Festivals
Camera Lucida: Was the film funding difficult?
Pia Hellenthal: The funding went incredibly smooth. I think that was, partially, due to a very developed concept we had - we worked on it so precisely before showing it to anyone, due to knowing that this film can very easily feel like it’s nothing, so it needs to be rock solid before going out in the world. Plus we had a Trailer out of the shot material - which we shot with equipment from Vice - and a research stipend called Gerd Ruge Stipendium by Filmstiftung NRW, which is very helpful and prestigious at the same time. With their approval you kind of have a button on your shirt which says: „They are serious.” Then the producers Corso Film joined in and they are trusted Producers so within a couple of months, ZDF Kleines Fernsehspiel joined in as Co-Producers, who are known for being the most experimental commissioning editors somehow. And NRW Filmstiftung & BKM gave us production funding. I think people were happy that we talked about the Internet. A modern topic, so to say. But still, this film was quite risky for everyone involved. After Picture Lock and also Ryot Film gave us money for the music, we could not afford anymore.
|
There are two realities to that. One was meeting Eva and having the feeling of her not giving a shit about us filming her. She just talked, got naked, peed on the toilet in front of us. It felt like it could have been anyone sitting in front of her, she simply did not censor herself, so I felt like trust was not even a concept that applied. . |
Camera Lucida: Fluidity/freedom of fluid identities seems to be what matters most to young millenials. Is this, in your opinion, the influence of only the internet or something else, too?
Pia Hellenthal: Here is Eva’s response to that:
the way the internet is used is a consequence of the fragmented character of life in the current times and the fragmentation of the individual and of life itself is a consequence of the power relations that are in act. we can no longer talk about the working class / think of the working class as revolutionary subject because the working class no longer exists as working class the same way as it used to when its idea was first theorized, today the individual must turn itself into many different things in order to survive, not many people are able to just ‘pick a career’, not many people have the privilege of identifying with their job. but the fragmentedness of identity is both the limit of the working class to organize as working class and its strength, cause it allows it to ‘see beyond’ itself and question all the other factors that constitute identity, such as gender for example. what’s at stake right now for the ‘younger generations’ is literally everything, and their very being reflects it.
Camera Lucida: It seems that you move freely and comfortably between and across many film sub-genres: personal diary, intimate portrait, cinema veritê, multimedia, observational documentary, poetic experimental documentary, surreal fiction-like dreamy sequences, direct cinema etc. When you started out, did you have a clear, precise idea about this, or new ideas came up during your and Eva’s communication, more spontaneously?
Pia Hellenthal: I had a long list of things I wanted the film to be without knowing how this will be ever done practically. A few examples „Eva’s story is not personal, it is not a film about her but a Zeitgeist“ or „not linear, but like a circle“; „In the beginning Eva is the Object, in the end she is the subject“ „Identity: As it is a construct it can be destroyed“ etc.
The realisation of these quite abstract ideas was a joined effort by Cinematographer Janis Mazuch, editor Yana Höhnerbach, Sound Designer Marcus Zilz, Dramaturg Lisa Reisch and Giorgia and me.
Something that helped in aftermath is that we did not have any film reference whatsoever. We felt like what this film needed to feel like, has not been made yet. So we looked how the blog dealt with time and narration and got inspiration from literature regarding form.
Some things evolved very organically, for example the static shots where she looks into camera. We felt we needed a static gaze from her, something referencing the selfies on her blog while at the same time looking back at the audience.
Others were a long hard process. It took us a while to figure out how to use the blog entries and the follower questions. In the end, the followers’ gaze upon Eva is our only clear thread throughout the film.
Camera Lucida: You narrative is non-linear, we could almost call it non-narrative, but structuring of such anti-narrative is more frequently than it’s assumed very difficult. How did you approach your structuring process?
Pia Hellenthal: That was mainly done in editing. It felt hugely chaotic while doing it, but in the end there is a very clear structure underneath the fragmented surface. For example, religion and capitalism - to just name two of the big societal constructs that form our idea of „identity“ - are holding all scenes together, before Eva comes along with her nihilistic statement that „she is nothing but a nest, held together by spit and trash“ and destroys what she just build up.
Camera Lucida: You shot much material, plus you had a lot of blog material. What was the montage process like?
Pia Hellenthal: The film very easily fell apart like a card house and was just nothing anymore. So without Yana Höhnerbach, our badass and hugely talented editor, I would have gone crazy.
We started with having a collection of scenes we liked - that was quite fast - then we narrowed down the immense amount of blog entries to a few ones that just kept coming back to us, which was an ongoing process until the final cut.
A sort of breakthrough was when understanding how to work in circles rather than in a line: Taking the subject of work and having scenes and blog entries that fit the topic circle around it. For example, a follower question about mental illness made sense here as it is a structural problem in capitalism. Actually, most of the editing did not happen in the editing room but by talking, talking, talking.
Camera Lucida: Cinematography is stunning. How important was fruitful collaboration with your DoP?
Pia Hellenthal: Janis Mazuch is an incredibly smart and sensitive cinematographer. He is interested in the films’ ‘soul‘ rather than producing pretty pictures. So we speak about the content but not really about what to do with the camera much, as we are quite symbiotic in that sense. He just puts the camera somewhere and I feel it’s how I would have put it there. And I feel comfortable, with him which to me is the most important part while shooting. I feel I can propose stuff that might seem stupid without fearing that I’m making a fool of myself. I trust him.
Camera Lucida: What is quite remarkable is that you manage to make a personal diary film without foregrounding a voyeuristic gaze. Were you avoiding this audience gaze consciously?
Pia Hellenthal: We were actually focusing on the audiences gaze. The followers are the tool, they are also looking at Eva and sometimes they are anticipating or catching the audience thoughts, gaze. That is how we avoided voyeurism. We are not looking at Eva, she is only mirroring all of us.
Camera Lucida: You let Eva stare at the camera, in her self-conscious anarchist manner, as if to challenge us to perhaps judge her, but also to assert her subjectivity?
Pia Hellenthal: Eva says, I see you, seeing me. You are part of this game.
Camera Lucida: How much input did Eva have during the filming process? Would she disagree with anything, limit access to her most personal psyche?
Pia Hellenthal: She let us do whatever we wanted, sometimes giving us hints what to shoot through her blog. She was a complicit. Although, when it came to clothes she was the boss. The limit was whatever she would not show us, we never tried to break that wall. It was not about looking „behind the image“. The whole film is precisely about the image.
Camera Lucida: Did you have any ethical dilemmas about including her most intimate moments in the film, when she was at her most fragile and vulnerable, even if Eva allowed it?
Pia Hellenthal: I always felt, the right thing to do is to go with what Eva shows. To censor her would have meant to discredit her choices.
|
I had a long list of things I wanted the film to be without knowing how this will be ever done practically. A few examples „Eva’s story is not personal, it is not a film about her but a Zeitgeist“ or „not linear, but like a circle“; „In the beginning Eva is the Object, in the end she is the subject“ „Identity: As it is a construct it can be destroyed“ etc. . |
Camera Lucida: What has the various festivals audience’s response been like so far?
Pia Hellenthal: A bunch of young girls & queer kids hugging us, one older lady crying, a couple of furious older men, intrigued intellectuals, excited film students, bored documentary audiences missing emotions, some puzzled faces.
Camera Lucida: Have you received any shocking or extremely biased, judgmental feedback?
Pia Hellenthal: One guy asked me why I did not make Eva cry, like Werner Herzog would do. That was funny.
Camera Lucida: What did you think of the audience reaction to your film at the Outview festival, Athens?
Pia Hellenthal: Some of the biggest supporters where there, like Maria the boss of the festival who was the first to say that the film embodied a female gaze for her as we are respecting Eva by not overstepping her boundaries. We had a great feedback there and won an audience award, so I think they really liked it.
Camera Lucida: What does it mean to you to be a female film author in today’s global backlash against women, i.e. how relevant is gender question in this industry?
Pia Hellenthal: Well, as long as I am considered a female film author, we obviously have a problem, but to be honest I do not feel it too much personally. I work with friends who trust me even though I am an emotionally uncontrollable female.
Maja Bogojević
