(excerpt of interview from Cinemad magazine)
I thought I knew Deborah Stratman’s work. Deep observations through beautiful images, especially long, controlled takes of landscapes and people in society. On her new DVD Something Like Flying (released by Peripheral Produce), she examines Iceland in FROM HETTY TO NANCY (1997), suburbia through IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE (2002), and a Chinese tightrope circus in KINGS OF THE SKY (2004), all with luscious camerawork and compelling themes. Her films have screened at many locations, from Anthology and Other Cinema to the Toronto and Sundance film festivals. But I learned through a cheerful phone call with Deborah that she puts a lot of herself into her films next to the observations of others, and uses a variety of styles and ideas.
CINEMAD: Is teaching just the only job that experimental filmmakers are going to get?
DEBORAH STRATMAN: Yeah. They corral all the freaks.
Did you try do anything else?
I did freelance, although not very whole-heartedly. It was always very half-assedly on my part. For me personally, I don’t know if this is the case for other filmmakers, but I just get too…if I’m working industrially, I get bitter and burned out about filmmaking. I mean, not that teaching doesn’t have its moments where you feel burned out, but I never feel bitter about it. I always feel like I get back as much as I put in. Whereas when I’ve done freelance work, I put in, but I don’t feel like I get as much return. It’s more psychically draining.
Where did you go to school?
I started at University of Illinois in Champaign. I was in the sciences at that point, and then I dropped out of that. I think it was probably one too many calculus classes or too many engineers – hanging out with engineers – that end of science was really dragging me down. (laughs) I took a year off and finished my undergraduate degree at the Art Institute in Chicago.
Were you dabbling in film, and science just seemed the safe way to go?
I didn’t do film at all. In fact, I wasn’t really making art at all. It was a hobby of sorts, but really I spent more time reading than I did making stuff. Though, come to think of it, there was a super-8 film class that I had in high school that I really loved that was an elective, but most of my electives were more dorky, like the Fermi Lab saturday morning science program. I was obsessed when I was in high school. I just pretty much stuck to the sciences and really thought that was the way that I was going to go. I was really interested in astrophysics and then…honestly, it was just the math that shot me down. The math and the engineers. They try to design those college lecture classes to weed out people who they feel don’t have the mathematical acumen, and I was definitely one of them.
I also got a little freaked out at that point of my life about how all of my future work options seemed to be with military contractors. I just thought, “God, what are my options in this field?” I’m sure there are granted positions that you don’t have to sell your soul to be a part of, but at the time, I was young and felt like, “Oh no, I’ll compromise myself.” So I did an about-turn, much to the surprise of my family, although they were very calm about it in the end. They’ve always been very supportive. They’ve never been like, “If you do that, we won’t support you any more.” Or “We won’t send you Christmas cards.” I never got that vibe from them. They were always like, “Well, if you think that’s the right thing to do, you should do it.”
So, Art Institute was the next logical step?
That’s where I ended up, yeah. I took a year off to travel and thought, “Well, I’ve always been interested in art...” It was a film class that I took which really clenched it for me. I think, in a way, filmmaking - the fact that I was dealing with optics, and mechanics, and time - really appealed to the physicist in me. And the way that the art form was mediated - the way that you’re basically sculpting time. That’s what got me going. I tried a whole smattering of classes, just like everybody does when they’re still an undergrad and not really sure. And it’s not that I didn’t like anything else. But I enjoyed having to learn so many different things to make a film. I loved all the mechanical labor involved. And now I’m like, “God, what was I thinking?” (laughs) It took so damn long to get anything done that I don’t know why I was so excited about all these steps.
Did you see a landscape or time-based film that sort of made sense because it was different?
That’s a good question. I definitely remember really strongly when I was a younger kid coming back from watching, you know, whatever Hollywood movies I would watch with my brother and being completely amazed because he would come home and tell the story of the film to my mom because he loved to recount a film verbatim after he’d seen it. And I would be amazed how radically different of a film he had seen than what I had seen. He was always caught up with the narrative and the characters and the plot twists, and I was oblivious to that stuff.
I mean, I knew we had just watched the same film, but the things I would notice would be like, “Well, what about that suspension bridge? You know, the one that was in the third scene?” And he’d be like, “What bridge?” I would always notice and get wrapped up in the places and the environments. Locations have always been what moved me, but I don’t have one charged moment that I remember watching a film and realizing, “This is what I want to do!”
There was definitely a lot small realizations… like seeing Peter Kubelka’s film UNSERE AFRIKAREISE (Our Trip to Africa) (1961-66). I remember that being sort of a little lightning bolt for me… finally seeing a film that was organized in a way that I felt like my brain was cut out for (laughs), like, “I can totally understand this!” Not that I didn’t admire films with stories, I love watching films with stories.
The myth about the experimental filmmaker is that they only like avant films.
Right, that we don’t like going to narrative films also.
And it’s like, “No, I just don’t wanna make them.”
I remember Antonioni was someone else who stood out…I guess because his films are so spatial…but I mean, when I first saw his films, and Jon Jost’s narratives and other people for whom the story’s really grounded in place, those films always clicked immediately. But I loved HERBIE THE LOVE BUG (1968) when it came out too, man.
Are your earlier films the same style? Or did you kind of work your way into the more controlled, longer take?
I worked my way into it, then out of it, and now I’m working back into it again. You know, it’s interesting that FROM HETTY TO NANCY (1997) and IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE (2002) are both on that DVD because those are the only two films I’ve made in that style.
Really?
Yeah. So, it paints a picture that’s falsely emblematic…they’re not unrepresentative of what my work is, but …
Those are the two extremes?
Those, in a way, are the two extremes. ON THE VARIOUS NATURE OF THINGS has much shorter shots, there’s a good deal of found footage, it’s all handheld, it’s much more frenetic in its construction. I made FROM HETTY TO NANCY as almost a reactionary gesture against the stylistics of that previous film. In fact, I do that with every film. I think, “OK, now that I’ve finished with that tripod film, I’m going to make a handheld documentary about people instead of this distant, static, observational film about landscapes.” I feel like they’re reactionary in that way… developing out of frustrations with the previous film’s limitations.
How much do you get sucked in and how much do you keep a clear vision? With all these, do you pretty much end up getting footage and keeping the overall same idea in mind and then just dealing with it all in editing or are you doing some editing as it’s going along?
It depends on the film. For THE BLVD and for KINGS OF THE SKY, I absolutely was not editing in my mind. I mean, not unequivocally. You make decisions every time that you frame something, but I didn’t have an overarching structure in mind whereas, in some of the other films, like IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE, I definitely have a clear sense of scenes I absolutely need. I have pre-conceive more of the pieces, and it’s more a question of going out to generate what I’m seeing in my head. Whereas with THE BLVD and KINGS, it’s more of gleaning what’s out there. “Gleaner” in the Agnes Varda sense - picking what’s there and creating a shape with it once I sit down in the editing room. If I’m filming that way, I tend to edit in a frenzy – I’ll give myself less than a month and just bang it out and it’s done. These are films that happen more…
Natural?
No. The ones that are slower and more plotted – where I’m really consciously going to film certain things because I know that that’s a puzzle piece I need – those take a lot longer to edit.
Did your short IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE take a while?
It took a while because I would edit and realize, “Okay, I need to go shoot this now.” So, the shooting and editing were happening more concurrently, whereas the more documentary kind of films are shot over a…either a three month period or, in the case of THE BLVD it was a year and a half period. Then I’m done, and then I go and do the editing. The shooting and the editing are completely separate and it just happens in this frenzy. The style of construction is pretty different for the different kinds of films.
IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE seems scripted basically. Not that there’s a 120-page script, but there’s the obvious political overtones with suburbia and the way that we’ve made our own little prisons. But then at the same time, it’s really beautiful shots and exposures. It’s cool to look at the lines.
It’s funny to try to make something about a place that ultimately you’re horrified by or disgusted by or sort of frustrated by, but still want to make a shot that’s beautiful. It’s a strange challenge. You know, “Well how do I show how horrifyingly vacant this is, and at the same time, make an image that people aren’t going to have a meltdown if they have to look at for thirty seconds.”
And that’s the thing, I wonder at times, what kind of crowd is going to watch it.
That film completely surprised me because I thought it was one of those films that was going to be very private. I guess I didn’t have much faith in what the audience was going to have patience for. So, I was really surprised when that film, of all my films, struck a chord. There was a lot of passion about it. They either passionately disliked it, or passionately liked it. It was really provocative in a way that the other films hadn’t been.
It definitely gave me more faith in going whole hog - if I’m going to have a long shot, well, what the hell? I’m going to make it REALLY long, and not hold back from making the audience work, or making them sit through stuff. That film taught me that audiences want to work. There are a lot of people out there that appreciate not being pandered to and actually watching something difficult. But, when I first made it, I thought, “Oh man, no one’s going to want to sit through this.” I thought I was just making it for myself, and that it might show a few places, and that would be that… because folks want to watch the “people movies.”
Just who wants to live in those cookie cutter homes?
That’s what provoked me to make the film in the first place. How can someplace that’s so hollow and gutted spiritually to me be so comforting and exactly what so many other people need and desire, and bust their asses working for…to achieve. I still don’t understand it, but I made that film as an attempt to understand. After having grown up in the suburbs, it’s this thing you ask yourself all the time. How are these people happy here? What are they getting out of it?
I don’t want to live in an unsafe home, but these homes (and maybe the owners) are tasteless.
They don’t have taste and they don’t have…I don’t think they sense how much they’ve been locked down. How much they’re allowing themselves to be locked in or down. I don’t know, maybe they’re going to wake up at some point and say “Ahh! How did I end up here?” At the time I was first shooting, my parents were still living in one of the suburbs that I did a lot of filming in: Naperville, Illinois - which is very much like Valencia or Shaumburg. Upper-middle class, very clone-like, often gated, but not always…if they’re not gated, they at least have those little gateways announcing what the enclave is called. In effect, they’re gated even if there isn’t a guard there because everyone who lives there is so fricken suspicious if you’re walking down their sidewalk and you’re not from their community. They’re self-gated.
My mom at the time…I would come out and sleep over at their place if I was filming during the week just because I was always shooting late at night. One night after dinner she was shaking her head and kind of crying and saying, “I just know that you’re going to make something terrible about Naperville.” Because she knew that I struggled with the place my whole life and was trying to come to terms with it. I was like, “Well, I don’t think it’s going to be terrible. It’s just a process of trying to understand.” My folks have seen it. And I’d say they appreciate it. They’re parents, so they’re proud. On occasion, they’ve actually forced their friends to watch some of my films, but, god, I can only imagine. I’m just glad that I’ve never had to be there.
At the Tupperware party?
Can you imagine? “Let’s look at our daughter’s experimental films!” And everybody there is just like, “Oh no!”
Did you encounter many people while you were shooting?
Very few.
Is that just ‘cause you were shooting late at night?
Yeah, I think so. There were two or three times when security cars drove up and asked, “Umm what are you doing, ma’am? You can’t be shooting here”. And there were people working in the mini-mart or in the Dunkin’ Donuts. When I was filming in those places, the people were kind of … they’re just these service industry employees. They don’t give a shit. There were no managerial-types there who cared. They were just like, “Yeah sure, film if you want.”
“You can film my donuts.”
“Go ahead, film my donuts” (laughs) I never saw anybody just walking on the street, or a neighbor who stopped and asked, “Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” Nobody ever came out from any of the houses. The one interior, the little countertop and armchair, those are in a model home. I had talked to the real estate lady and gotten permission to film inside. It was just the security patrol guys, those were the only human interactions of the unstaged shots. The dog and the helicopter shots - I was working with people on those.
How did you decide to use the whole helicopter aesthetic?
I had wanted helicopter images of people on foot being chased so that there was a mechanized pursuit…the police machine. An observational machine that was trapping people via the image making apparatus itself. Initially, I called around to sheriffs’ departments to see if I could find the shot I had in mind. I just said I was a researcher teaching a class…I don’t even remember what line I used... “We’re examining various methods of observation…” I can’t remember, but I got some departments to send me videotapes of footage they had of busts. I had the running shot in my mind and I thought I was just going to be able to find it, but I never could. The first image in the film is a found image, and that was really close to what I wanted, but I wanted one person running for a long time. So, I just decided I would stage it.
How did you find out about the acrobats in KINGS OF THE SKY? Was this another location thing?
Yeah it totally was. I got interested in that area because it’s the most inland place in the world. That was really interesting to me.
So, thinking how enormous that continent is…the Eurasian continent… I got interested in that inmost region. Also, I’ve always been a fan of deserts, so I wanted to visit the Taklamakan because it’s the second largest shifting sand desert in the world.
Through the course of reading, I found out about the Uyghurs, and found out about their political history. Then I read that tightrope walking was their national sport and I thought, “Oh, god. What a beautiful metaphor for where they’re at.” Politically and geographically: they’re kind of sandwiched in between wanting technological advancement, wanting to have cell phones and economic growth. But at the same time, really struggling to hold onto their culture. It’s such a catch-22 because if they allow technology and trade and the economic growth to come in, it also means an in-rush of the Han Chinese who are flooding, kind of drowning out, their own culture.
Plus, tightrope walking is just cool in general.
When the politics come into it – the crowd scene and the army comes in - I think it’s a better audience experience when you’re not prepared for that by narration or foreshadowing.
You know, that’s a big point of contention, that scene. Almost inevitably the first question audiences ask is, “What was happening there with the police beating the people?” I did a lot of thinking about how I was going to contextualize this – whether I needed to. And I decided in the end to keep the scene as close to how I experienced it as I could. I was just as confused at the time. Initially, you know that there’s something oppressive going on, but you don’t necessarily understand the larger implications and the history behind the shot. And that seemed ok to me in the end. It expresses what I need it to: the confusion of that moment. Maybe audiences don’t realize that the same scenario happened a lot. But it was really important for me to not have a voiceover explaining things throughout the film.
People are fanatic about Adil, so they show up in throngs, and then the Han police get completely freaked out because there’s been a history of civil unrest there. That many Uyhgurs gathered together for any reason scares the authorities. So, a lot of times, the performances end up with over zealous police control.
How did you come to balance shooting the larger events with the quieter times?
I just shot what seemed compelling, basically. Which, to me, often are really quiet, kind of banal moments when there’s not a lot happening. But it was a challenge. I was really intimidated by this film, more intimidated than any other film I’ve made because I’ve never felt so responsible for representing a culture that’s not my own to the same degree. Ultimately, all I can do is represent my own experiences there and maybe, hopefully, give people some insight to who the Uyghurs are… because most people are like, “Wee-bol? What? We-wha..?”
If I can come away with people learning about a place in the world they hadn’t really been aware of before, and the rhythms of life in that place, then maybe they’ll be curious enough to look more into the political history of the area on their own…or maybe go there, who knows? I was freaked out when I was editing, for sure. In the beginning, I thought, “How am I ever going to do justice to this ancient civilization?” You can’t make one film that tells that story. It became a lot easier when I decided, “All right, there’s not going to be any voice-over. I’m not going to explain them. All I can do is explain my immediate experience.”
What is the fear thing you’re working on with the phone number that people can call?
I have a feeling that’s going to be going on for a few years. It’s just a survey. Lately I feel like fear has become such a motivational factor. It’s been manipulated by media and by our current administration to corral people.
Keeping the fear level up.
As a method of control. That led me to think - to do a lot of self-questioning. What is it that I’m afraid of, and are my fears determining my…how do they factor into my decision-making? I started to ask myself that a lot, and then I just got curious about what other people are afraid of and whether this fear-mongering climate is actually effecting people. What are they actually afraid of? That’s when I started printing up those cards because I thought it would be interesting to really hear directly from folks. Are they really afraid of terrorists? Are they afraid of being mugged?
The number one thing that people are afraid of….
What’s that?
Lonliness.
Yup.
I was like, “Right on.” That’s my number one fear too. I can understand that. There have been so many answers that are not what the media portrays us as being afraid of. Is anyone really afraid of what the media is saying we’re afraid of? Or is that just a lower grade fear, not the number one fear?
Not being loved or not finding somebody to love, being lonely, someone you love dying…it’s much more humane, I guess, and manageable. Not that loneliness is manageable.
Well, we kind of understand it.
We understand it…it’s the fear of the other that the administration and the government is glomming onto as a form of control to make political decisions, but that fear is a false fear. I don’t know what the project is, I’m still figuring it out. That’s the whole point of the survey in a way. It’s something that I’m still trying to figure out. Maybe this’ll help me come to an understanding…at least it’s nice to feel like I’ve got company.
There’s a certain percentage of people whose number one fear is dogs or snakes. There’s a lot of people who are deathly afraid of snakes. Or heights or more bodily things.
I would imagine a lot of people would say getting a job, supporting a family. No one ever says that?
You know that’s interesting. There’s been a lot of younger kids, people who sound like they’re between twelve and seventeen or something who bring up AIDS and sexual diseases or getting pregnant, but I haven’t really had people bring up class and economic stuff…actually I can’t remember any answer that said that they’re most afraid of losing a job. Maybe it’s just a b-grade fear.
I’ve been recording all of them. Even the “Yeah. I’m wearing a black pair of pants and a gray shirt and I’m waiting for a cab and I called you ten minutes ago.” It’s so good. Why, with that answering message, would you think that this was a cab company?
That’s so great because it reminds me of HETTY - there’s a beautiful shot and some guy walks by and looks, “Oh shit, I’m in…oh…I’m walking by. Sorry.”
Yeah yeah yeah. It’s like a waterfall.
They just keep walking. I think there’s another shot like that.
Is it a scene with a dog…oh yeah there is a guy who kind of walks through, but he’s not waving at the camera though.
You just don’t expect it to happen.
He’s just suddenly like do-do-do-do, walking through.
The dog, I was thinking about the dog, too. Dogs don’t care about your art project.
“I just come here to see the landscape, man.”
NEWER interview to read here:
http://dinca.org/2009-interview-filmmaker-deborah-stratman/2324.htm
and Deborah's website:
www.pythagorasfilm.com
