Sat, Jan 19th, 4:30pm
Thurs, Jan 24th, 11am
In this tragic farce, Kate, after failing the bar exam, realizes that law is not for her. With no sense of a life-plan, she takes a job house cleaning and at first finds comfort in the repetition and routine of the work, but repetition and routine only go so far.
Tell us about the genesis of the project and your preoccupations as a filmmaker.I thrive on work. So, on a practical level,
ANECDOTE came about because I was just about to finish post-production on my third film, and the anxiety of being without another project to fall into was enough to start me writing again.
I'm interested in characters that have a fixed view of the world, but a view that's at odds with reality. When this is the case there are only two possibilities for the character, either giving up on reality or giving up on ideas. I find it depressing when the character gives up on ideas. In this story, the character follows her rigid ideas to the bitter end, and I suppose that's just as depressing, but at least she acts out of her own will -- I find some hope in that.
Where were you when you found out you'd gotten into Slamdance? How did you react?I was in my apartment in Paris, and I guess I was happily shocked. This was made with a crew of three (the director of photography, the production designer, and myself) for no money, and it's thirty minutes long, which most say is too long for a short if you actually want it to get into a festival.
How were you able to find financing for the project? Equipment and props were borrowed; there wasn't one rental. It was shot in my hometown – in locations that I knew I had access to, so the only costs were food and transportation. The budget ended up being around $1000, and I was able to borrow this from my family, who are kind and crazy enough to believe in a return one day.
Do you consider yourself a cinephile? What debt does the film owe to other films or filmmakers provided some influence? Certainly, I'm an addict.
For this particular project, I was watching and re-watching the films of
Yasujiro Ozu,
Eric Rohmer,
Nicholas Ray, and
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (but he's a constant).
Also, I put into a practice a lot of what I learned from the filmmaker,
Julia Loktev, whom I interned for while she was in pre-production for
DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT: namely, that you should produce a film as you see fit, big crews are a myth, and video has an integrity all its own.
Why Black & White?First, because I love black and white video – the tonal range of the grays is so rich – and it's very rarely used. Secondly, black and white immediately makes things seem remote. Since the story concerns a cleaning woman and takes place in very average middle-class houses, I wanted to make it both beautiful and remote so that the viewer might notice what a strange place this average world can be.
What were your biggest challenges when constructing the film in post-production?With my three previous short films I had to reconstruct the story almost entirely in the editing room. This was not the case with
ANECDOTE – this one actually matched the script. Here, the challenge was the sound. I had to do lots of ADR (not in a studio, but in my parents' basement) and foley hundreds of sounds.
Is this your first time on the festival circuit with a short? Yes.
Any other projects in the pipeline? Of course. A feature called
THE BLIND. It's the story of the doomed relationship of a young couple and their inevitable descent into marriage. I'm currently seeking funding.
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posted by Brandon Harris @ 1/21/2008 09:13:00 PM
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