Seventh Row

A place to think deeply about movies

In Her Chair

Female-identifying directors reflect on their experiences making films and leading creative teams.

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The Assistant: Kitty Green on making an office sound sinister

Kitty Green discusses crafting the sound design of The Assistant by recording office sounds and using them to create tension and discomfort.

Listen to the podcast on The Assistant and Promising Young Woman.

Read about why Matthew MacFadyen’s performance in the film is so great

The Assistant, Kitty Green, sound design
The Assistant: Kitty Green on making an office sound sinister.

In the first shot of The Assistant, director Kitty Green introduces us to protagonist Jane (an excellent Julia Garner) as a small figure in a dark, unwelcoming New York City. She climbs into a cab before sunrise and makes her way to her job as a film producer’s personal assistant. The sound of her footsteps are swallowed up by a whirring industrial soundscape that builds tension and unease like a horror movie, establishing The Assistant’s portrait of a young woman living and working in an environment that is apathetic, or even antagonistic, toward her. On the drive to her office block, she stares bleary-eyed out of the cab window as a hundred anonymous office windows fly by, each of them identical to the window out of her boss’s office, which is clouded slightly to protect the privacy of those inside. While Green’s film retains its laser focus on Jane’s subjective experience during one horrific day at work, this visual cue acknowledges that her awful boss is one of many who continue to get away with terrorising women in the workplace.

“I was trying to make sure that anyone could identify with her [Jane’s] story,” Green told me over the phone. “The more personal details we gave her, the less accessible she became to other people.” I had asked her about the opening shot, which is a wide of Jane’s house as she leaves for work in the morning, and why we never actually see inside that house or gain any real insight into Jane’s personal life at all. “There is something about giving the audience room to imagine who she is and what her background is. Nobody even says her name in the whole movie; it’s only in the credits. She’s kind of anonymous in this sense; she can be any one of us. There was never a version of the script where we had more information. There was probably a version where there was less, and I was asked to add a tiny bit more. The parents [to whom we hear Jane speak over the phone twice in the film] was an addition in that sense.”

Kitty Green’s film chronicles how insidious, powerful men like Jane’s Harvey Weinstein-esque boss (who is never seen on screen and only referred to as “him” or “he”) infect every aspect of office life, even mundane tasks like photocopying and printing. Green lingers on these banal tasks to draw out suspense and to draw us into Jane’s subjectivity. “I was interested in tasks that anyone in any entry level position would do,” Green explained. “A lot of photocopying, filing, coffee, mail, that sort of stuff. I tried not to focus on the things she [Jane] was suspicious of. I wanted to make sure the balance felt right. Maybe seven or eight tasks that were banal went by, and then the ninth one was a little worrying. Otherwise, the film wouldn’t have had as much weight.” 

The Assistant, Kitty Green, sound design
The Assistant: Kitty Green on making an office sound sinister.
Jane (left) escorts a newly employed assistant to meet her boss at a hotel.

As these tasks unfold, we feel the same frustration of waiting as Jane feels, and it gives us a chance to watch Garner’s subdued but always slightly disconcerted expression. The more evidence she gets that her boss is sexually exploiting women, the less she is able to hide the anguish and anxiety she feels about enabling him. Green noted with a chuckle that most of the test screenings for the film were to see, “when people were shifting in their seats, and how long can we stay on the photocopying and the coffee maker and the blender.”

Jane seems to be drowning under the piling weight of her guilt and worry from witnessing multiple signs of exploitation: a stray earring that belongs to a flustered woman, a young and unqualified girl being hired as an assistant and sent to meet Jane’s boss in a hotel room. Jane’souterwear is a massively oversized, puffy coat and a huge scarf that almost swallow her whole. Green and her longtime cinematographer Michael Latham chose to shoot Jane so that the smaller she feels, the smaller she is in the frame. “I wanted it to feel very claustrophobic. There is a sense that she’s almost sinking within the frame, as if the office is swallowing her up. She gets a bit more head room as we go along.”

It’s not just the indiscretions of her unseen, unnamed boss that weigh on Jane: microaggressions from other men in the office build a portrait of a work environment that’s hostile because of pervasive misogyny. Jane works in a room with two other male assistants who treat Jane like a servant rather than a co-worker, because she’s a woman. “One (Jon Orsini) is kinder to her, and one (Noah Robbins) is a little more…” Green struggles to find a polite way to put it — I want to interject with “a little more of a dick?” — but I let her settle on “not as friendly.” Green continued, “I think one of the most violent lines of the film are when [Jane buys lunch for the office, and] he says, ‘I wanted [a] chicken [wrap]. This is turkey.’ He says it with such disdain. There’s something so vile about the way he says that line.” Robbins’s character is the worst offender:  he expects Janer to get him food, to deal with their boss’s disgruntled wife, and to handle a colleague’s restless children —  all gendered tasks that require emotional labour.

The Assistant, Kitty Green, sound design
The Assistant: Kitty Green on making an office sound sinister.
Jane writes an email to her boss while her two male colleagues watch on.

One of the most brilliant elements of The Assistant is it’s unsettling, tense sound design, which was largely a collaboration between Kitty Green and sound designer Leslie Shatz. (Our interview with Shatz, who worked in the sound department of several of Kelly Reichardt’s films, will feature in our upcoming ebook, Roads to nowhere: Kelly Reichardt’s broken American dreams.) Together, Green and Shatz transform normal office sounds into the stuff of nightmares: the overhead lights turn on with a deafening buzz; the inane, overlapping conversations of coworkers make it impossible to concentrate; and the crunch and whir of a blender churning ice feels like it’s embodying the building pressure in Jane’s head.

“I adore [Leslie] and have been a big fan of his for a long time,” Green gushed. “Leslie Shatz had done the sound design for Elephant (2003, dir. Gus Van Sant), which is an incredible piece, taking all these high school sounds and laying them in in ways that were not traditionally how you would hear them. I asked him if we could go out and record a bunch of office stuff and play around. He got some people to record all these buzzes and hums and whirs and beeps. We tweaked them to give each scene a little more tension, slowly pitching them up in frequency or volume. We were always trying to figure out how we could create tension without using score, necessarily.”

The sounds used in The Assistant are all derived from real office environments, but their levels in the mix are highly subjective to Jane’s experience and her rising levels of horror at her environment. Green uses an example to explain the sound’s subjectivity: “There’s those Chinese men [who have a conversation next to Jane in the elevator]. At one point, someone was suggesting we subtitle them, but I was like, ‘No, the audience should only know what Julia’s character knows. They shouldn’t know any more.’” 

The main notable exception is Jane’s phone calls, during which we’re removed from her subjectivity and actually know less than she knows. We hear the other line from a muffled distance rather than hearing what she’s hearing. “You don’t need to hear everything. Most of it is just logistics and planes and airports. If you give the audience too much, people hang onto it in a way that’s unnecessary.” In fact, keeping the other line mostly inaudible takes our attention away from that information and focuses it on the information that’s important: Garner’s reactions to what’s being said. “Originally, I didn’t script the other side of the phone calls and assumed you’d just hear a kind of muffled voice, but we ended up shooting a lot more closeups of Julia than I thought we would because her face is incredible. We ended up having to record those phone calls and script them in post-production.”

The Assistant has been pitched as a day-in-the-life drama that reveals the mundane yet sinister everyday life of an assistant like Jane. But really, it’s not just any day. It’s the day when Jane realises she has to choose between losing her job or becoming an enabler, and she chooses the latter. “It’s the day when she finally tries to speak up by going to the HR department and talking about her concerns and being shot down. I think she learns a lot in that day about just how difficult her position is, how it’s almost impossible to change the behaviour that’s going on in her workplace and how powerless she is to stop something that she thinks is concerning. It is a day that is defining. It gives her a little more clarity as to how oppressive the structure is.”

Read books about brilliant films by women like The Assistant and their approach to sound design…

<strong><em>The Souvenir</em></strong>
The Souvenir

Our ebook, Tour of memories: The creative process behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, is the first book ever written about Hogg.

Find out more
<strong><em>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</em></strong>
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Our ebook, Portraits of resistance: The cinema of Céline Sciamma, is the first book every written about Sciamma.

Find out more
<strong><em>You Were Never Really Here</em></strong>
You Were Never Really Here

Our behind the scenes guide to Lynne Ramsay’s fourth feature is the essential companion to the film.

Find out more

Want to read the rest of the article?

Get the ebook.

Roads to nowhere: Kelly Reichardt’s broken American dreams will take you on a journey through Reichardt’s filmography.

It’s also the only place you can find interviews with her and all her collaborators, which together reveal Reichardt’s filmmaking process like never before.

Find out more

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Sundance ’20 interview: Ariane Labed on her directorial debut, Olla

Ariane Labed speaks about her background as a dancer and why she sees directing as a natural extension of her work as an actress. Olla is screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

Olla, Ariane Labed, Sundance
Sundance ’20 interview: Ariane Labed on her directorial debut, Olla

At the beginning of Ariane Labed’s directorial debut, the short film Olla, the titular character (Romanna Lobach) emerges from a cloud of mist, dressed in a puffy purple coat, a mini-skirt, and loud high heels. While her name is Olla, she’ll soon be christened Lola by the man she moves in with in suburban France, Pierre (Grégoire Tachnakian), in his attempt to obscure her origins as an Eastern European immigrant. Because she enters and leaves the town lugging all her possessions in a suitcase, and because we learn hardly anything about her (we don’t even hear her speaking her native language), Olla feels like a mythical character who has emerged from nowhere.

Now a stranger in a town and a home she doesn’t know, Olla is surrounded by Pierre’s things, and she is expected to assimilate into his life, like a piece of furniture in his immaculately clean living room. But with Pierre away at work in the daytime, we observe Olla as she whiles away the hours: she explores the town and is catcalled by men in the street; she tries to navigate shopping even though she doesn’t speak the language; and she looks after Pierre’s mother (Jenny Bellay), who lives with Alzheimer’s. In one set piece, Olla strips down to her lingerie and dances around the living room, rubbing up on the doorways like they’re stripper poles. The scene is funny, but it also demonstrates that Olla has enormous physical stamina that makes her seem quite powerful, even though she must appear meek in front of Pierre to satisfy his desire to live with a subservient woman.

In advance of the film’s screening at the Sundance Film Festival, I spoke to Ariane Labed about directing her first short after years of being an actor. Labed started out as a dancer and theatre actress before she moved into film, making her on screen debut in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg and later taking roles in films by Yorgos Lanthimos (she talked to us about her work in The Lobster here), Richard Linklater, and more. She spoke to me about how her background as a dancer greatly informs all her work, from acting to directing, and she explained why she sees directing as a natural extension of her work as an actress.

We interviewed Labed about her work as
an actress in The Lobster

Seventh Row (7R): Did acting in The Souvenir last year inspire you to direct at all, since you play a director in that film?

Ariane Labed: No, it has no connection at all! I’ve been an actor in cinema for ten years now, and I’ve been a big fan of Joanna’s work. Her film is set in a film school, and it’s about filmmaking. It was very funny for me that it happened in a moment when I actually became a director, as well, so it was kind of sweet and funny.

We wrote a book about The Souvenir!

7R: What was the genesis of Olla?

Ariane Labed: I’ve wanted to direct for many, many years actually, but I never really took the time for it because I was acting quite a lot. I was always saying, “One day I will.” And then I finally decided to take the time. 

First of all, I was writing a feature film, but I realised I would have to do a short film first, for me to try things out. I thought of adapting a short story that I really love, and I started doing the adaptation, but I didn’t get the rights. I decided to take inspiration from the things that were really interesting for me in this short story, and I started writing Olla. It had nothing to do with the story in the end!

It was a long process of writing. I was trying to find a way for me to talk about relationships between men and women, but any relationship, really, that is about trying to play a role, and realising that it’s really not [in] your nature. I wanted to talk about domestic violence, as well. I wanted to talk about how men can project onto women. Many, many topics actually, and somehow in the end, it was Olla. I had many things in mind, but I knew I wanted to do a short film, and I wanted to do a proper character film, and create a character. When you have only half an hour to do so, it’s quite tricky.

Olla, Ariane Labed, Sundance
Olla (left) and Pierre (right) in Ariane Labed’s Olla.

7R: Olla is introduced in the first shot of the film, emerging from the fog in a wide shot, which is reminiscent of the fact that we don’t learn much about her background in the film. She seems to have emerged from nowhere; we never hear her speak in her own language. Why did you decide to present her that way?

Ariane Labed: Because I was not interested in building a psychological character. I wanted this actress to portray something that is in between an animal and an apparition. The fog in the field is something I wrote, but I was lucky enough to have fog that day. She could also be an extraterrestrial who has no past. Her past is not the topic. She appears on screen, and then she disappears out of the screen. 

7R: I understand that you trained as a dancer before you entered acting. How has that informed how you choreograph actors?

Ariane Labed: That’s how I work as an actress, too. It depends on the project, but I like to work in a lot of precision and in relationship with the space and the other actors, in a physical way and not psychological. That’s something that drives me, as an actress, as a writer, and as a director, for sure. 

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have dancing in Olla. That’s maybe the scene that says the most about her, because it can actually give you an idea about a job she had or a past she had. The biggest detail I give about the character is when she dances. She has many facets: she’s an animal; she has something very down to earth and almost masculine about her; and there’s also something about her that suggests she was a professional dancer. I wanted to use dance to express more than words.

7R: How did you choreograph that dance?

Ariane Labed: I worked as a choreographer with my theatre group, as well, and I loved that. [In the dance in Olla], I used some animal movements, like the tiger and the spider. It’s the only scene we really rehearsed before, because we didn’t have the time [to rehearse other scenes]. But this one, I really wanted to arrive on set and know exactly what the choreography was. It was the most precise thing she had to do.

7R: Were her movements in the non-dance scenes of the film choreographed, too?

Ariane Labed: We would go through the scene once, and we would go step by step trying to find a precise focus for her, like where to look when. When she’s with the grandmother, I wanted them to be able to act and react to each other. There were moments between them that I knew would be playful, so I just asked them to play with that, and they did it almost without direction. 

But then it becomes very precise when the [man] enters, and he slaps her when he sees his mother in the makeup. That was very precise because of where the camera was and where I wanted Olla to look after that. It really depends, but mostly, it’s where [the actor] puts their eyes. A bit in the logic of Bresson’s style.

Olla, Ariane Labed, Sundance
Olla dances in Pierre’s living room, in front of his mother.

7R: Why did you choose to shoot on 16mm film?

Ariane Labed: First, it’s because I shot on 16mm on my first film as an actress, [Attenberg], and I loved it. It has the danger of the theatre that I really love, and the sense of time that is completely different because time has another value. The moment between action and cut is outside of real time. I cannot say the same with digital, which is a great tool, as well. But I really wanted all the crew to have this perception of very precious time. 

Of course I love the look of it. It’s something that’s really happening organically, on something physical, and I’m very moved by that. I also really wanted to avoid any aesthetics that could remind [the audience] of any social drama or documentary-type film. I think that film creates fiction by itself because it creates this painting quality. I was searching for this quality.

7R: How do you think your experience as an actor has affected the way you look at the casting process?

Ariane Labed: The only thing I know is that I would never judge an actor on their audition or casting, because I know how terrible that is! I wouldn’t really do proper casting, but I would meet people. It was true intuition, actually. It took me a long time to find Olla, and then in relation to her, to find Pierre. But I already had this intuition that I was searching for a woman with much presence and physicality. And I wanted him to be the opposite of what you would imagine his type of character is: not an alpha male. 

I don’t see a big difference between me as a director and me as an actor. I never felt that it was my first film. For me, and that’s the way I want to do it, making this film was a continuation of my work as an actress.

7R: The costumes are so striking.

Ariane Labed: Ah! My costume designer, Marine Peyraud — she’s amazing!

7R: All of Olla’s outfits are so vivid. How did you work with Marine to develop how she’d look?

Ariane Labed: I wrote the idea that I wanted her to arrive wearing this purple jacket, this puffy thing. I had that in mind from the beginning. But then Marine arrived with all these amazing colours, and we created many colours based on the colour of Olla’s hair. The clothes and even the set are [devised] around the colour of her hair, which is orange. We spent quite a lot of time talking. I used references and pictures. 

I had the idea of not really knowing when the clothes were from. The iPhone is the only thing that would give you the idea that it’s contemporary. I didn’t want anything that is fashionable, but not out of fashion either.

7R: What made you think of the puffy jacket for the first scene? It’s interesting that she’s wearing this big jacket but then her legs are totally bare.

Ariane Labed: It was a kind of vision. I saw her like that when I wrote it because I like the idea of someone a bit fragile wearing something that is like an armour. It’s like hiding and showing too much at the same time. It was a contradiction. I guess I wanted a costume that is already a contradiction, because she is full of contradictions. 

7R: How did you and your production designer work out how the house Olla stays in would look?

Ariane Labed: We had bad and good luck. I found what I thought was a perfect house. We didn’t have any money so I wanted to find a house with all the furniture and all the objects already there, so we would just have to get rid of some things. I spent a long time finding a house like that, and I did. And then a week before shooting, the person who had this house changed their mind, of course! 

My second option was a great house, but it was empty, so we had to find furniture. We had to paint the walls, and we had a week to find very cheap furniture. We went to charity shops and took all this old furniture, and because the costume designer, the set designer, the DP, and me worked very closely, we worked on it the day before shooting. We were there painting the walls until one a.m,! To collaborate in all these departments together makes one [unified] look in the film, which we were searching for. Everything that matches or doesn’t match is on purpose. 

7R: How did you think about the sound design in the film? The sounds of her high heels clicking on the pavement are so distinctive throughout the film.

Ariane Labed: I had an amazing sound editor who I had on set, and then another amazing sound designer, he’s British, called Johnnie Burn. He had instructions to collect all the noises, all the different types of high heels noises. That was on the list of things that we wanted to make sure we had. 

I would give a lot of time to capturing sound on set because it’s very important. We’d play with reverb sometimes: when she’s walking on the street, it’s almost like she’s on stage. It was a great tool. It became like the rhythm of the film.

Olla, Sundance
A greek chorus of men catcall Olla throughout the film.

7R: There’s that chorus of men in the film who catcall Olla, but they all speak in unison. Why did you choose to present them in this surreal way?

Ariane Labed: As a little idea about a Greek tragedy and the chorus in it. I thought it was kind of funny to have this very characteristic group of men. I grew up with those kinds of guys in the street, because I shot the film where I grew up. Somehow, the idea of them sounds like that to me. And it was also to fictionalise all of the things; the same idea with shooting on film. 

For the whole film, I tried to do something along the line of realism with a tiny twist, like the way [Pierre makes Olla shuffle along the floor in his living room wearing fabric shoe covers, in order to keep his carpets clean]. It’s all these movements that are absurd but actually could exist. And these catcallers…I believe when you spend a lot of time with other people, you don’t even realise, but you are completely one body somehow.

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The Souvenir

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Alla Kovgan on translating dance onscreen in Cunningham

Alla Kovgan discusses restaging and shooting dance excerpts for her 3D doc Cunningham, including creating the camera choreography and capturing the sound.

Image from Alla Kovgan's Cunningham courtesy of Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Image from Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham courtesy of Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

I first encountered the work of choreographer Merce Cunningham when I saw the Merce Cunningham Company perform his piece “Nearly Ninety” in 2012. Set to a score from John Cage — his long-time collaborator known for passing off noise as music, sometimes even gunshot noises — though not choreographed to his music, the piece was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was dance that was somehow independent from music, where what unified the dancers wasn’t immediately obvious.

As the piece unfolded, order seemed to appear among the disorder. There would be a trio where all three dancers twirl around in unison with an arm raised, but they will each have slightly different arm movements or different degrees of extension of the arm. The more I became conscious of this order, the more I found its defiance of complete order beautiful and intellectually challenging: it created a richer, more complex landscape of movements to follow. You have to constantly ask yourself “Are the dancers moving as one? If so, how?”, and only rarely expect the answer to be “yes, in every way.”

Alla Kovgan’s new 3D documentary, Cunningham, attempts to make sense of this disorder — not as it works in an individual piece, but how it served as an organizing principle throughout Cunningham’s career. By recreating excerpts of the dances in locations that emphasize some of the ideas behind the dance, and creating yet another dance between camera and dancer, Kovgan brings us inside the choreography in a way that is entirely different from how you’d experience it on stage — perhaps ideal for someone new to Cunningham’s often alienating approach. Working with the 3D stereography team from Wenders’ Pina and 12 dancers from the Cunningham Company, Kovgan has restaged pieces of Cunningham’s groundbreaking choreography devised between the 1950s and the 1970s.

In Cunningham, Kovgan mixes archival footage of Cunningham and his company dancing with interviews, letters, and voice recordings, creating a kind of 3D collage to contextualize Cunningham’s work. This is then mixed in with modern restagings of excerpts from several of his most famous works, performed in the wild rather on stage — much like what Wenders did with Pina. The film is most alive when it stays with the contemporary dancers and these restagings. Kovgan understands that you can’t capture dance on film so much as translate it, and the dance between the camera and the dancers makes for compelling viewing — bringing you inside the performance, rather than delivering a documentary of existing Cunningham pieces in full.

Kovgan succeeds in giving strong context for Cunningham’s eccentric choreography, positioning it within modern art of the day — after all, Robert Rauschenberg worked with Cunningham on the sets and costumes — rather than treating it as a curiosity that could otherwise appear to have emerged in a vacuum. But this contextualizing often feels boring compared with the dance recreations which are so vivid and exciting — especially given Kovgan’s dynamic approach to sound, lighting, and camera movement.

When the film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, I sat down with Kovgan to discuss bringing Cunningham’s work to the screen in 3D, the opportunities and limitations of the technology, and the process for translating dance from stage to screen.

Seventh Row (7R): Where did the idea come from to do a documentary about Cunningham and to do it in 3D?

Alla Kovgan: I never imagined making a film about Merce Cunningham. I know Charlie Atlas quite well, and he and Merce made quite a few films together. I used to run a dance film festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. I remember bringing Charlie to Russia in 2006 to show his film, and I just kept thinking, How did you guys do that? 

Fundamentally, Merce is a choreographer who works in space. You have 16 people going in different directions, so what do you actually show [on film]? There was a Rockefeller Commission with Dance Film Association to make a 3D film with a New-York-based choreographer, and I was actually never thinking about it because I was working on something else. But I went to see the last performances of the Cunningham company at Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and it crossed my mind that 3D and Merce Cunnigham would work. I was like, My god, he’s so good at working with space, but there’s no way to capture it! 

I actually think there’s no way to capture dance [on film] period. You can engage with dance in cinematic terms, but it’s a different thing. 3D slows down your perception, and it works so well in space with long takes. I thought something clicked in that moment. 

I was also looking at 14 beautiful dancers who were the last generation of Cunningham dancers to be trained by Merce himself. The next month, they would be out of work, and all of that work would be gone because at the time, it felt like they were never going to dance again. So there was a kind of urgency because they were at their prime; they were beautiful; and they carried something of Merce himself inside their bodies. That was the biggest moment. Merce embraced every technological advancement of his time, from 16mm to motion capture. I felt like, had he been alive, he would have been interested.

Image from Alla Kovgan's Cunningham courtesy of Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
An excerpt from “Suite for Two” in Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham, courtesy of Mongrel Media.

7R: How did you think about what parts of a Cunningham dance you were going to be able to capture on film?

Alla Kovgan: I’ve done other dance films in my life and have been around dance for over 20 years, so I know it is impossible to make movies about dance. It’s possible to make movies about dancers and choreographers as people. People can learn about them.

But to actually give an experience of dance, you can’t capture that on film, because dance and cinema are ultimately in conflict because they work with time differently. They work with space differently. One minute on film and one minute on stage is completely different. It’s impossible to compare. 

I immediately decided we were not going to capture anything. We were going to translate Merce’s ideas into cinema. We were going to think about Merce’s work in cinematic terms. We were going to do what Jerome Robbins did for Bob Fosse. We were going to think of choreography on screen. I was really inspired by this period when Merce wasn’t Merce yet, but he was a young dancer in New York and becoming Merce the choreographer. This period was between 1942 and 72 — from the first concert that John Cage and Merce Cunningham gave together, to when the last founding member of the Cunningham company, Carolyn Brown, left. That was, according to Cunningham historian David Vaughan, the end of an era. 

That’s the time when I felt Merce didn’t often know what he did, but was figuring it out. That process was very interesting to me. It also happens in New York at a time that was the rebirth of American art, and he’s with all these artists as the dance person among them. That was another big draw. And then finally in 72, in the ‘70s, Merce picked up the camera himself. He was very interested in the camera. He thought it affected his choreographic process, so all the films he made with Charlie, and Elliot [Caplan], and all these other people came later. I didn’t want to go to that place. 

We said very early on with directors of choreography that we were just going to try to tell the story of Merce through his work and think of his work in cinematic terms. We went through 80 works, identifying first 22, then 14 iconic works [that were] very important for his development and process and also life story. Out of each dance, we picked excerpts that were to be re-imagined in 3D. Behind each dance, we identified the physical question Merce posed and then thought about this physical question and the idea behind the dance in cinema terms. That’s where the locations come in, because cinema doesn’t happen on stage.

7R: How did you decide the locations you wanted to use to stage Cunningham’s dance sequences?

Alla Kovgan: If it’s a dance with the action of falling, how would cinema deal with falling? You can refer to many films that work with that idea, so we put it on the rooftop, thinking of Hitchcock. If it’s about layering, pine trees are perfect because we amplify the idea. If it’s about being enclosed, we made a maze. We tried to use locations as a way to highlight the idea [behind the piece].

Image from Alla Kovgan's Cunningham courtesy of Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Still from Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham, courtesy of Mongrel Media

Creating the choreography between the camera and Cunningham’s dancers

7R: How did you decide how to move the camera when shooting Cunningham’s choreography?

Alla Kovgan: That was a very deliberate process with the directors of choreography and the DP. The camera is stupid; you have to tell it where to move every second; otherwise, it doesn’t know, so we had to identify that. Sometimes, we lost dancers in the frame, but it didn’t matter because we were not trying to capture choreography; we were trying to capture the experience of the idea behind the choreography, and that’s a very different intention. 

Sometimes, it felt like the camera was inside the dance and people come and go and enter. We wanted to create that sense of proximity that would allow people to enter the dance and that guided a lot of the decision-making. 

Of course, you are also in space. Once you are in a location, the space becomes part of the composition. Sometimes, you have to deal with pillars, and pillars are not possible to manage. This all becomes part of the choreographic world, and that becomes beautiful because Merce was open to chance, to things happening. The three of them — [Robert] Rauschenberg, Cage, and Cunningham — were interested in what would happen if you bring all these things together. Sometimes, there is only so much you can control.

7R: At some points, you can see multiple dancers and how they are moving together and within the space. At other times, we are coming in close and focusing on the movements of a particular dancer. How did you think about when to focus on details and when to focus on the bigger picture of Cunningham’s choreography?

Alla Kovgan: Very rarely was the choreography broken down. We didn’t alter any of Merce’s choreography. We might have spaced it differently because we were in a different space, physically. Again, if you have a solo, it’s very easy. But even with the solo, are you close or are you far? 

It’s not really defined if I need to see somebody close or far. It was always about how you work with time and what keeps you interested. If you want to see a Cunningham dance, go and see them. People still perform them. What we are trying to do is bring the experience of the ideas to cinema.

When you think about [the dance] “Winterbranch,” [the camera] starts very low, and you go very high. All we do is create the idea of falling, but it’s a very long shot. You would never look at her doing that movement if we didn’t do something to create that idea. 

Capturing the sound of Cunningham’s choreography

7R: How did you think about sound? It’s really wonderful how you can hear the dancers’ bodies and how they are touching the ground in a way that is somewhat similar to being in the room with them.

Alla Kovgan: Movement doesn’t come without sound. It amplifies the visceral quality, of course, but it can also distract. If somebody is like boom, boom, boom, all of a sudden you only look at their feet, and in film, it is even more so than on stage. 

I always record foley while the dancers are there. I call them sound takes. We do our takes first. The sound is recorded, but we give instructions: all kinds of things happen, [and] it’s loud. Once everybody is done, we record sound takes with the cameras off. The sound people are very close to the dancers, and they can actually record the steps. I’m a big proponent of doing it while all the real dancers are there versus doing it afterwards in the green room with foley sessions. It’s much better to do it with the actual people, to keep a sense of authenticity of the movement because I’m all about the best performances. 

Of course. Cunningham and sound is very complicated because he didn’t work with music or sound. He believed there’s an internal rhythm which the action produces, which is of course true. You don’t have to have a drum beat to cross the street; you just cross the street, and choreograph yourself to an internal rhythm. I was very adamant about keeping the original score. I couldn’t imagine putting Philip Glass on Merce Cunningham. People were saying it’s too avant-garde, but I feel all the scores are part of the work. Why do you suggest taking away [Conlon] Noncarrow’s music from “Crises”? It’s like taking Tchaikovsky away from Swan Lake! Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean you can do that, especially working with a choreographer who’s not there anymore. That was the piece! We can’t do anything; this is it. 

I can take away the music though. Sometimes, we would take it away because it was too much for the movie world. But Merce did so many events where he would pull excerpts from different dances. He would come to a location and assess the location and see which excerpts would work. They could perform it with no music and just the sound of the environment, or they could commission new music. I felt that gave us a license, in a way, to work freely because we can create an environment.

With “Winterbranch,” for example, there was a feeling that there must be a club downstairs. The club downstairs can play anything, and we immediately create an environment. I tried not to be didactic with sound — step — sound, none of that. I tried to create more layers in the soundscape rather than writing music. We didn’t write music to dance.

Still from Alla Kovgan's Cunningham, courtesy of Mongrel Media.
Still from Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham, courtesy of Mongrel Media.

7R: For the sound takes, the dancers would do the whole choreography?

Alla Kovgan: It would be like surround sound. We would have mics all around. We would have sound people really close to get the steps, because on-screen, you are supposed to be close, so you hear. If you record sound really well, you have material to work with. You can push them away in space, especially in 3D, or you can bring them really close. 

[For the dance sequence] in the tunnel, for instance, the sound is much louder than you would ever hear in that proximity, so we cheat. Because we have the sound takes, you can hear him much earlier than we get to him [with the camera, which is pushing in toward him]. Again, we create an experience. It’s all very choreographed in this sense, from the distance, to the sound, to the lights. Everything. It’s painstakingly worked out.

Cristian Mungiu’s sound takes

Cristian Mungiu also does sound takes for his films in which the actors do the choreography for the scene minus the dialogue.

Read the interview

The opportunities and challenges of shooting in 3D

7R: Something that struck me about one of the early dances in the film was the use of the spotlight. In 3D, it’s amazing. I’ve never really thought about light on film as being three-dimensional. Of course, that’s something you see on stage all the time. It felt all the dances you were capturing were lit in a very specific way to make use of that.

Alla Kovgan: We had a great DP [Mko Malkhasyan]. We’ve worked together now for 13 years, so we know each other, and he has worked on all the dance films I’ve ever made. Light becomes another choreographic element. We had never made a 3D movie before so we could only imagine what it is going to work with. 

We had a director of stereography, Joséphine Derobe, who worked on Pina. She was great. She was advising which direction we need to point the light. It’s technical, too, because if a flare hits one camera and not another, you are going to have a blind spot. There’s two cameras strapped together, so you have to be a bit careful about how you do these things. 

Light became part of the choreography, the composition. This is demanding choreography. They can’t do it over and over and over and over again. There was a moment where they did 14 takes, but sometimes, they would say they could only do it five times: that’s it. One time, a dancer was injured, so there was only one time. We had a physical therapist on set, and she did wonders, but she said we could only do it one time. 

There was a trepidation among everybody, the whole crew, that they were witnessing a performance and that was different from other film shoots. And also, once the dancers are warm, you have to go. You have no time to dilly dally. 

Working with dancers is very different. It wasn’t that they danced, and we just filmed them. Everybody knew what the shots were; everybody had storyboards. When we got to the day of shooting, we knew everything that was going to happen. The more we knew, the more interesting possibilities opened up. I wish we had more shooting days. I wish we had more time because I think there were some things we didn’t have time to do. There was so much potential.

7R: Were there limitations to 3D?

Alla Kovgan: Especially with Merce. I was jealous of Pina Bausch because some of the crew worked on Pina, and they would say, “We remember studying the music. We remember the music goes woooo, and we go.” Here, we don’t have anything, so the hardest thing was for the crew to learn [the choreography without the help of music] because they have to learn the movement. 

There’s the choreography of the dancers, but there’s also the choreography of the crew. The guys with the crane or with the steadicam, they have to know [the choreography of the dance] because they can actually get hurt [if they aren’t in the right place at the right time]. 

When we did the test in 2015 of “Summerspace,” we learned that the crew could not remember more than 40 seconds of choreography. There were some one minute shots or even longer, but those shots were very simple: you just go from here, and you go up, and we would count for the crew, not for the dancers, how long did this take, so that you would arrive [at the right time]. She’s [the dancer is] consistent; she’s going to put her hands up, but [the camera operator has] got to arrive at that moment, and you’ve got to be still. 

Nobody [in the crew] could understand the idea of stillness because they come from commercials where nothing is ever still. When I say you have to arrive and be still, still means still, it’s not like half-pregnant. You are either pregnant or not. That was hard for people to do. I felt like that was hard and took time. Sometimes, you had to redo and retry, but the dancers can’t re-try all the time.

So how do you choreograph the crew and how do you bring them together? And because you are on a budget, and the clock is ticking, and you only have this one day on this one location, and you don’t have enough time for rehearsals, the crew would say there was not a single day that was relaxed because they had to dance, too. And most of them are guys.

7R: Did you have music on set when they were doing the dances?

Alla Kovgan: Only in three instances. Whenever Merce choreographed to music, then we had playback. But then we did sound takes without playback, because we needed it clean.

7R: All the dancers in the film were in Cunningham’s company?

Alla Kovgan: We had 14 dancers. 12 were in the Cunningham company, one was in the understudy group which Merce also trained, and one is a new dancer who was trained by Robert [Swinston, who spent 31 years with the Cunningham company]. We also had guest dancers. Robert Swinston started a new company in Angers, France around 2012, so he’s trained them now for five years, which is interesting because it’s a different generation. And at the end [of the film], on the rooftop, we had 26 Cunningham veteran dancers.

Discover how other directors approach capturing dance on film

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Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn on The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open

Co-directors and co-writers Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (who also stars) and Kathleen Hepburn discuss telling Indigenous stories and telling a story in real time. Read our TIFF19 review.

Violet Nelson and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers star in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Photo Credit: Katrin-Braggadottir.
Violet Nelson and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers star in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Photo Credit: Katrin-Braggadottir.

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a rare film: not only does it centre women’s often invisible experiences, but it also features a cross-cultural encounter between two Indigenous women from different nations and socio-economic backgrounds. We first meet Áila (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) in a doctor’s office where she’s having an IUD inserted; we stay with her as she changes into a gown, goes through the procedure, and prepares to leave — finding meaning in the empty spaces and minutiae, which will define the film. On her way home, Áila spots Rosie (Violet Nelson) a young, pregnant Indigenous woman, on the street who is barefoot and distressed. 

Áila invites Rosie home to offer her shoes, clothes, and comfort, and the film follows the pair in real-time during this encounter. As a Sami woman, Áila feels connected to Rosie’s experience as an Indigenous woman, but Áila also has much more privilege: she’s middle class rather than just out of foster care, and she’s also white-passing. This makes Rosie distrustful of her, no matter how sincerely Áila wants to help; to Rosie, it’s too reminiscent of her experiences with white settlers. Because Rosie is a survivor of abuse, Áila wants to help her get out of her unsafe domestic situation, but effecting change is more complicated than Áila first anticipates.

The Body Remembers is itself a product of collaboration between two women, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (on whom Áila is based) and Kathleen Hepburn, who co-wrote and co-directed the film. Together, they’ve crafted a smart and sensitive film about two very complex and realistic women. The film was picked up for US distribution by Ava DuVernay’s ArrayNow, which has made it available worldwide (outside of Canada) on Netflix. It opens theatrically in Canada this week. In anticipation of the film’s Toronto release, I talked with Tailfeathers and Hepburn about collaborating, telling Indigenous stories, representing class, and the challenges of telling a story in real-time.

7R: What made you want to tell this story and how did you both get involved?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: The film is inspired by an experience that I had. It’s very similar to the one in the film but we fictionalized it and the characters. As a filmmaker, before this, I primarily had experience directing documentary. I knew that I wanted to tell this story in real time. 

I knew that collaborating with someone with more experience with narrative fiction would only serve to improve the quality of the work, and I would also have the opportunity to learn. I find collaboration to be very enriching. Kathleen has been a friend for a while and I deeply admire her work and who she is as a person. I knew that the project would benefit from collaborating with Kathleen, specifically, so I reached out to ask Kathleen if she would like to co-write and co-direct. That’s how our relationship started.

7R: What was the process for writing The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open together?

Kathleen Hepburn: It was pretty organic. We didn’t have a strategy or a plan. Everything was happening really quickly so we just dove in head first and started writing. Because it was based on an actual event, Máijá had a pretty strong treatment to start with, so we were finding ways to fictionalize the characters and separate them from the real event a bit and also to add all of these complex layers.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: Kathleen is such a phenomenally talented writer. This was my first time doing a narrative feature. I think I often had a tendency to want to put too much on the page so working with Kathleen was a really wonderful experience. Kathleen has this beautiful ability to work with nuance and simplicity on the page.

We wanted to include larger themes that didn’t actually exist within that original experience. Something that was really important to both of us was to speak about the issue of Indigenous youth in foster care. It’s a massive issue in Canada. We wrote Rosie (Violet Nelson) as this young woman who had aged out of foster care very recently and had been deeply impacted by the system. She’s kind of the embodiment of generations of families fractured through child removal [which is the legacy of colonialism], be it through residential schools or foster care. There were a lot of things that we wanted to include within the story that needed to come from a place of fiction.

7R: You mentioned you knew you wanted to tell the story in real time. What made you want to do that, and how did you approach how you were going to do that?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: It was ultimately about honouring that original experience which was very short. I encountered this young woman who was in distress. I spent a few hours with her, and then I never saw her again. That experience really left a deep and profound impact on me. 

Sometimes, we have these collisions with strangers that really fundamentally alter us. I carried that story with me for years, not really sure what to do with it, and ultimately, decided I wanted to honour her story and our shared experience on that day. At first, I thought maybe this could be a short film, but I realized there was so much there in those moments of silence between us and these moments where nothing was being said, but so much was being communicated. I figured it could be a very powerful feature film if we just allowed the audience to simply sit with that experience. Wanting to shoot it in real time was also one of the impetuses for wanting to collaborate, and then the idea of the continuous take came later on.

Kathleen Hepburn: There were a couple reasons why that was important. We thought about just doing the real time idea, but it became very clear early on that to try to do it in a continuous take would really push us to the next level in terms of creating something that was really honest and held the tension that we wanted to create in this narrative in a feature-length form. We felt it just adds so much, creating conflict and tension and drama for the audience. But we also felt it was the best way for the actors and the crew to experience the moment, the temporality of the original incident, and to give them the full emotional journey in one take. 

We did the film five times over five days, so one take a day for an hour and half, and that was it; we’d move on to the next day. It was a really different experience and a different way of thinking about shooting. I think it really raised the stakes for everybody involved and made for some very authentic performances and some really beautiful accidents.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Violet Nelson star in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Photo Credit: Katrin Braggadottir
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Violet Nelson star in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Photo Credit: Katrin Braggadottir

7R: How did that affect your location scouting? You really do get a sense of the city of Vancouver in the film, and you have to travel around while you are doing one take.

Kathleen Hepburn: Yeah, it was a very complicated dance to find locations in one area that made sense for the timing of the script. We had a giant map of East Van [Vancouver] on the wall, and we were sort of trying to build our journey in a way that fit the timing of the script. It was very complicated. We had one location that became too complicated, and we had to switch last minute. But it was fun. It was a heightened challenge, and everybody had to reimagine what production looks like, particularly our AD [Assistant Director] team.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: It was definitely a mental challenge for everybody. There was this really funny moment where our DP drove us around from location to location, and Kathleen and I were in the back seat, reading the script, timing it out, making sure that we could get between the locations before the film mag ran out. Because it was shot on 16mm, we had all these transition points, and we had to make sure we stuck within 10 minutes because the film mag would run out at 11 minutes. There was this funny day where we were driving from location to location, timing out the conversations with traffic at that time of day, and it was a circus, at times.

Rosie (Violet Nelson), standing in Áila’s apartment in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Photo Credit: Norm Li

7R: Could you tell me a bit about the design of the apartment for your character, Máijá? I felt like we really got a sense of who she is from it.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: We had an incredible art department. The production designers were incredible. So we wanted to be able to build this conversation around class within the Indigenous community — and just class in general — and the way it impacts women’s lives. In particular, the way it impacts our bodies and our ability to choose. Áila is a heightened version of me: my apartment isn’t that nice, and I wasn’t in the same financial situation as her, but I was definitely much more privileged than this young woman when it came to my class. 

Áila’s apartment is meant to be this breath of fresh air, but also feel like this space where a woman has had the privilege and ability to thrive because she has the necessary resources and support. Rosie’s apartment is social housing in East Vancouver, and the apartment was completely empty. Our production designer and art team built that world, and it was meant to feel very lived in and wasn’t perceived through this lens of poverty. 

I think, often, when we are looking at Indigenous people on-screen, there is this need or desire by outsiders to frame us through this lens of poverty and trauma and victimhood, and it’s so much more complicated than that. That’s a deep misrepresentation of who we are and the complexities of human experience. We wanted Rosie’s apartment to feel like a place that was lived in and a place where there is love. But there is also the violence that happens there in all of its many forms. We wanted to have a real juxtaposition between Rosie’s and Áila’s apartments, but that both places feel lived in, and that love can exist in both situations.

7R: Were there other key elements for telling that story about class?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: Absolutely. Áila is someone who is university educated and is middle class. We imagined that she has a steady job working for the government. There was so much our production design team put into that space. 

One thing that really resonates with me is the books. There’s quite a few books that you will see in the background that are written by prominent Indigenous writers and thinkers that impacted our thinking around telling this story and also impacted me, as an Indigenous woman. It was a way of honouring those texts and that literature and also bringing into the forefront this long history of Indigenous resistance. It is so much more complicated than the need to frame Indigenous people through victimhood. There is resistance, and there has been resistance for a very long time. Our culture is rich in so many ways, including literature and the written word. 

There were so many beautiful pieces of art that were created by Indigenous artists — Indigenous women, in particular — and we were so lucky to be able to feature that artwork. That space is meant to feel like a space where an Indigenous woman has had the ability to thrive and were she is surrounded by art and literature that comes from our own people and our own voices.

Kathleen Hepburn: The only thing I’d add in terms of representing that privilege would be the IUD scene where she [Áila] obviously has the financial means to get a contraceptive device, which is something Rosie doesn’t have access to, or she wouldn’t know how to access those resources. The idea of choosing is another form of privilege.

Rosie (Violet Nelson) take a private moment for herself in the bathroom in The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, directed by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn. Photo Credit: Experimental Forest Films, Violator Films
Rosie (Violet Nelson) take a private moment for herself in the bathroom in The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, directed by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn. Photo Credit: Experimental Forest Films, Violator Films

7R: For me, it was really powerful all this time that we got to spend alone with each of the characters in private spaces, often in a bathroom, where you could see them recovering from what happened or thinking things through. How did you approach those scenes, and how did you decide whom to stay with? 

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: We rehearsed for four weeks with Violet, and there were so many things to consider about who the lens would be focusing on. Initially, we thought this would just be from Rosie’s point of view, and then we realized it was about both women’s experiences. We made a lot of careful, conscious decisions about who would be the focus in which moment, who would be in power in each moment, and who would have control and agency. Being able to sit in the intimacy of that private space was really important for us.

As an actor, it was a profound experience to be able to marry my experience with theatre and with film; having this long rehearsal process was inspired by theatre. There were so many moments that Kathleen called beautiful accidents because of the luxury of being able to rehearse for four weeks. A lot of those decisions, about where the camera would be and who it would be with, were often made in the rehearsal process. We had the ability to refine the script in those moments and to work with our DP to really figure out where to put the camera in each moment.

Kathleen Hepburn: With the bathroom scenes, I recently read a review where this person was complaining about the changing of the pad scene and why we needed to be there with her. But it was important to show that. There were layers to that scene, but we wanted to remind the viewers that Áila has things going on in her life beyond this moment — and also because, as women, we don’t get to see that represented on screen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman change her pad on camera in this real-time way. For us, it was a tiny, tiny act of pushback against the male gaze and showing all of these private spaces and the trauma that our bodies experience on a monthly basis.

7R: Was the DP Norm Li involved with rehearsals?

Kathleen Hepburn: We had four weeks of just cast, and then we brought Norm [Li] in the last week to start choreographing our blocking. He could see the action that we had been working with, and we spent quite a bit of time with him detailing the character’s action in the rehearsal space, and then we had a full week of full crew rehearsal to get everything fine tuned on the actual sets. It was a really important conversation with him in terms of whose scene is it, who do we stay with, why and who has the power in each moment? So making those choices about how close to be and who to linger with and who do we follow when one leaves the room — those were all conversations we had with Norm.

7R: I imagine the sound in the film was a technical challenge.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: I’m so glad you brought that up because so often we’re talking about the camera, but the technical proficiency required to pull off the sound in the film is so underappreciated. Our sound guy [Ingar Pedersen] was the only person on our crew who had done a single take film before, he had done it twice [one was Seventh Row favourite Blind Spot].

It was very complicated, as I think, at one point, he had twelve lav mics running at once, and then a boom. We’re so lucky to have had him around. We valued silence in telling the story. There was so much said in the silence, so that was something we needed to think about. Our sound designer was incredible. He’s also Norwegian, and that was kind of complicated because sounds are different in Vancouver than Oslo. It was kind of funny having to work through how sound is different on opposite ends of the world.

Kathleen Hepburn: In the sound design, we wanted to accentuate that difference in space. I’m thinking of one example, coming into Áila’s apartment, when you go from this street scene where we have a lot of violent, ambient noise, like sirens and constructions and traffic, coming up into a space that was supposed to feel very open, a moment to breathe — so working with the rain and more natural sounds, you know, birds. But when we are with Rosie in the bathroom, things shift slightly in the background ambience. Because she’s not feeling comfortable in this space, there’s a change in the kinds of sounds we hear outside, which are a little more tense. We were using sound in a way we might have used editing had we done it in a more traditional fashion, but we didn’t have that to work with.

Ailá (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) in Vancouver’s East Side in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Photo Credit: Experimental Forest Films, Violator Films

7R: Were there specific things you did to make the film sound like Vancouver?

Kathleen Hepburn: Yeah. We used a lot of natural recordings. Our sound designer, [Håkon Lammetun], did come for a few days during the shoot time, and he recorded a lot of ambience there. We had the train, which was a very important sound, and the types of birds we chose were very specific.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: Rain.

Kathleen Hepburn: Windshield wipers

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: So often, the city of Vancouver is not really Vancouver in film. We don’t really get to see Vancouver as it is on film, especially East Vancouver, and that was very important to us because it’s a place where we both lived. Kathleen grew up in Vancouver, and I’ve lived in Vancouver for most of my life. East Vancouver is a very complicated place. 

Vancouver, as a whole, is unceded territory. The local host nation’s territory has been urbanized. There’s also a really beautiful thriving urban Indigenous community with people from all over — and then the complexities of gentrification and where we are as artists in this site of gentrification. It’s a very rapidly changing urban landscape, and we wanted to be able to include all of that — the richness and complexities of East Vancouver.

7R: You’re wearing so many hats in this, Máijá. How do you direct yourself? And how did you two collaborate? I imagine it’s helpful to have a collaborator when you are in most of the scenes?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: As I mentioned, Kathleen is someone who’s work I deeply admire. She’s definitely an actor’s director. Seeing what she was to able to do with Never Steady, Never Still (2017) just blew me away. It’s such a beautifully moving work of art, something you feel. 

In terms of working with Kathleen, it was a wonderful experience. Initially, I didn’t think I would act in the film because I wanted to be able to fully experience directing, and it’s really complicated to act and direct at the same time. So a lot of the directing came in prep and rehearsal. In this four-week rehearsal process, Kathleen and I were able to really work through our directing decisions, and then I was also able to spend time with the text as an actor and work with Violet, who is so stunning. Believe it or not, but she’s never acted before, so that time we spent with her was really wonderful. 

Our working relationship was very organic. We didn’t really have a specific process in mind other than we are going to spend this time rehearsing, or we are going to spend this time doing this. I wore a lot of hats, but it was also such a beautifully collaborative process. We had such an incredible cast and crew. 

We had this Indigenous youth mentorship project which was so fundamental to the community and the grassroots approach we took to making this film. Film is often so extractive in terms of representing stories of marginalized people on screen, and we wanted this to not be that in any way. We wanted to build community and make sure we were not simply just extracting from the community the stories we were telling on screen.

We hired 11 Indigenous young people in all of our key departments, and they were there throughout the production process,some during pre-production, some in post. Having them there also made everything a little bit different. It grounded us in something real and reminded us of our responsibility to tell this story in the best way possible, in terms of being part of a community. Kathleen and I worked very hard on building a sense of responsibility and respect within our cast and crew.

7R: Can you tell me a bit about the music and the song at the end of the film?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: The song [Mommy’s Little Guy] is by Fawn Wood, who is an Indigenous woman. The song just really resonated with us. We used it in the rehearsal process as a way to ground ourselves. During the writing process, Kathleen and I felt like we were missing something at one moment, that there was a key element of the script that was really missing, and we came to the realization that it was ultimately about the love between Rosie and her baby. That is what we needed to consistently honour in the story. That song resonated with that theme in every way. It became a part of our rehearsal process and had a deeper meaning for us.

7R: I know you premiered The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open at Berlin and then played it at TIFF. I’m wondering about how you found it was helpful for reception? At Seventh Row, we’re very interested and invested in how we get Canadian films, especially Canadian Indigenous films seen.

Kathleen Hepburn: The film community is still so much about validation, in a lot of ways, and name recognition. Having that stamp of approval from a festival like Berlin is a huge step in getting people’s ears to perk up. You really notice it in conversations with people about the film, and they say, “Oh, is this your first screening?” and we say, “No, we premiered in Berlin” and suddenly you can see the physical shift. I think it is hugely important in reaching more eyes. TIFF is a great festival in creating buzz around the project

But I think what’s been the most amazing for us, so far, is our recent acquisition by Array Releasing, which is Ava DuVernay’s company. We just recently went out to LA and met the team. It was such an incredible experience just to have a group of people who are so professional, so good at their job, but also so invested in the heart of what this project is about, creating space for marginalized voices and really knowing how to access an audience that traditional distributors just don’t quite know how to reach.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: I think it’s complicated, as an Indigenous person, because festivals are so often inaccessible. Even the craft of filmmaking is, in a sense, elitist and inaccessible. To be able to make films is an absolute privilege; you have to come from some form of privilege to be able to be a filmmaker, and festivals in and of themselves are often inaccessible to the general public, to the people who you want to see the film. So it means a lot to screen in these places because it elevates the film in terms of the general film community and the longevity of the film.

But it’s also kind of complicated coming from a marginalized community and knowing that you want your own people to be able to see this film. As Kathleen was saying, it’s really great working with Array because they understand the need for our own communities to be able to access these films, in a way traditional distributor’s don’t really get.

7R: What was different that they did that you found helpful?

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: They understood right away that there are other ways of getting the film out there to audiences. They are very grassroots and community-oriented. They have already built relationships with educational institutions and community organizations. It’s really fantastic knowing the film is going to be screening in alternative spaces that are more accessible to the community.

Discover more great Canadian films

The last year was one of the best for Canadian cinema in history. Discover these great films through conversations with the filmmakers, guided by the Seventh Row editors in our inaugural annual book, The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook.

Get your copy now!

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Sophie Deraspe on her modern adaptation of Antigone

Québécois writer-director-cinematographer Sophie Deraspe on why she wanted to tackle and update Antigone and wearing many hats on a film set.

Nahéma Ricci stars as Antigone in Sophie Deraspe’s modern adaptation of Sophocles’ play.

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Sophie Deraspe’s new film, Antigone, is nothing if not ambitious. Translating Sophocles’ tragedy to present day Montreal, in this film, Antigone’s brother is the victim of police violence, and her act of defiance is not in his burial, but in rescuing her other brother from prison by secretly trading places with him. Antigone (Nahéma Ricci) and her family are permanent residents in Canada, but their lack of citizenship puts them in real danger when her brother gets in trouble with the law; her brother could be deported back to their unnamed African home country, despite the fact that they came to Canada as political refugees. While fate played a large role in Sophocles’ play, in Deraspe’s rendition, the legal system, with its unfair whims that individuals are powerless against, is the modern equivalent. 

When Antigone had its world premiere at TIFF in September, it won the prize for best Canadian film, and it was subsequently selected as Canada’s entry for Best International Film at the Oscars. When we discussed the film on our podcast episode on Canadian film at TIFF, Angelo Muredda and I both expressed admiration for the film’s ambition, though mixed feelings about how it carries it off. Still, it’s a fascinating watch, and a new approach to updating classics for a modern audience. 

Like Steven Soderbergh and Warwick Thornton, Deraspe is one of a select few directors who serve as their own cinematographer. Like Soderbergh (and Kelly Reichardt), she also edits her films, though she shares editorial duties with a collaborator. Before the film’s Canadian release, I talked with Deraspe about writing, directing, shooting, and editing her own films, why she wanted to adapt Antigone, and more.

Seventh Row (7R): What made you want to adapt Antigone, a Greek tragedy, for a modern setting?

Sophie Deraspe: I read Antigone when I was in my early twenties. That’s many years ago. I just really fell in love with the character. I was struck by her sense of dignity, her intelligence. She goes against the law, but for something that she really believes is the right thing to do. She stays true to herself. Even if it’s a tragedy, it was, to me, very uplifting. At the time, I didn’t know I would make films, but I knew I would do something related to art and go back to this material and bring to it my own signature and a contemporary setting.

7R: What was the process for doing that? Where you simply inspired by the story or were you looking at the play in-depth as you were putting the script for Antigone together?

Sophie Deraspe: The play stayed with me in the corner of my head and my heart for many years. It was sleeping there. One evening, I was reading online and watching YouTube [videos] about a tragedy that happened in Montreal in 2008. It’s called the Villanueva Affair. A 14-year-old young man was gunned down by the Montreal police in a park, and not long after, his older brother who was on the scene was threatened with deportation because of petty crimes. They were permanent residents, and they felt they were at home in this country. This family immigrated as refugees to Canada, and tragedy hits again. 

I was reading comments where people were expressing very cruel and racist things about them, not knowing them of course. It felt like, oh my God, people in my country, they have this position, but they don’t know. They are talking about a big tragedy, but they are not connecting with the real people. I was thinking about the mother of those young [people], and I was imagining the sister as being like Antigone because the setting reminded me of the play. 

Antigone has two brothers who are dead: one has a royal funeral because he was a hero to the land; and the other, his body is thrown to the vultures because he’s an enemy of the state. In Antigone, what she does is say, the two of them are my brothers, so good for the one who has a royal funeral, but I have the duty to give him [the other brother] a burial, so I will dig some earth and put it on his body. So she goes against the law of the king because she follows a duty that is greater. 

So with this case that happened in Montreal, I was thinking, what would a sister do for her brother, and do for dignity and love and what she owes, not only to her brothers but also to her family? The structure of the story became clear very quickly — how to transpose Antigone in our modern time. I had the bones of the story, but to have the meat, it took several years of research and writing. But I knew that I was holding something very strong in how to adapt Antigone for our time.

7R: What kind of research did you end up doing?

Sophie Deraspe: When I started writing, I decided Antigone would help her brother, the one that is left. She would help him escape from prison, but then, she will, of course, have to face justice and being in the juvenile care ward, and ultimately, the figure of the father [in this case, the justice system stands in for the father]. 

First, I had to know what happens when a minor is arrested and when a minor goes to court. I met with investigators and a lawyer, and I visited courtrooms to listen to how it is handled, and then I went back to writing. I knew what the words were to use and what were the consequences for a minor when a minor goes against the law. The research inspired me also in going further with the script.

Nahéma Ricci stars as Antigone in Sophie Deraspe’s modern Sophocles adaptation. Courtesy of Maison 4:3 Films.

7R: In Sophocles’ Antigone, fate is really important, and in the film, fate has become the way Antigone is powerless against the institutions she’s facing.

Sophie Deraspe: Yeah, the story of Antigone is her against authority. Authority, in our world, is first, the police, then, the judge, then, the consequences and punishments, either prison or juvenile care. But ultimately, she has to face the figure of the father whom she doesn’t have anymore. In the case of Antigone, and for immigrants — at least those who don’t have their citizenship yet — you’re so vulnerable that you can be told you have to leave this country. It’s a relationship with the state. It’s such a punishment and unfair; people can face deportation from the country where you have tried to build a new life. I feel it’s very tragic.

7R: You serve as your own cinematographer. The colours in the film are really striking.  How did you approach the aesthetic for Antigone? What do you get out of being your own cinematographer? How does that make it easier or different for you?

Sophie Deraspe: I started as a cinematographer, mostly in documentaries, so holding the camera and listening to the characters — while also being aware of the mic and thinking about everything at the same time — it’s a skill that I [have] developed over the years. It’s just natural for me. I think my mind and my body are trained for that. 

I see [cinematography] as a choreography with the actors. I dance with them, and sometimes, even while we are shooting, I speak with them and continue shooting so we don’t have to cut. It’s something very fluid and natural. 

When I write a scene, I see how I’m going to shoot it, but it changes when I do rehearsals with the actors. But when I write it, I have an idea of shooting and editing. I translated the ancient Greek chorus as the social media we have in our lives today. The social media in the film is something I experienced in my previous film, The Amina Profile [(2015)], which is a story of love and revolution that’s all happening online. It’s a documentary, but it was important to find the proper language so I wouldn’t be shooting people in front of the computer or fingers on the phone. 

I wear a lot of hats on this film: writing, directing, shooting, [and] I even [acted as] co-editor. I think I did the casting of my crew just as well as I did the casting of the actors. I wanted people that are very committed and have an artistic vision.

I prepare a lot prior to shooting. You were mentioning the colours of the films. It’s something very important. I picked the locations, and then I have the colours I wanted to use. I wanted this film to be young and full of youth, so it has a lot of movements, a lot of colours. Once we step into institutions like the court or juvenile care ward, then it is not colours; it’s more neutral because it’s the authority that speaks. When we go back to protests, it’s colours. It was well prepared.

7R: To some degree, the film is very heightened: the colours are so rich, and there are even scenes where it feels like it’s not a naturalistic drama, but high emotions, high tension. How did you think about that balance between making us connect with her and giving it this Greek tragedy heightened emotion?

Sophie Deraspe: Antigone is a character greater than nature. She’s a hero. She’s a myth. But I wanted to set the story of Antigone and her family in a social realism kind of fim. At the same time, as a documentary filmmaker, I feel reality is so amazing and even if we were to write something, we wouldn’t have the imagination, or be told you are going too far now, because reality is over the top, too. 

I wanted the audience to connect with Antigone as they would with a normal character and forget about the fact that she bears an ancient Greek name. You don’t have to have read the play before you see the film. If you do, you get another layer, but if you don’t, it stands on its own. But you’re right. I wanted to keep the ancient Greeks because I did not want to lose the link with Sophocles. 

I think it says something about our shared humanity that such a story with a young female character [who is] so intelligent was written more than 2000 years ago. It felt good to me when I first read Antigone; I thought strong female characters are not just something of today. I wanted to keep this link, a story that could happen in our world. And it is a story that happens in our world: like Greta Thunberg, there are young female characters in our contemporary world fighting when they feel the system is unfair or not doing what it should for the people. Some [young women] have the courage to step aside from their normal life and just fight for what they think is the right thing to do.

Nahéma Ricci and Sophie Deraspe on the set of Antigone. Photo by Lou Scramble.

7R: Can you tell me about your lead actress Nahéma Ricci and what your process was for working with her?

Sophie Deraspe: I found the actress playing Antigone via an open casting. She applied, just like more than 800 people, but I was looking not only for her, but all her siblings, her two brothers and a sister. At the same time, I thought why not find the other young women who are in a juvenile centre with her? I found all the young people who are in the protests or dancing or part of the demonstration. It felt like I met a lot of what is the youth today, and among all those people, she was there. 

She’s quite a unique actress. She has a great future in front of her. Not only does the camera love her, but she’s very talented, and she worked hard. The two of us worked to bring this character to something naturalistic. At the same time, Antigone is a hero, and we have to believe in her being this regular young woman who has to step into such big shoes in order to protect her family and her dignity — the big shoes of a hero. We’ll hear from her in the future.

7R: You mentioned rehearsals. What kind of rehearsals did you do for the film?

Sophie Deraspe: Since they are not trained actors, they have to know about their instrument, which is their body, their voice, their gaze. At first, I wanted to set a space where they would trust me and trust themselves, to step into their characters, try things, and not feel like they are judged. It was first getting to know each other, and then working with the other siblings so it would really feel we are with a family with their imperfections, but a lot of love, too. It was spending time together, eating together, doing the scenes and some improvisation. But really, feel[ing] comfortable was my main goal.

7R: How much time did you spend rehearsing?

Sophie Deraspe: Depends. Of course I saw Nahéma more. We had many months prior to shooting. I wanted to do it this way, and I was backed by the producers in the casting process, even before we had all the financing. They knew it was important to me and the film. It was so much work, but I feel it was so worth it. 

With Nahéma, we met every week for many months. and sometimes with the others, but a lot of times, the two of us. When I invited other famous professional Quebec actors to do a test, she was with me; she was the one doing the lines. She was Antigone even when we were auditioning other characters.

Discover more great Canadian films

The last year was one of the best for Canadian cinema in history. Discover these great films through conversations with the filmmakers, guided by the Seventh Row editors in our inaugural annual book, The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook.

Get your copy now!

/

Interview: Honey Boy is a confident step into fiction filmmaking for Alma Har’el

Poetic documentarian Alma Har’el discusses her first fiction feature, Honey Boy, Shia LaBeouf’s autobiographical exploration of his childhood trauma. This interview was conducted at LFF 2019.

Honey Boy is a confident step into fiction filmmaking for Alma Har’el.

I was first introduced to Alma Har’el’s work with the dreamlike documentary LoveTrue in which three Americans’ search for love is chronicled through both observational footage and surreal, neon-drenched recreations and tableaus. A profoundly emotional and empathetic film, it marked Har’el in my mind as a leading voice in creative nonfiction. Suffice to say, I was surprised and intrigued when her latest project was announced: Honey Boy, Har’el’s fiction debut, is an autobiographical film penned by Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf, detailing his traumatic relationship with his father (played by LaBeouf) when he was a child actor.

Har’el’s experimental sensibilities, which developed during her time as a boundary-breaking documentarian, certainly lend a lot to this autobiographical story. “I was really excited to go from [documentary to fiction] because I feel like I always blur the lines,” Har’el told us at the London Film Festival. “I don’t treat either of these genres as a set of rules you have to obey. Before, I was doing explorations of what a documentary means, and here, it was an attempt at exploring what a scripted film could do.” 

Honey Boy avoids the trappings of kitchen-sink realism by blending a handheld documentary style with moments of surrealism. Often, the most surreal sequences take place on film sets where 12-year-old Otis (Noah Jupe, a LaBeouf stand-in) is shooting, or the film sets that the older Otis (Lucas Hedges) works on. It heightens the stark difference between the glamorous Hollywood world Otis works in and the poverty and abuse of his home life, living in a motel with his alcoholic father.

One of the most striking aesthetic choices in the film are a series of sequences in which father and son commute on a motorbike, often shot at magic hour and beautifully scored by Alex Somers. These are some of the calmest, loveliest sequences in a film populated with harrowing exchanges: it’s the only time when Otis is allowed to show physical affection to his father by holding onto him. Because they don’t talk on the bike, there’s no chance for them to harm each other with insults and accusations. 

Honey Boy, Alma Har'el, Noah Jupe, Shia LaBeouf
Noah Jupe (left) and Shia LaBeouf (right) in Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy.

“It came from talking to Shia about the fact that his father never really hugged him,” Har’el explained. “[His father] was super conscious because he was a felon and had been a sex offender as a result of what happened to him in one of his blackouts. He was in jail for three-and-a-half years, and when he came out, he was very aware when he was in public with his son to never touch him, because he was afraid. The only time Shia would really get to hug his father was when they were riding a bike back from the studio or to the studio. Those moments were actually when he felt closest to him physically and bonded with him.”

Despite her innovations with style, Har’el was committed to emotional realism and accurately representing LaBeouf’s childhood trauma. Similar to another semi-autobiographical film from earlier this year, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, in which Hogg tried to exactly replicate her ‘80s London flat, Har’el recreated LaBeouf’s childhood motel home to the best of her ability. “Me and my incredible production designer, Jc Molina, and Natalie O’Brien, the costume designer, were working with a lot of real photos of [LaBeouf’s] father and of the motel they lived in, trying to recreate a lot of details. It was very close to reality. In the title sequence at the end, you can see he [original] photos. You can tell how much recreation was done.”

“It was very important for me to capture the right socio-economic background that Shia was growing up in,” Har’el continued when speaking on the reasons she wanted to recreate the motel so accurately. “What the motel looked like, the texture of it, and the fact that it feels at the edge of town. Even though it’s in Los Angeles, it’s outside the reality of most people. There’s an otherworldliness that you get sometimes from stepping into parts of society that are not really being taken care of. That’s what’s stuck out to me.”

At the centre of the film are a trio of excellent performances: Lucas Hedges plays Otis at 22, in rehab, processing the trauma of his childhood; Jupe continues to be one of the most impressive child actors of his generation, after being the only good thing in Suburbicon and standing out in Wonder; and LaBeouf gives one of his most moving performances to date. “Noah and Shia worked for a month and a half before and hung out almost every day,” Har’el said of the rehearsal process. “They juggled, played magic, and read through the scenes. They had a big history when they came to [film]. They already had a big relationship.”

Although Hedges and Jupe never appear on screen together, it was important to Har’el that they develop a shared physical language. “We did a lot of physical work with [Noah and Lucas] together, so they have some physical moments and behaviours that match. They did a lot of work together.” After all, Jupe plays the beginnings of trauma and Hedges playsg the long-lasting physical effects of that trauma — there’s immense tension in the frame of this angry young adult. Hedges moves with a kind of painful-looking tautness that seems the product of resentment and psychological damage left to fester untreated for over a decade. 

Alma Har’el is a leading voice in creative nonfiction

Read more about this subgenre of documentary filmmaking in our Doc Masters ebook, in which we interview master documentarians such as Frederick Wiseman and Gianfranco Rosi.