ABOUT THE ARTIST
1. Why did you submit to the Fourth Annual Chashama Film Festival?
I found it in the Without a Box web site, it seem interesting as the festival as an editorial choice with a thematic. It’s not just cool movies, but movies that shows different aspects of an idea.
2. How is your work illustrative of the country you are from?
For the movie, L’ancre, la croix, le coeur, it’s special because it’s a collaboration with a Finnish singer who is really intrested in French culture. So I imagine what could be France from an exotic point of view. What could be an image of France when we don’t live there. I am interested in colonial period, because it is the last period of the idea exotism. Now, on earth, there no more exotic places, because of the tourism, communication, and also the fact that everywhere, there are people equaly human to us. So that’s why I chose a French settler for the movie, he is foolish but epic. I like to think France can be a little like that.
3. Where was the most favorite place where your work was shown abroad? If it hasn’t been shown abroad, where would you like it to be shown?
I would be very glad if it could be shown in a wild forest, by night, under the snow, without anybody to watch it except white rabbits and owls.
4. Are you glad that your work is going to be shown in NYC?
Sure, it was the second place I would have liked it to be shown.
5. What is the best part about participating in a festival that facilitates discussion with international artists?
I wish I could be there to tell you.
ABOUT A RESPONSE TO THE FESTIVAL
1. What is it about chaos that is most upsetting to you?
I can’t tell that chaos upsets me, it is just the way everything goes physically. But the fact that our brain is too small to understand it is really upsetting. We are in a middle of a world too big to understand and it often leads to misunderstanding, between cultures and people.
2. What’s the most rapid social change that you have ever seen?
When the tsunami hit Japan and a radioactive cloud was expending its poisonous invisible arms around earth, a lot of people were thinking nuclear energy maybe wasn’t a good idea. But three days later, everybody forgot because a politician was arrested. Nuclear industry was saved.
3. How do you find strength in instability?
In weakness.
4. What do you do to divert disaster?
I cry.
5. If you could make a community more peaceful, what would be fulfilling about it?
Read more books and watch flowers grow.
ABOUT YOUR FILM
1. How did you choose your thematic material?
I want to do something haunting, but not in a normal way. So the idea of a ghost in negative came out. Instead of making a white ghost in a dark place, it was a black ghost in a white place. We were on the other side.
2. What is the most compelling image in your film?
At the begining of the video, there are two happy cats laying in the the snow. But one gets hunted down, so the other stays alone. In four shots, it summarizes what is going on with the two humans in the story.
Text compiled by Marcina Zaccaria