToo movement and the abortion ban in Poland, through Wallström’s experiences as minister. But the documentary devotes more space to a few historical events that profoundly affected Wallström’s career. One of them is Sweden becoming the first European country to recognize the State of Palestine during Wallström’s time as minister, the harsh reaction this decision drew from the Israeli government, and the accusations of antisemitism leveled at Wallström. Another is the major crisis triggered by the minister’s statements about the denial of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and by her reaction to the punishment of blogger Raif Badawi. In the wake of this crisis, Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador from Sweden, the speech Wallström was to give as an invited guest at the opening of the Arab League Summit in Cairo was canceled at Saudi Arabia’s request, and most Arab countries then took a stand against Wallström, accusing her of being anti-Islam. This diplomatic crisis also made the minister the target of harsh criticism within Sweden; some spoke of the amateurishness of her stance, while others harped on the damage the crisis had done to the Swedish economy (although it is not stated openly in the documentary, it is known that the economic damage in question really concerned the arms trade from Sweden to Saudi Arabia under the military cooperation between the two countries).
As for Wallström’s private life, we see almost nothing of it until a very late stage of the documentary. It is only as the film nears its end that we witness a personal grief of hers, step inside her home and meet her husband. In this sense, the film has no intention of being a biography of Wallström, or even of constructing her as a well-rounded character with all the different aspects of her life. Rather, it is interested in drawing her portrait as a minister. And in drawing this portrait, it gives very little room to direct interviews with her. The documentary camera follows her as she prepares speeches, works with her aides, gets dressed and does her makeup. We hear very little of what she says in various diplomatic talks, meetings and speeches. Instead, we mostly witness the tense preparations before those speeches and the assessments behind closed doors afterward. In this sense, the film is interested in the character portrait that emerges in the moments before and after her public appearances. At the same time, in a few small moments when Wallström opens up her inner world, we also witness her vulnerabilities. Besides seeing the stress she endures, her sleeplessness and the effects of the thyroid disease that disrupts her daily life, we hear her memory of the violence she suffered at the hands of a boyfriend when she was young, and we watch her cry after reading a newspaper article containing threats against her.
The Feminister is a film that values and sympathizes with Margot Wallström’s rhetoric of a “feminist foreign policy”; in this sense, it keeps its distance from any approach that sees, or seeks to expose, the contradictions in the minister’s political stance. Even so, it does allow small tensions to surface, for example in her encounters with FEMEN leader Inna Shevchenko and Yemeni journalist Afrah Nasser. It could be said that the moments in which Wallström, who injected the concept of feminism into the world of men and masculinity and achieved a series of successes throughout her career, appears most vulnerable in the film arise in her encounters with these two women.
Ayça ÇİFTÇİ
*This article was written for the Kundura Blog by ALTYAZI MAGAZINE writer Ayça Çiftçi.
Kundura Sahne‘s interdisciplinary and international concept and practice development program in the field of performance, held for the first time this year, PerformLab, brought together artists from Türkiye and the Netherlands at Beykoz Kundura from May 29 to June 6. Performance artist and choreographer Benjamin Kahn was a guest of Ten-Question Conversations!
Interview: Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel
Art Unlimited – 10-Question Conversations
Kundura Sahne‘s interdisciplinary and international concept and practice development program in the field of performance, held for the first time this year, PerformLab, brought together artists from Türkiye and the Netherlands at Beykoz Kundura from May 29 to June 6, 2021. Realized by Kundura Sahne in partnership with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam and with the support of Dutch Performing Arts, the PerformLab program gave artists from Türkiye at different stages of their careers, selected through an open call – Barış Arman, Dilan Onay, Doğan Can Serinkaya, Filiz İzem Yaşın, Halil İbrahim Aygün, Nadir Sönmez, Nursev Irmak and Selen Gürmen – the opportunity to share and develop their work over the course of a week, together with the artists from the Netherlands. PerformLab was also accompanied by artist İlyas Odman as its Art Fermenter, who brought a new perspective to artistic processes through the concept of fermentation. This approach, which proposes using fermentation as a tool for looking at artistic processes from a new perspective, formed the backbone of PerformLab. The artists from the Netherlands were dancer and choreographer Benjamin Kahn, Amsterdam Fringe Award–winning dancer and performance artist Cherish Menzo, actor and performance artist Khadija El Kharraz Alami, and Green Room Award–winning educator, artist, theater maker and director Samara Hersch.
Kahn, who believes that dance and choreography are powerful political tools, is interested in deconstructing the ways we look at individual and collective bodies; in his performances he places all kinds of power relations at the center in order to question them, whether they concern gender, racial discrimination or the dynamics of creating together, and seeks to make visible the invisible violence that lies beneath the surface. As part of PerformLab, Kahn also shared with the participants a showing of an original work he conceived, in which PerformLab participant Cherish Menzo appears as the performer; a piece that problematizes not only the notions of gender and race but also the power relations between those who create and those who perform, and that has been met with admiration at many festivals: Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Disidentified…
What do you think is the essence of performance? How would you define performance today?
I think there are many ways to answer this question, but if I were to try to define for myself what the essence of performance is, the first thing that comes to mind is being together, the desire to play the game of seeing and being seen, and the fact that it is first and foremost a personal yet decidedly collective experience. I believe performance allows for a profound experience that is at once intimate, collective, intellectual, emotional and physical. It can make it possible to question, decontextualize or reformulate our relationship with the other, with reality or with society. Performance is the place of the sublime and, at the same time, of politics. In that case, I’m not sure how I would describe the contemporary….
For me, there is always a contemporaneity between art and the time and culture in which it is produced, and for me, one cannot exist without the other. Artistic production is always the fruit of this relationship. The question that arises for me is rather how we decide what place performance will occupy in this society.
What new perspectives do you think interdisciplinary production in the arts offers artists?
I think moving back and forth between your own discipline and other disciplines is very enriching; much like teaching, for example, it lets you see these outlines, but also the power of language and of offering a perspective. I find it very interesting to shift the position of our own practice. I don’t think every project necessarily has to be multidisciplinary, because we shouldn’t underestimate the negotiation this involves. But today it is hard to think without this multidimensionality, and many artists today already work at these borders.
What specifically (which performance, process, etc.) will you share with the PerformLab participants?
At the moment, I am mainly exploring the materiality of the scream and how it can be activated and used as a choreographic tool on stage and/or in public space. I would like to share perspectives on this practice with the invited artists; we look at what kind of physicality is produced through action, voice and the scream. As an emergency channel, what is the scream already part of in our “everyday” lives, and how is it performed – represented and even reproduced? While this singular act resides both in a primal, instinctive impulse and in a commercial instrumentalization of vulnerability, how can it relate to, and express itself through, experiences or meanings that are sometimes opposed? During PerformLab, I will try to propose somatic and movement practices that produce both a voice and their effects on the act of screaming. In the continuity of different lines of research, and drawing on the codes, interpretations and existing uses of the scream, I want to deepen a radicalized practice, and I think we will share these different urgencies by listing them. In practice, I want to deepen models of how an expanded choreographic practice can transform these questions into spatial and bodily matter.
***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE
Kundura Sahne‘s interdisciplinary and international concept and practice development program in the field of performance, held for the first time this year, PerformLab, is bringing together artists from Türkiye and the Netherlands at Beykoz Kundura from May 29 to June 6. The second of the artists we are hosting in Ten-Question Conversations is educator, theater maker, director and performance artist Samara Hersch
Interview: Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel
Art Unlimited – 10-Question Conversations
***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE
Kundura Sahne‘s interdisciplinary and international concept and practice development program in the field of performance, held for the first time this year, PerformLab, is bringing together artists from Türkiye and the Netherlands at Beykoz Kundura from May 29 to June 6. Realized by Kundura Sahne in partnership with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam and with the support of Dutch Performing Arts, the PerformLab program will give artists from Türkiye at different stages of their careers, selected through an open call – Barış Arman, Dilan Onay, Doğan Can Serinkaya, Filiz İzem Yaşın, Halil İbrahim Aygün, Nadir Sönmez, Nursev Irmak, Onur Karaoğlu and Selen Gürmen – the opportunity to share and develop their work over the course of a week, together with the artists from the Netherlands. PerformLab will also be accompanied by artist İlyas Odman as its Art Fermenter, bringing a new perspective to artistic processes through the concept of fermentation. This approach, which proposes using fermentation as a tool for looking at artistic processes from a new perspective, will form the backbone of PerformLab.
The artists joining from the Netherlands are dancer and choreographer Benjamin Kahn, Amsterdam Fringe Award–winning dancer and performance artist Cherish Menzo, actor and performance artist Khadija El Kharraz Alami, and Green Room Award–winning educator, artist, theater maker and director Samara Hersch. Next in Ten-Question Conversations, we are hosting educator, theater maker, director and performance artist Samara Hersch. Placing the intersections of contemporary performance and participatory art practices at the heart of her creative process, Samara Hersch is an artist interested in non-hierarchical forms of sharing discourse and knowledge across generations. In her performances, into which she boldly incorporates the new forms that current conditions offer, and at times impose, Hersch invites her audiences, as participants in the process, to reflect on critical issues affecting future generations, to engage in a reciprocal intergenerational and intercontinental conversation, and to realize that they are part of a larger community, while at the same time aiming to craft an intimate experience for them.
What do you think is the essence of performance? How would you define performance today?
For me, contemporary performance is an encounter: with the other, with a stranger, with oneself… I am curious about what might happen in this space between us, and which possibilities that everyday life deprives us of can be brought to light, rehearsed and taken apart.
What new perspectives do you think interdisciplinary production in the arts offers artists?
At its best, it creates a sense of community and offers new ways to care for others, to resist, to show up and to listen.
What specifically (performance, process, etc.) will you share with the PerformLab participants?
I will be sharing my curiosity about distance and intimacy. Since I will be participating remotely, I hope to explore the potential of distance as a vehicle for desire, longing and closeness.
After taking part in PerformLab, what do you imagine you will take with you from your experience in Istanbul?
I hope my artistic community will expand as a result of new encounters; I see this as just the beginning of a conversation that will continue….
***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE
How did you first come across the footage and photographs from Ella Maillart’s journey to India? How did you decide to make a film out of the material?
Twenty years ago I was doing film restoration projects in Switzerland. I was not too familiar with Ella Maillart, but when a colleague told me about her films, deposited after her death in the Cinémathèque Suisse, I went and looked at them. There were several silent 16mm reversal prints, some in black and white, some in colour, of her journey to Afghanistan and India and a later journey to Nepal. Everything unpreserved. So I launched a restauration project, and in 2005-2006 a part of the material was preserved by duplicate negative and a new projection print. Ella Maillart had originally used the moving images like slides, to hold conferences. But without her the films were dead, silent; there were hardly any intertitles, and in the case of the colour material, the print situation was very chaotic.
A film restoration is finished only when the film reappears on the screen in front of a public. I made some screenings of the new 16mm print of the bw footage of Nomades Afghans, commenting directly during projection. Memoriav, the Association who had fineced the restoration, asked me to edit a dvd with the material. There was never question to make a film; I wanted to combine the material maybe in a kind of website, an experimental form of animated exhibition, and got totally lost in the ocean of ideas and materials and made several unsuccsessful starts. Finally I asked my friend Antonio Bigini to help me. We decided to work fast and cheap and to make two edited sequences for the dvd, one for Afghanistan, one for India that would go on a dvd. Only when the work was done we realized we had made a film. It premiered at the Nyon festival Visions du Reel. six years ago, and has had many screenings all over the world ever since.
Would you describe Double Journey as an essay film? What were your sources of inspiration in terms of shaping the story, editing, and the use of voice-over?
You know, we had no script, no budget, no plan, no ambition. We simply worked directly, on the basis of pages and pages of text, of about one thousand photographs and about hundred minutes of moving images. We combined words, still images and moving images, and something started to happen, they took life. It was a complicated process of course, and took much time and work. However, when the finished film was there, it there was all of a sudden, and now it seems to Antonio Bigini and me quite improbable that we are really its authors. Though all the decisions about shape and story and editing and sound and voice are ours.
The use of letters, and especially using the beginning of the letters as a kind of rhythmic structure is directly inspired by Sans soleil by Chris Marker. The film came out in 1983 just after I had returned from Japan and appeared to me like a direct visual record of my very intense year in Japan, it has left a deep impression. The opening and closing of the notebook to begin and to end the film comes directly from Alina Marazzi’s Un ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour with You, 2002), another film that has left a deep mark. Both films have enthralling narrations by a single voice. – If you feel like putting Ella Maillart – Double Journey into the same category like the Sans Soleil, that’s quite an honour….
Apart from the footage you used, how much did you research about Maillart’s life, her journey and her relationship with author and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach? Was it decided from the beginning that the film would limit its perspective to Maillart’s footage and letters?
To put it simple: This was a small-scale restoration project, about how to bring Ella’s silent film footage back to life on a screen. We consciously excluded to concentrate on the relationship between the two.
I started with a rather complete research on Maillart’s life and work, already during the restoration project of 2005-2006 which included other films by Ella Maillart. I was very much helped in my research by Anneliese Hollmann, to whom Ella Maillart had entrusted her heritage of images and writings and who has made an excellent work of editing letters and writings. Of course I have read also everything Annemarie Schwarzenbach had written during the journey, and looked through all her photographs. But it was always clear that the aim of the project was to find a form for publishing at least a part of the moving images Ella shot during the Journey. The best context for these silent and unidentified material were her writings and her photographs. Also, we wanted to follow her through to the first screening of her film Nomads of the Frontier in Bombay and to the end of her journey in the Ashram of Tiruvannamalay. The most important research work was done on her letters and photographs in order to establish the chronology of events and to identify when and where the film footage was shot.
Since the film is loose, light, it is essential that the chronology be reliable – and that there is a reliable perspective and voice, Ella’s.
Maillart’s letters to her mother reflect a deep disillusionment with European civilization, and the destruction brought by World War II, which breaks out during her journey. At one point she writes something like “We should try to understand why Europe has gone mad, instead of blaming one dictator or another”. What would you say about the personal and political aspects of her letters?
The war that brought her the disillusionment with Europe was World War I, 1914-1918, which she experienced as a teenager (Maillart was born in 1903). She was deeply disgusted by the war and its violence, by the ideologies, by the states forcing people to be soldiers and to kill each other in the name of patriotism. As a consequence, as very young women, she and her best friend Miette de Saussure wanted in 1926 to leave Europe for good and live on a ship in the Pacific (both were expert sailors).
The letters to her mother during the journey to Afghanistan and India show how clear-sighted she was even from such a far distance, about what is going on in European politics. As for the personal aspects, she tells her mother about her choices once she has taken them, but rarely about her troubles (these find expression in the personal notebooks), and always insits that her family should not worry about her, that she is fine.
By the way her (Danish) mother Dagmar Maillart-Kliim was also a very emancipated and strong woman, and an optimist.
As she travels through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and India, Maillart seems to have an ethnographic perspective and a genuine interest in the people she meets. But there is also a hint of orientalism in her comments about the people she encounters. She tends to describe local people and nomad tribes as essentially different. Would you agree?
I agree, however would not make this a reproach. Ella Maillart is a rare person who has the goal to strive for inner and outer freedom and she tries to find and live a free, indipendent and real life. You need alternative inspirations, dreams, imaginations and visions for such an endeavor and for Ella, the nomads are a source of inspiration. She feels closer to them than to the diplomats in the embassies. Do not underestimate the physical reality. Ella was an outdoor person of great strength and courage, who shared and deeply loved the hard life of the nomads and sailors in constant contact with nature. In 1934 she travelled in seven month on horseback and foot 6000km from Peking to Srinagar in Kashmir. It seems to me that she is doing this to esperience reality. Orientalisme is an effect of discourse, a mirror maze.
How did you contact Irène Jacob for the voice-over in the film? How was the process of working with her?
To start with the second question: Our part in the collaboration with Irène Jacob was limited to providing the text, organizing the recording studio and the technician, and then sit quietly in the background and watch a great actress and artist at work. It was a miraculous experience. Maybe there where a few passages where we suggested about how we understood the scene and how the narration might be done, but all in all, the music and expressivity of the voice-over which carries us through the film, is the work of Irène Jacob. Inestimable.
We had not really planned to make a film and had no budget, initially we thought we simply ask some friend to do the voice-over, a non-professional. Then, while editing, we realized that the project was developing the substance of a real film and that the voice-over was all-important. But when going through the professional voices you can buy, they were totally wrong, either commercially soft or documentary cold. We tried and failed several options, I remember for example contacting for weeks the agent of Mazarine Pingeot, philosopher, writer and journalist, who had in her voice, we felt, the right energy and strength of character, but never got a real answer.
The idea then was someone from Geneva, like Ella Maillart, and we started to look for an actress. We run out of time. A friend of a friend of Antonio who incidentally had been Jacobs dog sitter in the past, gave us her cell phone number and I took my courage and called her. She asked for the text, and the same day in the evening, after reading it, said yes, fine, I’ll do it. We cannot thank her enough.
You are also one of the curators of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna. What is, in your experience, the relationship between film programming and filmmaking? Are they two separate endeavours or do they feed off of each other?
In my case, the two activites are inseparable. I am, by profession and vocation, a curator and made only this one film, together with a fellow author. My main passion has always been to make film programmes putting together short or fragmentary early silent films and to make them shine in a beautiful, convincing séance / show. The editing of the moving images of Ella Maillart was exactly the same process and came very naturally to me: to select the right scenes and themes, to find the right place and order and finally to cut as much as possible, so that what remains gets more space and power. Antonio and I have a project for another film, about Albert Samama Chikli, the Tunisian Film pioneer. I first learned about this extraordinary film maker and photographer when co-curating the festival strand about Views from the Ottoman Empire in 2014.
Mariann Lewinsky’s film ‘Ella Maillart’s Double Journey’ can be screened online with Turkish subtitles via free subscription between 28thMay to 13th June,2021 at Kundurama!
Altyazı Cinema Magazine writer Berke Göl conducted this interview with the director Lewinsky in regards to the screening of the film in Turkey curated by Kundura Cinema at Kundurama
In the summer of 1939, the Swiss traveler and photographer Ella Maillart sets out on a journey from Europe toward Asia with her close friend Annemarie Schwarzenbach. Over the course of this journey, which stretches from Türkiye to Iran and from there to Afghanistan and India, Maillart will observe local peoples with her still camera and her 16 mm film camera, while also coming to terms with herself, her culture and a Europe on the brink of war. Co-directed by Mariann Lewinsky and Antonio Bigini, Ella Maillart: Double Journey (Ella Maillart: Çifte Serüven) is a poetic documentary edited from the photographs and footage the artist shot during this journey, an essay film that follows in the footsteps of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil. Director Mariann Lewinsky, who is also one of the curators of the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, answered our questions about the film.
How did you first gain access to the film footage and photographs from Ella Maillart’s journey to India? How did you decide to make a film out of this material?
Twenty years ago I was working on various film restoration projects in Switzerland. I didn’t know much about Ella Maillart, but when a colleague mentioned her films, which had been kept at the Cinémathèque Suisse after her death, I decided to look into them. That is how I came across Maillart’s silent 16 mm films, some black-and-white and some in color, from her journeys to Afghanistan and India and, in later years, to Nepal. None of these films had been stored with the necessary preservation measures. So I launched a restoration project, and in 2005–2006 part of this material was preserved by producing negative copies and a projection print. In her day, Ella Maillart used these films like slides, giving lectures accompanied by the images. But without her, the films were dead and silent; almost none of them had intertitles. And the prints of the color material were in complete disarray.
A film restoration project is only complete when the film in question can appear on a screen again, in front of an audience. So I organized screenings of the restored 16 mm print of Maillart’s black-and-white film about Afghan nomads [Nomades Afghans, 1939]. At these screenings I provided live commentary in sync with the images. The Memoriav Association, which had covered the costs of the restoration, asked me to edit the material for release on DVD. In truth, I never had the idea of making a film. At first I got lost in an ocean of ideas and of the material itself, such as gathering it all on a website or creating an experimental moving exhibition format, and I made several unsuccessful attempts. In the end I asked my friend Antonio Bigini for help. Working quickly and cheaply together, we decided to create two edits for the DVD, one dealing with the Afghanistan journey and the other with the India journey. It was only at the end of this process that we realized we had actually made a film. The film premiered six years ago in Nyon at the Visions du Réel festival and has since traveled the world through many screenings.
Double Journey — would you define it as an essay film? What were the sources of inspiration that shaped the story, the editing and the use of voice-over?
We actually had no script, no budget, no plan and no clear goal. We worked on pages and pages of text, around a thousand photographs and several hours of moving images with a direct and simple approach. We began combining words with still and moving images, and in the process the material took on a life of its own. Of course, it was a complicated process, and we put a great deal of time and effort into it. But in the end, when the project was finished, a film had emerged. And looking at it now, Antonio Bigini and I find it incredible that we are the creators of this film, even though all the decisions about form, story, editing, sound design and voice-over were ours…
The use of the letters in the film, especially their openings, to create a rhythmic structure was inspired by Chris Marker’s documentary Sans Soleil (Sunless). That documentary came out in 1983, just as I had returned from Japan; it felt to me like a visual record of the intense year I had spent there, and it left a deep mark on me. For the scene of the notebook opening and closing, which marks the beginning and end of the film, we drew direct inspiration from Alina Marazzi’s documentary Un ora sola ti vorrei (2002), another film that had a profound effect on me. Both of these films feature a captivating narration carried by a single voice-over. If Ella Maillart: Double Journey were to be seen in the same category as Sans Soleil, it would be a great honor for us.
Beyond the footage you used, to what extent did you research Maillart’s life, her journey and her relationship with the writer and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach? Did you decide from the very beginning that the film’s perspective would be limited to Maillart’s footage and letters?
To put it simply, this was a small-scale restoration project that we undertook in order to bring Ella Maillart’s silent film footage back to the screen. In this context, we made deliberate choices about what to leave out in order to focus the film on the relationship between the two women.
Because of the restoration project I carried out in 2005–2006, which also included other footage by Ella Maillart, I began with extensive research into Maillart’s life and work. In this research, the help of Anneliese Hollmann, to whom Ella Maillart had entrusted all her recordings and writings and who did a wonderful job editing her letters and texts, was invaluable. Of course, I also read everything Annemarie Schwarzenbach wrote during this journey and examined all the photographs she took. But from the very beginning of the project it was quite clear that our main goal was to find a form that would allow us to release the moving images Ella recorded during this journey. And the most fitting context in which to place this silent, unidentified material turned out to be her writings and photographs. We also wanted to follow Ella from Mumbai, where she held the first screening of her film Nomads of the Frontier (1940), all the way to the ashram in Tiruvannamalai that she reached at the end of her journey. The most important research we did was studying her writings and photographs in order to establish the chronology of events and where each shot had been filmed.
Since the film has a loose and light structure, it was very important for the chronology to be reliable and, likewise, for it to have a reliable narrative, that is, Ella’s perspective and voice.
The letters Maillart wrote to her mother reflect a deep disillusionment with European civilization, intensified by the devastation of the Second World War, which broke out during her journey. In one of these letters she remarks that “rather than blaming one dictator or another, we need to try to understand why Europe has lost its mind.” What can you tell us about the personal and political dimensions of her letters?
For Maillart, who was born in 1903, the war that actually caused this disillusionment with Europe was the First World War (1914–1918), which coincided with her early adolescence. The war and the violence it unleashed, the ideologies, and the way states forced people, in the name of patriotism, to become soldiers and kill one another deeply disturbed Maillart. As a result, in 1926 Ella and her closest friend Miette de Saussure, then two very young women, wanted to leave Europe for good and live on a boat in the Pacific (both were experienced sailors).
The letters Maillart wrote to her mother during her travels in Afghanistan and India show how clear and sharp a view she had of what was happening in the political world of Europe, even from such a great distance. On a personal level, we see that Maillart told her mother about her life decisions – after she had made them – but rarely shared the problems she faced. She expressed those problems mostly in her diaries. Maillart always reassured her family that they need not worry about her and told them she was fine.
I should also mention, by the way, that Maillart’s Danish-born mother, Dagmar Maillart-Kliim, was likewise a free-spirited woman with a strong and optimistic character.
Maillart seems to have had an ethnographic perspective; she shows a sincere interest in the people she met in Türkiye, Iran, Afghanistan and India. Yet in her comments about these people we can also see traces of an Orientalist approach. She tends to define local people and nomadic tribes in terms of essential differences. Do you agree with this observation?
Yes, I agree, but I wouldn’t turn it into an accusation. Ella Maillart was a rare character who strove to attain freedom in both her inner and outer worlds, to find and live an independent, authentic life. In such a struggle you need alternative sources of inspiration, dreams, imagination and vision, and for Ella the nomads were a source of inspiration. She felt closer to them than to the diplomats in the embassies. And the physical reality should not be underestimated either. Ella was a person of great strength and courage who spent her life outdoors; in this sense she loved the hard life of nomads and sailors, who live in constant contact with nature, and she shared that way of life with them. In 1934 she covered the six thousand kilometers from Beijing to Srinagar in Kashmir on horseback and on foot in seven months. I believe she did all this in order to experience a reality. Orientalism, on the other hand, is a product of discourse, a labyrinth of mirrors.
How did you get in touch with Irène Jacob for the film’s voice-over narration? What was your experience of working with her like?
To start with the second question: in our collaboration with Irène Jacob, our part was to provide the text, organize the recording studio and the technician, and then sit back and watch a wonderful actress and artist at work. It was a miraculous experience. In a few sections we may have made suggestions about how we understood the scene and how the narration should sound. But on the whole, the music and moving expressiveness of the voice-over that carries us through the film bear Irène Jacob’s signature. That is priceless.
Since we hadn’t actually set out to make a film and had no budget, we initially planned to ask a non-professional acquaintance or a friend to do the voice-over. But during editing, when we felt that the project was turning into a real film, we concluded that the voice-over was also very important. When we decided to work with a professional for the voice-over, all the names that came up were wrong for the job. They had either a commercial smoothness or a documentary coldness. We ruled out several options through trial and error. For example, we spent weeks trying to reach the agent of the philosopher, writer and journalist Mazarine Pingeot, whose voice we felt had the right energy and strength for this film, but we never got a clear answer.
After that, we decided to find an actress who, like Ella Maillart, was from Geneva. But at the same time we were running out of time. A friend of a friend of Antonio’s had once looked after Jacob’s dogs, and somehow we got Jacob’s cell phone number from them. Then I plucked up my courage and called her. She said she wanted to see the text, and that same day, in the late afternoon, after reading it, she accepted the job. We can never thank her enough…
You are also one of the curators of the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival held in Bologna. In your experience, what is the relationship between film programming and filmmaking? Are they two separate pursuits, or do they nourish each other?
In my case, these two activities are inseparable. By profession and expertise I am a curator, and I have made only one film, together with a friend. My real passion is creating programs that bring together early silent short films, or fragments of such films, and letting them shine in a beautiful, compelling screening. Editing Ella Maillart’s moving images was exactly that kind of process, which is why it felt so natural to me: choosing the right scenes and themes, finding the right places and order, and finally putting everything through a rigorous selection process to give what remains more room and more power. Antonio and I also have another film project about the Tunisian pioneer filmmaker Albert Samama Chikli. I discovered this extraordinary photographer and filmmaker in 2014, thanks to being one of the curators of a festival section devoted to images from the Ottoman Empire.
Director Lewinsky’s film ‘Ella Maillart: Double Journey’ can be watched on Kundurama from May 28 to June 13, 2021, free of charge and with Turkish subtitles!
On the occasion of the film’s screening in Türkiye, the director spoke exclusively to Kundura Sinema and answered the questions of Altyazı Cinema Magazine writer Berke Göl.
Both formats are more vertical formats than the usual 1.85 or cinemascope. In Afternoon Clouds I have used a classic European format which is 1.66. Although it is rectangular, it still retains the vertical feeling. My usual preference is 1.66 for fiction and 1.33 for non fiction.
In my opinion, a 1.66 format is less intrusive and draws lesser attention to the cinematic form. It is able to draw one into the narrative without the artifice of cinema being brought to the forefront. 1.33 on the other hand works as a much more urgent format that draws attention to itself. As the non-fiction work is much more formalistic, I think it creates a distance between the audience and the image which leads to a space for a discussion to emerge between the two.
None of this is set in stone of course! I guess as a filmmaker one is attracted to certain formats, much like a painter choosing a canvas, perhaps. And these ideas change as the norms of screening formats change too. For example, 1.33 used to be the standard TV format for decades. Maybe it had a different impact then.
I have often felt that if I watch a film without sound, its temporality cannot be experienced. Yes, we do see people moving forward within the image but the sense of time is arbitrary. For a filmmaker to make an audience experience time, sound is essential. Sound can be used like a musical orchestra that allows for the pulse of the film to be felt. I think of it in terms of painting too. For example, in western painting, painters worked with darkness and highlights. The highlights determined where the viewer’s eyes would move over the painting, how long they would linger there. This idea fascinated me. I think sound in cinema is also that play between highlight and shadow.
But sound has a quality that is physically experienced. An image is an illusion, unfolding in the distance. The sound waves emit and hit you, enter your body. That is a feeling, something that makes you interact directly with the image. Which is why sound is a much more sensorial experience and I like the idea of using it evocatively rather than illustratively.
This film was an unplanned mistake! I had originally planned to make a film only about the bee collector Mr. Patil. I recorded many of his interviews and activity in my research period. But in the afternoons it was too hot to roam around the forests and we would spend time with the ladies in his family. Inevitably, while cooking, they had the best discussions. I recorded many of these, with their permission – it was hours and hours of recordings. A camera would not have managed to capture those secretive voices. A sound device is much less intrusive. Soon I began to realize the film was not where I had set out for it to be but somewhere totally different. I guess I let sound lead me to the film, eventually!
There is no real cultural meaning per say, but more a personal one. Sometimes while making a film I like to draw or doodle about it. At one point in one of my earlier films ‘Last Mango Before the Monsoon’ I decided to simply put the drawings into the film with no explanation. For me they are in lieu of a voice over. It could perhaps express an inner thought, an inner vulnerability that cannot be spoken in words.
Yes were all students together. Each of them were an integral part of the film and more importantly as we did all our projects together, we grew together and recognized, slowly, the language we wanted to evolve. I guess being in film school certainly has that privilege.
Yes that is true. Sometimes I feel I should not show my films together as they seem to spill into one another! I have not watched the film yet but will certainly do so!
Although there are several women directing films in India, it is still a long way to go. In the mainstream film industry, the numbers are fewer but slowly rising. In the independent film and documentary circles, the presence of female filmmakers is significant. However, it is in other departments where we still need to see a bigger representation of women, in cinematography and the sound department. These are real challenges. Another important aspect is caste and class representation amongst the women who have access to filmmaking in india. It is still extremely low and this is a matter of great concern.
I am working on two feature length projects at the moment, one fiction and one hybrid-non-fiction. Funding my films is close to impossible in India. I am working with a French co producer to hopefully find funds from Western countries. The road is very long and requires a lot of patience, which is something I don’t really mind.
About PAYAL KAPADIA
Payal Kapadia is a Mumbai based filmmaker and artist. She studied Film Direction at the Film & Television Institute of India. Her work deals with that which is not easily visible, hidden somewhere in the folds of memory and dreams. It is between minor, ephemeral feminine gestures where she tries to find the truth that makes up her practice. Her much acclaimed short film Afternoon Clouds was India’s sole official selection in Cannes film Festival, 2017, in Cinefondation section. Her experimental short And what was the Summer Saying had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival (2018). It also received the Special Jury Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam IDFA (2018) and the Pramod Pati Best Experimental Film Prize at the Mumbai International Film festival (2020). Kapadia’s experimental short The Last Mango Before Monsoon was premiered at Oberhausen International Film Festival (2015), where she was awarded FIPRESCI award and Special Jury Prize. Presently Payal is working on making her first feature film All We Imagine as Light which she developed at the Cinefondation Cannes Residency in Paris (2019-20). She has received the Hubert Bals Script and Development Fund as well as the CICLIC Development fund for this project.
Payal Kapadia’s movies ‘Afternoon Clouds’ and ‘And What Is The Summer Saying’curated by Kinoscope under the title “The Other Side of the Dream” can be screened online with Turkish subtitles via free subscription until 19th, July 2021 at Kundurama!
Altyazı Cinema Magazine writer Fırat Yücel conducted an interview with the director Kapadia in regards to the screening of the film in Turkey by Kundura Cinema at Kundurama
Two of your films are being screened in Kundura Sinema’s “The Other Side of the Dream” program. Afternoon Clouds (Öğleden Sonra Bulutlar, 2017) was shot on 35mm film. It has striking widescreen cinematography that relies on color and mise-en-scène. And What Is the Summer Saying… (Ve Yaz Ne Söyler ki, 2018), on the other hand, is mostly black and white and, unlike Afternoon Clouds, uses a 4:3 (1.33:1) aspect ratio. Could you tell us how you made these choices? How do you think these formats affect the viewing experience?
Both films use formats that are more vertical than 1.85:1 or CinemaScope. In Afternoon Clouds I used the classic European format, that is, the 1.66:1 ratio. Although it is still rectangular, this format preserves the feeling of a vertical image. My general preference is 1.66:1 for fiction and 1.33:1 for non-fiction.
In my view, 1.66:1 is a format that intrudes less on the image and draws less attention to the cinematic form. It can draw the viewer into the narrative without having to bring the artifice of cinema to the forefront. 1.33:1, on the other hand, is a more urgent format that draws attention to itself. Non-fiction work is much more formalistic; this format places a distance between the viewer and itself and creates the space needed for a dialogue to emerge between the two.
Of course, none of these are hard and fast rules. I suppose a filmmaker can be drawn to certain formats, much like a painter choosing a canvas, perhaps… And these ideas can change over time, along with the norms of screening formats. For example, 1.33:1 was the standard television format for many years. Perhaps it had a different effect back then.
Sound also plays a prominent role in your films. In Afternoon Clouds, the ‘outside world’ comes to life almost entirely through sounds seeping in through the windows. And What Is the Summer Saying… is shaped by recordings of the stories, memories and dreams of people living in Kondwal Village in Bhimashankar. In one interview you said that “in cinema, time is measured through sound.” In relation to this idea, how should we approach the use of sound in Afternoon Clouds and And What Is the Summer Saying…?
Whenever I watch a film without sound, I feel that I cannot experience its temporality. Yes, we see people moving within the film, but the sense of time remains arbitrary. I think that if a filmmaker wants the audience to experience time, sound is a fundamental necessity. We can see this in painting as well. In the Western painting tradition, for example, painters worked with darkness and light. The bright areas that create the illusion of “light” in a painting determined where viewers would turn their eyes and how long they would linger there. This idea fascinated me. I think sound in cinema creates the very same play between light and darkness that we find in painting.
But sound also has a quality that creates a physical experience. An image is an illusion; it unfolds at a point away from you. Sound waves, however, spread out and hit you, entering your body. This is a sensation, and it brings you into direct interaction with the image. That is why I see sound as a much more sensory experience, and I like to use it evocatively rather than illustratively.
And What Is the Summer Saying… does not show images of the people speaking. One cannot help but wonder about the sound recording process. Did you also use a camera while making the sound recordings?
This film actually came about through an unplanned mistake! At first I was only planning to make a film about the beekeeper Mr. Patil. During my research I had recorded many interviews with him, as well as his activities. But on days when it was too hot to wander around the forests, I would stay at home and spend time with the women in his family. Naturally, wonderful conversations came up while they were cooking. With their permission, I recorded these conversations, which resulted in many long recordings stretching over hours. A camera could never have captured those intimate, confiding voices. A sound recorder is much less intrusive. Soon I realized that the film was taking shape not where I had planned, but somewhere completely different. I guess I could say that, in the end, it was sound that led me to the film!
Afternoon Clouds features paintings by Arpita Sing, while And What Is the Summer Saying… features illustrations superimposed on the images. Both modes of expression contribute greatly to the films’ dreamlike quality and to their themes of love and loss. Could you tell us about the cultural connotations of these figures and paintings?
Their meaning is really more personal than cultural. Sometimes, while working on a film, I make drawings and illustrations about it. In one of my earlier films, Last Mango Before the Monsoon (Musondan Önceki Son Mango, 2014), I decided to put one of these drawings into the film without any explanation. For me, this is the equivalent of a voice-over. It perhaps reveals a thought, an inner vulnerability, that cannot be expressed in words.
You worked with the same producer (Mayank Khurana), the same sound designer (Shreyank Nanjappa) and the same editor (Ghanshyam Shimpi) on both films. Are they also students at the Film and Television Institute of India? Could you tell us about your crew and your practice of working together?
Yes, we are all students at the same institute. Each of these people is an integral part of the film. More importantly, through the projects we made together, we grew together and slowly began to recognize the language we wanted to create. I think being at film school certainly has that privilege.
Curating a film selection is a lot like editing, especially when there are three films involved… Have you seen Notes from a Journey (Bir Yolculuktan Notlar, 2019), the third film Pawel Wieszczecinski selected for “The Other Side of the Dream”?
Yes, I agree. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t show my films together, because they spill into one another! I haven’t seen the third film yet, but I certainly will.
Alongside “The Other Side of the Dream” selection, Kundura Sinema is also screening Mark Cousins’ Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema. How do you assess the current situation in the Indian film industry in terms of gender and equality? Can we expect a feature film from you in the near future? If there is such a plan, what strategies will you follow to finance the project?
Although there are a number of women directors in India, there is still a long way to go. In the mainstream film industry the numbers are even lower, though they are slowly rising. In independent film and documentary circles, on the other hand, the number of women filmmakers is significant. But what we really need is to see broader representation of women in other departments, especially in cinematography and sound. These are the criteria we need to pay attention to. Another important measure is caste and class representation among the women who have access to the film industry, because the numbers there are very low and deeply worrying.
I currently have two feature film projects: one is fiction, and the other is a hybrid project moving between fiction and documentary. Finding funding for these films within India is almost impossible. I am working with a French producer in the hope of finding funds from Western countries. The road is very long and truly requires patience, but that is something I have accepted.
About PAYAL KAPADIA
She was born in 1986 in Mumbai, India. She studied film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Following her short films “Cassandra’s Gift” (2012) and “Watermelon, Fish and Half Ghost” (2013), her film “The Last Mango Before Monsoon” won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Special Jury Prize at the Oberhausen Film Festival. Her experimental short documentary “And What the Summer Saying,” selected in 2017 for the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation section, which supports new generations of filmmakers, had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in 2018 and received the Special Jury Prize at IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the Best Experimental Film Award at the Mumbai Film Festival. Kapadia, who is currently working on her first feature film project, “All We Imagine as Light,” which she developed after being selected for the Berlinale Talents program, is interested in what cannot easily be seen in her films, in what lies hidden somewhere in the folds of memory and dreams. She seeks to find the truth among small, fleeting and feminine gestures.
Payal Kapadia’s films ‘Afternoon Clouds’ and ‘And What Is the Summer Saying,’ screened in Kinoscope’s “The Other Side of the Dream” selection, are available on Kundurama until July 19, 2021!
On the occasion of the film’s screening in Türkiye, the director spoke exclusively to Kundura Sinema and answered the questions of Altyazı Cinema Magazine writer Fırat Yücel.