myDylarama

Storytelling at its finest: Fadia's Tree directed by Sarah Beddington

Abla Kandalaft, Anne-Sophie Marie — 2022-11-23T13:37:32Z

Dreaming of a homeland she is denied, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, sets a challenge to find an ancient tree that stands as witness to her family's existence, guided only by inherited memories, a blind man and a two-headed dragon. Sarah Beddington's first feature film is the result of over a decade of filming and years of editing, in collaboration with her producer Susan Simnett. The story of Fadia and her search is interspersed with footage of bird migration and interviews with Israeli and Palestinian ornithologists, as both strands dovetail beautifully to tell a story of migration, displacement and homesickness.

Sarah met Fadia by chance. The Palestinian woman initiated a conversation in a Beirut cafe and soon after, invited the visual artist to spend a couple of weeks with her in Burj Al-Barajneh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

There are many layers to this film, all interwoven elegantly and seamlessly. Short cartographic or animated segments display basic and factual information tracing the history of how and why Fadia has ended up there - Franco-British colonisation in the Middle East, the Balfour declaration, the Nakba, the Right of Return, the generations of diasporic Palestinians and so on.

Fadia's Tree sits alone amongst the many documentary feature films about Palestinian displacement. It is a rare, poetic film, which blends the very best elements of storytelling and masterful editing to tell a more esoteric and somehow optimistic account of displacement and migration, through the very personal story of Fadia and they migratory journeys of the birds flying over Palestinian land. Evocative sequences of contrasting images - the separation wall, the tight web of dangerously exposed live wires hanging overhead in the camp, the looming buildings vs the open skies, the whirling flight of birds, the sea - paint a thousand pictures of seemingly abstract concepts, yearning for home, belonging, living in purgatory, that are all too concrete to the likes of Fadia.

Producer Susan Simnett took part in a Q&A after the screening of the film at ActOne Cinema in Acton, London. She informed us that Fadia had in fact seen the film and was keeping a close eye on its reception. Thanks to its universal scope and intimate moments, her moving story also serves as a deeply personal initiation to audiences who might otherwise not be familiar with the timeline of Palestinian history.

Fadia's Tree was nominated for a BIFA.

Lynn+Lucy, dir. by Fyzal Boulifa - LFF 2019

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2019-10-16T13:25:55Z

The Mayfair Hotel, where I'm about to meet Lynn + Lucy writer and director Fyza Boulifa and newcomer Roxanne Scrimshaw (Lynn), seems very far away from the film's environment. Set in Harlow, the subtly dark and beautifully acted narrative follows two young mothers who have also been best friends all their lives, in spite (or maybe because of) their very different personas: Lucy the party animal, Lynn almost the wallflower. But when a tragic accident occurs and the local community reacts, their bond is tested to its limit. Boulifa's portrayal of the two women feels refreshingly authentic, giving us fully-rounded, three-dimensional, complex female characters.

What made you want to tell this story?

F. B.: I read a story about a woman who lost her child and who'd been accused of murdering him, along with her boyfriend in Bristol. She was arrested but subsequently released back in the community as she was found innocent. Despite this, she was harassed to the point that she ended up killing herself. The story really stayed with me. It wasn't until I thought of having the character of her best friend as the main character that it began to feel more like a film idea. It was also an opportunity for me to explore an environment like the one I grew up in. Because the story dealt with the death of a baby and social hysteria, it had to have at its heart these women, these mothers who live and die by their ability to take care of their children.

What resonated with you in terms of environment?

F.B.: I grew up in Leicester in a very working class area and have Moroccan origins. I wanted to explore my experience of England in this kind of world. But the film is slightly decontextualised, it lacks specificity of context so can talk about bigger things.

How did you find each other?

R.S.: This was my first bit of acting. I came across a Facebook post on our community page from someone working for a casting agency, looking for two females to cast. I emailed saying I was interested and received a reply wishing me good luck. I didn't really trust it, part of me thought it might be a scam. A week and half later, my mum showed me more information about it in the local paper, so thought it might be more legit. So I went back to my original message, sent a couple of pictures and said “if you want me, call me,” and they did.

F.B.: We had a huge casting process. I looked at both professional actors and non-professionals. It's a feature, and it's very dramatic, so although I really like working with non-professional actors I thought I'd look at professionals as well. But to be honest, there are so few working class actors in the UK today… It's really changed, you go back 30 years, there were many more. Acting is becoming more and more elite in England. However, it did also feel apt to have a non-professional playing Lynn, I wanted Lynn to “be”, I didn't want anyone “playing down”, I didn't want anyone playing working class cliches. So we were very happy to find Roxanne.

Tell us more about the filming process.

F.B.: I had Roxanne work alongside Nichola Burley, who's an experienced actress. However, she had been street-cast (in Dominic Savage's Love and Hate). So I found this mirroring of Roxanne's experience interested and Nicola really understood what she was going through.
R.S.: We don't have access to these kinds of opportunities where I come from. I didn't realise how big things were, so it was very exciting. The first person I met was Nicola and so many things she said rung true to me, so we really hit it off. She held my hand throughout the entire process, gave me tips and advice. Every actor I worked with was amazing and everyone worked together.

F.B.: There was no sense of hierarchy. It started with Roxanne and Nicola who have similar backgrounds and that set the tone for everyone else. Roxanne didn't have a script and we shot chronologically. She was discovering the story as we went. I didn't want Roxanne to judge Lynn and I thought perhaps the script would be problematic to interpret for a first-time actor.

What did you want people to take home from the film?

R.S.: Since watching the film, it's made me realise how boxed in I am in my life and in my situation. I would just be doing my 9 to 5, barely living, just about paying my rent, just existing. My child would follow the same process, find a job in the area, find a husband in the area. It made me realise there is more to life. First time Lynn breaks out of the community, of the area, she doesn't know how to interpret that. And that's when we become fully aware of the impact of our choices and decisions.

F.B.: I feel it is open-ended. Lynn is looking for an identity and because of the limited opportunities she has, she finds it in the worst possible place. It's a very human tragedy, that we need to create another to know who we are. And Lucy becomes the “other” to Lynn who helps create her identity. Increased political polarisation these days means it feels like people are attaching themselves to certain identities and that's when things can become violent.

LSFF 2017: Girlhood. Q&A with Louise Salter, lead actress of Butterfly

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2017-01-18T22:58:01Z

Part of LSFF's 'Girlhood' series, which had a screening on Sunday 8th January at the Hackney Picturehouse, Butterfly follows a young swimmer's struggle with epilepsy, her entourage, and her passion.

I had the chance to chat online with actress Louise Salter (who plays Jane) before the screening, so here's our Q&A below.

Tell us a little bit about Jane. What was it about her that you connected most?

Jane is an introverted yet ambitious 16-year-old who decides to not let epilepsy get in the way of her dreams of becoming a competitive swimmer. She suffers from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy which is a condition often provoked by stress, alcohol and tiredness, amongst other factors, which are all well known factors in most teenager's lives, including Jane's. After having a long period with no problems, her epilepsy strikes back and puts her life in danger. With her dad's overprotectiveness, societal pressures and worrying health condition she begins to feel even more trapped within her cage. Spreading her wings, against her dad's wishes, took a lot of courage and strength of character and I really felt the struggle she faced to not allow her condition to define her fate.
I think I connected most to Jane's relentless drive. Just as I feel strongly about my desire to play interesting characters, I completely understood that her motivation was inextinguishable - despite the odds appearing stacked against her. In life, I guess there will always be the illusion of something trying to hold you back from doing what you want to be doing, whether that's a person or a thing, it just takes the realisation that we have the power and limitless potential to do whatever we want to do. When something as burdening as epilepsy threatens your freedom and future, Jane's determination and strength of character taught me that nothing can hold you back.

How was your working relationship with Rupert Proctor, your onscreen father? You have a great connection; how did you build this?

Rupert and I hadn't actually worked together, or even met, before the first day of filming Butterfly. The thing with Rupert is he is an extremely warm and open actor, so we immediately formed a trusting relationship that helped establish Jane and her dad's connection. However, for me especially, it was an advantage that we were still sort of strangers as we didn't have long to get to know one another – this helped to create a distance between the characters, which was required for their scenes. So Rupert projected the warmth and support that Jane's dad would channel but the characters' emotional detachment was aided by the fact that we didn't really know each other that well!

How much did you know about epilepsy before Butterfly? What was your process with it?

I think it's best to say that playing a character with epilepsy taught me a lot about the truth of the condition. I was very aware from the start that epilepsy is underrepresented in film and so it was always paramount for me to be completely truthful, by learning about the ins and outs of Jane's condition. I embraced the pressure on my shoulders to present the truth about epilepsy and hopefully that's reflected in my portrayal of Jane's character.

Once I was publicly confirmed for the role of Jane, you would not believe how many people, who have in some way been affected by epilepsy, reached out to me. One particular man who suffered from epilepsy himself was critical to my research. He really went into depths about how epilepsy affected him and I even had the opportunity of hearing his mother's perspective on how his condition makes her feel. I based Jane's experiences of epilepsy on his experiences, that way I knew I was never far from the truth. I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to play a role in an area which seems to be inexplicably unexplored.

And Swimming: I saw you had a swimming instructor for the film. Were you already a good swimmer though?

I was a reasonably strong swimmer, thanks to my dad who'd relentlessly teach me when I was younger, but I wouldn't have said that my Butterfly stroke was up to Jane's standard. I've always enjoyed a challenge and I did succeed in strengthening my Butterfly stroke thanks to two intensive months of coaching with my trainer Chris Doyle. Training every single day, just like Jane would, was a great form of character development for me. It was also important for me to develop similar muscles to Jane, so that my body represented that of a swimmer, and allowed me to physically transform into her character.

How did you come to join the creative team and how was working with the writer/director? How did your experience working on Butterfly change you? (if at all)

Funny story, really. I was scrolling down my Facebook one afternoon when I saw that a mutual friend had liked Karl Poyzer's (Director of Photography for Butterfly) shared post of Butterfly's crowdfunding page. His like alone brought the film to my feed and the poster instantly attracted my attention. I saw they were raising funds to shoot the film, so I emailed the director, out of impulse just in case they hadn't cast for the film yet, and it turned out they hadn't. So I recorded a self tape, which led to an audition with Alex Withers and I landed the role!

Through my experience with Butterfly, I was awakened to seeing film as a powerful tool of change; which could mean inspiring a shift in consciousness or providing a voice to the otherwise unheard. It wasn't until the film had its trailer released online, that I realised just how important films are for creating platforms of unification. One response we had on our Facebook page was "thank you for making this film. My son is an athlete who suffers from epilepsy. Your trailer alone moved me to tears. The lack of awareness makes Epilepsy quite a lonely journey. I hope this film will go the distance in promoting awareness and brings a sense of community to those afflicted”. This comment from someone who had connected to us via Butterfly's Facebook page, was enough to reassure me that we were achieving what we had set out to do – create and be part of a film which creates unity within communities and inspires an open discussion about the struggles and reality of a topic that potentially otherwise would not have been thought about.

I think you're also a producer (?) We see more and more filmmakers with two specialities and more. In terms of filmmaking, how do you envision your career and yourself? (actor-producer, storyteller, actor above all else, something new...)

It's not unheard of that creative individuals become a hybrid of the roles, I think sometimes it's a means to an end. In my case it was an opportunity to utilise the resources I had gathered over the years to share a thought-provoking story, push my acting career forward and a chance to meet and work with new, interesting people. I created a film called How to be Human with an amazing team of individuals in order to facilitate a role in a film that I wanted to play. How to be Human (directed by Bruno Centofanti) is a short drama that reverses the refugee crisis to put people into the shoes of a refugee. I did produce this film but it was more because to facilitate stepping into another interesting role. Myself and co-producer Jeffrey Michaels were very fortunate to be working with experienced filmmakers who took a risk and trusted in us to this film. The film features BAFTA winner Sophie Kennedy Clark (Philomena) and Tony Award winner Frances Ruffelle, and is set to be released this year.

If I can continue to play influential roles in powerful, mind-opening and boundary-pushing projects, I will have lived a very fulfilling career!

What's next for you?

2017 already seems to be proving itself to be a busy year, which I'm of course thrilled about. I'll be featuring on another panel at the BFI, alongside a selection of the How to be Human team, to discuss the film and our experience thus far with it. April is when How to be Human is set to premiere at the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival and then we'll see where the film takes us after that. I'm also delighted to have my next feature film role confirmed, which should hopefully be shooting this summer. Fingers crossed this year continues to be as busy (the good kind of busy) as it began!

Q&A with Suzie Hanna, director-animator Known Unto God - LSFF2017

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2017-01-15T19:05:42Z

Commissioned by 1418NOW as a five-year programme connecting people with the First World War through the arts, Known Unto God is a mud and pigment animation interpreting Bill Manhire's poem about the deaths of young people during the war. It is made up of 14 short epitaphs for unknown NZ soldiers killed at the Somme, and unnamed refugees drowning as they flee from wars now, 100 years later.

Below are a few questions with Suzie Hanna the film's animator and director, to find out more about her background, her process with this commission, and about animation in general.

Mydylarama: How did you become in touch with 1418NOW and receive the commission?

Suzie Hanna: I was approached by Writers Centre Norwich as they knew I have previously made poetry films in collaboration. They also approached several other filmmakers.
I was asked to submit a proposal saying what I would want to include in a film about WW1 and my proposal centred on my grandfather's experiences of war and how returning soldiers were badly treated in terms of financial and medical support. I was interviewed and assigned Bill Manhire as the poet I should work with. This was in February 2016 and the film deadline was the end of April, and so in the end I think I had three weeks to make the film by the time the poem arrived. As I made clips I put them up on Dropbox so Stella Duffy and Phil Archer could see them, and so Phil could work on sound for those clips.

M: From the poem, how did you develop the animation? Is there a style of animation towards which you tend to gravitate?

SH: I don't know if I have a style, I just like to work in mixed-media really and use material that suits the film design. Looking at my website there is quite a lot of simple graphic flatness to my work, and I love silhouette, probably inspired by Lotte Reiniger, Saul Bass, and William Kentridge amongst others. I also work in stop-motion and have used human actors as puppets by pixelating their movement, and made dance videos. I see animation as a form where you can choreograph all sorts of scale and techniques together. And if I am working from a poem, then the materiality of the subject or the cultural historical context will lead me to find an aesthetic that has some relationship to the poet, the place, the content or all three.

M: You also teach animation… I know close to nothing about it, so I'm quite curious about the learning and creative process.

SG: That is a big subject area….. animation has a huge skills base, so just at a technical level there is potentially everything to learn from traditional drawing through to rigging CGI characters. Students tend to start with drawing, character design, looking at gesture and expression and movement, understanding how movement breaks down into frames, as well as the power of metamorphosis and transformation. They work in groups to create collaborative results, animating each others' designs as well as their own for instance. They have the opportunity to make stop motion puppets and test their body language before moving on to CGI puppet design. Then there is typographic animation, lip synch, animating to a pre-composed soundtrack, mixing media through blue screen, compositing and edit….so students can make a choice about their area of strength, skill and interest and focus on that. The animation industry covers everything from feature character animation right through to small animated graphics for websites. It includes games animation, architectural projection, as well as the amazingly rich area of independent animation production, music video and TV shorts, so difficult to be specific!

M: You're a musician as well. How do they relate in your work?

SH: I love working with sound designers, and sometimes record elements of the soundscape myself, bowing gongs, playing the fiddle or the saw. I certainly enjoy that side of collaboration and really value the work of sound designers and composers.

M: What's next? Could you tell us a bit about The Blue From Heaven?

I am working with a Stevie Smith scholar, Noreen Masud, at Oxford University who chose the poem. Here is a link to a page in her blog from the day we recorded Glenda.

The poem uses the characters of King Arthur and Guinevere in a study of their separateness, he craving the 'Blue from Heaven' riding off through a forest of cornflowers, and she, colourblind, relegated to the palace. Stevie Smith's drawings often feature sad girls in paper crowns, kings and centurions, as well as fantastic dogs and cats, and these are some of the images that I will be animating. They are executed with a lively gesture and a strong outline and come to life very convincingly as 2D animation. But my plan at the moment is to also include collage made of the kind of scraps that could have been in Stevie's wastepaper basket, magazines and newspapers, and discarded typed copy, so the film relates to her everyday life as well as to the poem itself. My deadline is May 2017 so getting on the case now!

If you missed it at LSFF, Known Unto God is now available on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/173053863

For more on Suzie and her work:
http://www.suziehanna.com

And 1418NOW:
https://www.1418now.org.uk

Q&A with Stuart Gatt, writer and director of The Dead Sea - LSFF2017

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2017-01-14T17:33:32Z

The Dead Sea, which screened on Thursday evening as part of LSFF's Global Movements night at the Hackney Picturehouse, follows Emanuel and Olu who, after almost reaching Europe by boat, are returned to Libya and incarcerated in one of its infamous migrant detention centers.

Unable to meet up at the event, writer/director Stuart Gatt and I chatted online after the event. Here's our Q&A below.

Mydylarama: What is your background and how does it relate to The Dead Sea?

Stuart Gatt: I'm a Londoner and was raised by my Indian Mother, who was an immigrant, so have always felt a deep connection to issues of immigration due to the fact my existence is so intrinsically linked to the phenomena. But with the specific issues depicted in the The Dead Sea of refugees fleeing Libya, I was writing as a European (my Father is white). The current state Libya finds itself in is directly linked to our invasion in 2011 to overthrow the Gaddafi government and we are now funding detention centres (to prevent refugees coming to Europe) that are responsible for the human rights abuses detailed in the film.

M: What's inspired you to make the film? Since it's based on true events, how did you hear about them? How did you then adapt them for film?

SG: The inspiration was definitely the demonisation of refugees in the corporate media. As a filmmaker, I feel that my art can be utilised to affect society enough to spark a debate or act as a countervailing force to mass media. The plight of Libyan Refugees and Migrant Detention Centres were virtually absent from the media narrative and I felt we could shine a light on them. The colonial mindset is still so deep-rooted that we are almost indifferent to the idea of invading another country that I felt it was only right that we see the brutal reality of what our actions have created.

We reached out to Medecins Sans Frontieres who really got behind the project and pushed our Kickstarter campaign out to their supporters. MSF also helped provide reports that detailed testimonies from those that have survived these camps. They are still some of the most harrowing stories I've ever read and I tried to be as true to their experiences as possible by not imposing my artistic licence. It was also a collaboration with the actors, by making as many resources as possible available to them, they were able to inhabit the characters in an authentic and honest way.

M: Where did you shoot?

SG: The film is set in Libya but was actually shot in Brixton! We had an amazing Production Designer in Lily Faith Knight who's done an incredible amount of research into the look of the detention centres and meticulously recreated them. Creating an authentic environment was essential to evoke the right performances in the actors as well as sell it to an audience. Unfortunately our budget didn't allow for a shoot outside of the UK.

M: Filming in closed spaces is often quite challenging. What was your process (and your DoP's) to do this successfully?

SG: In general that is certainly a truism and even more so when using anamorphic lens, as we did for this film, although in this case it wasn't such an issue as myself and DP Yann Maritaud discussed framing the actors intimately to add to the sense of claustrophobia. We also planned for minimal practical lighting, so even a flicker of light that picked up some detail on our actors skins was enough to sell their emotion.

M: There is one scene involving sexual assault which is incredibly effective, with very few words and no gruesome images. How did you conceive it?

SG: One disturbingly common theme among the testimonies of those incarcerated in the detention centres was the sexual abuse of women. Women had become objects to be used by their captors either for pleasure or as leverage to extort money, as in the scene in question. It's not an easy decision as a filmmaker to include a scene like that but once you do, you're totally committed to it and to ensure sure you can parlay as much of the emotion from the characters into the audience.

An audience's imagination is far more powerful than any image I can muster. As a filmmaker you're constantly trying to keep your audience engaged, the moment your film removes the ability for them to guess, think and feel, you've lost them. So I felt keeping the camera on the man who's watching the guards rape his wife was more horrific than covering the act itself. I think it's the main reason why that scene affects people the way that it does.

Again, full credit goes to Sope Dirisu, Yasen Atour and Joan Iyiola for their performances in that scene as they were nothing short of incredible.

M: Following up on question #5, your film made me wonder how a human being can show such brutality onto another. Have you thought of this, making The Dead Sea?

SG: It's a very scary reality and one that is deep rooted in the human psyche. It seems that we are literally capable of anything if operating under some doctrine and that is particularly frightening as we are a heavily propagandised society. If we look at cases in history, a false sense of superiority over another people, coupled with a supposed righteous cause seem to be responsible for history's worst acts. The European destruction and colonisation of Africa, Asia and the Americas fit perfectly within those parameters.

In the case of the guards in the film, I wanted to explore what creates this callous disregard for human suffering and not portray them as mindless torturers. I decided to write in the ‘Ahmed' character, played by Harman Singh, who is new to the centre and struggling with the acts that are being asked of him. Everyone of the older guards has, at one point, been Ahmed and relied on various mechanisms to tolerate their continued heinous acts.

M: What's next for The Dead Sea?

SG: The film will continue to screen at festivals and it will soon be released online. Keep up to date at www.6thif.com or follow us on twitter @6thif

M: What's next for you?

SG: My next project will be a feature film based on a script I've written about a couple that are on the run in West Texas. That will shoot this year with a 2018 release date likely.

Q&A with Treasa O'Brien, director of Noor at Mytlini Port - LSFF2017

Anne-Sophie Marie, Mydylarama team — 2017-01-13T10:45:04Z

Treasa O'Brien is a Ireland and London-based filmmaker whose works (doc and narrative) ‘explore art politics, poetry, social change, the individual and the collective, ecstatic truth, storytelling, reality, the usual.' Her film Noor at Mytlini Port screened as part of LSFF's Global Movements at the Hackney Picturehouse last night, where I had the chance to chat with her about the refugee situation, Noor, filmmaking and activism just before the event.

Mydylarama: Your film seems like quite a journey: what sparked your desire and how did you make it to Greece?

Treasa O'Brien: I went to Greece beginning of November in 2015 because I had a film that was being shown at a film festival in Athens, and in the leadup to it I'd obviously read about what was called the refugee crisis (I don't really like this word, refugee “crisis”, I would call it maybe a “situation” because the crisis has been invented by Europe rather than the refugees). I thought if I'm going to Greece, I'm gonna go onto Lesvos and see if I can help out. It was coming to Christmas, so I could use my holidays and stay there for a month and volunteer.

When I got there, one of the big things I heard from people was the reaction towards filmmakers and journalists, the liberties that they were taking in a vulture mentality. For example, the day I arrived in Lesbos, there was a Greek photographer who was taking photos of women when they were changing just after coming off the boats. He said that it was his freedom to report. That was one story I heard on the day I arrived, and there were many others. It's something I think about in my work anyway.

And I wasn't going there as a filmmaker.. but I am a filmmaker, so of course I was thinking maybe if there's something particularly interesting. Then I decided my role there wasn't to film. The world knows enough, it's not about not knowing. It's about what we actually do. So in the end I spent two months there, working at an activist/volunteer level to help set up the camp, welcome people, cook and work the night-shift to welcome people who were arriving then (It was the middle of the winter and everyone knows the boat journey is precarious, but in the middle of the winter in the middle of the night... most people have hypothermia by the time they arrive, if they arrive)...then I met Noor.

M: How did you meet Noor? What led you to Noor? How did you work together?

T: That was a month in. I stopped off at the port which at that time was very busy, because at that time in Europe, the borders were open. So most people passing through Lesbos after doing a very arduous journey (people know about the boat journey, but don't know about the journey through the mountains from Syria into Turkey and so on). At that time if you arrived in Lesbos, you were pretty joyous and hopeful and you were going to get a piece of paper that allowed you to pass through Greece up to the Macedonian border etc.. And a lot of people were going to join family and friends that had gone earlier, up in Germany and Sweden and other countries who at that point were welcoming refugees. That's all different now. Completely different. When I was there it seemed crazy and precarious but now it seems like hopeful times compared to how it is now.

So a couple of days before New Year's Eve, I was walking down, it was about 3 o'clock. And at that time a lot of people were getting their piece of paper to go on to Athens and to Europe. It was quite buoyant, and I was looking out at the sea, having a reflective moment, and this girl next to me started chatting to me with quite good English. This was Noor. She was very curious about me and what I was doing. And she'd had a good experience in her 3 days in Greece with volunteers and people being very kind with her, compared to when she had to travel through Turkey with smugglers. So she was quite positive and curious ( “Who are those people who are welcoming us?”) I told her I was a filmmaker but that I didn't think it was my place to film. There were a lot of people doing that, I don't know what I could say...and I asked her “what would you say if you were a filmmaker?” and she said she would like to tell women's stories. And she said “come on, make something now! I'll help you, I'll translate.” And I said rather that translate, I'm more interested about what you might like to ask, so why don't you ask the questions and I'll get it translated later. We hung out, got something to eat, got to know each other a little better. I took her down to the camp where I was working where we always had a huge daytime meal, and we talked to people about what we might do and we went back to the port to make this thing on my mobile phone. I didn't even see this as a film at the time, I saw it as an activist video. But I think the reason why people respond to it and why I felt ethically OK making it was that Noor wanted to make it. She made it with me, and she takes agency within this very short film. She leads it.

M: Why did you choose a mobile phone? How was it?

T: She was leaving that evening at 8 so I had no time to get a camera or anything. I was worried it'd come out terrible. Afterwards I didn't know if it would be usable. Due to the nature of more activist type stuff, I took it off my phone that very evening, edited it pretty quickly and put it up on my Facebook. I'm very glad I did because my phone got stolen two days later. And in those two days myself and Noor were in touch a lot. She was updating me on her journey. She sent me a beautiful message on New Year's Eve. And that's the night it got stolen. So I then didn't have her number, so unfortunately, I don't know how Noor got on. I hope she's well and happy and in Sweden. I tried to find her, the end of this summer. I presume she made it to Sweden as she was already in Germany two days after we met, and at that time - before the EU-Turkey 'deal' on 20 March 2016) the borders were open and Noor and most refugees could travel overland legally through Europe. Noor wanted to become a doctor so I hope she is thriving in Sweden and starting her studies.

M: In the film, a woman, speaking about the catastrophe in Syria, says:
"May God not show it to a Jew or an enemy"

T: I got it translated afterwards so I didn't know what she was saying at the time. I got the gist she was pregnant because of their gestures, and Noor told me afterwards, but it was only when I got it translated later that I realised what she had said and it was a turn of phrase, I don't know if it's a racist turn of phrase, or a turn of phrase you just throw out, I don't know. And I didn't want to censor it. But I don't know.

(M: We have old expressions in French with similar issues. ) Did you meet others not included in the film?

T: Yes. Other things weren't quite interview-based. When I went back in April I met someone who was a photographer in Iran. And we started to talk about cameras, a bit of a geek conversation. It was night time. He said he always loved to do long exposure photographs. We started to play around with the camera and the borders had just been shut, so we made this beautiful photograph. I also filmed a group of guys smoking shisha that were chatting about their journey, watching things on their mobile, having serious conversations but jokingly. And I took part in a project called precarious trajectories

M: Noor at Mytilini has been showcased at a few festivals already. What do you plan with it moving forward?

T: It premiered at the London Film Festival now LSFF, tomorrow evening, it's in Berlin, British Shorts Festival (I'm trying to get them to change the name to British-Irish Shorts given all the stuff going on), then it's coming to the Belfast Film Festival next month and I've been asked to do a talk on video activism and relationships and so on. I'm glad to see that. It's great to change consciousness that then turns into some kind of action eventually.

M: . What's your next project? The film you're making in Ireland?

T: It's a longer piece on longing and belonging. I made it in a small town in the west of Ireland It would have been a very traditional down where for centuries people just grew up and left it. A lot has happened there with globalisation, Celtic tiger, austerity, and so on. Many migrants that came to this town are from Brasil, but also there are English migrants, Romanian, French, Polish and internal migration from other parts of Ireland. I'm making this film Town of Strangers (working title) more in the tradition of some of my favourite Iranian films, in a style that transcends fiction and documentary genres.
I would love it to premiere at Sheffield doc fest and hoping to finish it this Spring (it's at rough cut stage. I've been working on that for 2 years). I've been doing shorter things around it too. And I feel like they're all connected. There's a refugee from Afghanistan in this film that's been in Ireland 10 years now. So it's also what happens later. How we live together. How we miss home. How we adapt, how we try to belong, how we long for….

(M: Ah yes we can relate!)

T: I think most people do, it's why I'm making this film, most people can relate to this film on an emotional level, rather than a didactic activist level where you'd feel morally guilty. If you actually relate and think “this is me” then it can change your consciousness more. I hope. I'm an idealist!

More on Treasa's work:
www.treasaobrien.wordpress.com
http://www.vimeo.com/treasaobrien

Q&A with Roger Carvalho, Founder of Snoovies

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2016-10-05T15:47:12Z

Snack Movies and Life Online

If you make or watch short films, you should be familiar with Snoovies by now. Created in 2013 by three London actors (Roger Carvalho, Karsten Huttenhain and Viana Maya), this free App showcases quality short films (aka “Snoovies”) on all mobile devices, tablets and smartphone alike. With a gorgeous homepage that puts short films in handy “make me... (smile, laugh, cry, think, tremble)” categories, the trio recently won the Platinum Award for Best Designed Mobile App.

We caught Roger Carvalho (now based in LA) on his way to TIFF to find out more about the Snoovies philosophy and making film in the online era.

Mydylarama: So tell us a little bit about how Snoovies started?

Roger Carvalho: So...before I went to drama school and became an actor, I was in IT management. I studied business and I have some programming development skills. I was working for some telecom operators, and built apps for other companies. I met Karsten and Viana in drama school, and afterwards we kept in touch about whatever production we were working on. Plays, Screening nights, etc.... We ended up seeing a lot of quality short films together. And we thought: it's a shame we all make these amazing works that are only seen by a handful of people and then we all move on to other projects. It's all about you know, experience and trying new stuff, but never really about releasing a film for the general public...and I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if I could combine my passion and my experience in the film industry with my technology background. So I reckoned, there's a lot of people out there that travel to work or spend a large portion of the day waiting, playing around with their phone, with their tablet... Wouldn't it be amazing if we could give them a cinematic experience and at the same time increase the exposure of some filmmakers and actors? That's how Snoovies came about.

M: How about the name? 

RC: Snoovies stands for “snack movies”. Whenever you only have a few minutes but you would like a proper cinematic experience, you can have a ‘snack' movie. A Snoovie.

M: It's a great name. How did you come up with it?

RC: I don't fully remember, actually! Short films have been around since the birth of cinema, and never really took off. I knew that it was going to be hard to get people excited about short film, so I purposefully decided to rebrand the short film in a way that it would appeal to people who had never gone to a film festival before or have never seen a short film. And the idea was: what is the difference between a ‘film' and a ‘movie'? I think that's how we came up with it. When we say we go to see a ‘movie', we expect Hollywood and explosions, action, famed actors, oscars and ‘bling bling'... And when we say ‘film', we just think about something ‘artsy'... You know what I mean? ‘Film' is instantly put in that angle of... It's for those ‘weird' artsy people. Whereas ‘movies' feel more geared towards the general public. Because of that, I wanted to create a new word for short films that rebranded them as short movies.

M: Tell us about your early days...

RC : It was actually really hard! We started out as a magazine. The reason why we did that was two-fold. First of all, we wanted to be different. We knew we would never be like Netflix or Amazon, or any proper platform with millions and millions of films, because we simply didn't have that catalogue. So we thought: let's do it in a magazine format. We could showcase the films, while at the same time tell our audience more about the filmmakers and the actors: we could introduce them to the public. Interviews, behind the scenes and that kind of stuff.

M: How was sourcing the first films?

RC: Getting the first film signed up was tougher than we'd thought. A lot of filmmakers were kinda like “So, how many users do you have?” and we were like “well, we don't have any users coz we're just getting started”. Their response was often like “well, we don't really wanna bother, coz we might get distribution or we might get this and we might get that...” so a lot of filmmakers actually snubbed us at the beginning. But other filmmakers did want to give us a try and work with us. So we did ‘issues'. We featured 6 or 7 films every two months as a kind of magazine edition. Films that shared a topic, a ‘feel'... We did that for a year, from 2013 to 2014.

M: What happened in 2014?

RC: That summer, we decided to make the App a bit more general, and we released a new App that was closer to a Netflix model, where we just had loads of different films in different categories and people could watch whatever film they felt like. That's what we've been doing since then.

M: Ah yes, the new format is great, and congratulations on winning the design award! Looking at it there's something really cool...those little icons you have: “make me think”, “dazzle me” etc. How did that come about?

RC: Yeah that was interesting! When we worked on the catalogue, we realised that because short films tend to be experimental or ‘odd' in some way, they don't necessarily fit the ‘general' movie genres. We thought about the normal genres like comedy, action etc. And we realised that a lot of short films are kind of like... they're not fully comedy, but they can make you laugh... you know what I mean? So we asked ourselves: “how do we describe the genres?” And we came with: instead of comedy let's just say “make me smile”. Even though a film wasn't comedy, if it put a smile on your face, it fitted that category. And a lot of films could get you scared or get you thinking, but didn't fit an existing genre.
In terms of design, we believe films are beautiful. Film is an art, a craft. These cinematographers do amazing things... They capture these moments, they capture these colors. Something that is very difficult to replicate in any other art-form. So what I did with the design of Snoovies... For every film that we feature, we take snapshots and stills, and we use them to influence the design. So whenever you pick a film in our app, you see the background of the App turn into the film, you see stills fade in and out, and the icons that you tap to play the film or to watch the behind the scenes are basically scenes of the movie. That is what makes the App so well designed. Because the films are beautiful. Whenever you pick a Snoovie, you really feel you're already in the film before you even start watching it.

M: From a filmmaker's point of view: say I've made a film, it's ready to go...how do I get into Snoovies?

RC: You just submit! We have different methods of submission. You can go to snoovies.com and submit your film there. We're also partners with some of the bigger websites that offer automatic submissions to multiple festivals. We're on Film Festival Life and some other sites. We have a very simple form of curation. We're three founders, so every founder watches every film that is submitted objectively, and if two of us like it, it goes on. That's our curation process. The film needs to have a strong beginning, middle and end, and it needs to have some sort of twist or surprise within it for us to feature it. We don't do documentaries by the way. We want to feature those eventually, but right now we focus on fiction.

Q&A with Yony Leyser, dir. of Desire Will Set You Free, at the East End Film Fest

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2016-07-01T09:57:53Z

What drew you to filmmaking?

I got into a lot of trouble as a teenager. A counsellor suggested that my mom find me a creative outlet so I started practising theatre and photography. Then after a couple of years, I combined the two to make films. I made my first documentary when I was 16.

...and what led you to Berlin and its underground scene?

I came to Berlin for a semester when I was at university. It was the opposite of where I was living (NYC). There is common sense in politics. Politically aware people. A vibrant subculture, a rebellious, radical culture, a beautiful queer scene and beautiful architecture. I made the decision that summer-still the best summer of my life-to find a way to come back. I applied for a passport and was granted one because my grandparents where German Jews from Berlin, who fled in the mid- 1930s. In 2011, I screened my film William S. Burroughs: A Man Within at a festival here and just packed up two suitcases and stayed after the screening.

Your film has a few distinctive characters. How did you find them? Tell us more about Tim Fabian Hoffmann and Amber Benson's involvement (couldn't help thinking about Buffy's musical episode when she first appeared)?

Everyone got involved through personal connections. Most people are playing themselves and most of the film is improvised. Tim and Amber are two of the only actors in the film. Tim I met through a mutual friend. At first, we wanted to cast a trans actor, but none of the trans women we auditioned wanted to play a man for 80 percent of the movie. We saw him on camera and knew he would be perfect. I met him through a mutual friend Ralf. Amber saw my last film at Slamdance and told me if I was ever doing anything again she wanted to be involved.

How did you go about picking locations and working with your DoP and production designer?

The DoP is the great Ali Gözkaya, who is Turkish-German. I fell in love with his work on Futuro Beach. Ira Sachs recommended him to me. Our production designer was the controversial Afro-Swedish artist and my old flatmate Iulia Mitzner. Together they did a great-albeit chaotic-job on a tiny budget.

Especially when you alternate between party sequences and more sober scenes? What equipment did you use?

Alexa used Master Prime lenses (think Spring Breakers). Thanks for the sponsorship ARRI Berlin ;).

Is Berlin as colourful as it is in your film?
Only in dreams...

Since this is a docu-fiction, can you tell us a bit more about the writing process? How much did it evolve during filming? How much improvisation was there?

About 80 percent improvised. We asked people to play themselves and we decided to see what happens.

How was your experience of both starring and directing?

It was so much fun but also way too much work. I also wrote and produced. Next time, I'm only directing!

Tell us about the Kickstarter campaign for the post-production?

We launched the kickstarter, then the TV station ZDF saw it and gave us money to do reshoots and post production.

...and your next project?

I am finishing a documentary about Queercore / Homocore, which should be premiering in the winter.

PS: are cupcakes very popular in Berlin?

Cupcakes to me represented the American femininity that is present in the city. 5 years ago Germans had no idea what cupcakes were. I remember there was a shop called Cupcake that opened by my old collective flat. Germans would stare in the window display and ask each other 'what is a cupcake?' That's where that all came from.

Desire Will Set You Free is screened as part of the East End Film Festival, at the Rio on 24 June at 6.30 pm. More info here.

Q&A with Adrian Tanner, dir. of Redistributors, at the East End Film Fest

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2016-06-30T19:33:53Z

What was your background in film prior to Redistributors?

I started out as an editor and got indulgently trained at the BBC in Bristol on wildlife shows with David Attenborough. Then moved to London and cut a lot of TV.

What sparked the idea behind the film? Do you have a background in PR?

I worked for some years filming corporate CEO interviews where people talked utter drivel. I kept wondering ‘What if one day someone told the truth?' - this gave me the idea for the inciting incident of ‘Redistributors'.

Can you tell us a bit more about the development process? Biggest hurdles and luckiest moments in the process? Any "happy accidents" during filming?

I wrote the first draft while the Occupy Movement seemed to be offering a way forward in 2008. I visited the camps and planned to shoot there, but then had to watch them deteriorate into ‘weirdos only' after everyone with a more conventional life outside the camps left. We were all set to do a test shoot when I went past Finsbury Square (the second London camp) and saw that they had been evicted and it had disappeared overnight. This was probably a good thing though as it forced me to evolve my fictional rebels as well, and the idea of the ‘Redistributors' was born; effectively an Occupy Movement that has taken the fight onto the net and has the ability to produce real change through hacktivism. We later found a real squat in Camden where we shot those scenes.

Getting locations without much money is a massive pain. There's no point trying if someone has to go up the chain for permission – it won't happen. We got quoted 6k for a foyer for one night, but then I had the idea of contacting turnstiles companies, and someone who had just fitted some for a huge place in Canary Wharf sorted us out permission for free. Apparently if you're filming a corporate for a money-making company, that's fine, but if you're making a low budget feature from the heart with a load of student volunteers you don't get a look in. Obviously all the public places in the film were done without permits, but I used a hand-held camera smaller than many tourists', so no-one would have had the right to stop us.

In the story, the protagonist doesn't learn her lesson until quite late (would have even been too late if not for a lucky break). What was behind this choice? Do you think many of us are deluded to the extent that we can't tell right from wrong?

I think the layers of delusion needed to be quite deep for my heroine to overcome – but it's not unusual structurally to have that change of heart at the end of the second act, when the hero hits rock bottom. But you always have to see the potential for the change - and I think when we meet her family and realise that she's been rebelling against the rebels, by being so conventional and corporate you can sort of guess where she's going to end up. To make it as dramatic as possible, that choice of corporate bullshit with nice clothes versus honesty and shopping at Oxfam had to be borne out of violence.

Redistributors will be screening a week after the Brexit aftermath. There's been plenty of corporate/political corruption talks around this. Any comments?

I wish the film had predicted Brexit – but it certainly did highlight the fact that the inexorable flow of money to the richest has to be stopped. I do fear that like in 2008, when I hoped for a changing of the guard and some economic justice, volatile times simply make the rich richer. Let's hope somebody like our hero Micheal Manning comes along with the ability to infiltrate the digital fortresses of the rich and share their money around.

You were also DoP on Redistributors. Why did you make that choice? Would you ever consider a collaboration with a DoP?

I have worked with several great DoPs and would have loved to involve them in the film, but there simply wasn't the time or budget. Also DoP's have drunk the koolaid a bit when it comes to technology, and would have wanted more camera kit. The little cameras are so much better now you really don't need the clutter of a Red or an Alexa. I was able to go ahead with a £1700 camera and three lenses in a small bag and that made it a very fast shoot.

What's next for you?

I'm looking for an agent who might be able to get me working in TV - so that I can really learn my chops. No-one seems interested yet! I also have a script which is attracting a lot of attention – ‘The Sandwich Experiment' is a true story of a group of middle aged men in Kent in 1991 who were invited to take part in the first trials of a drug designed to treat angina. The drug turned out to have unexpected side effects, revitalising the men's marriages and self-esteem and 'Viagra' was born. I'm hoping to get a really veteran director on board for it and work as a producer on it as it is designed to be packed with stars!

Redistributors is screened as part of the East End Film Festival at Genesis Cinema, on 2 July at 5.30. The screening will be followed by a Q&A. More info here.

Q&A with Daniel Fitzsimmons, dir. of Native, at the East End Film Fest

Anne-Sophie Marie — 2016-06-30T16:05:36Z

I gather your background is a mix of Liverpool and California? How have both environments influenced you and your work on Native? (And does Liverpool produce better alien beaches than LA?)

In my experience Los Angeles and Liverpool are generally open and welcoming to outside influences and people, but on this movie that is not the sort of environment we needed the characters to inhabit. I wanted to burden Cane and Eva with an insidious social claustrophobia that can either be a help or a hindrance, depending on your perspective. I've travelled around a lot, I went to school in Brussels and spent time in Spain and France growing up. Maybe the idea of a character wanting to understand or be a part of a culture that is as scary as it is seductive is something that influenced Native. Actually, I think that central idea infuses a lot of the stories I want to tell. And Formby beach is as good an alien landscape as anywhere. We didn't set out to make Baywatch.

You mentioned Samuel Beckett. North Korea and London as two sources of inspiration for Native. Could you tell us a bit more about this?

In order to give Cane and Eva a relatable context, we had to create and give rules to their society. What is the hierarchy, the structure, where does the loyalty to authority come from, why does it work in such an ordered way… and through Cane's experience, how and why does it wane? Their lives are structured as part of a hive, serving the common good. ‘For the good of us all' is their mantra. And that is what they are indoctrinated or born to believe. Tales of people who have fled and documented extreme isolationist regimes such as North Korea inspired the journey that Cane goes on. Conversely, it fascinates me how these power structures are able to maintain the loyalty of millions and function. Beckett has influenced everything I've done on some level: Isolation, loneliness, the futility of existence in a godless universe, and all that lovely stuff. It felt particularly relevant to me when I moved to London.

How did you select your cast and crew for it? Can you tell us a bit more about budgeting and funding?

One of our producers, Jennifer Handorf, has a wonderful team of London-based filmmakers that were available and wanted to work on Native with us. Without her resolute determination that we could get such a talented group of people involved, I don't know whether we would have attempted to be so ambitious with such a meagre budget. This commitment was the same with every one of the crew, each of whom went above and beyond for the cause. Rupert is a genuine star, someone I wanted to write for since I've known him. He understood the character from an early version of the script, and his thoughts filtered through the subsequent drafts. I think what Rupert gives us is a very human performance. To say more than that would be saying too much! Once we had cast Cane, I met with Ellie, as I had been a fan since I saw her in Misfits and An Education. What she is able to transmit is an independence and agency that was vital for Eva. She has an amazing ability to communicate so much in a very economical way. As a director, that is currency. It is really when the story telling becomes cinematic. Great actors allow us to do this. And in spite of the age difference, Eva is very much Cane's equal in the film, a dynamic that was absolutely necessary.

You had two DoPs working on Native. How did that come to be and what was the reason behind it?

We worked through prep and did most of the planning with Nick Gillespie. Nick was able to commit to the first part of the shoot on the ship with us. But right up until production, with us being on a modest budget and needing to compromise, we knew that we could lose Nick to High Rise when it went into production in Belfast. It was just unfortunate that the two schedules ended up clashing. However Nick, the producers and I anticipated this and we arranged to change over from Nick to Billy midway through the shoot. Billy Jackson has photographed with Nick before and so the transition was a comfortable one. He turned up on his massive bike with his tattoos and ponytail and I knew we were in safe hands!

Cane and Eva are two names charged with meaning. How intentional was it?

If we accept that these two characters speak a language that we would not even begin to recognise, I wanted to give them names that would be equivalent to their own myths and legend. Transposing our biggest myth, the Bible, over to their society, I took names from the Book of Genesis for all the characters in the hive, and corrupted the original spellings slightly. I think the best myths, legends and fairy tales are nasty, pulse-quickening things that arrive at a cathartic, climactic release, and those first biblical stories of incest, violence and betrayal that many people still chose to live their lives by seem somehow appropriate to our movie.

Music is an essential (and stunning!) element in the story. How did you pick the piece that triggers Cane's physical and emotional journey? How did you work with your composer to score the film?

Baltic Fleet is Paul Fleming. He scored the film and recorded his own version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which is on the Golden Record sent on Voyager I. That was the jumping off point in plot terms for this idea of connection across the universe, but it is also a genuinely powerful and recognisable piece of music that we felt Cane could become obsessed by. Baltic Fleet had scored a short film I made, Schrödinger's Waltz, and it was obvious that he would be perfect for Native. Paul is so inspiring to work with, and the way his music encapsulates the tone of the film is just genius.

How did you work with your cast from the first contact to the final day of filming?

We didn't have the luxury of much rehearsal time but Rupert, Ellie and I talked a lot about the script before we started production. I had even less time with Daniel, Pollyanna, Leanne, Joe and Chiara, but they are all great actors so we were able to just get on with it.

Do you think we could be at risk of becoming a hive?

I understand the usefulness of social media, but on some base level I find it troubling. Personally, I don't like how social media has eroded privacy, or how it has changed the way we communicate, allowing us to view and parade our deepest and most private insecurities in front of everyone, and in perpetuity. In this sense, it can be unedifying and I suppose a bit hive-like. Instantaneous sharing creates a barometer of consensus or panic that changes constantly, and hooks us into a pattern of needing to know or broadcasting things that we could, and probably should keep to ourselves. People stare at phones and get swipe fatigue instead of using actual human verbal conversation. There is a danger that people start broadcasting themselves instead of talking to each other. I know I sound like an old codger but I just don't think that telepathy on that scale is something we should aspire to!

Native is screened as part of the East End Film Festival, at Genesis Cinema on 1 July at 9 pm and will be followed by a Q&A. More info here.