FRAMELINE 37: WHITE NIGHT (BAEK YA, 2012)

Positioned within Frameline 37's spotlight on Queer Asian Cinema, South Korean entry White Night (Baek Ya, 2012) is LeeSong Hee-il's follow-up to No Regret (2006), which emerged as a milestone in Korean gay cinema. White Night had its international premiere in the Dragons & Tigers program at last September's Vancouver International Film Festival, and screened in BFI's Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and has continued its presence in various festivals worldwide, landing two screenings at San Francisco's Frameline.

As synopsized by Brendan Peterson, White Night is a "mesmerizing exploration of painful memories and dangerous obsession." Won-gyu (Won Tae-hee) is a flight attendant who has returned to South Korea after two years of self-imposed exile overseas upon learning that the homophobe who brutally bashed he and a friend outside of a gay bar is being released from jail after a minimum sentence. Won-gyu briefly reconnects with his ex, now limping, who wastes no time in blaming Won-gyu for his disabled condition. Apparently, Won-gyu ran away from the assault, leaving his friend to take the brunt of the violence, and then ran away from the country to process his trauma.

Won-gyu runs away one more time and abandons his limping friend at the cafe. Thus, the tone of self-loathing and ineffectuality is set early on as Won-gyu fantasizes on revenge, even as he is no more capable of exacting same than when first assaulted. Enter motorbike courier Tae-joon (Lee I-kyeong), a feisty internet hook-up expecting an easy one-night stand, who is more accustomed to physically fending for himself and who eventually steps in to exact the revenge Won-gyu desperately craves.

The film is primarily a desultory and nocturnal mood piece with brooding attitudes and atmospheric affects draped over a minimal script. Lots of cigarettes are idly chainsmoked, butts crushed underfoot, and lighters flicked open and shut, killing time until Won-gyu has to catch his morning flight back to Europe. The on-and-off attraction between Won-gyu and Tae-joon feels staged and unnatural as the two walk stiff-shouldered side by side through Seoul's neon-lit streets, refusing to look at each other, let alone speak. Visually it borders on the unintentionally absurd with overwrought meaningfulness. At times its silliness made me smile. When Tae-joon complains that he's a "crazy bastard following a crazy bitch", it seemed the most genuine statement made throughout the night's vigil.

The true depths of this film are in its thematic implications, not fully realized by its performances, its script, nor its direction. Those implications are that damaged gays act out and hurt each other instead of learning to love each other, and how self-fulfilling is that? White Night suggests that someone as traumatized as Won-gyu has become incapable of love and that whatever dignity he might have salvaged from that violent attack years ago has turned inwards into self-loathing. Perhaps because he was too weak to defend himself? Perhaps because he ran away, too frightened to help his friend? Perhaps because society doesn't care enough to administer appropriate justice? He desires anonymous sex in public toilets as a gesture of self-debasement. When Tae-joon eventually leans him over and fucks him over a urinal, one doesn't sense pleasure as much as a psychological re-enactment of a punishment Won-gyu believes he deserves, even as one senses a trace of compassion in Tae-joon treating him as he wants to be treated. The power struggle between Won-gyu and Tae-joon can hardly be called love, more the therapy of sexual theater, but it is as close a connection as this one night will allow and sometimes, White Night suggests, that's as good as it gets. Sadly, that's about as good as this film gets.

FRAMELINE 37: PIT STOP (2013)—The Evening Class Interview With Producer Jonathan Duffy

It was my honor to write the Frameline 37 program capsule for Yen Tan's Pit Stop (2013) [Facebook], especially after having been so enamored with Tan's earlier effort Ciao (2008), and which I replicate here for easy reference.

It might be difficult for urban gays to relate to the circumscribed lives of their small-town brethren, where options to assuage loneliness narrow down to limited or missed opportunities. Then again, loneliness is a universal animal, heedless of specific geography other than the vast terrain of the yearning heart, and when the "right one" finally comes along, it doesn't matter whether it's among the throngs of San Francisco or at a pit stop in Texas.

With his third feature, director Yen Tan joins forces with David Lowery (St. Nick, Ain't Them Bodies Saints) to craft a charming romance characterized by Variety's Dennis Harvey as "low key but ultimately deeply satisfying." B. Ruby Rich adds: "Yen Tan's gift for long takes and his comfort with silences makes demands on the audience that films ought to make—and pays them back with a surprising happy ending."

Construction contractor Gabe (Bill Heck) and forklift operator Ernesto (Marcus DeAnda) are caught in compromised relationships: Gabe with his ex-wife and young child whom he wants to responsibly raise, and homebound Ernesto with a young lover anxious to start an independent life in the big city. Despite both being handsome and available, Gabe and Ernesto are insecure about their future chances for love. With heartfelt nuance and patient observation, Tan captures honest performances from an accomplished cast.

Pit Stop was, likewise, one of the twelve films chosen by the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) to participate in their inaugural A2E Direct Distribution Lab. It was in that context that I met and interviewed Jonathan Duffy, one of Pit Stop's producers. My thanks to Bill Proctor for setting us up to talk.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Jonathan, can you speak to how you became involved with A2E? Are you from Austin?

Jonathan Duffy: I am from Austin but I moved to San Francisco shortly after filming Pit Stop. I came into A2E because we all know that technology is changing and—after hearing all my filmmaker friends discuss their experiences with distribution, some positive, many not—I knew that I didn't have most of the answers. I knew that I needed to know more. A2E sounded like a really great opportunity to listen to the questions other people were asking and maybe pick up a few answers.

Guillén: How did you first hear about A2E?

Duffy: Through Alicia, who invited me to participate with Pit Stop. I'm one of the 12 films invited to the lab, by way of an email they sent out. Pit Stop is an authentic portrayal of two working class gay men in a small town in Texas. There's Gabe (Bill Heck), recently left behind by a lover who was a married man, who's now hanging close to a relationship with his ex-wife. They're working on being parents together. Then there's Ernesto (Marcus DeAnda) who's at the end of a relationship with a younger man and still involved emotionally in a way with an ex who's now in a coma. Both characters are experiencing heartache in one way or another; but, they have eternal hope that someday they will find somebody who will love them like they want to be loved.

Guillén: What most impressed me about Pit Stop was the suggestion that a gay person would want a life other than a life in the big city. It feels almost like a new narrative idea because the cliche is that every young gay man runs away to a big city to find themselves. Yet in Pit Stop you have two strong characters who choose to remain in a small town, even though it complicates and frustrates their search for love. But the truth is that running to the city doesn't necessarily mean they will find love either.

Duffy: Yen did his research. He talked to a lot of people who specifically made the choice to stay behind in small towns. He drove back and forth between major cities in Texas, passing through these small towns that made him wonder if there were gay people there and, if so, why? Why would they be there? Through social networks and message boards he contacted such individuals and asked them that specific question. Yen maintained journalistic integrity in his research and he genuinely cared about the results. We all see these movies where a gay person is beat up or terrible things happen to them, but several of the individuals Yen interviewed had a live-and-let-live attitude, some weren't even necessarily "out", and they were just living in a small town because the people they loved were living there and this was the only life they knew. They already seemed to have a sense that running off to a city was not going to solve their needs.

Guillén: Exactly. Pit Stop also shows that many of the characters and scenarios depicted in all too many GLBT films advocate a certain romanticized irresponsibility. Pit Stop offers responsible, nuanced characters. Gabe's unwillingness to abandon the responsibility of helping his ex-wife raise their child, for example, strikes me as a fresh (and welcome) characterization of a gay male. Several of the films invited to A2E were recommended through cultural agencies....

Duffy: Our's was not. Pit Stop was simply invited by Alicia. I had just moved here and she knew I was interested in having a relationship with the San Francisco Film Society and in meeting more filmmakers. The Pit Stop team were asking questions about distribution, both locally and globally. We wanted men like the characters of Gabe and Ernesto to have the chance to see this movie wherever they lived. That was very important to us but we didn't quite know how to do that.

Guillén: What distribution model did you initially have in mind to get Pit Stop out and about? Was it to circulate the film in niche film festivals?

Duffy: We intended to have a festival run. We had the great fortune to premiere at Sundance, and then got into South by Southwest. We've been fortunate in that festival programmers have welcomed us. But what most consultants will tell you is that most filmmakers are reactive and—after gaining entry into festivals—will wait to see what comes to them. Do people come and offer to buy the film or are they forced into other choices? So what excited me about the A2E Lab was that they were going to talk about tools that can help filmmakers make a plan from the very beginning based on real knowledge about the various platforms and what they offer.

Guillén: They've offered that, I understand, through a kind of "speed dating" process where each filmmaker sits down for 20 minutes with each technical service or launch pad. Are these sessions done separately; the tech services distinct from the launch pads?

Duffy: I can't speak to the launch pads so much because a lot of those groups we haven't intermingled with much except during happy hours; but, the tech platforms we've talked to have basically outlined their levels of expertise, whether international and domestic, or just North American, whether DVD or VOD, some with a semi-theatrical component. I might have had ideas about each of those forms of distribution, either through my friends' experiences or what I've read about online, but what was great and what came out of each conversation was the personification of each organization, which for me matters. It's not some faceless company who's talking about taking 30% in a transaction where the filmmaker has to do this or do that. A film is your baby, you care about it, and you don't want a merely transactional relationship; you want somebody to hold your baby and to show it off to a lot of other people.

Guillén: How many tech services have you spoken to so far?

Duffy: Roughly somewhere around 15.

Guillén: They're tossing ideas at you, possibilities, game plans. Do you feel that any of these suggestions are actually going to help you with distribution for your film?

Duffy: Yeah. Being my first project, I've just been thankful up to this point. I'm really happy that people respond to the film and I feel confident that we'll get a positive result for our stakeholders and all the people who helped us make the movie. What's been uncertain for me is the future life of the film after the festivals and how all of that will take shape. Coming out of the lab, after talking to these services, I feel we have a little bit more of the answers because, for this film, it's a global question. I certainly didn't have answers about how we were going to distribute in the UK or Latin America, what platforms would allow us to do that, and which platforms were really good at doing that. I didn't know if we had to get the film dubbed or subtitled and I've learned that certain countries like certain things. In Germany, for example, they want the film dubbed. Knowing that requires an investment on our part if we want to sell Pit Stop in Germany, which I believe would be a great film for German audiences.

Guillén: Not only is direct distribution one of the suggested tools coming out of A2E, but emphasis on ways to return investment to stakeholders. Have you learned anything at A2E to do just that? Anything to suggest to future investors for future projects?

Duffy: We have definitely learned that there are choices; but, the thing is, though, that it's different for each project. Each project has their own reality. Each project has their own team and you have to know what your team is capable of and willing to do. If we're going to embark down certain paths, you're going to have to keep inspired to do what's necessary. You can't just rely on someone to handle those things for you, which is what has traditionally been done for filmmakers. What's been discussed in these sessions is that frequently when it's done for you—we used the holding the baby example—people are protective of their projects and then let down about the results. What A2E has done is to empower us to not be scared to explore these alternative options. We all know how hard it is to make a movie. Everyone in that lab knows that. They've gone the rounds trying to get investors to believe in their project. Once they've got past that, they have to make the movie, edit the movie, and all of it each step of the way is hard. Even Troll 2 was a hard movie to make.

Guillén: And just as hard to watch!! [Laughs.]

Duffy: But the point is that even these bad movies are hard to make. To make a great movie is even fucking harder. Now we're aware that this other step of direct distribution is equally hard, but rewarding.

Guillén: I know that you're still in the process of assimilating the information you're receiving and recognizing the potential of the tools being offered to you so I understand that anything you say is evolving; but, I'd like to know if there's anything specific you've learned from the A2E lab that you will apply to the future distribution of Pit Stop?

Duffy: For our next step, we have to really think about our audience in a way that goes beyond tailoring it just for gays, and to reach out to our straight constituency. Fortunately, so far, straight audiences have responded well to Pit Stop. Some of that has to do with avoiding stereotypes not only for gay characters but straight characters as well. We don't have the angry straight guy threatening gays, for example. There's also no reliance on dumb country people. Audiences like the characters in Pit Stop. They like them as people, gay or straight, living in the country, or living in the city. I want real people, all kinds of people, to see this movie. So we have to think about audiences, about our initial audience and our projected audience, and we have to think about how our key art is going to catch their attention. Several of these tech providers have talked to me about how we can improve on that.

Guillén: What do they feel is wrong with the poster art as it stands?

Duffy: This is a very touchy subject because Yen is the graphic designer. He's a well-known, effective graphic designer and I think he's made a pretty image that I'm attached to in a lot of ways. But what they've told us is that we're not taking advantage of the good looks of our actors. I don't want to presume what Yen was trying to do with the poster image but what I saw in his work is that he took our ensemble cast and showed how together they are, how interwoven their lives are, do you know what I mean? And I loved that. I think it's brilliant. But from the perspective of someone who wasn't part of our team, they didn't necessarily get that. They said that they couldn't really tell what the film was about from looking at the poster. Whether I like it or not, as the producer I have to listen to that. I had multiple people in that room tell me that they were at Sundance—where we had a good run and a decent amount of coverage—but they didn't even know we were there. And why is that? Was the poster ineffective?

Guillén: Were the colors too muted? Was it not sexy enough?

Duffy: I, for one, loved the colors because we wanted it to be subtle.

Guillén: There's certainly nothing wrong with starting out with one idea and graduating to another. I consider that critique a very important one. By way of example, there's a film production in Idaho that I'm monitoring—Smoke, written by Alan Heathcock and directed by Cody Gittings and Stephen Heleker—that recently applied grant funds towards a competition for local graphic artists to create a poster for their film. They held an event where six or seven of these artists displayed their posters to the public and it was fascinating to see how people reacted, which posters were favored over others, and which were bought at auction. As a film journalist maintaining a blog site, poster art is very important to me. Finding appropriate images to supplement my text is one of my favorite efforts and I especially enjoy looking at poster art, particularly when a film has trafficked internationally. It intrigues me how posters vary from country to country, emphasizing one element over the other. This advice you've received to reconsider your poster art reminds me there's an actual mercantile effect to graphic design with a measurable economic reception. I'd always just thought of movie posters as aesthetic.

Duffy: Which is how I've always thought of movie posters as well.

Guillén: I frequently lean on old French movie posters because I find them colorful and dramatic, and I like that sense of international penache.

Duffy: But as a technical point, I would say that to extend the life of the film we would like to do some kind of theatrical, possibly in tandem with or in front of our DVD and VOD release, and there's a lot of things I didn't know about with regard to the rules of how theaters respond to that. Some theaters don't like simultaneous distribution. Others are okay with it. We talked to TUGG who partner with filmmakers to set up theatrical releases in cities only if there's an ambassador there or an organization who will help sell a minimum number of tickets to break even to cover the theater cost. If they can get to that point, they'll do it, and then they split the profits with the filmmaker. That's an exciting way to get the film, let's say, to gay Modesto while not taxing the film's limited resources. For me that's an exciting partnership because it means we can get the film to people without jeopardizing the investors' money and being responsible in spreading the word.

Also, since this was my first film to produce, I didn't know if showing a film in a theater would cannibalize my DVD/VOD release? Apparently, that's a silly question because each of these tech services have claimed the opposite, saying no, it doesn't, it helps it, it accentuates, it builds.

Guillén: It gains pedigree.

Duffy: Yeah, but I was worried about it. I was worried that if we showed Pit Stop in a theater, we would only be getting 35% of the screen fee, that it costs money and we'd be losing money, but if we just sell it on DVD we might get a lot more of that percentage, and isn't that better in the long term? What I heard in the lab is that if you do all of it well, it's better. More people see it, it gains pedigree as you say....

Guillén: Let alone that it creates a complexity in reception; the reception becomes diverse.

Duffy: And, apparently, as part of that process of gaining pedigree, some people want to know if a film has shown first in a movie house before going straight to DVD / VOD.

Guillén: Absolutely. I can only speak for myself, but I am less prone to watch a film that's gone directly to DVD / VOD for fear that it is somehow not as good a film as one that has had a theatrical release. If a film has gone straight to DVD, it tells me that there is something lacking in the film. I may be completely wrong, but that's my impulse.

Duffy: Right! Going straight to DVD is like the scarlet letter. When you make a movie, one of the first things you're always asked is: "Did you get distribution?" Bringing together all these really smart people at this A2E conference has changed the phrasing of that question and taken the "did you get?" out of that question and added instead, "What is your plan? How are you going to be empowered to make this happen?"

Guillén: Namely, direct distribution in the hands of the filmmakers, granting them agency in their film's commercial success. Choosing to no longer play a passive role of waiting for someone else to distribute your film.

Duffy: But also, if you choose to create your own team to distribute your film, that's not a failure. There's proven success everywhere you look in film that self-distribution works. And we're trying not to even use that term anymore. "Self-distribution" doesn't express the team effort with all the different platforms you might partner with to get the distribution done. More now we're thinking in terms of alternative distribution plans that are still aimed towards commercial success. A small film like Pit Stop—with its human themes of looking for love—why should it follow a standard path?

Guillén: Yen's previous film Ciao didn't follow a standard path, yet the film achieved a theatrical run.

Duffy: You're right. Ciao was well-received. I mean, I'm a young straight guy and was fresh out of college when I saw Ciao and I loved it for the same reasons that you've expressed: there were these quiet moments that revealed a true humanity.

Guillén: Some connective tissue between Ciao and Pit Stop is David Lowery's involvement, whose own film St. Nick I deeply admired. Did Yen bring David in for this project? That wasn't a decision of yours? In fact, whenabouts did you become involved with the project as a producer? I first heard about Pit Stop when Yen launched his crowdfunding campaign to raise the seed money.

Duffy: I was involved even then. Basically, Yen had gone through the Outfest Screenwriting Lab a number of years ago and he had talked to James Johnston and Eric Steele, both who have helped produce Pit Stop, and both from Texas: James in Ft. Worth and Eric in Dallas. They were all working on different projects together, but for some reason, trying to find the right catalysts to make a film "go" just wasn't happening. We all started talking about working on Pit Stop together a short time before the USA Artists campaign happened. Kelly Williams, my producing partner, knew I liked Yen's film Ciao so all of us got on the phone and decided Pit Stop deserved the chance to be made. We all read the script and felt passionately about it. We wanted to get it made so we all made the commitment to do that. Right around that time, we got a Texas Filmmakers Production Fund (TFPF) grant from the Austin Film Society and so that built the momentum. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was a helpful amount. So then, as a team we were kind of like, okay, we've made this decision to go and now the Austin Film Society's behind us so now we really got to go. We committed to raise over $30,000 online.

Guillén: Which you did.

Duffy: We did!! We were successful. We were the number one project on the USA Artists website for the entirety of our campaign. That was great! Then we said, okay, we need to raise a little more money and we did that through a combination of grants and investors that we knew. We set about creating a cast and crew of people who we felt reflected the world of the story and that were just generally kind people, people that we liked to be around and either already knew or wanted to know, and they became the Pit Stop family. They all sweated in the Texas heat in the summer and we made the film together.

Then Yen edited the film with Don Swaynos, a talented Austin guy and a funny individual, and they both got in there and looked at all the pieces that we had and made what we all watch now. They did a great job. So that's basically my involvement with Pit Stop. It was my first film to produce. I'd been thinking about doing it for years and I had been reading scripts for a long time, but it was Pit Stop that really got me. I felt it was the right time with the right story.

Guillén: Then the film premiered at Sundance, where it was received well. You got a lot of good write-ups out of that festival.

Duffy: We did! We were very well treated. The write-ups were great, but what was really great were the things that people would come up and say to us. A 60-year-old straight woman came up to me and said, "I want to go home and make-out with my husband for an hour." Who knew this gay film was going to make her say that? It was so great. And then there were other people who loved pets and wanted to know more about Sasha the cat, and about the dog. They knew how important their pets were to them and they could relate to how important the pets were to Gabe and Ernesto.

Guillén: Clearly, being a producer on your first film has been a positive experience for you? You're not done with the Pit Stop project by any means, that's why you're attending A2E, and the film has barely started its festival run; but, I imagine you're going to want to produce again?

Duffy: Totally. Gearing up.

Guillén: Speaking of the film's festival life, Pit Stop will be at Frameline? You'll be accompanying the film in San Francisco?

Duffy: Yes, I'll be there.

Guillén: Yen Tan will be there?

Duffy: Yes, and we hope to have some of our cast at Frameline as well. One of the things I was most excited about in making Pit Stop was that it might play at the Castro Theater and it's made me very happy that Frameline has chosen to do that.

Guillén: I was certainly honored when asked to write Frameline's capsule for Pit Stop. I hope you like it and that it helps draw people in.

Duffy: Thank you for your positive affirmation of the film and your interest in it, and in our journey.

YBCA: THE PARADISE TRILOGY: The Evening Class Interview With Ulrich Seidl

Fresh off the success of his New Filipino Cinema program, Joel Shepard and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) score another programming coup with Ulrich Seidl's Paradise Trilogy, providing San Francisco / Bay audiences a rare opportunity to see all three films in sequence. It's an experience I envy, having only seen the first installment of the trilogy (Paradise: Love, 2012), in conjunction with Strand Releasing's U.S. theatrical rollout.

As profiled on the YBCA website: "Ulrich Seidl is one of the most controversial and provocative filmmakers working today. His portraits of the private lives of everyday people are disturbing to the core, and yet they are also often quite humorous. Obsessed with finding the beauty in ugliness, and a world-class smasher of all things taboo, Seidl vastly expands his reach with the epic Paradise trilogy."

As profiled at MUBI: "Ulrich Seidl was born in Vienna in 1952 and grew up in the town of Horn in Lower Austria. He studied journalism, art history and drama in Vienna, supporting himself with odd jobs, before entering the prestigious Vienna Film Academy at the age of 26. In 1980 he made his first documentary, Einsvierzig. Following the controversy surrounding his second film, Der Ball (1982)—a wickedly satirical portrait of the graduation ball in his home town—Seidl was asked to leave the Film Academy. In 1990 he returned to the scene with the feature-length documentary Good News. Within the decade Seidl was to make seven more documentaries for cinema and television, winning much acclaim and many prizes for his work.

"Hundstage—Dog Days, his first fiction film, was released in 2001 and won several important awards, beginning with the grand jury prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. The same year also saw the release of Zur Lage / State of the Nation, a critical survey of Austria under its far-right coalition government. Seidl initiated, oversaw and co-directed the project, which also contains episodes directed by Barbara Albert, Michael Glawogger and Michael Sturminger."

Seidl's most recent provocation, his Paradise Trilogy, launched with Paradise: Love (Paradies: Liebe, 2012), which premiered in competition at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, where Dave Hudson gathered up the critical response for Fandor's Keyframe Daily. Hudson continued monitoring the reception when the trilogy's second installment Paradise: Faith (Paradies: Glaube, 2012) appeared in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Paradise: Hope (Paradies: Hoffnung, 2013) appeared at the Berlin Film Festival, alongside the previous two installments.

My thanks to Marcus Hu and Strand Releasing for the invitation to interview Seidl during his L.A. press day, and to Robert Gray for helping with translation. The first installment Paradise: Love is currently in theaters via Strand Releasing. The Paradise Trilogy continues at YBCA through June 30, 2013.

* * *

Michael Guillén: I've read conflicting reports regarding the source of your story. Was it directly inspired by Ödön von Horváth's 1932 play, Faith, Hope and Charity?

Seidl: Well, as you know, originally the film was going to be a single film involving three separate protagonists. The title of the single film was going to be Paradise. When it turned out that the project was developed into three separate films, I had to come up with individual titles for those three separate films. Hope, Love and Faith seemed appropriate to me. So, my film was not so much a reference to the Horváth play, as it was to the three Christian virtues. I should also point out, however, that—while I had to come up with a title for each of the three separate films—the titles apply to all three episodes.

Guillén: You developed the script with your wife Veronika Franz. Can you speak to how the two of you collaborated to develop this script?

Seidl: I've been writing with my wife for many years now. Technically, our process is that I will write a scene and then she will read it and comment upon it. Sometimes she'll just make suggestions; other times she will re-write the scene. It's a kind of ping pong. With this project, where we were dealing with three female protagonists, it was especially useful to collaborate with a woman.

Guillén: I'm aware that your scripts develop once you start filming on location and begin interacting with your actors. Does Veronika join you on location when these changes are taking place?

Seidl: No, Veronika was only present on location on occasion, not for the entire period. The script forms the basis for beginning the work. It allows me to scout for locations and to start the process of casting. Veronika is in touch with all of these processes because it's important to have the input of her close collaboration. She's involved with the casting, which is a lengthy process, and I like having her on hand to discuss choices.

Guillén: With the Paradise Trilogy opening theatrically in the U.S. with its first installment, now is a good time to look back on its film festival trajectory, which has been admittedly unique. Each segment of the trilogy has premiered at a major international film festival—the first in competition at Cannes; the second winning awards at Venice; and the third shown with the other two at Berlin—yet all within a festival year. Were all three films ready to go at once?

Seidl: The first film I completed was the second part Paradise: Faith and I submitted it a year earlier to both film festivals; but, shortly thereafter, I finished the other two segments and had a better idea of how to show them at separate festivals. There just wasn't enough time to complete production on all three and that delayed their premiere as well. I also felt it was important that the films be seen in their correct order, which meant it was important to start with Paradise: Love. When it was invited into competition at Cannes, at the same time I decided to go with Venice for the second film, and shortly thereafter Berlin invited the third and final installment of the trilogy.

Guillén: As I'm interested in reception studies, I'm curious if—by unveiling the project at three separate film festivals—if you noticed a detectable difference in your audiences?

Seidl: Paradise: Love, which showed at Cannes, was the most popular. Cannes was the best place to show this film because it allowed the most exposure for the film. The Venice film festival was the best place to show Faith because of its components and, finally, I was very happy that Berlin wrapped up the trilogy and allowed me the opportunity to gain a retrospective view with the screening of all three films together. That was very useful to help publicize the trilogy to German audiences.

Guillén: I imagine you prefer that all three films be shown together? I'm sure that would reveal complexities within the narrative across the three films. So the Berlin experience must have been particularly rewarding. But now, as the films approach their theatrical distribution, once again they are being necessarily divided into individual releases. Does that feel at all like you are stepping backwards?

Seidl: First of all, the release of the film is subject to the dictates of distribution and it would be near to impossible to expect spectators to sit through all three installments. Many would be unwilling to do that. I left that decision to the distributor. But I would very much hope that audiences around the world might have an opportunity to see all three films together, perhaps as a special event? The response is quite different when you see all three films at once. You make associations, links, that make each film much more powerful in relationship with each other.

Guillén: Fortunately, in San Francisco audiences will have that opportunity as all three films are being shown by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Seidl: I'm very happy about that.

Guillén: You have described yourself as your "first spectator", but that you don't really consider audience reaction while making a film. But as you shepherd a film around the film festival circuit, does audience reaction factor into your ongoing relationship with your films?

Seidl: Of course, I am very grateful for the opportunity to talk to audiences and to hear their different responses. If those responses conflict with choices I have made, it doesn't make me look at my film differently but it does allow me to, perhaps, make my next film in a better way, based on what audiences (and critics) might think.

Guillén: And yet you are a filmmaker of integrity, often railed against as a provocateur, but true to your own vision, despite critical reaction?

Seidl: For a long time my films were criticized and attacked by a certain group of critics; but, I kept on making films in the way I believed was important. Interestingly, after many years several of those critics have reconsidered their positions and opinions. It's essential to remain true to your convictions. Work, like life, is a process that you are constantly re-evaluating.

Guillén: Your framing, your staging of reality, your observational aesthetics, have been emphasized as stylistic elements of your work for many years. If camera angles can be said to produce specific feelings, what is it about the planimetric approach that feels emotionally appropriate to your themes?

Seidl: My visual style was present from the very beginning with my first film. At the same time, my interest in film developed only after my initial interest in painting and photography. The environment is important to me and that's why it's so present in my films because the environment says a lot about the protagonists moving through it. Over the years I've been able to perfect my tableau images to create a more concise answer to the questions I have about the world. My films are a product of two different elements. The first is so-called documentary film, which remains for me the way you capture things as they happen, but which also allows a lot of room for chance. The other element is a more artificial and artistic element. Much like a painter composing a painting, I am able to make choices about the decoration and the lighting.

Guillén: I'm glad you mention your background in painting because it's your films' painterly effects that affect me emotionally. Painting essentially taught me the capacity of an image to contain several conflicting elements. For example, some of your most serious scenes likewise reveal comic undertones. Two separate feelings, two separate attitudes, are being shown at the same time. Images also exert a gravitational pull, a fascination, and your films equally fascinate.

Seidl: I'm attempting to capture various layers of meaning through my tableaus. I leave room for multiple interpretations, rather than imposing moral perspectives on the scene. This allows for a much more open-ended and richer experience. At the same time, I like presenting the absurd and comic aspects of serious events. In the face of something disturbing, there are always opportunities for laughter, even if it is laughter that gets stuck in the throat.

Guillén: I'm also glad that you mention your love for photography. I understand that Diane Arbus had a significant influence on your work? Can you speak to what it was about her work that influenced you? And, secondly, your films are often compared to the work of Martin Parr and I was wondering if you find any resemblance in your films to his work?

Martin Parr, "Common Sense"

Seidl: There are numerous photographers who have influenced me; too many to name. But among them, Diane Arbus and Nan Golden would be direct influences upon my work. Simpler, black-and-white photographers interest me. I discovered Martin Parr's work much later, so I can't say he was an influence, but I do think we share many interests and themes in common. [Note: A more thorough analysis of the similarities between Seidl's work and Parr's can be found in the essay "Critical Strands: On the Beach with Ulrich Seidl and Martin Parr", cross-published at retinalechoes and MUBI.]

Guillén: I would be remiss not to mention Margarete Tiesel's brave performance in Paradise: Love. Can you speak to your on-set strategies to create trust among your actors to deliver such revealing and intimate performances?

Seidl: I direct precisely. I describe everything to my actors in detail. But I never really write dialogue; that's something I develop with the actors. I also always work with an ensemble cast that combines both professional and non-professional actors. In Paradise: Love, all the roles of the white women were played by professional actors, whereas all the black men, the so-called "beach boys", were non-professional. To prepare them for their roles before we begin shooting on the set, I spend a lot of individual time with the various actors discussing their parts as well as who they are as actors. The role depicted in a film is the result of the encounter between the role as written and what the actor brings to the performance of that written role. I require actors to be able to improvise and to let go of the notion of trying to protect themselves when some subjects appear taboo. I help them work against self-censorship. Being able to improvise requires that an actor know the intention of the film and how to factor their performance into that intention.

Also, I'm always inspired by the locations where I'm shooting. Locations often give me ideas. That was exactly the case with Kenya where so many of my shots were determined by things I saw. But I present those shots in a specific manner that allow me to say a lot visually about this other world. You can feel the complexity of the world when you're faced with scenes like that.

Guillén: How do you achieve your admittedly disturbing nude scenes? Do you have a closed set with a skeleton crew?

Seidl: When you're doing a film like this, from the very beginning when you're talking to your actresses during casting you have to admit there are going to be these intimate scenes in which they will have to be naked in bed with black men. They have to be willing to display their bodies, however imperfect they may be on camera. Part of the preparation with my cast in the months before arriving on set and then when actually on location is to develop the trust, which is a context in which the actors feel that they can be free. This also requires shooting in a way in which the technical aspects of filmmaking play as little a role as possible and won't impede the atmosphere on set.

Guillén: I was impressed with Paradise: Love's post-colonial critique of sex tourism. There has been much discussion about the mutual exploitation of the characters within the story; however, I felt Margarete Tiesel's performance revealed an alarming sense of self-exploitation. Can you speak to how her character has colonized her own desires by conforming to social mores and standards?

Seidl: During the course of the film, Margarete Tiesel's character has to go through several experiences, not the least of which is recognizing that she is not seen as a woman in her own right by the beach boys, but as a white woman who has economic potential for the black men. By the end of the film she has decided to go along with this, but it departs from what she truly desires. Often love relationships are commercial arrangements that involve mutual exploitation.

Guillén: If the film's critique is that there are these economies of desire, that love—as you say—is more often than not a commercial arrangement that reflects inauthentic feeling, when can desire bring happiness?

Seidl: Desire and happiness are quite different. What interests me is showing people who are attempting to fulfill their desire to escape the trap of their isolation. I'm not so much interested in the individual fate or destiny of my characters, their happiness, as I am in presenting a mirror of our global society.

YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—Kalayaan (Wildlife, 2012)

Reminiscent of the sensually dilated visions of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and João Pedro Rodrigues (Tropical Malady and O Fantasma, respectively), Adolfo Alix, Jr.'s Kalayaan (Wildlife, 2012) likewise exudes a nocturnal sheen as it slinks through a (somewhat) homoeroticized psyche, suggesting a gradual descent into madness. The opening scene tracks perfectly, with an unidentified nude male being blown by a mermaid among the shadowy mangrove roots, climaxing to the sound of a gun shot. A dream? A fantasy? Who's to say? Certainly not Julian, the taciturn soldier stationed on Kota, a remote military outpost on the disputed, isolated Spratly Islands.

Foxy Thai superstar Ananda Everingham delivers a wordless yet compelling performance as Julian, a soldier more than ready to complete his three-month service, even as news of a pending coup in Manila threatens to bring down the 1998-2001 presidency of Joseph Estrada, forcing Julian to stay on the island until further notice. The film's first half is a protracted depiction of near quotidian insanity as Julian battles boredom and loneliness by jogging along the beach, doing push-ups, watching a pet turtle emerge from his carapace, cleaning his rifle, and masturbating to porn. But at night, especially, Julian is silenced by ghosts and haunted by spectral presences enticing him from within the mangroves.

Winner of the Balanghai Trophy for Best Cinematography (Albert Banzon), Best Production Design (Adolfo Alix, Jr.) and Best Sound (Ditoy Aguila) when it premiered in the Directors Showcase at the 2012 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival, Kalayaan recently received comparable accolades from The Young Critics Circle who—along with awards for cinematography, production design and sound—additionally singled out Teresa Barrozo's aural orchestration. Kalayaan is having its U.S. premiere as part of New Filipino Cinema at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

In his review for Variety, Richard Kuipers likewise extols Kalayaan's high order technical feats achieved on a low budget, and he tunes in to Kalayaan's "internal logic" to appreciate its elliptical narrative, which he cautions might frustrate the impatient viewer. Albert Banzon's camera work mutes Kota's paradisal beauty and elicits an environmental menace that successfully visualizes Julian's beleaguered psyche, whose paranoia is further underscored by Ditoy Aguila's cacaphonous sound design mixing "low-bass industrial rumblings with the shrill tones of an insistently ringing bell." As stated by Gabriel Gatbonton, the island is given a "terrifying bipolar character—paradise by day, wilderness by night" and the island's beauty ironically compromised by monotony. A sense of the narrative's alterity is enforced throughout the first half of the film with startling images that are never explained (a body on fire submerged face down in beachside waves), Julian's silence, and an overall non-diegetic approach that edges the narrative's traction forward by viscerally immersing the viewer in Julian's unsettled perspective.

It isn't until about half way through the film that Julian's absolute isolation is interrupted by the arrival of Eric (Luis Alandy) and Lucio (Zanjoe Marudo), fellow soldiers sent to Kota by commanders concerned over Julian's lack of radio response. Swiftly caught into the round of Julian's routine, Eric and Lucio jog along the beach, do push-ups, shoot hoops, and struggle to draw Julian out of his shell, much like his pet turtle. They make him eventually laugh by staging a campy beauty peagant (that slyly critiques Philippine relations with Malaysia and China). Their narrative purpose, however, lies essentially in suggesting the back story that has challenged Julian's sanity. They discuss what Julian never reveals. By film's end it's a free-for-all as to what has actually happened; but, it's done so evocatively that it hardly matters. The descent has provided its own distinct pleasure.

YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA 2013—The Evening Class Interview With Joel Shepard

Last year about this time, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) launched New Filipino Cinema to introduce American audiences to the startlingly creative yet relatively unknown work coming out of the Philippines. Here at The Evening Class, we reviewed several films in the 2012 line-up—Niño, Kano: An American and His Harem, Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings, Amok, and Boundary—replicated Philbert Ortiz Dy's essay, and interviewed Raya Martin and Carlo Obispo.

New Filipino Cinema was so successful that YBCA programmer Joel Shepard has returned with a second edition, co-sponsored by FACINE (Filipino Arts & Cinema, International) and Filipino American Arts Exposition. "Even if the rest of the world is still catching on," YBCA's website boasts, "the Philippines remains one of the most creative and exciting countries for independent cinema. 5 days, 16 films, 7,107 islands!"

In his follow-up essay for this year's edition, Philippine critic and New Filipino Cinema co-programmer Philbert Ortiz Dy qualifies the difficulty of trying to pinpoint a unifying theme in this year's selection of films. "Once again," Dy writes, "we are faced with a uniquely diverse set of movies that defy classification. Like the country itself, which is made up of thousands of little islands, each with its own culture, dialect, and people, our cinema often refuses to homogenize." New Filipino Cinema's quest "to document the soul of a country" reveals a character of violence negotiated through art. "Many of our films ... seem to meditate on living within a culture of conflict, telling the stories of people who are forced to adapt to the violence that is so present in their lives."

During my recent stint in San Francisco, I made a point of inviting Joel Shepard out for coffee so that we could profile this year's edition of New Filipino Cinema, opening tonight at YBCA.

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Michael Guillén: Joel, I was so pleased to receive notice that YBCA has followed through with a second edition of New Filipino Cinema. Before launching into that, let's recap a bit of what happened with last year's edition. Did it achieve the reach you imagined? From my perspective, the 2012 series was one of the best uses of diasporic channels to distribute a national product internationally that I'd witnessed in some time.

Joel Shepard: It's been quite a journey. I've made 7-8 trips to the Philippines now, researching Filipino Cinema, and pulling these programs together.

Guillén: What motivated your interest?

Shepard: I knew a little bit about Filipino Cinema, but mainly older films; I didn't know much about contemporary films. Then, six or seven years ago the Rotterdam Film Festival had a focus on the Philippines with a sidebar that had a particular view of contemporary Filipino Cinema. They focused on the avant-garde underground scene, very much based out of Manila, and a group of people who were all friends—Khavn De La Cruz, John Torres, Raya Martin—members of a younger, underground scene working with tiny budgets, who were making experimental and raw, immediate street filmmaking, and I had no idea all of this was going on. The Rotterdam sidebar was eye-opening. I decided I needed to know more and get deeper into Filipino Cinema, especially since the Bay Area has such a huge Filipino American community. It seemed a natural contribution for YBCA.

My first visit to the Philippines was to serve on a jury at a film festival called Cinemanila, which is actually the only international film festival in the Philippines. I learned there was way more going on with independent Filipino Cinema than the selection Rotterdam had shown—which were all great, important films—but, just one part of the whole scene. It was incredibly eye-opening to discover there was this independent film scene in the Philippines that is not hardly known at all outside of the Philippines. It's starting to get out there a little more but there's still a long ways to go.

The term "independent cinema" doesn't mean much anymore in America. It's been drained of meaning. "Indie film" has been largely co-opted by the studios. But it still means something in the Philippines where there are three major studios that put out all the commercial product and where everything else is independent.

Guillén: The financing is independent? None is government-subsidized?

Shepard: The Philippines have a unique system for how independent films get made. There are several film festivals in the Philippines who basically commission films through a grant-application process. The festivals fund a certain number of these films, which then end up being shown at the festival. Cinemaya and the Cinema One Originals Film Festival are both festivals composed of such commissioned films. We don't have anything quite like that in the States.

Guillén: Is that influence from Rotterdam, who I understand groom filmmakers to harvest premieres? Is the independent Filipino Cinema scene trying to make movies they think will interest festivals like Rotterdam?

Shepard: Their system pre-dates Rotterdam because it was basically the only way they could get movies made. The Cinema One Originals Film Festival is actually an offshoot of Cinema One, a television channel that's kind of like their HBO. They're producing these films because it provides content for their TV channel.

Guillén: It intrigues me that your research has discovered much more than what has been consensually understood as the national cinema of the Philippines. This confirms for me the slippery nature of using a term like "national cinema", which necessarily requires constant maintenance.

Shepard: I continue to be amazed at the quality of work being produced there and how little it is being seen outside of their own country. Again, a few films are spreading out into the international film festival circuit. I don't know if you noticed but at Cannes this year there are three Filipino films, one in main competition, and two in Un Certain Regard. That's the first time there's every been three Filipino films at Cannes at the same time. All three have come out of the indie world. So, though it's taken them a while, even Cannes is catching on.

Guillén: When you decided you wanted to create a program of New Filipino Cinema, what was involved in negotiating with YBCA? Did you seek a grant to finance your initial research trips? Did you have to have the whole program in place before you pitched it to them?

Shepard: Luckily, I'm pretty independent at YBCA in terms of where I place my focus. I'm allowed to be self-directed. I'm lucky that I can get obsessed about something and have the freedom to just go for it, as long as it fits into the institutional mission. I was able to adjust my budget to accommodate the additional travel required. I couldn't just have people send me DVDs to get a sense of the scene. I had to immerse myself in the culture and meet the filmmakers and go to the events. It would never have worked to just research on the internet and pull together a program that way.

Guillén: By comparison to your programming colleagues in the Bay Area, I consider yours to be one of the most curatorial sensibilities out there. Do you consider there to be a difference between programming and curating?

Shepard: That's a tricky question. I've always been a little bit uncomfortable with the term "curator", which seems to me to be a term that comes more from the visual arts of the museum and gallery worlds. I've never been sure exactly how it fits in to film. To be honest, it's always struck me as a little pretentious.

Guillén: I admire your modesty, but surely you're aware that your programs are singularly unique? Most notably, they have an edge to them. You often approach mature and erotic domains. You'd think in San Francisco that would be par for the course, but it actually seems to me that most programming in the Bay Area has become increasingly safe. There's not as much edgy content available.

Shepard: Less and less, yeah. It's changed over time. San Francisco's just not as edgy a place anymore, though that edginess is something I often revisit. As for the Filipino project, I should be clear that I co-programmed this series with Philbert Ortiz Dy. Right off the bat, I knew we needed to do this with somebody from the country. I'm not Filipino. I don't speak any of the Filipino languages. To make the series something deep, I felt it was important to partner with someone in the Philippines.

Guillén: Which lends credence. Philbert Ortiz Dy is one of Manila's main film critics as well?

Shepard: He is, yeah, and he's really sharp. He's somebody who can write about Iron Man all the way to some weird avant garde film with equal interest, intelligence, and passion. There aren't a lot of critics like that.

Guillén: He wrote the essay for last year's edition of New Filipino Cinema. Has he written a new one this year?

Shepard: Yeah, and it's very good. I wrote a short essay laying out the broad picture, then in his essay Philbert went deeper into the themes of this year's films.

Guillén: How did you two negotiate shaping the rhythm of the festival?

Shepard: We figured it out as we went along. We didn't draw up a contract or anything like that. We agreed on all the films. We both had to buy in to each film. I can't go to every major film festival that goes on there—not like I did in my first year when I made four visits to the Philippines—so I depend on him to preview films in advance for me and pass on what he thinks the most valuable.

Guillén: How is the Philippine film community reacting to the New Filipino Cinema series that you've introduced to the United States?

Shepard: They're supportive, happy and proud that it's happening. I was just there for a few days a couple of weeks ago on my way to a film festival in Korea and I was sitting at the breakfast buffet one morning reading The Enquirer—which is their daily newspaper—and opened it up to find an article covering the film series and the 16 Filipino films coming to San Francisco.

Guillén: Have you had any anecdotal response from the filmmakers featured in last year's edition to the extent of sensing any increased visibility for their participation?

Shepard: Having only had a year, I think it's going to take some time before the series is fully noticed. There certainly was an increased interest in the series nationally from other film programmers. I received a lot of inquiries: "Can we show these films here?" I imagine the next step for New Filipino Cinema is to organize some kind of national tour; but, it's complicated. Dealing with the Philippines presents unique problems and challenges that don't happen with other countries.

Guillén: [Laughs.] How ambassadorial!

Shepard: It's not simple.

Guillén: Is the entire series digital?

Shepard: Yes. It's pretty much all DCP. There's no film. But that's because no one is making film in the Philippines anymore. The only projects coming out on film are some of the broad, commercial films where prints are being struck because not all of the theaters have converted to digital yet; but, otherwise, in the independent world, no one is shooting on film.

Guillén: It's possible that—if the classification of a "national cinema" is to apply at all in the future—it won't be through commercial channels and might just have to be through digital independents.

Shepard: It's interesting. As much as I bemoan the loss of 35mm, I also have to acknowledge the democratization enabled by digital technology that allows people all over the world to make films that would have been impossible to make in years past. So there's good and bad.

Guillén: I imagine another advantage of a DCP series is the potential for organizing a national tour? In that respect, it's not such a bad thing?

Shepard: Yeah.

Guillén: I don't intend for you to cover the entire upcoming series for me, but I was wondering if you could give me three or four titles that you're especially excited about for one reason or another? Titles that you really want your San Franciscan audiences to see?

Shepard: The whole program, including shorts, is 16 films and—just so you'll have a sense of the series as a whole—we've really tried to make the program a comprehensive picture of the entire independent film scene. We cover the experimental, avant-garde world, as well as documentaries, more traditional dramatic narratives and shorts. I was very conscious of making sure we had a number of films directed by women, as well as films in different languages. Most people assume Tagalog is the language spoken in the Philippines, but that's just one of many languages. Tagalog is the language of the capitol region, but outside that region are dozens of other languages.

We also wanted the program to cover the whole geography of the islands. The Philippines are much more than just Manila. Of course, as the capitol, most film production takes place there; but, there are pockets of regional filmmaking going on as well, particularly in the South, which is historically known as a troubled region of the Philippines because of an ongoing Muslim war against the Philippine government. It's considered a dangerous area and Americans are warned not to travel there. That's mostly misleading information—it's safe to go there—and it was important for us to secure films from there. There's incredible independent work coming out of that region, which very few people are aware of.

We're starting the series with an older film Himala ("Miracle" in Tagalog) made in 1982. This was a choice we debated a lot because the program is called New Filipino Cinema. Himala is directed by Ishmael Bernal, who—though now deceased—remains one of the Philippines' greatest filmmakers. Himala is probably his greatest film; it's a masterpiece. It could be considered the Philippine equivalent to The Godfather or even Gone With the Wind, but it's completely unknown in the West. The rights to it are owned by ABS-CBN, a major television network in the Philippines, and they've restored the film. It was re-released at Christmas in the Philippines and it stars Nora Aunor, who's probably their biggest movie star. So we're opening the series with the U.S. premiere of this new digital restoration. This is exactly the kind of film that should be showing on the circuit at the Castro Theatre, along with Kubrick and Hitchcock and the standard repertory fare. So it's new not only in that it's a new digital restoration, but it's new in the fact that film restoration itself is a relatively new concept in the Philippines. In general, they haven't done a good job of taking good care of their film history; but, there are a lot of efforts now to change that.

Another highlight would be our closing film The Journey of Stars into the Dark Night (Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim) by Arnel Mardoquio. He's one of the filmmakers from the South, Mindanao, that I was mentioning earlier. We showed his film Crossfire last year. His new film is also set during the uprising in the South but he takes a completely strange and unexpected point of view on this conflict. It's a truly surprising film and he's going to be at YBCA in person.

Guillén: Ah, I was going to ask if YBCA was hosting any talent.

Shepard: We have four people coming from Manila: three of the filmmakers, and an academic. So both the opening and closing films are pretty special to me. It's hard to choose because all of these films are like my babies. We've chosen them so carefully. We didn't have enough slots to show everything we wanted to show, there were that many good films, so everything's good in the series. You have to come and see everything!

Guillén: I'd still like you to single out at least one more.

Shepard: Okay. I'm a big fan of one of the documentaries we're showing, Tondo, Beloved: To What Are the Poor Born? (Tundong Magiliw: Pasaan isinisilang siyang mahirap?). Tondo is a neighborhood in Manila that has a bad reputation. It's one of metro Manila's poorest neighborhoods and is one of the most densely populated areas in the entire Earth, actually. This young woman Jewel Maranan made this documentary about the neighborhood. She lived with a family there for a number of years and has crafted an extremely intimate documentary about their daily existence. There isn't really a plot or anything like that. There's no editorializing. No directorial flourishes. I'm not sure if Jewel has ever seen this director's work, but her documentary reminds me a bit of Pedro Costa. It has a similar narcotic intimacy that fully immerses you in this place.

Guillén: Is there anyone in the United States who you would consider a Filipino cinema expert? Someone who's writing on the subject?

Shepard: There's very little. I had a meeting with Susan Oxtoby the other day and going over the program with her and she had never heard of any of these films and, as you know, she's one of the most knowledgable people in the world on film. Filipino Cinema is a blind spot for most people.

Guillén: Which your series clearly remedies; but, it makes me wonder why there's been such a blind spot? Are there historical contingencies between the Philippines and the U.S. that would have contributed to that?

Shepard: I'm not sure why this is; but, I feel like it's my duty to do something about it. Also, I think we owe the Philippines a little more than we're willing to acknowledge. They were our colony for 50 years and they're still very much dealing with the aftermath of that, and not always in an entirely positive way. Americans have a responsibility to understand more about the Philippines. That's my main reason for pulling together this film series.

Guillén: Let's return to the idea of distributing a national cinema through diasporic channels. How do you coordinate community outreach to your Filipino American constituency?

Shepard: There's a whole number of cultural leaders in the local community that I've gotten to know and who are giving their support. There's active Filipino American media in the Bay Area, including four newspapers, and a TV channel, a whole slew that—if you're not a member of the community—you wouldn't necessarily know about; but, it's big.

Guillén: Again, I know it's still too early to fully gauge reception for the series, but has there been any preliminary sense of how older Filipinos are relating to the new work you're showcasing in the Bay Area?

Shepard: It's complicated because there's a complicated relationship between Filipinos and Filipino Americans. They're not the same people. They're different communities. I don't necessarily think of Filipino Americans as being the main audience for New Filipino Cinema. They're an important audience, of course, and we want to do everything possible to reach them and get them interested but I want to reach beyond them too.

FILL THE VOID / LEMALE E HA'HALAL (2012)—The Evening Class Interview With Rama Burshstein and Hadas Yaron

Rama Burshstein was sitting at a wedding with a friend when a beautiful 17-year-old girl came to their table. She was wearing a lot of jewelry, which signified she'd recently been engaged. Burshtein's friend congratulated the girl, but in a weird almost mournful way, as if the young girl were going to a funeral and not her wedding. After the bride-to-be left their table, Burshtein's friend remarked, "You see her? She's about to marry her late sister's husband." That was "the end of it" for Burshstein, who became fascinated and pursued the young girl the entire evening, trying to understand why she had agreed to such an arrangement? Recently converted to the Hassidic faith, Burshstein had never heard of such a thing before; but, became intrigued enough to follow up with research. She met with 17 women, some girls, some already grandmothers, all married to their late sister's husband. By the end of her research, and with a more nuanced eye towards her culture, she came to accept that a young woman marrying her late sister's husband was a natural phenomenon, with hardly any of the drama she first imagined. Nonetheless, she drafted a treatment of the idea, even though she was not yet thinking about making a film.

Burshstein learned filmmaking at the Sam Spiegel School in Jerusalem. A few months after graduating, she became religious, and has been for 20 years. Though she didn't continue making feature films, she applied her skills to crafting films for her community, primarily films made by women for women (who ordinarily do not watch films). Paid for out of pocket, these films had to be generic enough—informational, educational, and with just the right balance of crying and laughter—to be something community women would come to see. Thus, they were hardly art films and had little to do with creative self-expression. They were, in fact, about making a living through providing entertainment. The experience taught Burshtein a lot about script writing, financing, camera work, directing and editing, all within a female-structured support system that met little resistance from the men.

But she felt mute. She felt women had no voice in Hassidic culture; a culture that was more than 3,000 years old, and which contained wisdom and beauty rarely shared from within. Any films made about the orthodox world were made by outsiders looking in, many were not researched thoroughly, and frequently were edited to misrepresent the community. She began to intuit meaning in the fact that she had learned a craft before becoming religious and became motivated to make a film that would reach past her community to the outside world, to give them an accurate view. Fond of saying her shoulders are too narrow to hold flags, Burshstein asserts her film was never meant to be political. She wanted to make a personal film, in the way the best stories told are personal. As a storyteller, she wanted to tell a story about her community set within her community. That's when she remembered the research she had done on the young girl marrying her deceased sister's husband.

With the blessing of her rabbi, and the support of her community, Burshstein began negotiations to make her first feature film Fill the Void (Lemale e ha'halal, 2012). It took a year to cast the film. Not because people weren't talented; but, because she didn't know what she wanted. It was important to her to cast the film from within her community, using non-actors, for fear that the performances would prove unbelievable otherwise; but, that ended up not being feasible because the characters proved too complicated for non-actors to perform. So she decided to audition actors, even though it was sometimes hard for her to believe they could accurately represent orthodox Jews. For example, the actor who played the male lead Yochay (Yiftach Klein) was already a recognized star in Israel, and had played such diverse roles as a pimp, a cop and a homosexual. Who would believe he was orthodox? The film's female lead Shira (Hadas Yaron) came to the project towards the end of Burshstein's year after auditioning everyone possible in Israel. Yaron walked into the room, "with love," and Burshstein knew immediately it was her. Yaron was Shira.

I met with both Rama Burshstein and Hadas Yaron in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel during the 56th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) where Fill the Void was featured in the festival's New Directors sidebar. My thanks to Karen Larsen for arranging same. Fill the Void opens theatrically in the Bay Area come Friday, June 7.

* * *

Michael Guillén: First and foremost, congratulations on such an intimate, authentic film that has bravely crossed cultural barriers to achieve an international audience. A remarkable achievement.

Rama Burshtein: Thank you.

Guillén: At last night's Q&A after the SFIFF screening of Fill the Void, you were asked about your use of soft focus and its importance to the film's overall visual design. It was an interesting question to end your Q&A, but today I wanted to pick up from there because you mentioned that the soft and indirect focus was structured into your narrative script. By example, you brought up the brilliantly comic scene where the old woman interrupts Shira's conference with the rabbi to gain assistance with her oven. Can you speak to that comic timing—which I understood as a clear inflection of the humor within Jewish culture—and which you captured so well within that scene?

Burshstein: I can speak about the powerful thing that drew me into Judaism: the comic and the sorrowful working at once. Drama and comedy happen at the same time. Before I even joined the religion, a friend of mine who was religious had to marry off her son in the evening and her mother had died that morning. She buried her mother at 12:30 and at 7:00 she held the wedding and she was able to maneuver her conflicting feelings. I asked her, "How can you do that?" Ever since then I have asked the same question about Judaism. How can it be two things working at once?

The comic relief was about relief, yes, but it was more than that. You're drawn into a drama and interested in it, in what's going on and how it will end, and that's the time to break that focus because such is life. Life is never a movie that plays all the way out; there's always something interrupting. The rabbi, being responsible to his duties, knows that secret. He goes with whatever is floating. He doesn't say, "No, this is not important because this other thing is more important." Being a rabbi, a wise man, means asking, "Who says this is more important than the other? Who says?" So he leaves the conference with Shira to help the old women out with her oven. I didn't mean it to be so comic.

Guillén: But it was quite hilarious, perhaps because such "interruptions" are in and of themselves hilarious for being unexpected?

Burshstein: When the film screened in Los Angeles, someone came up to me and said that the only time she cried was during that scene because she felt the loneliness of the old lady. So everyone is watching this weird film differently. Yes, the scene was shot and edited to provide comic relief, but what I truly meant was that everything works together. For example, the wedding scene has everything in it: joy, excitement, and fear, and sorrow. It's all mixed up together. She's crying, so for a minute you think she doesn't want to get married. But then she's excited. Being honest is about allowing everything to happen, as it does in life. It wouldn't be true if she wasn't scared, excited, and sorrowful over the loss of a sister. For me this is the power of Fill the Void: everything happens together.

Guillén: Would you say that you're approaching this inclusivity of contrasting emotions from a cultural understanding? Or from a feminine viewpoint?

Burshstein: It's a cultural understanding. I had to learn this about my culture. I was brought up in a liberal family and taught to make clear distinctions—"I am a woman. Now I am happy. Now I am sad."—but, when I converted to orthodox Judaism, I had to learn that feminism within Judaism is about watching and observing and being able to hold what is witnessed without an immediate need to express it. Once I learned how to do that, new things happened. I'm still learning this. It's not my natural way of dealing with life.

Guillén: The comic strength in that scene, as well as the film's ambiguous ending, speaks to your directorial skill with timing. The ambiguity of the final scene has to do with, as you've said, the inclusion of so many different and contrasting emotions, but its strength lies in how you edited it and the moment when you chose to cut to black. Your timing is impeccable. The look on Shira's face begs interpretation and that scene's ambiguity becomes seductive. I didn't want you to stop the film there. I wanted to know more about what happened to these characters with whom I'd become so invested.

Burshstein: First of all because it's between me and God, I have to be honest and admit that the cut itself was made by Asaf Sudri, my cinematographer. I had cut the scene a little bit further and he came to me and said, "No, this is the place where we have to cut." So I have to give him the credit for the brilliance of that edit.

Guillén: Did he explain to you why he felt it would be better to cut right at that moment?

Burshstein: He was able to be more precise than I was. I looked for that moment, I looked for what he did, but I wasn't able to find it myself. He should receive all the credit for that choice. He suggested that the audience receive only a glimpse of what was about to happen, but they shouldn't be there when it happened. He made the cut and I saw how perfect it was and I asked myself, "Why didn't I see that?" Regarding that moment, some people feel it is erotic....

Guillén: It is! That's how I saw it.

Burshstein: But other people focus on how scared she is. They sense that Shira regrets the whole thing and wishes she could start over in the supermarket, having some say about the boy she wants to marry. Some people have focused on the difference in their ages, with Yochay being older than her, and it upsets them that he is going to be with her. Some people feel the romance. It's weird. Everyone reads it differently because all the emotions are there and they can choose whichever one they want to hold onto. It depends on who you are. From what you're saying, I can tell that you can see a lot of emotions at once; but, others can only go with one emotion at a time. They'll see the fear, or the regret, go only with the sorrow, or only with the romance. Everyone chooses their own lens to watch the film.

Guillén: I was startled last night by the question from the man who felt Fill the Void was all about duty and not about love. I wanted to turn around and ask him, "Did you just see this movie? Where were you?" You're clearly more patient with audience reception than I am, aware that the movie is being read in so many different ways. But perhaps that is what is widening your audience? The fact that the film is able to be read in so many diverse ways? You mentioned last night that before making this film you had made films within your community by women for women; but, you knew this film would reach past your community? You wanted that, right?

Burshstein: From the beginning I knew this film was not meant for the community. It never was.

Guillén: And yet from what I understand, it's been a blessed project from the very beginning. The community went with it and there were not a lot of issues about your making it. What has that been like for you? Did you anticipate such support from your community? Did you anticipate that the film would do as well as it's done and achieve the international reach it's achieved? Was it what you expected?

Burshstein: If you knew what I expected....

Guillén: What did you expect?

Burshstein: [Laughing] Nothing! My expectations were so low. I remember when the film was shown at Venice and I began to notice how the audience was reacting, I turned to Hadas and asked her, "Are you ready for this film to change your life? Maybe you're going to become a star?" First of all, I never expected to even make this film; but, then suddenly it was done. But as the director and the editor, it was really hard to achieve the precise energy of the film. I couldn't see if it was going to work or not. So I had low expectations of how it would be received by its audience.

Guillén: So the film's reception was a revelation for you?

Burshstein: It's not a question of revelation because it wasn't about my making a "successful" film. My reaction was more about, "I can't believe that people relate to this film." I was surprised. I couldn't believe that this simple tale, this love story where very little actually happens, where very little that is familiar happens, where the boy and girl don't touch, they don't kiss, and yet somehow this was so shocking to audiences.

Guillén: I consider Fill the Void to be one of the most eloquent expressions of the necessary restraint of desire. Because the Hassidic culture is completely foreign to me, as the film started I was concerned about whether or not I would be able to relate to it. But it didn't take very long before I began to sense that something was happening in this movie that was uniquely authentic, and fascinating for being so suggestive and erotic. And when I say "erotic", I don't mean sexual. I mean it in a classic sense, of eros being that which holds the world together. It's like atoms being attracted to each other to create molecules. What you have expressed about your culture through your film is the loving and erotic strength embedded in your faith. And I must commend you for communicating that so well to a secular audience.

Burshstein: I love you. I do. You've said it so beautifully that it makes me want to cry. Thank you, first of all. Really. I was always interested in the relationship between men and women. All I care about is people and their intimacy. For me, this is it, the secret and the enigma of all that, the chemistry. Judaism told me a great secret: passion is only for something you lack. You could never be passionate if you have it. The secret of passion is not having it. When you have it, you can be experiencing all sorts of wonderful things, even love, but it's not passion. As a secular person I didn't have an answer for why passion would go out of my life as swiftly as it came in.

I made this film going forward with the power of restraint that insures passion will be there all the time, and it's erotic as you say, but also sexual in a refined way. There are two sexual feelings and they are very different from each other. One happens here [she touches her heart] and then it goes down. But when it happens here [again, she touches her heart] and goes down, it is stronger when it goes down. That's what I was working with when I made this film. People feel it. Some people have told me they can't breathe watching the film; they're so into it.

Guillén: I like how Manohla Dargis described in her New York Times review that Fill the Void was sexy but chaste.

Burshstein: What do you mean by "chaste"?

Guillén: The sense of reservation, the sense of propriety, and the sense of not acting upon desire when it is not appropriate, and yet how sexy that all is. It's shown best in your film in the scene where Yochay comes perilously close to Shira and intimates what they could have had together. That scene is almost suffocating—the intensity of the desire sucks the air out of the room—and I found myself anticipating, "Are they going to touch? They can't touch."

Burshstein: [Laughing] You became the rabbi of the film!

Guillén: Hadas, was there something in particular about the story that made you want to play the role of Shira?

Hadas Yaron: It's a love story, which is always attractive to do. I guess it was because it takes place in such a certain community and a way of living a set of rules that added something much more intense to this love story; something you don't get to see a lot.

Guillén: Rama mentioned earlier that when the film screened at Venice she turned to you and asked you if you were ready to have it change your life? You then won the Best Actress award at Venice. The film has had a tremendous impact and you have achieved incredible visibility with this role. I saw an interview with Rama where she worried that everything was coming at you too fast and that you might become distracted from your studies. How do you see yourself positioned within your success?

Yaron: I don't know. Even though it's been a few months, I'm still letting it sink in. After I got that award, I did feel the need to go study. I had never studied in any kind of formal acting studio or drama school. I'd done maybe one workshop. While we were traveling with the film on the festival circuit, I just didn't know how to take it. It's weird when you do something for the first time, and you're not confident with what you do, and then someone tells you, "You're that good." You start questioning that. I'm still in that process with myself. I look in the mirror and it's like, "Really?" So I'm starting to do as many workshops as I can just to feel that I'm getting to know myself more as a person and as an actress. It's all been very strange, but I'm lucky to have the experience, and we'll see what happens.

Burshstein: Haddas is amazing as a person. She's not self-centered. She's humble and she's beautiful and she will succeed because of her nobility.

Guillén: How was your on-set interaction? How did you work with each other to create the character of Shira?

Yaron: Rama and I had a lot of conversations about how Judaism works so that I would understand. Because I didn't know anything about this world. You have to know how it works technically to understand what goes underneath. When I asked Rama for home work on how to work with this character, Rama just told me, "Read the script and see that you're getting it, that you're feeling it, and that you know what you feel in each and every scene."

Guillén: One of my favorite scenes is the accordion scene where we see Shira collapse into her uncertainty with music becoming the only way she can express her sorrow, however inappropriately in front of a group of children.

Yaron: I thought of my father working on that scene. My father always told me that—whenever the world became too noisy—he had a button that he could turn off to make it silent. I tried to do that with this scene. Shira doesn't have the vocabulary to tell herself what she's feeling.

Burshstein: She doesn't have it in words, but she's an artist. She's a true artist, because it's not about wanting to play to a packed audience at Carnegie Hall, it's about expressing herself through her music, which to me is higher than Carnegie Hall, in a bigger way, in bigger terms.

Guillén: This is the value of Fill the Void, and why I suspect audiences are relating to it so much, because it suggests a different way to approach desire and ambition. Here in the West we presume things have to be done in a certain way; but, your film suggests something else, another way. That there can be restraint. That there can be uncertainty. That final scene where Shira is preparing for her wedding is truly ambitious. As an actress, Hadas, you displayed a wide palette of emotions. How did the two of you work together to depict that conflict of emotions?

Yaron: All that I remember is that, first of all, it felt very real that day and I remember praying.

Burshstein: But you have to go back, especially when you went to go see a real Hassidic wedding. It was a strong experience for you.

Yaron: It was.

Burshstein: Mostly because the guy was crying all the time.

Yaron: Yeah, more than the woman.

Guillén: Is that what inspired Yochay's tearful approach to Shira during the wedding ceremony? How can anyone say there is no love in this film after seeing his eyes in this scene?

Yaron: That's true. When I saw the girl at the wedding, I was looking at her and thinking, "Okay, I'm going to be there." But when the boy—and he was a big boy—walked in, he was all red and crying. I was shocked.

Burshstein: It was important for me to express that a wedding for an Orthodox Jew is not just a ceremony; it's about a true moment where two souls unite. This is so strong for people in the Hassidic world. They've been educated in this moment. Usually when you go to a Hassidic wedding, it's so emotional that you can cry the whole time without even knowing the bride and groom personally. The connection is so strong. For me it was important that we show that strength and have the audience feel it.

To raise money, I made a four-minute documentary of a friend's wedding that focused on the bride waiting for the groom to come. She's crying and she's blessing. At one point she lifts her head after crying and her eyes are blackened with streaked mascara. In that moment she didn't care how she looked. She was into something so much deeper than that. Hadas and I talked about that footage a lot and it helped her prepare for that final wedding scene. Then there was this miracle where Hadas woke up that day, came to do the scene, and she was into it in a way that she said, "Tell me where to pray." She sat for three or four hours in that chair praying. I gave her the insights but she did the work.

After we shot the whole film, one nice thing that happened was that Yiftach Klein—who had been living with a girl for 15 years and had three children—finally married her with a rabbi. He went for it. He felt it. He felt the strength of it and he felt the need to do it.

Guillén: This touches upon what was asked of you last night regarding the tension between love and duty. Here in the West, love is something you try out. But you were clear that love for you meant commitment, a quality vital to your culture. Afterwards, I was arguing with someone about your response. They said, "I can't imagine not having had sex with the person I'm going to marry." And I said, "But this isn't just about sex. This is about an attunement." It strikes me that in your culture it is about being in tune with something larger? You don't need to try it out; you just need to be in tune with it. Is that a fair assessment?

Burshstein: It's fair enough. But I also understood what he was really saying; that it's scary to commit on that level. I'll speak freely, having sex with someone is about that specific time you're having sex with someone. But having sex is a lifetime thing. Sometimes it's nothing and it doesn't work. Sometimes it's beautiful. The way it works doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful and then it doesn't work. Sometimes it doesn't work in the beginning and it becomes beautiful. When you commit, it's not about now. That commitment is to the road, and that road has so many things that nobody's leaving. Nobody's going. Nobody's wondering, "Oh, will he call me tomorrow after we've had bad sex?" No. You have bad sex and then you work on it until you have good sex. Commitment revives love, but not in just a romantic way. Commitment doesn't let love go. You work at it. You understand it. You make it better.

Imagine you're stranded on an island until the day you die and no one is ever going to rescue you, and you're there with someone. It doesn't matter who that someone is. They will be lover and friend for your life, you and him, that's it. Even the genders don't really matter—you could be homosexual: a man with a man, a woman with a woman—or a man with a woman, but that's the person you have to work with. And it will work, right? Because that's the power of commitment. But I can understand the fear of commitment.

Guillén: As the closing credits roll, it's all in Hebrew except for the Sundance reference. Can you speak to your involvement with the Sundance Screenwriter Lab?

Burshstein: I didn't even know about the Sundance Screenwriter Lab and—if I'd known anything about it—I probably wouldn't have submitted my script, because only three out of every five thousand get chosen. But they came unofficially to Israel and the director of the film fund introduced seven new directors and they said they'd heard about my script and wanted to read it. I sent it to them, they read it, and then they invited me to the lab. Everyone was very excited about the opportunity but I didn't go because it was held on Saturday, which is a day when we don't work, and—even though they were into not letting me do much at that time—I felt that I had just finished the film and I was already playing around with my religion. I felt it was a test.

But the beautiful thing was that a month later they called me again and said, "You won't believe it but we're coming to Israel for the first time to bring the lab to you." They booked a four-day lab during the week so it didn't conflict with Saturday, and they invited two other Israeli female directors to attend. It was an amazing gesture of friendship. We've remained close friends, much how I imagine we would be close friends if you lived near me. It's so nice to meet people from your own tree.

Guillén: What a kind thing to say. Thank you. Can you speak a bit about who you were before you became religious and how it's changed your feeling of yourself as a woman?

Burshstein: Okay. That's a very good question. I was very naughty before I became religious and I stayed naughty. Nothing really changed. You stay the same. Being religious is not about not being you; it's about you on a way, on a path. So everything's the same. But femininity and womanhood is different. The difference is not who you are; it's the way you see femininity. I grew up in a very open house, home, family and I was educated. I was expressing myself and fulfilling myself and not holding myself. Being feminine in the orthodox way is to hold something inside, to be able—which I find very hard—not to express yourself all the time. When you force yourself to that which is really hard, then you start finding a new power that you didn't know you had within you. I love that power. So this is me, before and after.