Filmmaker Q&A: Sasha Waters on This American Gothic
October 14th, 2008“This American Gothic” is a documentary on a famous American painting, and the small town of Eldon, Iowa, that inspired it. The film follows four local women over two years as they work towards their dream of building a Gothic House Visitor Center to revive their fading rural community. This American Gothic explores the poignant irony of a rural America abandoned to economic hardship trying to rebuild itself through tourism that glorifies a happier, if largely imaginary, country past.
This American Gothic
This quirky film weaves together history and art history with a compelling vision of rural America today. It appeals to a wide cross-section of film loving audiences, including those interested in stories from rural America that are not often seen outside the heartland, those interested in architecture and art history, viewers with a passion for stories about the struggles and triumphs of small towns and stories of strong, determined women working at the grassroots level to improve their communities. “This American Gothic” sheds light on an enduring icon of our shared cultural heritage, yet is a film about a painting in which we never see the original, only the translations, parodies and permutations it
inspires; a cinematic portrait of a painted portrait that periodically looks back at the viewer in a manner that echoes the
unsettling gaze of the painting itself. Like “American Gothic,” which has been viewed at different moments in its history as satire, reactionary nationalism, as art and as kitsch, the film “This American Gothic” withholds judgment, leaving the final interpretation up to the spectator.
You can also view a trailer at http://www.room135.com.
What led you to make this film?
The film was inspired by the best-selling book “American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting” by Harvard professor Steven Biel. Initially, I imagined sticking fairly close to the book in the sense that I wanted to focus the film on the art historical aspects of the creation and reception of Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic.” However, once I journeyed to Eldon, Iowa, site of the home in the background of the painting, I found a rich, contemporary story of a town whose fortunes had waned considerably since the Rock Island Railroad went bankrupt in 1980. A number of admirable women residents of Eldon were quite impressive in their dedication to rebuild the town through tourism, although aware that the image presented by Grant Wood was itself, even in 1930 when it was first created, a kind of historical fiction.
Also in “This American Gothic” I follow up on the themes of community and economic development in rural America that I first explored in “Razing Appalachia,” an hour-long documentary on a grassroots effort to stop the expansion of a huge mountaintop strip mine in Blair, West Virginia which aired on the award-winning PBS series “Independent
Lens” in 2003. I am inspired by my earliest mentor in documentary, Barbara Kopple, two time Academy Award-winner for her documentaries “Harlan County U.S.A.” and “American Dream,” in my passion for stories from people not usually attended to by the media, such as rural Americans, women and everyday members of America’s vast middle
class.
What were some of the greatest challenges you faced in making this film?
The greatest challenge I faced was simply carving out enough time over the weeks and months it took to complete it, particularly during the editing phase which lasted nearly a year. I was working with about 40 hours of material in film and video, and since the documentary has two distinct narrative strands - the history of the painting and the modern story of the town - it was a challenge to successfully weave them together in a way that flowed organically. I teach full-time at the University of Iowa, and I have two young children, age 1 and 4, so really time is a very precious commodity for me. The up side is, because I am committed to a personal, truly independent cinema and I do not make a living as a documentary producer primarily, I am not under pressure to deliver a ‘product’ for broadcast according to someone else’s deadline. I can muddle along at my leisure!
What impact do you hope this film will have?
“Impact” is a hard one… as an artist, I am interested in exploring cinematic forms, pushing the boundaries of non-fiction expression, but in a way that is still accessible to a general audience. As a media educator, I am very interested in the question of audience reception, meaning: in what broader social, political and personal contexts audiences view media, and what they then do with that knowledge.
In May 2008, I had the opportunity to discuss “This American Gothic” with a group of writing students at Western Washington University using video conferencing technology. The most intriguing question came from a timid Freshman: “The people in your movie are just, like, totally normal. Why make a film about them?” This simple question really motivates me, because although much has been made of our golden age of documentaries with claims that Reality TV and YouTube have expanded the popular appetite for real-life stories, I do feel that the increasingly formulaic casting of ‘characters’ in documentary as easily identifiable social types such as The Jock, The Hippie or The Nerd, has troubling cultural and political reverberations. The unspoken subtext of the student’s question was: “the people in your film are not aspiring supermodels, neither eating bugs nor competing for cash; not celebrities (or former celebrities). Why should I want to hear their stories?” So I hope the effect, if not the impact of “This American Gothic” is that the film opens up a space for contemplation of both the poignant, satirical nature of Wood’s painting, and the questions of self- presentation and representation of the rural heartland. My focus on ordinary people throughout my work provides an alternative to our celebrity-obsessed and stereotype-driven media culture.
How much did it cost to make the film?
The cash budget was about $65,000. If I include in-kind labor and equipment, the true budget is closer to $150.000.
What are you working on now, or next, and how do you find documentary projects?
Documentary ideas are everywhere! I have loads of half-baked ideas - old newspaper articles, notes to myself - overflowing a file somewhere in the darkest reaches of my office. But because I work slowly, I need to know I can commit to a feature-length project over a few years. (My non-fiction experimental shorts are a different matter - they are not less work per se, but the are less psychically exhausting, so I often work on them alongside bigger projects). Currently, I am in early production on “Vanya ‘79,” a feature documentary about a performance of the play Uncle Vanya at the Symphony Space theater in New York City by a group of public school 5th and 6th graders in 1979. Directed by the writer Philip Lopate and immortalized in his essay “Chekhov for Children,” the production was a mad folly and remarkable success, captured in its entirely on black-and-white video. The film “Vanya ‘79″ revisits these now middle-aged children and meditates upon noble self-delusion; misspent youth, unrequited love – the great themes Chekhov explores throughout his work. The film is also about the very nature of character as it is expressed in childhood versus adulthood, the very nature of childhood itself, and life at middle-age. It’s about the free-wheeling New York of the late 1970s, and about a time when public school arts education really mattered and, quite possibly, made a difference.
I am also working on an experimental short that mixes 16mm, and HD, and includes images of outdoor vernacular furniture, my sister Nell, the blogosphere and “Peter Pan.” The tentative title is “Iowa Winter: Strategies for Overcoming Deflated Motivation.”
What are your three favorite films?
Right now they are:
God’s Country by Louis Malle
Daguerrotypes by Agnes Varda
Letter from Siberia by Chris Marker
Have you placed your films online and do you think it’s a good outlet for young filmmakers to get exposure?
I am in a holding pattern in regards to online film distribution in terms of my own work. I have trailers for my longer films online, but I have not posted my feature or short films in their entirety… it seems, in theory, like a good place for young filmmakers to get exposure, as long as they are not allowing others to monetize their work and control it without safeguards for intellectual property.
I’m a big believer in non-exclusive, artist-controlled, “creative commons”-type protections, but how these will integrate with our emergent media landscape online remains t be seen.
Did you go to film school? If yes, where and what did you think of the experience?
After studying photography as an undergraduate, I received my MFA in Film & Media at Temple University which provided a broad education in the theory and practice of film and media. It was not “film school” in the classic sense per se, but definitely very valuable for the time and freedom those three years allowed me to experiment and explore - and fail! - outside the pressures of the marketplace.
What are the other films you have made?
“Whipped,” (1998), 63:00, a feature documentary in 16mm that is a portrait of three New York City dominatrixes.
“This Existence is Material” (2003) 10:00, a 16mm experimental collage that tells a story other of a poet who flies solo to Rome to incite an uprising against fascism in the 1930s.
“Her Heart is Washed in Water and Then Weighed” (2006) 13:00. A 16mm experimental meditation on motherhood, monuments and mortality that takes its title from a procedure in the autopsying of a human corpse.
These 3 films are screening together in a program titled “Immodest Objects & Fetish Subjects: Films by Sasha Waters Freyer” at the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago on the evening of Sat., November 1, 2008.
Other films included “The Waiting Time” and “Razing Appalachia.
Which filmmakers have most influenced your work?
Agnes Varda, Chris Marker, Barbara Kopple, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, Louis Malle, Franklin Miller, Marcel Ophuls, George Stoney, Su Friedrich, Chick Strand, Gunvor Nelson, Jill Godmilow, Vanalyne Green…not necessarily in that order.
What’s you motto?
“Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.” - Virginia Reed, survivor of the Donner party.
What do you think film festivals like We the People offer to the
dialogue about issues facing our society?
Film Festivals are crucial to creating and inviting dialogue on a wide range of issues, both in terms of bringing together audiences, and in offering perspectives outside the dominant, corporate media. They create a true public space, like a park or a playground of the mind and spirit, that allows for interaction and play, argument and experience, as well as the freedom of personal reflection.
What format (film, video, hi-def) and camera did you use and why did you choose the format and camera? If you had a choice, would you use that camera again?
“This American Gothic” is blends 16mm Kodak film shot on my beloved wind-up Bolex (transferred to DV) and standard-def DVCam shot on a Sony PD 150, an excellent camera (although more than five years old) which has unfortunately been discontinued. I am slowly moving towards hi-def because I think it is becoming *the* accepted
professional standard, but personally, I prefer the 4:3 aspect ratio of standard-def to the 16:9 of HD. I hope never to give up 16mm entirely!
What other festivals is your film appearing in?
“This American Gothic” has screened (or will soon screen) in fifteen U.S. states, with upcoming shows in Illinois, Michigan, California, Maryland, Utah and Texas. The film screens at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago on November . Also upcoming are screenings at Detroit Docs, the Rockport Film Festival in Rockport, Texas, and the Utopia Film Festival in Greenbelt, MD, plus the film is under curatorial review at a number of museums, including the Des Moines Art Center. The most up-to-date list of screenings can be seen here:
“This American Gothic” will be playing October 17 at We the People: A Documentary Film Festival at the Echo Park Film Center, 1200 N. Alvarado St., Los Angeles, CA.
For more info on We the People, visit:
http://www.tradeandrow.org/wethepeople/index.html