Tag: film

  • Behind the Scenes of We Don’t Dance for Nothing

    Behind the Scenes of We Don’t Dance for Nothing

    We Don’t Dance for Nothing is about Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, their struggles, dreams, and communal expression through dance. The main character “H,” played by Miles Sible, raises the children of two busy Chinese parents. This is a common arrangement in Hong Kong, where roughly 200,000 Filipinx women have left their homes to raise the children of their employers. They experience abuse, live under constant threat of deportation, and have no path to permanent residency. But they’ve also created a thriving dance culture in the city center on Sundays, where they gather. This is where director Stefanos Tai saw an opportunity to create a multi-dimensional story highlighting these workers’ talents.

    The film was shot on 16mm, using almost entirely still images to convey a sense of the main character feeling stuck within her circumstances. It combines real events, remembered personal narratives, and staged dances with hundreds of domestic workers. Production took place in 2020, during Hong Kong’s social unrest and the pandemic lockdowns.

    A panel discussion featuring a speaker with a microphone, seated in front of an audience, with a large screen displaying a colorful image of dancers in the background.
    Director Stefanos Tai pictured

    This interview by Conor Provenzano with Stefanos Tai was conducted one month after the world premiere of the film “We Don’t Dance for Nothing” at DOXA Film Festival in Vancouver BC on 10 May 2022.

    Conor Provenzano: I want to ask you about the writing process. I’m curious what it was like for you to go out and meet women on Sunday and then develop relationships and access.

    Stefanos Tai: I fell into the community pretty quickly. They were hospitable to me, they invited me to things – barbecues, birthday parties, and dances. They were surprised that this foreigner wanted to hang out with them, and I told them every Sunday I was making a project. Most didn’t take it seriously, and many didn’t care, or were too exhausted from their workweek to care, so I had to meet them where they were.

    CP: Did you write the script from transcribed interviews?

    ST: We had so many conversations, but most of them were not transcribed. At that point I didn’t know what form the project would take, I was just inspired. But eventually, I started to keep notes and read books. I researched in-depth, watched documentaries, we danced more together, and I came to realize that no one in the media was framing them through their talents. Everyone was only talking about their struggles. I could see they wanted to be known for more than just their professions, as we all do. So from there I wrote an outline myself and started to model characters based on the people I’d met.

    A group of dancers performing on a city street under bright sunlight, with skyscrapers in the background. The dancers wear casual outfits and are captured in dynamic, expressive poses.
    Film still

    CP: Did you go over outlines together?

    ST: Always in a very loose way. We didn’t say, “Everyone! Let’s meet on Sunday and we’ll go over the latest draft.” That couldn’t have worked, and I was always respectful of their time since they were often exhausted. Sunday was their only day off, so I’d just try to listen. And I heard trends of what they were dealing with; not enough food was shockingly common.

    From there I wrote a script in English. And the actors, I would say, did a lot of writing as well. A) to convert the narrative into Tagalog, but also B) to point out anything that wouldn’t ring true to actual members of their community. I gave them enormous agency, but I reminded them that we’re not making propaganda. Of course we’re painting these women with warmth, but we wouldn’t ignore anything, or sanitize their rougher edges. Sometimes these women would make jokes about the Chinese folks and, you know, is it benign? Is it racist? I’m not sure. It’s a small way they can feel some power over their situation, for a moment. But I felt we needed to show all sides of their personalities, including these moments, even if they elicit mixed reactions from an audience.

    CP: Right, that’s a good example of a multi-dimensional representation.

    ST: We tried to be fair, and re-writing took place until the end of post. We could change anything because we shot mainly in still images. We recorded the location sound on set but it wasn’t synced. So in the sound studio later, we’d play the location dialogue, and the actors would say, “Oh, it would be funnier if I said it like this”. They were redesigning lines and I was furiously writing notes trying to catch up. Enormous credit goes to our cast.

    CP: Did you feel any doubts as an outsider?

    ST: Definitely, mostly stemming from the fact that I don’t speak Tagalog. Sometimes I get the oddest questions on this topic. People ask me, “Did you ever consider doing it in English”? And the answer is no, because they don’t speak to each other in English.

    CP: It’s a basic matter of representation, and maybe de-centering this whole English obsession.

    ST: The other question, perhaps even more ridiculous is: “What was behind the decision to cast Filipino talent to play Filipinos?”

    CP: Wow. That indicates the need for this film, actually.

    ST: And many more as well, right? But I definitely had doubts. I think the key was meeting with Filipino folks, not only domestic workers but friends of ours, friends of our actors, early in the script stage. I would annoy them: “You need to tell me: does this line make sense? Tear it apart, please! Because the worst thing that could happen is to have viewers say, ‘that doesn’t make sense in Tagalog! Who wrote this?’” I’m still worried someone will see the film and catch something that we never did (so far nothing major has happened).

    It was also important for us to hold work-in-progress screenings. Our friends and actors brought their parents and grandparents. I needed to see if the cut could work for them all. And they did point out many things to change, remove, or fix.

    CP: Let’s talk a little bit about the dance element. Do you have a history of dance, or a dance background?

    ST: My parents were dancers. I think dance is the highest form of art. It’s the most beautiful thing to watch in person, or on-screen. It’s also the most beautiful thing you create with someone. It’s like music, it’s beyond words. So I’ve always had an appreciation for it, but seeing the domestic workers dancing expanded my whole view on dance. I saw literally hundreds of women in the middle of the city— which, by the way, is not embellished, and actually does happen every Sunday. People never believe me, but I say, “Go to Hong Kong and see for yourself.” COVID has reduced its scale, but still it’s there.

    So while at first, I saw their street dancing as fun, and visually interesting, it was once I looked closer that I discovered how profound dance was to them. It’s not all happy faces. Despite their high level of skill, you can sense that many are dancing to shed something, trying to release something. It’s an act of survival, and they weren’t dancing for nothing, hence the film’s title. And when I asked them about this, I heard things like “it’s the only way we can forget. In dance, I can feel like I’m not here anymore.” Or, “by moving my body, I can escape that house that I’m working in, 24 hours a day.”

    A person wading in shallow water at a beach, with buildings and mountains in the background under a clear sky.
    Film still

    CP: You said in a panel I watched recently that they’re “dancing through their struggles,” which indicates a serious need for embodiment, to return to the body. Of course, it’s true for everyone, but these women have such a demanding schedule and only one day for self-care.

    ST: Absolutely. I’ve started to believe recently that art needs something to push back against, and they certainly have no shortage. They’re dancing with their pain. And that’s how I view the film, as a dance-filled romance between H and her circumstances. She’s constantly wrestling to figure out her life. But again, on a simpler level, the talent of these domestic workers was unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine that they’re not practicing their routines daily, and it often seemed unbelievable that they could do strenuous housework all week long, and summon such energy on Sundays.

    CP: Yes I agree. [SPOILER ALERT] And then there’s the intimacy of the duet sequences between the two leads, H and Sampa. And they never kiss! Can you talk a little bit about that choice?

    ST: It might sound strange, but I believe that in general, kissing is shown too much in films. I like the Bollywood approach – kissing is almost obscene. You don’t need it, and often the moment is stronger with only its implication, or the tension… There’s a Danish director I like, Nicolas Winding Refn. He says violence in films is like sex: it’s about the build-up. And I think romance is the same. A kiss always feels like the climax of a romantic buildup, but I feel it’s usually so poorly done in films, and it takes me out. I begin thinking of these two actors, who are clearly not in love, and how they must be feeling during the take. To me, some things just can’t be faked.

    CP: Chemistry, you know…

    ST: So in this film, we take viewers right up to that point, without actually showing a kiss. It essentially accomplishes the same thing, but we don’t need to see it. Of course, kissing is not actually obscene, I guess I just believe it’s often creatively stronger to imply than show. And I mean that for men and women, women and women, men and men. It’s a general proclivity I have.

    CP: Thank you for that. We don’t actually know if the two characters H and Sampa ever explore each other sexually, and what if they don’t?

    ST: Right.

    CP: They have a real connection that is vulnerable. But it couldn’t possibly come across that you view sexuality as obscene, because there is so much tension in the dance sequences as they are. The body-dancing and so on.

    ST: I hope so.

    CP: Was that how it appeared to you in person?

    ST: Absolutely. You would see a lot of relationships that seemed romantic, but you couldn’t be sure. Nobody was talking about it, and it wasn’t my place to ask directly. But I also found these relationships beautiful, because Hong Kong, despite its glitz, is a conservative place, and there are still many folks against two women being together. And domestic workers usually can’t afford to risk losing their jobs, so I wanted to show that it’s not Berlin, or New York City. Hong Kong is a different place, and it’s a more closed society that they’re navigating.

    CP: The performances were so moving and so real to me. And yet, the film consists mainly of still images. Xyza and Miles (who play H and Sampa) said that they couldn’t use footage from WDDFN in their reel. This was shocking to me. And you responded to that by saying that industry people showered praise on their performances.

    ST: I think what they meant— which I understand— is that it’s hard for them to show still-image performances to get moving-image acting jobs. And I’d be lying if I said I knew with certainty that their performances – or any actors performances – would be heightened by stills. I felt strongly stills could carry weight emotionally, but it was always a risk. A worthwhile one .

    CP: It’s also the nature of moving images that there are gaps in between the frames. Our eyes and our brains put it together.

    ST: True.

    CP: Actually I found this film to be more immersive than traditional 24-frames-per-second. There’s a lot of movement, it’s dynamic. [SPOILER ALERT] And it all builds toward a scene at the beach, the one-take dance, which was shot in 24fps. It took two days, four takes, and an unbelievable performance by Miles— the music and display of emotion through movement was so intense for me, it was so effective. Miles could use that for her reel, right?

    ST: She can definitely use that one for her reel! But if we’d shown the dances in stills as well, the actors would have killed me (laughs). And this gets to the heart of the watchability question. I always wanted to meet viewers halfway. We can and should ask people to watch something different, but we’ve got to reward them for their effort. I intended for viewers to be a bit uncomfortable in the beginning, but tried to structure the film such that if they put in a bit of extra work, there would be something to be gained, a transcendence of the medium itself… And the dances are the key to this— nobody dislikes watching dance on-screen. And ours are peppered in throughout the film, so if viewers start to tire of the static stills-treatment, there’s always a high-octane dance right around the corner, to grab you with a more familiar experience, more easily “watchable.”

    CP: I felt it was a breeze to watch. The still images are never held for too long. Not as long as La Jetée, which you cite as one of the influences. Have you had any complaints about the stills?

    ST: Oh yeah (he laughs). Of course.

    CP: A lot?

    ST: Not a lot. I think it’s about expectations. I do find that if we’re sending it to people and they’re watching it on a small screen (or their phone), and they have no idea that it’s not a traditional film, I end up hearing “is my Wi-Fi broken? What’s going on?” And that’s a tough place to come back from within a 90-minute film. But several people have also said they grew to love our cinematic experiment. Overall, we’ve seen everything from standing ovations to walkouts.

    CP: That’s hard, knowing it didn’t work for some people. But there’s also the issue of lack of viewer openness. We shouldn’t write things off so quickly. I myself have been historically bad at this, walking out of films and so on. Then later, facing heavy criticism of my own work, I start remembering the way certain friends seem to appreciate and learn from everything they see. Sometimes our criticisms say more about us.

    CP: Let’s talk about photo-montage. This is the correct term, right? “Photo-montage”?

    ST: I suppose so (laughs). If there is one.

    CP: From the financial side, was it difficult to pitch this film? “La Jeteé” is only 28 minutes, and here you have an 86-minute film.

    ST: It was difficult. Many producers we spoke to didn’t understand why we even cared about this topic, why this needed to be a movie. I’d say, “aren’t you inspired when you see these women dancing?”, but we’d get blank looks, and responses like “yeah, but who cares… why do you want to make a film about maids. We already know about them.” And I think that’s a result of some people in Hong Kong having grown up around domestic workers. They don’t see these women as special, as anything more than their cleaners and cooks. And another sad truth… was that box office revenue was the first, last, and only concern of so many people in the industry. Or wanting to shoot sexier topics with celebrities to build their clout… And let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with making money with a celebrity-driven film, but I quietly thought to myself, “isn’t there something you want to say with your films? I’m trying to help someone, somehow. Whether I succeed or not, I am trying. How about you?” But despite living amongst hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers, they somehow seemed not to care about Filipinos at all.

    CP: Filipino women specifically, if we want to name that.

    ST: Definitely… Now, about financing such a wildly different kind of film (a photo-montage), funders would say “it sounds interesting, do you have an example?” And we’d say, “Well… there’s La Jetée,” and you’d be surprised how many people have never heard of “La Jetée.”

    CP: I’m not surprised I guess, because it’s mostly shown in Universities these days.

    ST: But it’s also on the IMDb “Top 250 Films of All Time” I believe. In the film world it’s iconic, right?

    CP: True, true.

    ST: I love Chris Marker’s work. But even now, some people tell me, “don’t mention ‘La Jetée’ cause you can never sell your film. You’re trying to sell your movie, don’t mention a movie that’s unsellable!” (laughs)

    CP: So you mention “La La Land” as well [in the pitch], which was really smart, I thought.

    Film still

    ST: Certainly, that’s a very profitable film.

    CP: Brilliant marketing move.

    ST: Well, let’s see if it works. No one’s bought the film yet! But we’re happy just to have finished it. When I look back, I see how steep our hill was. So many potential funders asked, “have you made a feature?” —“No I haven’t” —“Oh, well do you have name talent attached?” —“No we don’t.” —“And you want to do some sort of photo-movie project that you can’t show us references for?” I could have shown them La Jetée, but I’d have to say “we’re not shooting black and white, it’s not sci-fi, it won’t feel slow, there will be dialogue. Oh, and it’s something of a dance-musical as well.” It’s no wonder people couldn’t visualize that – and fair enough, right? It was hard enough for me to visualize…

    CP: How did you reach producers in the beginning? Can you describe that process a little more?

    ST: We attended Hong Kong Film Art. We cold-talked to as many producers as possible and… it’s funny how these industry events work. We didn’t have a script yet, but had a one pager, a 15-second read. We attended meetings and I’d hand over the one-pager, and I would see them take the paper, not read any of it, put it down and say, “You know, Stefanos, I think your idea is strong, but I think you need to go back to the drawing board and make sure it has this, that and the other…” It was ridiculous, but today, some of those very people have seen our finished film and reached back out to congratulate us. I think people don’t expect you to actually make a movie when you say you will. And now that I’ve crossed that first finish line with this project, they view me as an entirely new filmmaker, which is odd considering that I’m still the same artist, interested in the same stories. The reason I make films is the same.

    CP: Well, your film got made, you’re showing it, and you have, to me, a lot of grounded confidence in speaking about it. But at that time, when you had no backing, it must have been hard on your confidence. How did you deal with that?

    ST: I’m fortunate that older and more accomplished directors had told me it was the same for them. And also thanks to the internet, you can find any master filmmaker’s advice on YouTube, and they echo the same struggles. The industry has high walls, and you’ve got to find a way over them while it’s raining ‘no’s. Of course you’re helped by amazing friends, but you really do hear ninety-nine ‘no’s for every ‘yes.’ Especially if you’re doing something entirely new.

    And to be fair, I didn’t make it easy on myself. I knew making a photo-montage feature was crazy, but I thought, “If I can pull this off, with the right team, and make something entertaining out of a shooting style most people wouldn’t touch, nobody else will be in that space. We’ll be truly original, which counts for a lot in today’s world of commodified, derivative filmmaking. But along the way, so many naysayers told us bluntly we were working with a bad idea, or trying too hard to be different. But I tuned them out, because they never bothered to boil the idea down to its fundamentals. They never could answer: Why can’t a photo-montage work? Exactly, why? Prove it. So I knew that if we afforded ourselves this level of intense curiosity, and never made assumptions about what could or couldn’t work until we tried— if we started there, and created anything of interest, we’d get attention. And, we’d attract the perfect future collaborators: people willing to take risks and forge new ground.

    CP: That’s right… I wish you all the best with this amazing work of art that amplifies the experiences of domestic workers in Hong Kong. Right up until the end, it was so tender and sad and beautiful. I had a lot of tears for this character H.

    ST: That’s really nice to hear, thank you for saying that. And thank you for being willing to amplify, it helps a lot.

    CP: I felt a responsibility to do so, because it touched me deeply. Thank you for letting me into your process.

    In collaboration with Movies Move Us on film making with social impact.

    Follow We Don’t Dance for Nothing on Instagram and Facebook for the latest screenings in your city.

    Upcoming:

    Singapore International Film Festival

    Sunday November 27th, 1:30PM

    Hawaii International Film Festival [Online]

    until November 27th

    All images courtesy of Stefanos Tai.

  • Vivarium Director Lorcan Finnegan on Irish Folklore in Film & Dystopian Cities

    Vivarium Director Lorcan Finnegan on Irish Folklore in Film & Dystopian Cities

    Interview by Sarah Wei and Faye Bradley

    Lorcan Finnegan’s exploration into uncanny dystopia settings started way before Vivarium, the highly-praised debut featuring Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg. His career began in creating surreal absurdist content for Zeppotron, one of Charlie Brooker’s early ventures before Black Mirror, where he began shooting sketch comedy and motion graphics. Fast forward through his career, Finnegan started his own company Lovely Productions to pursue independent short films, which followed with Foxes, Without Name and Vivarium. The Irish director has been busy since and is working on several projects on the go including an upcoming film with Eva Green and Mark Strong.

    We spoke with Finnegan on his key themes interwoven in each film, including what makes a dystopia, sociopolitical systems and Irish folklore.

    Faye Bradley: Could you give us a bit of background on yourself and how you got into filmmaking?

    Lorcan Finnegan: I studied graphic design originally – I thought at the time that graphics was more like motion graphics, you know, from watching things like the Channel Four logo coming together and stuff like that. So I was like, oh yeah, that looks cool. Graphic design. And then I studied graphic design and it turned out to be mostly about print. But I started experimenting with animation in college, just sort of teaching myself some motion graphics and animation and I made a couple of short films, like fake trailers for movies, and a stop motion interactive game and stuff like that. When I graduated, I was really into absurdist comedy. So I was watching a lot of American and British surreal and absurdist comedy and was watching a show called Unnovations which was like a fake shopping channel comedy show and I got in touch with the creators of the show at Zeppotron in London. And I asked if I could get a job doing whatever. They were starting to make comedy content for the very first mobile phones with video that came preloaded with content. So I ended up getting a job with them and ended up editing some of this comedy content. They gave me a camera course and I started shooting some sketch comedy on a PD 150, which is a mini DV camera and doing motion graphics and intro sequences to the sketches and stuff like that.

    That company actually ended up making Black Mirror much later – it was Charlie Brooker’s company. Then I started creating sketches myself with my friends in Dublin. I’d borrow equipment from work and fly back and make stuff with my friends. And then I realised that I preferred not working for anybody. So I started a small company, just to make my own stuff and started applying for short script awards and funding to try and get stuff made.

    My first short film that had a budget was called Changes – it’s about two caterpillars in love and when they emerge after metamorphosis, with one of them has turned into an unpleasant butterfly. She’s really mean to the other butterfly and they break up. It did well and won some festivals.

    From there, I got to make more. I got funding for another short film called Defaced. I was putting everything I was doing on the internet. It was at a time when YouTube was really just coming up. Its content was user-generated and they were trying to get more short films and things like that. So a lot of people ended up seeing the shorts that I was making. And then an ad agency got in touch asking if I could direct a TV commercial in this style. So I started doing some TV commercials and music videos and that kind of thing. So it was kind of an organic transition from graphic design to filmmaking. I think once you start making films, there’s definite interest in feature films since it’s a big challenging project to take on, to create an entire movie. So that’s what I’m doing at the moment.

    FB: Your feature film Vivarium came out in 2019 which was actually before the pandemic hit. How do you think the meaning of the film has changed since its launch, with reference to concepts like self-isolation and people’s views of the future?

    LF: So Vivarium was coming out in March and I was in France. It came out in France first and then it was supposed to come in the U.S., in late March, early April. So I was in Paris and a lot of people came to see the film on the day of release but there was already a fear of coronavirus and people were a little bit wary. The next day the government started shutting down the schools and the following day they shut down cinemas. So it was a bit of a bummer. And then I had planned on doing a US promotional thing with Jesse and Imogen and then suddenly everything closed there too.

    I was lucky, first of all, to make the film and I got to travel a lot to festivals and all that kind of thing. But then it took on this other life of its own when people were watching it during lockdown. A couple stuck in a house with a child that was driving them crazy, not being able to go anywhere. You know, Jesse’s character, Tom contracts a mysterious illness and he starts coughing. There’s a book showing some sort of strange virus that seems to be dividing into a man and woman with this child in the middle. So there are all these weird coincidences. In some ways, if you’re interested in collective consciousness, in which humans all share similar ideas and thought patterns, then maybe it was inevitable that we were going to make this film to be released for to watch during quarantine. It’s certainly interesting but I’ve never got to see it from that perspective. When you make a film, you never really get to see it as an audience member would. And even then the experience I’d have wouldn’t be the same as seeing somebody seeing during lockdown as a completely fresh thing. Did you guys see it during lockdown?

    A man and a woman stand in a misty environment, with the woman holding a baby. The man has a concerned expression on his face, while the woman looks intently at the viewer.

    Paradigm Haus: We did yes. I think it was kind of like April or May last year.

    LF: Right. It must have taken on a whole other meaning, but I think maybe it did no harm in a way because it’s quite existential in a lot of regards. So, I imagine people had a lot of time to think about their life and the future and what they would like life to be perhaps, while they were stuck at home.

    FB: You mentioned quite a bit about Irish folklore in your film. How do you think this Irish folklore or these stories have influenced your creative processes?

    LF: It’s interesting. It’s hard to tell what parts are folklore for me. Greek mythology, Roman mythology and those stories because they generally have a dual purpose. Their narratives are there to steer society or give whoever’s listening to the story some sort of moral guidance. And that’s sort of the function of folklore in many ways. There’s a lot of fairy stuff, I guess that could be related to Vivarium and Without Name. But Irish fairies aren’t really, you know, like Tinkerbell or anything. It’s much more of an idea that nature is an entity in itself and it sort of manifests as the faerie rather than a fairy and you know, there are ideas that they live under hills and all that kind of things. So, I’ve seen people draw parallels between Martin and some sort of changeling and that fairies live underground. So, I mean, maybe subconsciously there is an element of that. But it wasn’t put into the film as some sort of Irish folklore, but at the same time, I think our role, Garrett and I work together at creating these stories that could be, considered as modern folklore, because the means of telling stories now is different to when like people sat around the fire, before electricity. Now you can have an audiovisual story being told and it can still be folklore essentially.

    Sarah Wei: Are there any futuristic concepts you’ve integrated into your films to kind of enhance this dystopic theme? Like where did they come from – are they parallel universes?

    LF: Vivarium was influenced a lot by art, architecture and film. The idea of the lifting of the curb, I think came from like a Bansky painting, like lifting a curtain on the side of the street and sweeping stuff underneath, which sort of drew a parallel between what’s underneath, what’s behind, what’s the kind of machinery that’s driving consumer-capitalist society is never something that we really see and it’s sort of behind the curtain. So I think that’s where that idea came from. But yeah, I mean I was influenced by people like Roy Andersson, David Lynch’s films and Todd Haynes’ film Safe.

    It’s also been a while since I’ve made the film – I’m currently making another film. So it’s hard to remember where all the various influences come from. But I don’t think it was so much thinking about this topic, worlds or dystopia, trying to do a film version of that. It’s more that we’re trying to explore themes, and through these themes create dystopic sort of environments for the stories play within. And that version of dystopia, it’s just this world of homogenous, characterless, de-humanised, gigantic housing developments. This was what was inspired by Foxes and what really went on after the crash in 2008 – all these abandoned housing developments with people living there and they were really trying to get out of their predicaments, but they were trapped there because they bought a house that cost way too much money and the banks wanted the mortgage paid back and all of that. So on a kind of parallel, the world we were creating for Vivarium was like an amplification of all of that in order to show how strange and absurd real-life would be if we all decided to that let a capitalist mindset just go for it – that’s what you’d end up with because they would literally strip back all of the natural world and cement you into little boxes that make it very easy to predict your behaviour and bleed you dry in order to just expand and keep growing, a little bit like Yonder itself. So, yeah, I mean, that probably leads to the whole technology thing as well, where like, you know, what the problem is with the future and all of this. Yeah. But it doesn’t look good.

    FB: What is your take on us living through this internet age with all this new technology in a virtual reality-driven future?

    LF: So I saw an article about cows in Japan wearing VR headsets that were showing green pastures that made calmer and produce more milk. It’s a pretty grim concept, but yeah, I mean, it’s strange. It’s strange, but there’s the version of the future where everyone just kind of goes along with it and just keeps on allowing their data out and all of that kind of thing, which is one version of one trajectory, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it became more punk and new wave to reject all of that and start taking privacy more seriously.

    They may start using technology to better society rather than just kind of continuing in this sort of untenable pyramid scheme where people end up quite unhappy because they’re in a pursuit of happiness that is actually not real. It’s something that’s advertised. So I guess that’s the difference between individualism and community and all of that.

    Technology is bringing people together in a lot of ways, but it’s also alienating people and isolating them and giving them sort of a false sense of reality. So, yeah, it’ll be interesting to what happens. I don’t have the answers to how we save ourselves from a horrible world like Yonder in Vivarium, but I think it’s up to the younger generations as well. There’s a responsibility for everybody to leave behind a world to the next generation, but then it’s also up to the next generations to visualise the kind of world that they want to live in and then make that into reality

    SW: Yonder exists as its own community – there were only two people. Did you ever think about adding the other variables of neighborhood – more people and neighbors and stuff – and how does that kind of affect the society?

    LF: Well with Vivarium, the idea is quite abstract. As we were developing the story, we conceptualised that there are other people in the houses, but they can’t see each other, which is sort of mirroring subdivisions and these sort of housing developments on commuter belts where people don’t actually know their neighbours and never see them because everyone is working all the time. We were also interested in string theory while working on this as well, that each home is sort of vibrating at a frequency that the next home is out of sync with. When Gemma goes underneath the curb and experiences the other houses, it’s as if she’s able to pass through these other dimensions and see there are people going through the exact same kind of things. And some people are handling it better than others. The idea was that the place is actually full of people, but nobody can talk to each other. They’re all trapped in their own little worlds.

    SW: What do you think post-modern culture would look like? In the context of Vivarium, there wasn’t much of that community culture that we get in regular neighbourhoods or in this kind of like ghost estates, how they were kind of created from scratch?

    LF: Maybe I’m just optimistic, but I have a feeling that people are starting to feel the absence of community in society. And I think that even during the whole lockdown, people are starting to notice and appreciate the smaller things like that, like knowing the people down the road and your neighbour, spending time locally and shopping locally and all of that kind of thing. Maybe that could be a positive takeaway from the whole pandemic, that there’s more of a veering towards respect and admiration and desire for community rather than pre pandemic when it was everyone was so busy working and trying to reach goals that were impossible and not spending enough time to just enjoy life and see their family and friends.

    I’d like to think that post-modern society is more focused on community and producing local products and supporting the local community and less about giant corporations owning everything. Even like 20 years ago, you know, if you go traveling, each city fell quite different, you know, different shops. I remember people would come back from France with H&M clothes and you’re like, oh, cool you got that in France. Whereas now every high street is pretty much the same, everywhere in the world has the same stuff, which makes it all a bit boring, you know? It would be nice to see less of that and more choice and more local-based business. The film I’m working on now is sort of dealing with fast fashion and exploitation. I think people expect everything to be cheap. Therefore these giant companies do well because they buy up all of the smaller shops and offer people cheaper things. I think that if people appreciate spending money on things that lasted longer the community will do better and everyone would probably be happier.

    FB: Do you have any recurring themes or themes that you would like to explore more in your filmmaking?

    LF: It seems that these films have a cyclical theme to the nature of the narrative. When you’re making a film, you need to care about it – the themes that you’re trying to explore – enough to fuel the duration of development up to pre-production, production, post-production, you know because the whole process takes years. So it needs to be something you’re passionate about. The current film obviously I’m very passionate about. It has interesting themes on folklore and culture and cultural differences from the east and the west. It’s about a Filipino nanny who moves into the home of a fashion designer who is suffering from a mysterious illness and she uses a traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.

    I’m working on another project with the same writer that’s about war, creating monsters in order to start wars and steal natural resources. So I suppose they’re quite universal themes that explore humanity but in a slightly sci-fi or genre way. The narratives wrapped up in a way that’s engaging I hope, but also it is multilayered and people get to disseminate it afterwards.

    A camera crew is filming a scene in a studio. A director stands beside a table, guiding an actor while holding a script. The setup includes professional lighting and a camera focused on the actor.

    SW: Can you take us through how your creative process starts? Does it start from these themes that you were just talking about, like what’s topical, for example?

    LF: It’s not like we think, oh, what’s topical? It’s more about what are we interested in and the starting point can be different for different projects. For example, the war film was inspired by paintings in the National Gallery here of David and Goliath. David is standing over Goliath and he looks like he’s about 15. Goliath is looking at him with sad eyes, not wanting his head to be chopped off. He looks like a sympathetic character and that image is what inspired the story. And with Vivarium, I suppose it was socio-political events that ended up inspiring the story because we made Foxes based on what was going on. And then that developed into Vivarium

    With Without Name, it’s about a land surveyor who ends up trapped in this forest being protected by an entity. I think that was kind of vaguely inspired by a documentary about the Finnish nuclear waste disposal programme, burying nuclear waste underground and sealing it up because it will be dangerous for the next 2000 years and how they warn future generations not to go down there as it we don’t even know what language people will speak in the distant future. I guess that Garrett and I talk to each other a lot, so we ended up discussing these ideas and themes – talking and watching stuff and talking and watching stuff and then stories start to emerge and then I gather visuals and we watch a lot of films, documentaries, share them with each other and then the writing process starts and that can go for a couple of years. Generally, it takes maybe three or four years from the beginning of an idea to getting it into production.

    SW: Would you say there’s any period in history of artists that you feel most inspired by or nostalgic for? Would you want to explore these even more in the future?

    LF: Hmm, not really a period in time. I mean, in terms of films, I think I’m inspired by the sixties and seventies because they were a little bit more free. They were breaking the mold and experimenting and making really interesting films.

    Now, there are new techniques emerging and new types of filmmaking coming out. But in terms of a time, not really, I mean, I’m interested in doing a prehistory story, set in the bronze age. There’s an amazing museum here in Dublin with preserved bodies which were found in bogs from the bronze age. There’s a guy who you can see who had his hair slicked back and has been preserved – he has his nipples cut off and apparently Kings used to have their nipples sucked and they cut his nipples off so they could never become King. So you know, it was an interesting time.

    SW: What elements do you think make up a dystopian society? How do you integrate that into film?

    LF: Ultimately a dystopia is like the opposite of utopia. And I think a lot of that comes from the feeling of dehumanisation, a lack of control and love, happiness, humanity, all those kind of things. I think with Vivarium, what we’re trying to do is create a very synthetic world that was tangible, but fake. So the boy was only mimicking a human only in order to reproduce like a brood parasite. He was completely devoid of humanity and the place is devoid of nature. The food is vacuum packed, processed and stuff just arrives boxes. So to me, that is a horrible nightmarish dystopia where everything looks the same and everything’s synthetic and there’s no nature anywhere to be found.

    This article is from our interview feature on Lorcan Finnegan available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.

    All images courtesy of Lorcan Finnegan.