Stephanie Gould: Dreaming, Mural Murals

Episode #5 - Post-Production Expert, Director, and Cinematographer Stephanie Gould was the appointed contributor. Originally from Australia, Stephanie does animation, coloring, and editing in a wide variety of films and has had much of her own visual work featured at film festivals and live events. She captures City Skins in photo formats as well. To see more of her visual work, visit her website.

Our screening took place in Bushwick at Fourwind Films’ headquarters where Stephanie presented her impressionistic, experimental short film which was shot in 8mm titled Dreaming (2015). This piece in its debut was projected alongside a live dance performance, but for the podcast Stephanie replaced the live dance piece with a song by Akiva Zamcheck who performed a live soundtrack on the guitar. 

For the second film of the event, Stephanie presented the 1981 feature-length documentary Mural Murals by Agnès Varda. For this film, we enjoyed some Mexican pastries to accompany its L.A. flavor and had some nice beers to wash it down. There was a Coors Light advertisement in the film, so we had those for refreshments.

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall.

Location & Production Company - Fourwind Films

Live Score - Akiva Zamcheck

Sound - Brian Trahan

Stephanie Gould - Director/Cinematographer, photo by Justin Joseph Hall

Transcript:

Justin Joseph Hall:

Welcome to Feature & a short. Feature & a short is a monthly screening hosted by Fourwind Films, where an appointed contributor presents their chosen feature motion picture and short movie. The only condition for screening selection. The presenter must have been directly involved with one picture, but not the other. I'm Justin Joseph Hall. Stephanie Gould was our presenter this week and she does almost everything in post-production, including editing, animating and color correction.

She presented her short film Dreaming, which was shot on film, originally accompanied by a modern dance. Tonight, however, since the film doesn't have any sound, we had a live score played along with the film. This was provided by composer Akiva Zamcheck.

Stephanie Gould:

This short that I made has my friend Brighid in it, and for my screening at that festival, I showed the film with her dancing with the projection of the film. The film I made in one of the eight millimeter workshop. It's silent, but Akiva is going to play a live score for us.

(guitar starts playing)

I shot it all so that I didn't have to do any editing, so I filmed everything, like, very specifically timed out in sequence. I didn't actually end up editing them at all.

Audience:

Cool.

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah. So this is just basically one reel of super eight film.

Justin Joseph Hall:

How did you do the kaleidoscope?

Stephanie Gould:

That’s through these crystal prism things that I got this sort of multifaceted clear glass. So for that, I was like holding them in front of the lens, rotating them to get that refracted image. I made the film with this song in mind that didn't end up putting them together after I had finished it, but it was a song by a friend’s spouse who had this band called Friend Roulette. It was a song called Garden’s Tidings.

Audience:

But you couldn't get the rights.

Stephanie Gould:

Couldn't get the rights. No, I don't know. It just, you know, I, it just turned out as this silent film. And I like having a film that has no fixed soundtrack that could be reinterpreted in different ways. So I like that it can stand alone. The story is just sort of restless sleep and frantic visions of dreams.

Audience:

Wow.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Did you do a lot of color with this or…?

Stephanie Gould:

No, I didn't do any.

Akiva Zamcheck:

I know that it fell off from out of nowhere and he seems to be accumulating gear.

Stephanie Gould:

Actually, yeah. They're building a lab in Brooklyn, and he got this huge piece of very expensive equipment from, like, the Scientology church in California. And he had to drive across the country to go pick it up, and he brought it back here. He's a great guy to know if you're interested in doing any work with 16 or 8 mil, especially. I wanted it to go from night to day so yeah, that's sort of how the lighting goes.

Audience:

And how would you spend making it, was it?

Stephanie Gould:

We filmed it over one night and then into the morning.

Audience:

And how did you get the cat to ah…?

Stephanie Gould:

That was just a very lucky shot that I got of her. She's not trained… at all.

Audience:

Did you actually film the protagonist in her sleep?

Stephanie Gould:

No, I didn’t. She was just acting. Maybe I should have done that, though. 

Justin Joseph Hall:

Yeah, that would have been hilarious. 

Stephanie Gould:

(laughing) Yeah.

Audience:

So, that girl who's dancing during the performance…

Stephanie Gould:

So when I did it for the screening, I had her, like, do a dance in front of the projection. So then it’s sort of in conversation with each other. I think I like images that have a lot of texture, and almost feel tactile in a way.

I always liked taking pictures on film because you can get those, you know, marks on it from handling the film or dust and scratches. And I always like that extra layer to the imagery. It's little, like, happy accidents.

Audience:

Do you think it's too silly to intentionally corrupt your digital imagery?

Stephanie Gould:

I have done it. Yeah, I think it's kind of silly, but I also find digital video to be too clean and flat. So for me, it feels nice to watch when there's a little bit of softness to it.

Audience:

So it's almost like looking back in that eight millimeter stuff has different connotations than it did in the 90’s.

Stephanie Gould:

At the time. Yeah, definitely. I think that with every new advance and technology, the era that is producing films in that medium always becomes iconic for that era.

Audience:

Right.

Stephanie Gould:

Like VHS or even like the first HD video.

Audience:

I'm running the same, the same idea with my current project. Wanted to use, like, a higher tech camera, but I want it to feel like it when you film. So I don't use like a mid-level camera.

Audience:

Can you tell the difference though between?

Audience:

Yeah.

Audience:

Really? 

Audience:

Oh, definitely. There's just more grain. The nicer camera you have, the cleaner it is just off the bat.

Audience:

Even the mid-grade ones lens? 

Audience:

Yeah, cause a lot of the darker tones have a lot more stuff. And also the color profiles aren't quite as even all the time.

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah, usually. And with higher end cameras, you get more latitude and color space. So you tend not to get overexposed whites and underexposed blacks. And they have much, much greater range.

Audience:

Yeah.

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah, it’s just a different effect.

Audience:

Oh wait. If you're a mid-level camera looking for today's look, what is the high level camera supposed to signify then?

Stephanie Gould:

The future.

Audience:

Didn’t you say also that you wanted it to look like an indie film, not like a-

Audience:

Yeah, not a Hollywood. 

Stephanie Gould:

Not like a blockbuster, yeah.

Justin Joseph Hall:

So maybe. Yeah, maybe Hollywood films right now. That's what you'd want to use it for…

Justin Joseph Hall (as narrator):

For Steph’s second film, since it's Oscar month, she chose a film by one of this year's Oscar nominees, Agnès Varda, called Mural Murals or Mur Murs, which is a film of the famous Agnès Varda coming to the United States and doing a documentary in Los Angeles about murals and different paintings that live in the city.

Stephanie Gould:

I started watching her film several years ago. She's 89, French woman, and was very influential to the French New Wave cinema and has done a lot of documentaries and fiction films. I especially like her documentaries because she's very much a character in them as well. And I just think that her vision and way of presenting her films is really beautiful and interesting.

And this film is a documentary set in LA and, and she goes around the city and films all these various murals around LA in the 70s and talks to the artists and other people in the communities.

Justin Joseph Hall:

With this film, which focused a lot on the Chicanos of Los Angeles. We ended up picking out some pastries at a Mexican bakery and accompanied it with some nice beers to wash it down. There was a Coors Light advertisement in the film, so we had those for refreshments. After the film, we had a discussion on Agnès Varda and her style of film. We couldn't quite finish off the baked goods, but we sat around and talked for a while.

Akiva Zamcheck:

So ominous and prescient about this film, especially with the final scene and the very dramatic soundtrack, is it ends at the cusp of gentrification. Like, which it hints on this development happening, but that word doesn't exist in America yet. And, uh, the concept is beginning to become real to them in L.A. 

Audience:

And the real estate is mentioned?

Akiva Zamcheck:

Yeah and they’re starting to talk about it. They don't know what's about to happen, but cause, you know, the 90’s haven't happened yet and they’ll still be some time before the people can even imagine how cities will be devastated by this. But just with that really dramatic soundtrack, 

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah.

Akiva Zamcheck:

it seems like there's an indication that this dream will be truly washed away. And she kind of sees it coming from afar.  It’s really quite beautiful.

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah, I think that that was one of the reasons that I chose it was that it’s, when I saw it which was only a couple of years ago, it still felt, like, very relevant.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Yeah. It's also very interesting seeing film, because we don't, especially in the U.S., it doesn't happen as much, I feel like. It's having a foreign filmmaker, especially with somebody who's respected, come and see what they find interesting in American culture. And it's interesting because we do that all the time. But it doesn't happen here as much.

Akiva Zamcheck:

Um, there are a few great examples of Werner Herzog. Did his great study of the American bro in the early 2000s. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. That takes place in Northern California. And it's actually the most accurate depiction of his American prototype. 

Audience:

Except for Borat, right?

Audience:

You know it. 

Stephanie Gould:

Borat, yeah!

Akiva Zamcheck:

It's very powerful having this French lady perform a little study…

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah, I like her, especially though, because she just seems interested in people and what they're doing with their lives. So she doesn't project anything of her own ideas of how things should be onto them.  She's just more, like, curious about what they're doing.

Audience:

Except for with her visuals. And it's not, Yes.  So it’s not the characters. But like, her style is so much like, “Oh, I look.  This was fun to look at,” and it's, like, constantly like that. Or this is what the music rhythm is like with the visuals or something.

Audience:

You’re just in that party that was being planned, or there's a group that put on these temporary warehouse occupations and through, like, some performance pieces, that little moment where they were painting like a mural over the course of the weekend and having different performances. It reminded me of like early New York uh, examples that have enough Brooklyn, Cat's Head and other dominant occupations in the waterfront that became Rubelade and other famous permanent parties.

Audience:

I love watching documentaries from before the time that people grew up watching documentaries. So the people that speak, they don't, they don't know how one should speak on a documentary. So they come across very strange to us.

Stephanie Gould:

Non-actors. Yeah, just regular people,

Audience:

Yeah. 

Stephanie Gould:

who agreed to be part of it. But yeah, she obviously just had a way of making people feel comfortable

Audience:

Yeah. 

Stephanie Gould:

on camera. The other films of hers that I’ve seen that seem to have a similar feeling to them. And to me, it seems like she's just a very approachable, interested person, and she wants to know about these different people.

Audience:

You, you see her a lot in Faces Places.

Akiva Zamcheck:

I wonder what Agnès Varda’s relationship was with, with the darkness like.

Justin Joseph Hall:

If you watch Faces Places you’ll find out.

(audience laughs)

Stephanie Gould:

With Godard?

Justin Joseph Hall:

Yeah.

Stephanie Gould:

Oh, in all her documentaries. You don't really. You don't see her on screen a lot, but she's narrating them.

Audience:

That was her, right?

Stephanie Gould:

Yeah, it was her narrating. She's very much a part of that. 

Audience:

Yeah.

Akiva Zamcheck:

Great film choice. It was a lot of fun.

Justin Joseph Hall:

It was a pleasure to have you all listening again to Feature & a short. We hope that you have seen or will see some of the films that we talk about. Please leave a comment on iTunes or wherever you find the podcast or shout out to us on social media. We are always @fourwindfilms. That is f-o-u-r-w-i-n-d-f-i-l-m-s. Thank you very much and we'll see you next month.

Michael Fequiere: Kojo, Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father →

Episode #4 - Brooklyn based Filmmaker and Photographer Michael Fequiere was the appointed contributor. Michael's short films have screened in numerous festivals both domestic (Lower East Side Film Festival, Big Apple Film Festival) and worldwide. To learn more about his work, visit his website and check out his Vimeo page.

Our screening took place in Bushwick at Fourwind Films’ headquarters where for the first film, Michael presented Kojo (2017), a short documentary he directed about the gifted 12-year-old jazz drummer Kojo Odu Roney. Michael has traveled to many countries with this film including the Toronto International Film Festival.

For the second film of the event, Michael presented the 2008 documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father by filmmaker Kurt Kuenne. During this film, we didn’t provide any food due to the intense nature of the film. Because it takes place in Canada and the United States, we had homemade shortbread cookies and provided American whiskey and Canadian beer.

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Location & Production Company - Fourwind Films

Michael Fequiere - Director/Editor, photo by Daria Huxley

Transcript:

Justin Joseph Hall:

Hi, welcome to Feature & a short, a monthly screening hosted by Fourwind Films, where an appointed contributor presents their chosen feature motion picture and a short movie. There's only one condition for the screening selection. The presenter must have directly been involved with one picture, but not the other. My name is Justin Joseph Hall, owner of Fourwind Films.

This week's guest is Michael Fequiere. He brought along two great films, one he made in 2017 called Kojo, about a young kid from New York City who plays jazz drums. He has traveled to many countries with this film, including the Toronto International Film Festival. After the first film, we stopped to discuss and the audience had quite a few questions and reactions for Michael.

Michael Fequiere:

This is a short documentary that I did. It's basically about a 12-year-old jazz prodigy. I've known him for like nine years, and we just had a really good opportunity to film this. So this is an interview with him and then kind of following him through his day and his performance and stuff, so.

Audience:

I work with Justin at Fourwind Films. I actually had the good fortune of seeing this prior, at the Landmark Sunshine. I just wanted to commend you cause even the second time showing it was just as good. So, bravo.

Michael Fequiere:

Thanks, man. 

Audience:

Yeah, I'm Adam, and I don't know much about film, but I appreciate them. I was wondering, like, how you met that kid.

Michael Fequiere:

I met him, like, about nine years ago. So his older sister and I went to college together, and so we were cool. And so she kind of invited me over to her place. And so I met her entire family, so.

His whole family is talented, like, his mom is like a well-known contemporary dancer, like his sisters in ballet. They did like a cover spread with, like, Misty Copeland. You know, kinda sucks, you know? It’s kind of, like, damn, like, what am I doing? You know, just a cool family to kind of hang around and just kind of pick their brains.

And then nine years later, that happens. So, yeah.

Audience:

Nice.

Michael Fequiere:

Yeah. 

Audience:

When did you film this? 

Michael Fequiere:

We filmed that 2016 June. So yeah, he turned, he’s 13 now. 

Daria Huxley:

Yeah, where is he now?

Michael Fequiere:

Well, he’s actually on tour, so this is gonna screen at BAM. He was supposed to come there and perform, but he's like touring. So, you know, he's a musician. So that comes first.

So he's like, I'm going to do touring because that's going to pay me. So I was like, shit, all right, fine.

Isabel Restrepo:

At the end, I wish there would have been like a little graphic of, like, how long he actually ended up performing. Cause he’s like, I feel like we could do 20 minutes.

Michael Fequiere: 

Oh yeah, they definitely go for 20 minutes.

Isabel Restrepo:

And then I wanted like 20 minutes later.

Audience:

(laughs)

Audience:

I was hoping.  Wait, but yeah, it was. And he has a great style too. I'm like, how are you so hip and, like, cool and.

Michael Fequiere:

Confident.

Audience: 

Yeah, yeah.

Audience:

…It’s cool that, like, you highlighted this kid because I'm trying to think is rare. But at the same time it's not like it's out there with these people, let's just have these interesting ass lives. But normally you get to hear about it. And it's kind of, like, what am I doing with my life? 

Audience:

You go from, like, a still portrait of the person straight to the interview.

Michael Fequiere:

Right.

Audience:

Did you find that style somewhere else or did you? 

Michael Fequiere:

Yeah, I used an exact similar style on a previous documentary that I made to replace clothes with paint. So with that one, though, in those long takes where it kind of stays on him. That one I got from the 13th, actually, because I remember, yeah, I remember watching it and I was like, the editor did a cool job where it would just like, hang on the faces for a little bit and then cutting to like the next scene or whatever. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

Audience:

I don't know what it is about your editing  style.

Michael Fequiere:

Yeah.

Audience:

I don’t know what it is about your editing, but, like, pushes you forward. 

Michael Fequiere:

Yeah, no. And that's kind of like two story lines. It's like one is following him and then, you know, your classic interview style kind of thing. So it's like as he's telling you, like you're also forced into this point.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Like Frontline, he’ll go to the next part or whatever instead of just…

Michael Fequiere:

Exactly, exactly. So yeah.

Daria Huxley:

Especially, I appreciated the graphics.

Michael Fequiere:

Those were my brother.

Daria Huxley:

Those portraits. 

Justin Joseph Hall:

Yeah, Michael’s brother worked on the graphics and.

Michael Fequiere:

We’re twins, so.  We’re not identical but fraternal.

Audience:

I'm also curious, what's, what was it like working with your brother especially, like, assuming he should do those as well?

Michael Fequiere:

Yeah, yeah. So he drew those. It's funny. So he just did them very quickly. So he's done some animation series and stuff like that where it's, like, full on animation and just like all in color and it's like way more vibrant. These were like quick sketches for him. But yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I just, I just isolated the clips and I was like, oh, these would work as animations.

So I just, like, hit him up. I was like, dude, can you just animate these? And he's like, okay. I don't tell him the direction cause Kojo is telling the story. And so he would just animate.

Audience:

But I know a lot of animators don't like to have free rein. They’re like.

Michael Fequiere:

Yeah, I think it's just because those segments I'm giving him have a start and end point. He knows it has to end at some point, whereas if he's just doing something open-ended, it's kind of like he has no direction and he doesn't have anyone telling him that there's a deadline. You know what I mean? So when there's no deadline, it's kind of hard for him to.

I paid him, but I mean, it was super cheap. So we did the Indiegogo, so there was a couple of funds left over. So I was like, at least let me pay the people who are working on the film. So yeah. But to answer your question, I've been, I went to school for film, so I'd been making them since like 2009.

Yeah, yeah. I work, so I work for Great Big Story. So I'm a producer for them. So basically we just travel around the world, just like producing all these short form documentaries that go on their social platforms. We had a big shoot coming up. And so we rented all this equipment, and so we rented it two weeks early cause, you know, when you rent from Adorama, they give you like the special deals or whatever.

So we had an extra whole week of the cameras just sitting there. We rented a bunch of reds and everything. And I was just, like, wait a second. So these are just gonna sit here in this office over the weekend not being used. So I was just like, oh, fuck that. I took it with me. And then I just filmed.

I just went up to him. The interview I shot in a day, and then we ended up getting another guy who owns the red, and then he just lent it to me for like 300 bucks, and I just shot the rest of it. So, you know.

It was literally like an on-camera light that I literally mounted somewhere else. Everything else was pretty much natural. They had really big windows. So that kind of, like, helped with the lighting. The only light I had was this like an on-camera light that I kind of mounted to the side.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Michael’s second film was a 2008 documentary. This is the first time that we had any documentaries presented on Feature & a short. Michael paired his documentary with Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, which is one of the films that got me interested in documentaries. When I learned what documentary storytelling could be, and that it could have stories just as good or even more unbelievable than narrative film.

Michael Fequiere:

So yeah, like Justin said, the name of this film is called Dear Zachary, a letter from a father to his son. It's, it's a really powerful film. And again, like he said, it's, it's a film that you can totally recommend to anyone, who is not into documentaries, who's never seen a documentary. It's very, very powerful. Might need your tissue box, but.

Justin Joseph Hall:

During this film, we didn't provide any food due to the intense nature of the film. Because it takes place in Canada and the US, we had homemade shortbread cookies and provided American whiskey and Canadian beer for everyone to drown their tears. After, people discuss the film.

(crying/laughing)

Crystal Hilaire:

I was trying to be the strong one.

Michael Fequiere:

I legit cry everytime I watch it.

(crying/laughing)

Crystal Hilaire:

My sweater is soaked.

Michael Fequiere:

Imagine him going there.  You don’t, you’re like

Audience Member:
Oh my god!

Justin Joseph Hall:

Thank you for listening to Feature & a short. If you would like to see more of Michael Fequiere’s work, check out his Vimeo page. Please leave us a review on wherever you get your podcast or a comment on our website. Our social media is @fourwindfilms, that is at f-o-u-r-w-i-n-d-f-i-l-m-s. Thank you for listening to Feature & a short where filmmakers present, watch and discuss films.

Uta Seibicke: Last Christmas, Good Bye, Lenin!

Episode #3 - East German born Director, Writer and Casting Director Uta Seibicke was the appointed contributor. Uta has many credits as a casting director in feature films in Germany and has since moved to New York City in the United States. She has a deep connection to her home, the city of Berlin and its history of separation.  It’s something that she feels and understands in a way only a German could.

Our screening took place in Bushwick at Fourwind Films’ headquarters where Uta presented her short film Last Christmas (2013) she wrote and directed. Last Christmas takes place in Berlin and is about a terminally-ill woman and a special relationship she has. Uta went into detail about her casting and relations of working with the cast. Since she’s a casting director, it was strange, even to herself, that she did not go through a casting process to shoot this short holiday story about an insomnia disease that leads to death. 

For this event, we had Glühwein that Uta brought and cooked, which is mulled wine and a specialty around Christmastime in Germany. And we also enjoyed a German breakfast prepared by Thomas Kelsey as we watched Good Bye, Lenin!

For the second film of the event, Uta presented the 2003 feature Good Bye, Lenin! directed by Wolfgang Becker. It’s a film that takes place in 1990, revolving around a mother who wakes up from a long coma. In order to protect her from a shocking truth, her son keeps her from discovering that her nation East Germany has disappeared.

Credits:
Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Location & Production Company - Fourwind Films

To watch Uta's film check out it on YouTube here.

Uta Seibicke - Wrtier/Director, photo by Daria Huxley

Transcript:

Justin Joseph Hall:

I am Justin Joseph Hall. Welcome to Feature & a short, which is a monthly screening hosted by Fourwind Films, where an appointed contributor presents their chosen feature motion picture and a short movie. There is only one condition for screening. The presenter must have been directly involved with one picture, but not the other. Today we have Uta Seibicke who has many credits as a casting director in feature films in Germany and has since moved to the US.

The first movie she presented was a Christmas film entitled Last Christmas that she wrote and directed. So we ended up watching that. And before she arrived, Uta made Glühwein, which is mulled wine. And it is a specialty around Christmas in Germany. So, we had that along with some other drinks after the first film we had a quick discussion and Thomas Kelsey began to prepare our German breakfast that we would eat during the second film.

Audience:

Yeah, this is pretty. I like the color correction.

Uta Seibicke:

Thank you. Thank you. I had professional people working on that. I didn't do it. I have nothing to do with it. But I, I was fortunate enough, yeah, to have people who helped me without getting paid.

Audience:

(laughs)

Yeah. That is like a big advantage to make films about how many people can, people can afford to do that that could help you, like, even, you know, they're working people. They, like, they work in films and like, the camera person who did the camera on this film. He's worked in films for, like, 20 years. And he did that for me as a favor. He didn't get paid, so.

Audience:

What were you looking for in the actors?

Uta Seibicke:

That, that’s a cool question because I was actually really, I didn't cast my actors. Like, I didn't have auditions. I just cast them.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Because you already knew them all or?

Uta Seibicke:

But, yeah, but I didn't know that I was going to do that. I had one audition with two people, and after that I just realized, I don't want to do this. Yeah, it was just really weird. I just knew I wanted them to be in the film and, like, even the girl who's playing the woman, originally I had thought of much, much older person to do that.

Audience:

Yeah.

Uta Seibicke:

But I just wanted her to be this person and work. And the taxi driver, I mean, that guy, he's like really well-established actor in Germany. And I really think that that performance there is the best I've ever seen him in. That’s, like, really strange but he's just so, I think, I mean, from I don't know what you think, but for me he's just, he's a taxi driver. He's not an actor at all.

Audience:

Yeah.

Audience:

It was in Berlin.

Uta Seibicke:

Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't know, I mean, did you get the, the East German kind of thing in it cause that's kind of, like, that's the connection to the film that we are showing after this, the, the, Goodbye, Lenin. Cause I am East German and I did actually, like, my, my sister is ten years older than me, and she studied in Berlin when I was still East Berlin and the wall was up. 

So she lived on Ackerstraße. So she was never able to go to the end of the street. So Ackerstraße’s one of the streets that were divided by the wall. So you had an East German part of the Ackerstraße on the West German part. So it really was like that. You could walk until you hit the wall, basically, but you could never go into the end of your street.

Audience:

So what was the site they visited?

Uta Seibicke:

That is now, it's a memorial for the, like a wall memorial kind of thing or whatever you want to call it.

Audience:

So it was one of the last standing portions of the wall?

Uta Seibicke:

Yes. And it's actually one of those towers where the policemen were, like, standing and watching. 

Audience:

How do you come up with a story that’s, it’s like, so sad for when everybody’s so happy during Christmas?

Uta Seibicke:

Do you think it's so sad? I don't know cause I, actually I wanted to make a long version and I just wanted this to be a trailer. But in the end, it ended up being like the perfect short film for me. When I done it, I was like okay, I'm done with it. This is, like, I can't tell anymore.

That's, like, the backstory. Of course, I have all this in my mind, but, like, I wouldn't make a film about that. And that's how it started. I wanted to do a long film and I was trying to think of, like, the part that's most important about the long story that I want to tell and how to make it into, like, a teaser so people would get interested in producing the long film.

Audience:

But where'd you get that idea? Was it from, like, something that happened to somebody? Do you know, or?

Uta Seibicke:

I was thinking about death a lot in that time and I did an interview with a friend of mine who interviewed people at graves. And she was interviewing people what graves mean to them. And, so it's all about this, kind of, how do we deal with death? Like, what's so, what's so scary about death? And, you know, and so it just all kind of came together to have this person who totally accepts that she's going to die.

She knows she's going to die. So why not, like, make it into a happening and, you know, say goodbye to whatever was important to you before she basically goes to die. And I, of course, I wanted her to leave some kind of imprint, you know, to make someone at least, like, a little happy before she goes. And that's what she does with the grumpy taxi driver.

And I think that's also, like, a Christmas spirit is, like, you hate it or you love it. There's no in-between. So this is kind of, like, the version where someone who loves it helps someone who hates it to get a little bit, you know, less grumpy or maybe think about it, like, do I really have to be so anti-Christmas or can I just see something nice in it? You know, or make my girlfriend happy if she loves Christmas. Why don't I just, you know, get a fucking Christmas tree and decorate it for her? You know, what’s, you know, what's the big deal if you can make someone smile? So, so that kind of, like, came together in a longer period of time was things that happened in my life. And was also trying to think of something that I could do with the film stills and make them, you know.

Audience:

It's nice this all came together.

Uta Seibicke:

And then Lilia, my daughter, she's in it and she really wanted to be in it. So she’s the middle version of the actress. And that's also, like, an East German thing that this very small girl, the very blonde one, she's wearing a pioneer blouse. We went to school, the first five years we were so-called young pioneers. So we had, like, the white blouse and the blue kind of thing that we put around our necks.

I think you were in Russia, you had similar stuff. Then, the next period from 5 to 7 or something, we had a red scarf and then was the one with the dark blue blouse that the second girl was wearing. So. 

Audience:

You had to wear that too? 

Uta Seibicke:

Yeah. 

Audience:

Wow.

Uta Seibicke: 

That was mine, actually. I went back to my parents’ house. My mother has this, kind of, huge closet and, you know, in our house, and we all have old clothes. So this were exactly the ones that I was wearing when I was young.

Audience:

So you'd already written the featured version of this?

Uta Seibicke:

No.

Audience:

You hadn’t.

Uta Seibicke:

No.

Audience:

So you had it conceived.

Uta Seibicke:

Yeah, I had the idea and then, yeah. No…

Daria Huxley:

So you're not going to the, you're not going to do anything else…? 

Uta Seibicke:

No, this is really finished for me.

Audience:

And with that version never revealed what she was dying from?

Uta Seibicke:

No, I think that would have always been the backstory.

Audience:

Mystery.

Audience:

Yeah. 

Audience:

Wait, you're talking the Christmas story, reminded me of A Christmas Carol. Dickens.

Uta Seibicke:

Yeah.  

Audience:

A Christmas Carol. And so I was thinking, because at one point, watching, I was thinking she could be a ghost. Like she, she has this quality about her.

Uta Seibicke:

I like that, I like that. 

Audience:

It’s very ethereal.

Uta Seibicke:

And I could go with that. The thing was, one of the reasons people go to an hospice is it has to be like an illness that's not curable. Otherwise, you don't go to an hospice. And I didn't want to have the usual cancer person. Well yeah, cause she has so much hair and I was like, oh I don't want, you know, to put her in this kind of like.

Audience:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uta Seibicke:

So the thing is, I found out that there is an illness that people can't sleep anymore. It's like, yeah, insomnia or whatever. I don't know what the, like their brain at some point just burns because they don't get to relax anymore. 

Audience:

Yeah.

Uta Seibicke:

And there's nothing you can do about it.

Audience:

Can do a medication?

Uta Seibicke:

No, nothing. So the only thing, yeah, the only thing you can do is to go to an hospice and they can put you under high painkillers and everything to make it less bad that you die. But at some point you just die because your brain can't, you know, your brain needs to relax. And these people have this illness and it doesn't. They don't, they'll never shut off. And so, that's also why she's in the graveyard because her mother died of it. 

And that's also why she learned to deal with her, her own dying because she knew, you know, what, it was going to happen at some point of her life. She'd always been, like, the graveyard was always her place where she would be happy and by herself and reading and stuff like that. So.

Audience:

So did you direct the actress with that in mind?

Uta Seibicke:

Yes. 

Audience: 

Okay.

Uta Seibicke:

She definitely, yeah, I mean, I think her part was really difficult cause all, like, everything that her character has is in her backstory. So, of course I had to provide her with the full backstory.

Audience:

Yeah.

Uta Seibicke:

Otherwise, that's, like, impossible to act. It's like, I think, I mean, I don't know, but yeah.

Audience:

I mean, you communicate a lot in the story nonverbally through, through visuals. Did you storyboard it out? Because there were some very key shots there. You know, where information is delivered, you know.

Audience:

For example, like the headlight shot.

Audience:

The headlight, exactly. Kind of the hospice care. Also her, like, the dark circles under her eyes. It's like a lot of the most important information is not spoken.

Uta Seibicke:

Yes. 

Audience:

Yeah.

Uta Seibicke:

I totally do believe in that. I think, was it Hitchcock or something who said, like, everything that’s said and not shown is wasted? So I totally believe in that. Yes. Dialogue should just be fun but not, it shouldn't tell anything about the story. Yeah.

Justin Joseph Hall:

What do you think about, like, Woody Allen films or directors that are more?

Uta Seibicke:

I like watching Woody Allen films, but it's, that's not how I do it not because I don't like it, just because I don't think I can. And yeah, I guess I am a more visual person than, like.

Justin Joseph Hall:

What brought you into casting number one and then obviously directing and writing rather than being in front of the camera?

Uta Seibicke:

I actually never thought about being in front of the camera.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Yeah. What drew you to being a casting director originally?

Uta Seibicke:

I guess I like to tell people what to do rather than being told what to do. Maybe it's as easy as that, you know, like.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Uta presented Good Bye, Lenin!, a film from 2003 for her second feature. After the last film, some people stuck around a while and we ended up talking about socialism, communism and the perceptions from different countries. 

Audience:

Well, no. Uta, do you want to explain?

Uta Seibicke:

Well, not really explain, but yeah. And so, I basically chose it because it has the, the East German, West German topic too, the one that I mentioned. I have this in this moment that she goes back to the place where she could never go to the end of her street. 

And also, I haven't watched this in a very, very, very long time, but when I saw it I really related to it cause, well, I grew up in East Germany. My mother was not in a coma but she was also, like, she had a brain tumor when I was very young. So a lot of what he does for his mother and this film really moved me. And so I thought I'd watch it again with you and then see how I react now, ten years later.

Justin Joseph Hall:

Thank you so much for tuning in. This again was brought to you by Fourwind Films. If you want to check out anything by Uta, check out Last Christmas which is free on YouTube and you can Google that. Thank you and talk to you soon. Happy holidays!