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Well, a couple of things really helped. One was seeing a number of films that were made in New York City in the 60s and 70s that were very personal filmmaking; subject, camera, room, people, artists. So films like Shirley Clark\u2019s Portrait of Jason<\/em>, and a film by Jim McBride called My Girlfriend\u2019s Wedding<\/em>, and Chantal Akerman\u2019s early work. Andy Warhol\u2019s Poor Little Rich Girl<\/em>, which has Edie Sedgwick in the Chelsea Hotel. These films of which a lot could be said in very minimal ways. I saw in them the use of ellipses that happened because the film rolled out, or they cut between something indoors and outdoors. Those films gave me the permission to create ellipses in something that didn\u2019t necessarily have them. That was really freeing.<\/p>\n Ultimately we worked for a couple of weeks with stand-ins. And Alex Ashe,<\/strong> my cinematographer, and I shot these two figures in various spaces at various times in the location. Suddenly I ran into a sense that I was making a movie much more about portraiture than I had imagined\u2026. I realized that there was a story in photography inside the film. Which was pleasurable obviously because of the subject, but also was pleasurable to me because that\u2019s what I am interested in, in part, when it comes to cinema: What emotion does an image convey separate from the language or from the text?<\/p>\n Where did you shoot this?<\/strong><\/p>\n I was lucky enough that a friend of mine had recently become the executive director of Westbeth Artists Housing<\/a>, and he saw the project as aligned to the mission of Westbeth, which is an artists\u2019 housing space that\u2019s been around since 1971. Its mission is to support and encourage artists\u2014their domestic life and their creation of their work. We were doing all of that, so he gave us this space for a couple of months, gratis. That allowed us to really explore the images we were going to make with a kind of freedom that would not be usual in film production. Merce Cunningham had his office in that building. Many, many artists have been there and are there. The ghosts of other artists were in the building while we made the film. That was resonant to me.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a real energy to these last two films of yours, between Passages<\/em> and this one, amid a difficult climate for independent filmmaking. I\u2019m curious, taking a step back: How are you feeling as an artist these days?<\/strong><\/p>\n I feel like I am making hay while the sun shines. I feel fortunate that I met and started to work with [producer] Sa\u00efd Ben Sa\u00efd,<\/strong> and we\u2019re now working on a third feature together to shoot this summer in New York. Careers seem like they\u2019re made by caveat or by faith, but they\u2019re often made by a certain few people. Truly, if Sa\u00efd hadn\u2019t taken interest in my work about six or seven years ago, I don\u2019t know if I would\u2019ve been able to sustain.<\/p>\n Since the pandemic\u2014and this is also where I look back at the artists of the East Village in the 70s and 80s\u2014I feel that risks must be taken. We\u2019re going to die, so you might as well try. My husband, Boris<\/strong>, says this to me occasionally, when I get kind of nervous that I can\u2019t make something: \u201cIf you don\u2019t make it, it won\u2019t exist.\u201d That alternative creates something that encourages me to go forward. I feel like I\u2019m in a forward-moving phase. I really do continue to get inspiration from people who were savvy about the business or the industry or the art form, but they weren\u2019t craven to it, and they found ways of making work that was deeply personal. That\u2019s kind of the needle that I continue to try to thread. There\u2019s some advantage of getting older: I feel like that\u2019s the only needle I\u2019m interested in.<\/p>\n This interview has been edited and condensed. This feature is part of Awards Insider\u2019s exclusive Sundance 2025 coverage<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
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