SLAMDANCE DIRECTORS INTERVIEW: CANDELA FIGUEIRA, MAITENA MURUZABAL, UNDER THE SNOW

Fri, Jan 18th 12:30pm
Mon, an 21st 9:30pm

Following the unusual connection made between four workers at different stages of their lives, Under the Snow captures factory life in a way rarely seen: personal, flirtatious, introspective.

Tell us about the premise of Under The Snow? What informs it and when did you conceive of it?

Most of the times it is up to us to change our reality. Hard situations can become, lots of times, better with small changes. Under the Snow proposes game, as a way of changing things. The idea came up while Maitena was working at a snow chains factory. I, started working at that factory just to earn some money and have afternoons free to dedicate to my film projects. I didn´t expect anything but the money at the end of the month. It wasn´t a pretty or very creative job, waking up at 5 am and doing the same thing for 8 hours in a cold and ugly factory. However, I found that I could live life in there, that those eight hours weren´t useless, but eight hours to live, to make friends and to have fun during that “ugly” job. Just little changes in the way of working could become that grey factory into a colourful one.

What we’re the biggest challenges in creating the look and texture of the images?

Honestly, the main challenge was having almost no crew and no lights. Besides, “Under the snow” takes place in the winter and we had to shoot it in the summer. We didn´t want that the lack of money forced us to have a determined style, we didn´t want to refuse to have a camera car, or dolly, we didn´t want to use hand held because is cheaper, so we made a creative effort and we designed and made a dolly, a camera car and we used natural light as much as we could. So we could have the style we wanted and not the style of no having money determined.

Tell us alittle bit about your background, both as people and filmmakers?

Candela is from Argentina, while Maitena is from Spain. We met at UCLA Extension in Los Angeles, studying film. We became friends and also we worked together in some short films, where we realized that we were a very good working team. In 2004 we created a production company in Pamplona, Spain, to start creating and producing our own projects.

Is the film playing Slamdance largely the film you initially imagined, or did you find it in the editing process?

Definitely, is the film we initially imagined. Since we were writing we knew exactly what we wanted to say and how we wanted to say it. Every scene and every shot had its purpose, we found new lights in the editing process, but the film we imagined remained the same.

Can we expect more of the same, or do you plan to work in other genres and forms?

There will be some elements from “Under the snow” in our next movies because of our own style of telling and making films, but we will use the genre and form that is better for the story we want to tell.

What projects are down the pipeline?

Actually, our next project, which we are rewriting now, has nothing to do with “Under the snow” relating to genre and form. It is a romantic comedy we are planning to shoot in october/november 2009 in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Pamplona (Spain).