July 2, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Interviews ‘Esther in Wonderland’ Filmmaker Stephanie Bollag at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Esther in Wonderland, JM Jüdische Medien
“As a second-generation immigrant, I am interested in identity and the excavation of the “self” amidst societal and cultural norms. As a result, my films are roadmaps of conflicting emotional and physical expression that occupies that space “in-between.”
— Stephanie Bollag
I spoke with Stephanie Bollag during the Tribeca Film Festival where her short film Esther in Wonderland had its world premiere in the New York, New York 2021 program. We discussed her current and past work, influences, and her experience at NYU film school.
Stephanie Bollag is an award-winning director, writer and producer from Zurich, Switzerland based in New York City. Her short films won a number of Jury and Best Short awards at festivals worldwide. She previously worked in film in Switzerland, the UK and Israel, where she assistant-directed the Oscar-nominated Israeli drama Beaufort.
Set against the racial tensions of 1991 Crown Heights, Esther In Wonderland depicts two seemingly opposing cultures through the eyes of a Hasidic young woman. Drawn to the expressiveness of hip hop and breakdance, Esther tests the boundaries of her restricted existence as a young married woman in a Hasidic community in 1990s Crown Heights.
Kouguell: Your short screenplay Esther In Wonderland won first place at the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival and the 2018 Shore Scripts Screenplay Competition. Let’s talk about the genesis of this project.
Bollag: It started four years ago. I met a break dancer and together every weekend we went to (dance) battles and the story organically came to be. Esther’s story is stuck in this world where she can’t express herself. This was a theme in all my shorts. My dad, who worked in the fashion industry, studied to be a rabbi and Judaism has been a big part of my life. I merged these ideas together.
Kouguell: Your integration of found footage from 1990s New York City seamlessly worked to set the tone, atmosphere and setting of your film.
Bollag: The idea of using the footage was not in the script. The choice was to add layers of identity and music and genre. I already shot 8mm and digital, and I thought why not add another layer of time, texture and material. So many people were naysayers but my editor was very open to this idea to add this footage.
Stephanie Bollag at Tribeca Film Festival 2021
Kouguell: You’re a classically trained painter with a background in dance and fashion. You describe your work as a quilt of cultural and textural influences that range from visceral to narrative storytelling.
Bollag: I’m very visual in my thinking and how I remember things are through textures and pictures. I grew up going to museums; the emotional impact of beauty and pain are so close together.
Kouguell: Your film offers minimal backstory through dialogue about your main characters, which was a strong choice. It will be interesting to see how you expand upon this in your feature.
Bollag: In the feature we will find out more information about how the characters know each other, their communities and conflicts, as well as the racial tensions. I love when there are many questions and the audience has their own answers.
Kouguell: Tell me about your experience in film school.
Bollag: We had strong filmmakers in my class, and we had very open and honest discussions. It was very formative to me as an artist.
Our professors emphasized learning story structure and that was really good. One professor said to me, you’re asking too much of your actors so you need to explain things more in your script, and I thought no, you don’t have to wait until you’re working with Meryl Streep. You can make actors do what you want with little words.
Kouguell: Speaking as a screenwriting and film professor, I know firsthand that not every professor is a good fit for every student. That said, I find it important for students to get out of their comfort zones and take classes with professors who might not be an obvious choice for them.
Bollag: Yes.It’s important to choose a teacher who doesn’t have your style or someone you’re scared of.
Kouguell: Advice to screenwriters and filmmakers?
Bollag: Build your voice. Stay true to your voice and find the best way to express it.
June 29, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with ‘Souad’ Egyptian Filmmaker Ayten Amin
Susan Kouguell Interviews Egyptian Filmmaker Ayten Amin About Her New Feature ‘Souad’.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Egyptian filmmaker Ayten Amin reveals the unique genesis of bringing Souadto the screen, drawing inspiration from a true event and working with a cast of nonprofessional actors.
SOUD still. Courtesy of VIVID Reels
It was a true pleasure to speak with Ayten Amin during the Tribeca Film Festival where Souad had its international premiere. Although our talk was over Zoom (Ayten was in Egypt and I was in New York City), we immediately connected over our passion for storytelling and character-driven films.
Ayten Amin’s first short film Her man received several national prizes and was acquired by Canal Plus in France. In 2013, her debut feature film Villa 69, received the Special Jury Award for Arab Film at Abu Dhabi Film, the Cairo Film Connection Award for Best Film and the Hubert Bals Award at Durban FilmMart. She co-directed the documentary Tahrir 2011 selected at the Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and nominated for Best Documentary in Cinema For Peace award Berlin. In 2019, she directed 20 episodes of the hit drama Saabe Gaar (The Seventh Neighbor), a 70-episode TV series.
Bassant Ahmed and Basmala Elghaiesh won the best actress award at Tribeca Film Festival.
On the bus, a stranger meets Souad: she excitedly explains that she’s studying for finals at the university in Zagazig, Egypt, and shows her photos of her fiancé, Ahmed, an army officer in Sinai. It sounds wonderful—but it’s not exactly true. In reality, Souad is torn between the expectations set by her traditional upbringing and her social media-based life among her peers, which splits her life in two. By day, she helps her family around the house and looks after her teenage sister Rabab; by night, she’s glued to her phone, sending sexts to her distant content creator boyfriend Ahmed in Alexandria.
KOUGUELL: Let’s jump in and talk about the evolution of this screenplay.
AMIN: At the beginning, I had the initial idea about a young girl whose sister committed suicide and the journey she goes on with the guy she was talking to. I started talking to my co-writer Mahmoud Ezzat who was a social media influencer; he’s a well-known poet and writes short stories. During the 2011 Revolution, he had thousands and thousands of followers and during this time he got to know a lot of girls from small cities who were following him on social media.
When I started to think about the film, I wanted to set it in and talk about girls from small cities. Mahmoud and I talked about the girls who were following him on social media, and he introduced me to a number of them and some auditioned for the film.
We were auditioning for the film before writing the film. We were telling the girls ideas about scenes. We had long conversations, about three to four hours with each girl, about their life. One of them we based a character on.
It was very organic the way we worked. We wrote a treatment and then we met the girls, and then we wrote the first draft and we kept writing and rewriting and meeting other girls. When we met the girls, who became the stars of the film, we did improvisations. I was doing rehearsals with them and filmed them. When I went back to Cairo, Mahmoud and I started to rewrite based on what we did at the rehearsals.
KOUGUELL: Tell me more about your collaboration with co-writer Mahmoud Ezzat.
AMIN: Mahamoud worked with me on my first film. He and I are very close friends, so it was a nice collaboration; we are very open with each other, we talk about our vulnerabilities and the things we face in life. When working on this film we were trying to understand things about the girls and about ourselves.
KOUGUELL: The sisters’ relationship is very poignant; the moments with the younger sister, Rabab, looking up to Souad, and needing her attention and the love she has for her are so realistically and subtly captured.
AMIN: The story resonated with me personally. It was based on a childhood friend whose sister committed suicide. It was a big thing at school; we were ten at the time. The girl took time off from school and when she came back, nobody ever talked about what happened. It’s conservative here and we didn’t talk about it until we graduated. I was thinking about how the younger sister would deal with it.
KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about the process of making this film.
AMIN: All the actors were nonprofessional, and it was part of the process of making the film. I knew from the beginning this was how the film was going to be made. It was an ongoing process.
Since we didn’t have money, we shot for three days, and then I started editing and stopped for two months, and during those two months, I rewrote some of the first part and then we went back and then we shot for eight days, and we finished the first two parts with the two girls. Then we stopped for five months, and I was editing and during that time I changed a lot of what was happening, and actually, I shot another ending, it was totally different than previously written.
This process was actually very good for the film and for the actors. When we stopped for those five months and when we went back, the girl who plays Rabab grew a little and changed as they do at that age.
KOUGUELL: How did Wim Wenders and his company get involved as producers of this film?
AMIN: When we were selected for Cannes, Souad was not finished; a large part of the sound took seven months. We got funding from the World Cinema Fund and we were looking for a German producer. We met Leah, the producer at Wenders’ company in Cannes and she liked it. After we finished the film, Wenders joined us.
I was telling her about my conversations with Mahamoud when Souad, was just an idea,and how important Wenders’ 1974 film Alice in the Cities was to me; there was something about this film, and the energy we need to capture in ours.
KOUGUELL: It’s also one of my favorite films and was a big influence on my own work. I can see your shared creative sensibility with Souad and Alice in the Cities.
AMIN: Actually, it was a reference for a long period for us. Even Mahamoud couldn’t believe it when Wenders came onto the film.
KOUGUELL: Advice to screenwriters and filmmakers?
AMIN: Develop your own process. It’s nice to listen to other filmmakers and hear their experiences, but I believe you always come up with your own process and I think you should trust it.
June 26, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with “No Ordinary Life” Filmmaker Heather O’Neill
Defining History ‘No Ordinary Life’ Interview With Documentary Filmmaker Heather O’Neill
“Cynde, Maria, Jane, Mary and Margaret took the images that defined history for their generation, yet their own stories have not been told, until now. The shifting scenes between the inhumanity and beauty they filmed, woven with their moments of humor, illustrate how they tried to cope with all they were witnessing. The wars and crises they covered produced images that can be difficult to watch, so I strived to create a balance of stories and images.” – Heather O’Neill
JUN 25, 2021
No Ordinary Life. Photo courtesy Array Films.
The feature documentary No Ordinary Life had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival during which I had the opportunity to speak with Heather O’Neill about her film and her passion to bring the lives of five extraordinary women from behind the camera to the screen.
About “No Ordinary Life”
In a field dominated by men, five pioneering photojournalists Mary Rogers, Cynde Strand, Jane Evans, Maria Fleet and Margaret Moth went to the frontlines of wars, revolutions and disasters. They made their mark by capturing some of the most iconic images from Tiananmen Square, to conflicts in Sarajevo, Iraq, Somalia and the Arab Spring uprising. In the midst of unfolding chaos, their pictures both shocked and informed the world.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Heather O’Neill is an Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She produced the feature documentary Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi, and with CNN Presents, the award-winning documentary series, Heather directed and produced more than 20 projects around the world.
KOUGUELL: One poignant theme of the film was the idea of bearing witness.
O’NEILL: The genesis behind the film is that I wanted to show the world what these women experience. So often we generally don’t think about who is behind the camera. What motivated me to become a journalist was watching the protest in Tiananmen Square, and 20 years later I would meet Cynde Strand,, who was one of the photographers who stayed the night of the crackdown; I had never imagined at a young age that it was a woman behind the camera.
I wanted to make a film that allowed the audience to be immersed in their experience; the sights and the sounds of what was coming next. These women were incredibly driven, incredibly professional and their singular job was to bear witness and go to these conflicts and uprisings and revolutions to document what was happening and that was the main driver to go into these harrowing situations.
KOUGUELL: The camerawomen also talked about the female perspective in their work.
O’NEILL: They bristled at the question of ‘did you approach your stories differently as a woman?’ and I expected that and that’s fine. When we looked at some of their footage together, I noticed a bit of difference; there was a bit more intimacy or an instant rapport. Perhaps women are less threatening to certain subjects or in some cultures it’s more appropriate for a woman to approach another woman. I noticed a subtle difference in how they approached their filmmaking.
No Ordinary Life. Photo courtesy Array Films.
KOUGUELL: In an age when the media is often negatively portrayed by politicians and pundits, this film underscores the importance of storytelling.
O’NEILL: Yes. This was an untold story and that is what really drew me to it. Once I got to know these women and heard their stories collectively, I thought wow, you’ve been
told the history of your generation. I wanted to share their story. I didn’t grow up knowing super successful female photographers and in my career at CNN I would rarely see camerawomen and I felt it was a powerful story that needed to be told.
KOUGUELL: Tell me about the evolution of the project. Did you know the women beforehand?
O’NEILL: I first met Mary in Baghdad in 2006 and was struck by her tenacity and what an incredible professional and journalist she was. I worked with some of these women when I was at CNN. About four years ago I decided this would be a great story to do now. I think women’s stories are still somewhat untold and I think that’s changing, which is encouraging,
We approached all of them and talked about the footage shot and began to record their stories and developed that level of trust which is critical for a documentary director; people have to trust you to tell their story. They slowly began dropping off tapes to me. They had an incredible library of tapes, which told me that this just wasn’t an accident that someone decided to tell their story. I began the two-year process of screening the tapes along with my co-producer. The story began to come together. We interviewed with them, we filmed with them, and the scripting began.
KOUGUELL: When you planned out this documentary, did you work from an outline or any particular source material?
O’NEILL: For any documentary that I create I usually write a treatment, which you use to pitch when trying to get funding for a film. It is also my road map of where I knew I wanted to go. That was the first process, to have the story laid out in a three-to-five page treatment, and go on to do the pre-interviews with these women over Skype and over the phone, and begin to understand from their storytelling and for me, where we wanted to go with the narrative. We decided that we would weave the stories that they shot with their own backstories of behind the camera of what they were going through when they were actually filming.
KOUGUELL: Was there any reluctance from the camerawomen to speak with you?
O’NEILL: They are an incredibly humble group of women. I always wonder if it were a group of men, if it would be different. They witnessed a lot of difficult things and it was challenging at times to get them to talk about how they were feeling emotionally because there’s a little bit of guilt associated with being a journalist and being able to leave a situation where you know people can’t. They began to understand that we (the audience) have to understand their characters as human beings, too, not just journalists.
KOUGUELL: Advice for aspiring documentarians?
O’NEILL: Make your film, don’t wait for permission. If you have a story to tell, you’ll find a way to tell it. Getting this film made had its challenges. It’s a very long road and you have to be prepared to field a lot of nos. You’ll be surprised how many people want to help and be supportive.
June 24, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with Filmmaker Laura Fairrie. The Making of an Icon ‘Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story’
“I loved the idea of making a film that could intertwine fact and fictional storytelling, and through the spinning together of the two, arrive at an authentic portrait of a woman who often shared her most private self in her fictional writing.” – Laura Fairrie
Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story tells the untold story of the ground-breaking author who sold more than half a billion copies of her 32 novels in more than 40 countries, eight of which have been produced as movies. Narrated by a cast of Collins’ closest friends and family, the film reveals the private struggles of a woman who became an icon of 1980s feminism whilst hiding her personal vulnerability behind a carefully crafted, powerful, public persona.
I had the pleasure to speak with director Laura Fairrie at the Tribeca Film Festival about bringing the Jackie Collins story to the screen, and the surprises she discovered along the way.
Laura Fairrie is a British documentary director whose credits include ‘Spiral’, ‘The Battle for Barking’ and ‘Taking on the Tabloids’. Previously Laura worked as a current affairs journalist and producer in the UK, Northern Ireland, China and America making special reports and documentaries for BBC Newsnight, BBC2, Channel 4 News and Channel 4.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
KOUGUELL: How did this film evolve?
FAIRRIE: Ipreviously made films about tough subjects and in quite dangerous places and often I felt scared on shoots. I wanted to start making films with female perspectives. I was going into meetings, saying I wanted to make a film about a fabulous woman, and I don’t know who that is. Producer John Battsek and I had done another project together before, and he said, strange you should say that because I just had this project land on my desk; Collins’s daughters had contacted me. I said amazing, she was my sex education teacher; I had read her books as a teenager, hid her books under my desk in school. I was excited to learn who the persona was behind her work, what drove this woman to write the books she did, and what drove her to be the businesswoman she was.
KOUGUELL: You were interested in making a film that could intertwine fact and fictional storytelling. Please delve into that more.
FAIRRIE: I was interested in making a film about Jackie Collins that was really surprising and not superficial. I was excited by the idea of being able to intertwine her fictional writing with her factual story and arrive at a deeper understanding of who she was through the books that she wrote. Once I started reading her books again, I discovered that there was so much of her own life and experiences and that her authentic voice was actually in her fictional writing.
KOUGUELL: How did you establish trust with your interviewees?
FAIRRIE: I’m always genuine in my motivations for making my films so the conversations I had with people were always very upfront from the start. To do her justice we really needed to show Jackie in all her vulnerabilities and complexities and show the side of her in her own life that she didn’t often share with people. Her friends and colleagues all really loved and respected her and once I spoke to them about it, they all pretty much signed up for it and wanted to tell their version about Jackie.
KOUGUELL: Do you work from a treatment or outline? What’s your process?
Laura Fairrie
FAIRRIE: I start with creative ideas, and a vision and tone of the film I want to make. I’ll often watch movies for reference and for this film I watched , I Tonya,Joy, and To Die For. There were things in those films that were useful for me, and a creative starting point. I loved that idea of narrative films borrowing from documentaries and documentary films borrowing from narrative films.
There were 4,000 pieces of archives, not to mention Jackie’s fictional books and her letters, diaries, Jackie kept everything — photographs, home video footage, there was a huge amount of material to extract a story from. I sat down with her daughters and went through Jackie’s life from beginning to end. From that I wrote a story beats document so I knew when I went into the interviews, I could be specific about what I needed from each person.
I had this idea that in its simplest form, it was the story of a storyteller I would always say to the cast of characters who were essentially the narrators of the film, please just tell stories, let’s make these about storytelling, tell me your tales about Jackie.
KOUGUELL: There is fascinating archival footage included in the film. Let’s talk about how you gained access to this and how you approached choosing what to include.
FAIRRIE: Jackie’sdaughters gave me access. When Jackie died, they couldn’t believe what she left behind. For them it felt like she left behind the untold story she hadn’t managed to tell in her own life. They felt they wanted to tell it for her. They were incredible about giving me access to the most personal and private information and trusting me with it. It was a beautiful process working with them.
KOUGUELL: Advice for documentary filmmakers
FAIRRIE: Follow your instincts. Don’t be disheartened starting at the bottom and working your way up. You can shoot your own films. I started off with just me and a camera, I did all the sound, and I would immerse myself in stories. I loved the freedom of that, and I learned so much about storytelling and about connecting with people from all walks of life in all places.
Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story airs on CNN Films in late June and on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer later this year.
February 26, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview: ‘Cherry’ Screenwriter Jessica Goldberg
Susan Kouguell speaks with screenwriter Jessica Goldberg about her work as a playwright, and the process of collaborating and adapting her new film ‘Cherry’ from the book to the screen.
I had the pleasure to speak with screenwriter Jessica Goldberg about her work as a playwright, and the process of collaborating and adapting her new film Cherry from the book to the screen.
CHERRY, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, follows the wild journey of a disenfranchised young man from Ohio who meets the love of his life, only to risk losing her through a series of bad decisions and challenging life circumstances. Inspired by the best-selling novel of the same name, Cherry features Tom Holland in the title role as an unhinged character who drifts from dropping out of college to serving in Iraq as an Army medic and is only anchored by his one true love, Emily (Ciara Bravo). When Cherry returns home a war hero, he battles the demons of undiagnosed PTSD and spirals into drug addiction, surrounding himself with a menagerie of depraved misfits. Draining his finances, Cherry turns to bank robbing to fund his addiction, shattering his relationship with Emily along the way.
Jessica Goldberg
About Jessica Goldberg
Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and executive producer Jessica Goldberg previously served as the showrunner and executive producer on Netflix’s AWAY which starred Hilary Swank and Josh Charles. In 2016, Jessica created and executive produced the critically-acclaimed Hulu series, THE PATH, starring Aaron Paul, Michelle Monaghan and Hugh Dancy, which ran for three seasons. Prior to that, she served as a writer and producer on the NBC drama, PARENTHOOD.
Susan Kouguell: How does your background as a playwright inform your work as a screenwriter?
Jessica Goldberg: There’s a lot of characterdepth you must have as a playwright. Of course there were so many things I had to learn from theatre, to television, to film about structure and plot. Plays tend to be more character-driven. This movie actually worked well for my early skills since it’s quite a character-driven movie. As a playwright it’s really about dialogue; I used to hear voices always talking in my head, and film is more visual. Often you need more story drive, but there is so much overlap as the depth of the human experience that you try to mine as a playwright, and that’s what you want to do in any form of writing.
Kouguell: You are the co-writer along with Angela Russo-Otstot, the sister of the directors Joe and Anthony Russo. Talk about this collaboration.
Goldberg: I met the Russos about a year or two prior on another adaptation of a book that I was adapting for the screen. Angela produces for them, and we worked very closely on that project so she and I developed this language together, which you need when you collaborate on a screenplay.
The book was very personal to the Russos. It takes place in Cleveland where they grew up; it’s about people they know and the opioid crisis in Cleveland. They asked me to come on board with Angela to work on the screenplay and it was amazing because we already had a strong collaborative language but I didn’t have Cleveland. The first thing we did was get on a plane and go to Cleveland. We walked the walk of the book it was based on. The main character is a bank robber, and we walked to all the banks, we saw how he escaped, we really got a feeling of the town, the city, and we talked to a lot of young people who came of age at that same time our main character was coming of age. Through that process of walking through her hometown and discussing the story over dinner, in the car, over breakfast, and so on, you really start to develop a way of working together.
Cherry, AppleTV+
Kouguell: Tell me about the adaptation process from Nico Walker’s autobiographical novel to the screen.
Goldberg: It was quite a difficult adaptation. The book goes over 18 years and it’s a series of stories, little vignettes that move forward through his life. He starts as a young man, then he goes to Iraq, comes back and gets addicted. Traveling in that book is the character of Emily but she wasn’t as much a part of the book. When we started to decide how are we really going to invest in this guy and the story, we thought maybe we can pull out more of a love story here. That’s something we added to the structure in the film; it became the frame of the film to have a person who we invested in deeply through this story. That was an addition.
Also, Nico wanted the book to be seen as a work of fiction. He was in prison when they acquired his book. We found a little bit of liberty in our adaptation, translating it from the book to the screen, which was obviously a totally different form.
Kouguell: In the film, the main character breaks the fourth wall. Let’s talk about the decision to include this device.
Goldberg: One of the big challenges of adapting the book was that his voice is so lyrical and poetic; he has such a unique way of looking at the world. So the challenge was, how do you capture a voice that is that unique? Really early on the Russo brothers said, “Try everything, just go and have a great time, let’s get his voice in there.” They gave me and Angela this freedom to experiment and that’s why I think they embraced all these different stylistic choices that come up in the movie. We needed to capture the heart and soul of the book and they were so open to playing with ideas when approaching writing the screenplay.
Kouguell: There were elements that added a level of humor and tone, such as the fictionalized names of the banks.
Goldberg: That was another way of approaching the question of how do we capture the book. He had this way of walking in the world and seeing hypocrisy and seeing these institutions as blank places and we embraced that idea. Even the doctor who he goes to after the war was named Dr. No One. The movie is told through Cherry’s perspective and that is how he sees the world. Some of those little nods are taken from the book.
Kouguell: Words of wisdom for screenwriters?
Goldberg: My first advice is that life is really long and it’s really challenging, so you have to keep writing. It takes a long time; people always want their first thing made. Perseverance is half the battle to being a writer. That’s a big one.
Cherry is slated for a theatrical release on February 26 and will release on Apple TV+ March 12.
February 25, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on SUSAN’S INTERVIEW: ‘Son of the South’ Writer/Director Barry Alexander Brown
Susan Kouguell speaks with ‘Son of the South’ Writer, Director and Editor Barry Alexander Brown about the film that was twelve years in the making, the adaptation process, and how his background as an editor informed his work as a screenwriter.
(L to R) Sharonne Lanier and Lucas Till in a scene from SON OF THE SOUTH, Courtesy Vertical Entertainment
Executive produced by his longtime friend and colleague Spike Lee, Son of the South is based on civil rights activist Bob Zellner and his autobiography, “The Wrong Side of Murder Creek”. The film follows Bob Zellner, a Klansman’s grandson, who must choose which side of history to be on during the Civil Rights Movement. Defying his family and white Southern norms, Zellner fought against social injustice, repression, and violence to change the world around him.
This film, which was twelve years in the making and is dedicated to the late civil rights icon John Lewis, takes place in Alexander’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama where the real-life events occurred.
As a young director, Brown was nominated for an Oscar for his first film, a feature-length documentary about the rise of the anti-Vietnam War Movement titled, The War at Home. He edited numerous Spike Lee films, including Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Inside Man, and BlacKkKlansman for which Lee won a best-adapted screenplay Oscar and Brown was nominated for best editor. Brown has worked with Mira Nair on the Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay!, Madonna, In Bed With Madonna, Adrien Brody on Clean, and Tony Kaye’s Detachment. Brown was recently honored at UNESCO and AFI’s World Peace Initiative Awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award and their World Peace & Tolerance Narrative Feature Film Award for Son of The South.
Barry Alexander Brown
Mr. Brown describes his relationship with Bob Zellner as: “We were both liberal white boys from Alabama and we easily got along.”
Susan Kouguell: Tell me about the adaptation process.
Barry Alexander Brown: The first thing I gravitated towards was that The Wrong Side of Murder Creek should be a movie, but the scope was way too big for one film. I wasn’t interested in doing a movie that quickly skips through history. I was writing the script around the same time Bob was writing his book. So much of what I wrote was more based on lots of my conversations with him.
It took me almost two decades to tell his story in a concise way that would convey the importance of what he did and who he was. It took me forever to decide which part of this story that I can take that will make a good story, with a good beginning, middle and end.
You have to write a story that makes sense, and write dialogue that is sayable for the actors and helps move the story along, and come up with dialogue that sometimes paraphrases what happened. This film gave me the ability to say things I wanted to say things about what Bob and I grew up in.
Kouguell: Did you consult on the script with Mr. Zellner?
Brown: I sent him scenes and sometimes he would tell me more information and stories because I wasn’t there when these things happened — he’s about 20 years older than I am.
Barry Alexander Brown on set ‘Son of the South’, courtesy of Vertical Entertainment
Kouguell: How did your extensive work as a film editor inform you as a screenwriter?
Brown: With film editing, you’re taught so much about pacing and how to get in and out of scenes. Editing informed a lot of how I wrote. There are so many times a scene would stand alone but more often than not it actually creates a greater sequence of scenes that is all about one thing and what the characters are feeling. I’ve come to understand that one scene doesn’t always stand-alone, it’s a piece of a sequence of scenes.
I’ve worked with very good scripts, and you begin to grasp what writers are doing and also in terms of their language. I remember reading the James Joyce quote about Ulysses – ‘I felt like a thief walking around Dublin stealing people’s lines”. I think it’s good to go around town and listen to the way people talk.’Son of the South’ Script-to-Screen, Courtesy Barry Alexander BrownVolume 90%
Kouguell: There are some humorous moments in the film that offer a good balance with the dramatic events unfolding.
Brown: Although this film is a drama, I still wanted to have humor. Mainly, and why I wanted to use it is because the south is a funny place and they like to play with language. Many films that are set in the south, I don’t recognize these people that are somewhat dour and have no sense of humor; that’s not the south I know.
Two examples of these moments are when Younger asks Bob “Are you really a communist? Say something in communist for me” and Bob’s own repeated line, “I’ll try anything three times”.
Kouguell: Your advice to screenwriters?
Brown: Give every character their own life. Some people have very stylized scripts and sometimes that really works but I don’t think I could do that. I want to understand everybody. There are no small parts. If someone walks into a scene and they have a line or two, you have to know who they are and give them something in that line or two because this is a real person with a real personality.
Also, one of my rules is I should be able to sit down with somebody and tell the story I’m writing but tell it as a story not a script. For me it’s very important that not only is the journey interesting but that it’s going somewhere, so when you get to the end someone isn’t thinking ‘What? That’s it? Why did you tell me the story?’
February 2, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview: “Acasa, My Home” Documentary Filmmaker Radu Ciorniciuc
Filmmaker Radu Ciorniciuc speaks candidly with Susan Kouguell about his debut feature film, “Acasa, My Home,” and how the importance of building empathy and trust with your subjects can advance the context of your story and provides insight into his writing process with co-writer Lina Vdovîi.
Radu Ciorniciuc’s debut feature film, Acasa, My Home, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it was honored with a Special Jury Award for Cinematography. The film has played at over 60 festivals around the world and has been nominated for the IDA Documentary Awards, European Film Awards, and Cinema Eye Honors. The film opened in the U.S. on January 15th courtesy of Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber.
In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, an abandoned water reservoir just outside the bustling metropolis, the Enache family lived in perfect harmony with nature for two decades, sleeping in a hut on the lakeshore, catching fish barehanded, and following the rhythm of the seasons. When this area is transformed into a public national park, the nine children and their parents are forced to leave behind their unconventional life and move to the city. This is a compelling tale of an impoverished family living on the fringes of society in Romania, fighting for acceptance and their own version of freedom.
In 2012, Radu Ciorniciuc co-founded the first independent media organization in Romania – Casa Jurnalistului, a community of reporters specializing in in-depth, long-form and multimedia reporting. Since then, he has been working as a long-form writer and undercover investigative reporter. His research focuses on human rights, animal welfare and environmental issues across the globe. His investigative and reporting work was published on most of the major international media organizations in the world – Channel 4 News, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, etc. – and received national and international awards.
His journalistic work was acknowledged by Royal Television Society UK (2014), Amnesty International UK (2014), Harold Wincott Awards for Business, Economic and Financial Journalism (2016), and by other international and national prestigious institutions.
Lina Vdovîi (co-writer) is an award-winning independent long-form reporter covering migration, conflict zones, poverty, education, and social integration. In 2012, she joined the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism and, in 2014, became a fellow in the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence. In 2014, she was awarded 1st place in the Feature Writing category at Premiile Superscrieri. In 2015, Lina received the distinction Young Journalist of the Year, awarded by Freedom House, Romania. Her work is published in both national outlets and international publications, such as in The Guardian, the EU Observer, Courrier International, Al-Jazeera, Transitions online, RFE/RL, Berlin Policy Journal, and Balkan Insight.
Susan Kouguell: How did you initially meet the Enache family?
Radu Ciorniciuc: It was in 2016 when we heard the Romanian government was going to give the highest environmental protection to a place that was known for the garbage that was stored there, and all the bad urban legends like people get killed in this delta. It was quite a story for me living just two streets away from there.
At first, I just wanted to report on how these authorities were going to make these places accessible to the general public. What they discovered inside was something amazing and truly valuable; a delicate and complex ecosystem where hundreds of species of birds and animals and plants found their home despite it being in one of the most polluted capitals in Europe.
For me, as a reporter, it was quite interesting. With the co-screenwriter of the film, Lina Vdovîi, we started doing interviews and one thing led to another. We met two of the boys, half-naked 400 meters from the city center with their long hair and their funny way of speaking, coming out from the bush. It was quite an image and obviously, we wanted to understand where they came from. They took us to their father, and this is where we learned that the father was quite essential to the whole project and campaign of making this is a nature park. He was working closely with all the researchers, scientists, and other journalists who would come to write or promote the place. He knew everything about the place, he was also acting as a ranger with all the poachers that would come.
We had the privilege on our first encounter to have him see us as another crew of journalists and he took us on this very well-scripted tour of his, explaining the main things of the ecosystem, acting as a modern-day Robinson Crusoe – he was very well aware of his character. Weeks passed and we kept coming back and the father asked: ‘What kind of journalists are you guys? When are you finishing your story?’ We said what’s happening here deserves more time to properly understand the context in which they were living.
Kouguell: You mentioned that in order to create a feeling of familiarity and home with the family, the camera was always shooting at the eye level of the characters and at close distances, especially when highly emotional events were taking place. How were you able to gain the family’s trust?
Ciorniciuc: This trust you build with time. It’s something that is evolving and shifting. As long as there is empathy, understanding and fairness– and this goes with every relationship– I think there are strong bridges to be built.
Kouguell: You co-wrote the film with Lina Vdovîi – please tell me about the writing process.
Ciorniciuc: We both come from a writing background; we both started working in long format, as nonfiction writers. For me it was essential in making this film to always have what I call the bible of the film, which is the treatment, the script. It was very important at different stages of the project so everyone on the project, including myself, knows what’s going on, knows the material we can show, and also clarifies our intention.
Obviously, there are many ways of making a film. Documentary has shifted in form over the years, which is a beautiful thing. There is nothing scripted in the film; I or my crew, never fed them lines.
The truth can have a lot of forms; there is the journalistic truth, artistic truth, and human truth and that can be attained with different forms.
The way we tried to direct some of the scenes, for example, the conflict scenes with the family was that we did our best in becoming mediators between the family members. We were already the people they were turning to when they were having hard times. For example, with the scene with Vali and his father, they had been struggling with each other for about three months and never talked with each other. That was understandable; I come from a patriarchal family and culture and I understand that embracing your vulnerabilities and communicating them can be seen as a sign of weakness. One day I sat with them and said, “I probably won’t be here (with you) in 10 or 20 years and you probably will, and to solve some of these issues you need to talk.” They only needed this to start expressing their frustrations that were there for years.
The way we scripted it was to imagine drawing a red line through 300 hours of footage, which is something that we had with many possibilities of telling the story, including finding an abandoned son of Gica, that exploded our story. We were two years in the making of the film when we followed that storyline. It’s great when you’re making independent documentaries because you have the liberty of following whatever you feel is important.
Writing helps me understand where the end of the film will be. When the written treatment was matching what we had in our rough cuts, that’s when I knew this is what we wanted to say, the things we discovered, what we considered valuable and truthful and worth sharing with the world. This is why I believe in the written process even in the conventional documentary.
Kouguell: You captured people’s intentions yet remained nonjudgmental in conveying the material even when we see how various people are not making the best choices.
Ciorniciuc: You’re a filmmaker and you know that learning the nuance to judgment takes time and education. It’s hard not to judge some of the decisions the father made regarding the children, but understanding that those decisions come from a place that made him feel confident, that the things he was doing were for the best of his loved ones, that for me is context. It took me time to give him a break, and it took me time to accept the fact that those children were deprived of a lot of the opportunities that they should have 400 meters away from them. One judges things on how culture influences you or your family, education, community, and so on.
I think in telling a story like this one it was important for the characters to tell their story, tell their reality in how they see it. I wanted to make a film from within the family rather than about the family. This was obviously tricky because many times we had to fight with our perceptions and our own judgments.
Kouguell: It was powerful to see the footage of Charles, Prince of Wales in your film. It wasn’t just about the celebrity factor, but it put it in the context of how important this land was. How were you able to obtain the footage?
Ciorniciuc: We got it from the official news agency in Romania. We got lucky; if we actually asked the Royal House of Windsor, we would never have gotten it. It mattered to them that our core team were journalists, including myself, and we were known to them and they trusted us.
Kouguell: Has the Enache family seen the film?
Ciorniciuc: Yes. Some parts they enjoyed and some parts they were reminded of the many hard situations they have been through in the last four years. I think it had a very therapeutic effect especially on the mother who told me that after all this they are still together, she can still feel that she has a family, which is something I am very proud of. I was very nervous showing the film to the family but at the end of the day, it worked very well for the family.
Susan Kouguell, award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, is a senior contributing editor for Script Magazine, and is the author of The Savvy Screenwriter: How to Sell Your Screenplay (and Yourself) Without Selling Out! and Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays!: A comprehensive guide to crafting winning characters with film analyses and screenwriting exercises. As chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a motion picture consulting company founded in 1990, Kouguell works as a script doctor and post-production consultant with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, executives and studios worldwide. Her extensive background includes work as story analyst and story editor for many studios, including Miramax, Paramount, and Viacom, acquisitions consultant for Warner Bros., writer on voice-over narrations for Miramax, associate producer on two features, and over a dozen feature writing assignments for independent companies. Susan teaches screenwriting at SUNY College at Purchase and is a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute. Her short films are in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection and archives and were included in the Whitney Museum’s Biennial. Follow Susan on Twitter: @SKouguell, Facebook, and Instagram @slkfilms
December 16, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s interview with “Donut King” Documentary Filmmaker Alice Gu
Director, cinematographer and writer Alice Gu talks about her feature directorial debut, The Donut King, in an insightful discussion that includes DIY filmmaking, discovering the story and establishing truthful relationships with interviewees
Director, cinematographer and writer Alice Gu talks about her feature directorial debut, The Donut King, in an insightful discussion that includes DIY filmmaking, discovering the story and establishing truthful relationships with interviewees.
The Donut King tells the unlikely story of Ngoy, a Cambodian refugee who arrived in America in 1975 with nothing and set out to build a multi-million-dollar empire by baking America’s favorite pastry, the donut. Ngoy soon found himself living a classic rags to riches narrative after sponsoring hundreds of visas for fellow Cambodian immigrants, helping them get on their feet in a new land by teaching them the ways of the donut business and amassing a small personal fortune. By the mid 1990’s, Cambodian-Americans owned nearly 80% of the donut industry as a result of his influence.
The Donut King is a story of tenacity, survival, redemption, and above all else, the power of the American Dream. The Donut King is executive produced by Academy Award-winner Freida Lee Mock and produced by Logan Content in association with Scott Free Productions.
ALICE GU (Director/DP/Writer) A Los Angeles native, Alice began her career as a Director of Photography, working with renowned directors Werner Herzog, Stacy Peralta, and Rory Kennedy, among others. “Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton” made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, a documentary film lensed by Gu and directed by Academy Award-nominated director, Rory Kennedy.
KOUGUELL: I understand it was your nanny who introduced you to the concept of “Cambodian donuts” and Ted Ngoy’s story. What grabbed your attention about this story?
GU: When I read about Ted’s story there were several things that grabbed my attention—but not everything made it into the movie due to time, otherwise it would have been three hours long. First, he was a boy born in poverty in Cambodia. Second, in high school, he falls in love with the daughter of a high-ranking official and they have a whole Romeo and Juliet moment where they are forbidden to be together—he actually stabs himself three times and goes on a hunger strike and she takes pills, and they are both almost dead—and finally her parents send them off to live in the countryside.
I was only casually familiar with the atrocities that happened in Cambodia at that time. Ted escaped from that as a refugee penniless and within three years becoming a millionaire and then he lost it all and ended up destitute. His life was so topsy-turvy. Ted’s life read like a movie, like fiction. All of that appealed to me.
Also, the personal component resonated with me. I’m a child of Chinese parents who were forced to leave China with just the clothes on their back.
Ted Ngoy
KOUGUELL: Tell me about the evolution of the project.
GU: This is a case of leap before you look and ignorance is bliss because if you knew how hard it was and all the challenges that would be coming your way, I think it would have been too daunting. Then I thought, I can do this, I’m a DP and I can shoot this, I can get a camera. And then taking a very much DIY approach to it.
KOUGUELL: How long was the shoot?
GU: We shot on and off over the course of eight to ten months. I would have loved to have compressed that, but it was very much DIY—when we had money and time available, we would go back and shoot this project.
KOUGUELL: When you planned out your documentary, did you work from an outline or any source material?
GU: When I met Ted—and that was meeting him over Facebook—we talked several times and he said he just wrote a book, a memoir that’s coming out in a month, and that he would give me a copy. I used that as our bible, a starting point of getting to know characters and getting familiar with everything. But, as we went along and started filming more and meeting more people, it really wasn’t just his book that we followed, we realized there was so much depth and so many other characters and substories we wanted to tell. We used Ted’s memoir as a beginning to research material and as a jumping off point, but the script itself revealed itself to us during the process.
KOUGUELL: How did you establish trust with your subjects, including Ted Ngoy and his family members and colleagues?
GU: That is a product of time. Ted was approaching 80 with nothing else to prove, nowhere to hide. He was a man in his golden years and reflecting on all the good and all the bad. When I approached him about making this documentary, I told him it’s not going to be all the good, it’s going to be warts and all—it’s going to be the good, bad and ugly and are you okay with that, and he said yes.
Over the next 12 months the trust deepened. There was a difference between our first interviews and when we filmed later; his guard was really let down. It was about having honest and true intentions yourself when making a film and that will show and reflect in your relationships and how you approach everything. The other element is persistence. You will get a lot of no’s in the beginning, like from the other characters who are in the film, and eventually after months go by, they say, “Oh, she’s still here? I guess she’s here to stay, and she’s still asking me to be interviewed.” It’s patience, persistence and really having true intentions.,
KOUGUELL: Final words to share about your project?
GU: I love documentaries and I loved them for such a long time. My editor and co-writer Carol Martori is passionate about documentaries and the art form, and we both knew early on this story is so complex and there are so many ways to tell it. There is an American dream story, there’s an immigrant story, a rags-to-riches story, a David-and-Goliath story, and a story about helping other refugees getting their start and rescuing them from refugee camps. There is also what we call the Donut Shop 2.0, the second generation. We have all of these stories, and the bigger immigrant story and history lesson, and we thought, how do we fit this all in here and not be a complete mess. It was a bit daunting.
We took inspiration from narrative. Our approach was to have a narrative structure, a narrative arc. We also wanted to do something fresh and different, and I hope that comes across, as an interesting way to tell the story.
October 30, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off on Filmmaker Chloé Zhao and Producer Peter Spears Talk Adapting “Nomadland” to the Screen at the New York Film Festival
“Nomadland” director, writer, producer, and editor Chloé Zhao and producer Peter Spears spoke with New York Film Festival Director of Programming Dennis Lim at a press conference to discuss their NYFF58 Centerpiece selection.SUSAN KOUGUELL
Nomadland director, writer, producer, and editor Chloé Zhao and producer Peter Spears spoke with New York Film Festival Director of Programming Dennis Lim at a press conference to discuss their NYFF58 Centerpiece selection.
Zhao is a film director, screenwriter, editor, and producer known for her work on her debut feature film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her second feature film, The Rider (2017), received several accolades including nominations for Independent Spirit Award for Best Film and Best Director. Zhao directed the upcoming Marvel Studios release Eternals, set for release in 2021 by Walt Disney Studios. Peter Spears produced Call Me By Your Name.
Zhao adapted Nomadland from journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century following Frances McDormand and producer Peter Spears’ acquisition of the literary adaptation rights shortly after publication. The film follows Fern (McDormand), a woman who, after the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. The film features real nomads Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells as Fern’s mentors and comrades in her exploration through the vast landscape of the American West.
The process of translating this nonfiction book into a narrative film.
Peter Spears recounted that his husband, talent agent Brian Swardstorm who represents Frances McDormand, brought the project to him. “At first we thought it would be something as an adapted screenplay situation—something that Frances would play Linda May herself.”
Once Zhao was brought onto the project, this initial idea changed. They discussed that immediately Zhao thought the adaptation would not be just turning Linda May’s life into a cinematic treatment but that Zhao wanted to explore something even deeper and larger in the landscape of that.
Lim remarked that in Zhao’s three films she worked with nonprofessional actors who brought something of themselves to the role. “For Chloe, maybe it was not such a stretch in this film because she’s made narrative films in the past with strong nonfiction elements.”
Zhao stated: “I remember meeting Linda May, Swanky, and Bob Wells for the first time. It was exciting—they had sparks in their eyes and stories in their lives. From the beginning, I thought: How do we create a narrative and a fictional character and a journey for her that we can incorporate organically and all these incredible characters that [book author] Jessica met through her research.”
Creating the character of Fern played by Frances McDormand
Zhao, Spears and Lim discussed how much is drawn on Frances McDormand and how the name “Fern” suggests there’s an affinity there.
Zhao: “I think so much is a collaboration with Fran—everything from the plates (that are a significant symbol in the film, given to McDormand by her father) to the photographs—are from Fran’s real life.”
The Screenplay
Overall, the film’s dialogue is minimal and the visual storytelling—the sparse and breathtaking landscapes, the observational moments with Fern alone and her interaction with others—enable the viewer to step into Fern’s world.
Zhao: “The script allowed enough breathing spaces for surprises. The structure was there that when surprises occurred it often led us into new directions.”
September 6, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off on SUSAN’S ‘SCRIPT MAGAZINE’ INTERVIEW: Isabel Sandoval Discusses Her New Film “Lingua Franca”
Susan Kouguell interviews writer/director Isabel Sandoval about her film, “Lingua Franca,” the themes that are important to her, and advice to emerging writers and filmmakers.
Isabel Sandoval as “Olivia” in LINGUA FRANCA – photo courtesy of ARRAY
“Every image or sound is a vessel for emotion: rapture, despair, sensuousness, fury, a combination of these. That makes cinema a kind of legerdemain: the art of sculpting such seemingly artificial elements to create a singular, genuine emotional experience.”
Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Francamade history at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival Venice Days program as the first film directed and starring an openly trans woman of color to screen in competition. In July 2020, Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing acquired the film, which debuts on Netflix and opens theatrically in select cities on August 26th.
I recently spoke with Sandoval before the release of her film. Lingua Franca follows an undocumented Filipina trans woman, Olivia (Isabel Sandoval), after she has secured a job as a live-in caregiver for Olga (Lynn Cohen), an elderly Russian woman in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. Olivia’s main priority is to secure a green card to stay in America. But when she unexpectedly becomes romantically involved with Olga’s adult grandson, Alex (Eamon Farren), issues around identity, civil rights and immigration threaten her very existence.
ABOUT ISABEL SANDOVAL (Director, Writer, Producer, Editor, Actress) An emerging auteur recognized by the Museum of Modern Art as a “rarity among the young generation of Filipino filmmakers for her muted, serene aesthetic”, Isabel Sandoval is a US-based filmmaker who has written and directed three features. Her debut, SEÑORITA (2011), competed in the Concorso Cineasti del presente at the 2011 Locarno FF. Her follow-up, APPARITION (2012), competed in the New Currents section at the 2012 Busan IFF. Considered a modern Philippine classic, APPARITION, is regularly programmed in retrospectives of Filpino cinema. Isabel is currently developing her fourth and most ambitious feature, TROPICAL GOTHIC, a 16th century surrealist drama about the haunting of a Spanish conquistador in the Philippine islands. The project is a 2020 Locarno Open Doors Hub selection.
Kouguell: You came up with the premise for Lingua Franca, which addresses both immigration and the transgender experience, while undergoing gender transition, but the film is not autobiographical. Let’s talk about the process of writing the script.
Sandoval: My theme of choice has been women with secrets, and also women who are disadvantaged, disempowered and forced to confront broader issues. This is true in all my features.
About halfway through writing the script, there were a lot of minorities living in the U.S. who were experiencing these same immigration issues, and I channeled that emotional state in the temperament of the film. It’s kind of an amorphous film; it has elements of drama and shades of a paranoid thriller so that’s how the premise and idea for the film came together. I was channeling that time.
Kouguell: Was it always your intention to also star in the film?
Sandoval: The idea came to me naturally. I like to think of myself as an auteur—when the writer directs, when the protagonist is kind of like an alter ego or double, so to speak. Olivia is a character I’ve known quite well and fondly for almost two years, so that decision to play her came quite organically.
Isabel Sandoval as “Olivia” and Lynn Cohen as “Olga “ in LINGUA FRANCA – photo courtesy of ARRAY
Kouguell: In many of the interviews I have done for this publication, filmmakers tell me that either the script has remained the same from idea stage to the screen, and others say their work makes a complete departure from the script stage to the screen. Did you find that the story changed in any way or is this the film you always intended to make?
Sandoval: I took on the key creative roles—writing, directing, editing and being a producer because I feel like it helped me take my vision of the film from the page to the screen more faithfully as I originally conceived.
As an indie filmmaker, it’s very intuitive to me to be flexible and adaptable. With limited resources you don’t always get the location you want, etc., and there’s a lot of thinking on my feet, and my relationship to a script is a blueprint for a story.
Kouguell: Advice to aspiring writers and filmmakers?
Sandoval: I didn’t go to film school, but I exposed myself to many different kinds of cinema, especially risk-taking cinema that tackles unconventional styles, themes and narratives. My advice is to try to establish your own distinct and singular voice and be willing to take risks—that’s how we grow and evolve as filmmakers and artists.
