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And She Stares Longingly at What She Has Lost
By MarBelle | February 3, 2008
Phillip Van, 2:31—I spend a lot of time, perhaps more than could reasonably be considered healthy, trolling around webland looking for forms of visual entertainment to while away the day, so when I come across something that’s completely new to me but has been hiding in the open for a while it has the unsettling feeling of finding yourself wearing the very glasses you’ve spent the last hour hunting for.
That was my experience when I stumbled across the latest installment in the Little Minx Exquisite Corpse series on one of my most trusted video resources nofatclips. An exquisite corpse is a technique employed by Surrealists whereby words or images are collectively assembled in a creative relay that picks up where the previous participant left off, forming the corpse in question. The Little Minx Exquisite Corpse rules dictate that each director responds to the last line of text of the previous director’s script only, which has resulted in a nice range of subject matter and style for the collection.
The fifth jump brings us to Phillip Van’s haunting And She Stares Longingly at What She Has Lost, which opens to a carefree child’s Eden full of bunny rabbits and a dog eager to play fetch accompanied by Jeff Alexander’s Come Wander with Me (sung by actress Bonnie Beecher for an episode of The Twilight Zone of the same name) initially evoking a feeling of peace and comfort, that is until the appearance of the Water Man.
There are several ways to interpret the underlying cause of the loss of innocence that takes place in And She Stares… but it’s aching obvious that no matter how much she pines, Big Minx played by Kate Tomlinson can never return to the world of her girl self. Phillip Van’s luscious frames are beautifully augmented by Method Studios’ visual effects and I was particularly taken by how the oft used ugly duckling turns swan motif of the shedding of glasses, is the transformative moment here that spells utter destruction for the life that once was.
• Watch And She Stares… online at: Little Minx | YouTube
Q&A with filmmaker, Phillip Van, after the break.
Phillip Van, a recent NYU grad, has received accolades for his Berlin Int’l Film Festival creation, High Maintenance. A film that earned him a Student Academy Award and numerous festival honors.
What is the basic concept or premise behind And She Stares Longingly… and how did you arrive at it?
The short is really “about” a kind of feeling. It’s one of the most memorable and intense feelings I’ve had and it’s a common one around the world. There’s no word for it exactly in English, and I find this strange. You could describe it as similar to nostalgia, but it’s different, less precious, more fatal and meaningful. The Portuguese have a word for it: “Saudade,” and they express it through their music, “Fado,” much of which bears similarities to the title track in the film, “Come Wander With Me.” It’s a particular kind of longing for something like youth or home, something that is perhaps even more a part of you because it’s lost.
I’ve used shorts to tell tightly conceived stories, arc characters and hone my craft, but creating a tone specific and unique to my subject matter is the greatest challenge. I’m most interested in working with narratives, rather than experimental or abstract ideas, but in my narratives I try to define something inscrutable, an emergent property that exists beyond the characters and story, something that haunts and permeates.
My influences for this film were pretty wide-ranging: everything from Charles Laughton’s “Night of The Hunter” to original “Twilight Zone” episodes to some very dense German renaissance paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder to the works of Carl Jung. The film does tempt the taboo to insight a subtle sense of dread, but any overtly taboo interpretation is probably not as substantial as one that takes into account the semiotic undertones of all the imagery.
I like films and art that are bottomless, that you can keep looking into and reinterpreting and that inspire that process. My favorite art and entertainment is full of meaning. This sounds obvious, even definitional, but I don’t think it is. There’s a lot out there that either fakes it or is overtly literal. I went so far towards a semiotic approach to the story that the images are justly “loaded,” even to the extent that they risk absurdity. But I welcome that. Bring on the rabbits.
The special effects are very well-integrated in the final film. What was the technical process behind creating the vision you had for the film?
Prior to the shoot, I spent a couple of months researching my aesthetic, scanning dozens of “nature” photographs, a mix of plant life from both the sub-tropics and the Pacific Northwest, the two places I grew up. I wanted the garden and forest to feel exotic yet familiar, whimsical yet grounded. In order to walk the line it was critical to base my look on plants that are amazing and that actually exist, rather than something fully fictional. It got very personal. The autumn leaves on the trees were scans of actual leaves from the tree in front of the house I grew up in. The beagle is based on my dog, named Mars, with whom I was raised.
You’ve won numerous festival honors including a Student Academy Award in 2007. What do you hope to achieve with And She Stares Longingly…?
I hope people see it and get something out of it. Beyond that, I don’t have any expectations. I think that’s the best way to go about screening and distributing a short. I’ve seen bad shorts make careers and good shorts go neglected. In the past, rejections unsettled me, but when I got a slew of acceptances and awards that completely invalidated the rejections, I realized the true nature of the beast. I’m on a great festival selection committee now with some amazing people. And there are cracks in the pavement. The more exposure you have, the less likely you fall through.
This short will play at festivals. Limited audiences can help generate “buzz,” but there’s also something to be said for access. The internet is making the short accessible to a huge audience. People I never would have expected are phoning in. I had an aversion to the internet for a time, because without content filters, short filmmakers’ hard work can get slopped in with a lot of junk. But I think as long as the site and platform for the film are well designed, the internet can out-perform the majority of venues. The writing’s on the wall. It’s the future.
What’s your favorite moment in the film?
Tricky question. This is kind of like asking, “Which of your kids is your favorite?” I know the film so well that the moments I like probably won’t coalesce with the ones that stand out to first-time viewers. I really love simple things, like the first shot in the forest, a high-angle close-up of the girl’s face as she looks at the man’s back. There’s something about the look of doubt on the face of a little girl that I find subtly unnerving. It’s an expression that doesn’t belong there, not yet. For me, a simple look like that opens up a gateway to an adult life, and it’s the kind of passage that only goes one way.
Topics: YouTube, Life & Society, Surreal |