Marina Rice Bader

door Fleur Pierets | sep 25, 2014 | Movies

Marina Rice Bader

Text JF. Pierets Photos Marina Rice Bader

Executive Producer of the lesbian themed movies ‘Elena Undone’ and ‘A Perfect Ending’, Marina Rice Bader, is releasing her feature length directorial debut ‘Anatomy of a Love Seen’ as a streaming rental, breaking outside of and bypassing the traditional Hollywood distribution channels. Bader was set on the idea of exploring alternative distribution options in order to engage and connect directly with her fans, and get the film out to as many people as possible. A conversation about lesbian films, about running her independent film company ‘Soul Kiss Films’ and about love & passion.

When did you start to make movies? Lesbian movies, to be correct.
I’m in the movies since 2009. It hasn’t been really long, but I can say it’s been fantastic. That year I fell in love with a woman for the first time. She happens to be Nicole Conn (film director, producer and screenwriter. The lesbian love story, ‘Claire of the moon’, was her debut feature. Red.) I had never fell in love with a woman before, never even kissed a woman. So, when you are walking into an entirely new world, you do your research by watching movies. I rented so many lesbian movies that I noticed there were some really good ones but also some terrible ones because of the lack of chemistry between the actors. Movies have been my non-human loves my entire life and after we were together for almost a year I said to Nicole; let’s make a movie, just for fun! Since the only story she wanted to tell was ours, we made ‘Elena Undone’, which was literally my story. On the set I did about 20 different things. From executive production to preparing food and shuttle driving, just to name some. I had my hands in all the different departments and fell in love with the process. After that I produced ‘The Perfect Ending’ and when Nicole and I split up a couple of years ago, my love of film didn’t die with the relationship. I just continued on my own with ‘Anatomy of a Love Seen’ and the upcoming ‘Raven’s Touch’.

‘Anatomy of a love seen’ is your directors’ debut. There’s quite a difference between being an executive producer and a director. How does one take such a big step?
I don’t like to call myself a control freak, but I do like to have my hands on everything. And I love storytelling. As a professional photographer I spend 18 years telling stories through still images before I got into this rollercoaster business. Directing this film came as a natural progression and besides that I chose the wardrobe, I did the make-up, chose the location and coached the actors into getting the real emotions. I can actually say it was an easy transition because I have already been doing it for so long on a smaller level.

Why did you make another lesbian themed movie?
Well, I love women. I just do. My female friends have been the most important people in my life, up until my kids. I want to tell women’s stories and since almost all my friends are lesbians and we have so many beautiful, committed fans from ‘Elena Undone’ and from ‘The Perfect Ending’, it just makes so much sense for me to continue telling their story. And also; a good story is a good story. It doesn’t matter who’s making love to whom because they are two human beings. They are not anything other than that. I’m trying to tell universal stories because the one thing that every single person on the planet struggles with and what every single person wants, is the ever-illusive true love.

What do you think about lesbian movies in general?
Some of the most beautiful films I’ve seen are lesbian films but whatever niche you name, there are both good and bad films. Of course we all hope that our film goes beyond the niche, that it tells a good enough story that other people want to watch it. But we are forced to make films on a very small budget. When you’ve got a small percentage of the planet that are going to be organically interested in your film, you can’t spend a lot of money because you don’t know how much you are going to get back. And when you have a low budget it’s easy to reach for the moon when you’re for example doing your casting. You continually have to ask, ask, ask for what you feel you deserve for your film and at a fraction of the price. But once again, that’s just not only in lesbian film. It’s niches across the board. It just happened to be what I’m talking about right now.

What is the one thing you would never settle on?
For me, one of the number one things I was missing in a lot of the films was chemistry between the two leads. When Nicole and I worked together we worked really hard to make sure that we did chemistry reads. Nicole was very adamant about that because it’s critical, it really is. When I cast Charon and Jill in ‘Anatomy of a Love Seen’, I did it because their chemistry was phenomenal. They where incredibly comfortable and they adored each other. When you are tossing two actresses in bed, naked, the very first day of filming, those are important attributes.

You shot the movie in only 5 days. That’s quite a challenge.
The reason for that was that I wanted to maintain the production value that I had on the other films that we’ve done…with about one third of the budget to work with. I had one investor who really is an ally in the world of lesbian cinema, and when I decided I wanted to make this film I called her and asked if she wanted to be involved. When she said she had 75000 dollars to invest, I didn’t want to spend one more minute trying to find other investors. I just wanted to make the movie right away in order to get it submitted for the summer festivals. The only way to keep the production value high was to limit the amount of days we where shooting, which is what I did. I can tell you that every shot that I took to make ‘Anatomy of a love seen’ was very carefully thought about.

And then, well, there was no script.
Indeed. Everything was just an idea in my head. I started working on an outline and did not finish until I casted the actresses. There was something in my brain that was not letting me move forward without knowing who was going to inhabit these roles, which, in a fully improvised film, I think you can probably understand that. So much comes from who is stepping into those roles and when I did the audition process, I didn’t even audition the first time around. I just brought these women in to meet them. You can’t cast someone to far outside the character when it’s improvisation.

So you said: we have five days to shoot, we don’t have a script. And everybody followed? More than that; they where incredible. Everyone who came on this ride with me was so brave and non afraid. It was just the right group of people because they loved the story, loved the idea. The thing that sold them all was that we were going to do this in 5 days, but on only one location. After being on numerous sets, I know how much time is wasted when you’re moving your company to another place where you have to reset the lights and everything else. We, on the other hand, had a soundstage and didn’t have to stop for plains nor trains. I made it as doable as possible. Everyone agreed and of we went. All of us. Into this great adventure.

‘I try to get out of thinking in terms of small. I’m trying to live the rest of my life big.’

When ‘Anatomy of a love seen’ was finished, you chose not to go via traditional distribution.
The thing that bothers me about traditional distribution is that it’s exclusionary. Inherently I find that to be upsetting. With the last two films we went via traditional distribution and the US was able to watch the film months before many of the European countries, because of the way they have it divided in the territories. That doesn’t only feel bad, but it also leads to piracy. I don’t blame people who have to wait for months and trying to find it illegally. But they shouldn’t have to wait. And that’s why I wanted to do it this way. I wanted a worldwide release and I’m happy to say that the movie has been viewed in 90 countries. It was available on the same day to everyone who had access to Internet and at a very reasonable price for a brand-new film. I released it after our world premier at Outfest here in Los Angeles. I just wanted to try something new and it’s been extremely successful. It really makes me happy that everyone has had the same opportunity as everyone else.

Right now the movie is available on only one platform, which is Vimeo.
There are many platforms I could have gotten the film on myself, but I wanted to start with Vimeo because they are so filmmaker friendly and it’s so easy to figure it all out. They offer high quality and are very responsive to questions. It was a great place for me to start and it turned out being tremendously successful. Our statistics within that one platform are phenomenal. Each person who rented it watched it on an average of three times. A full 10% of people who viewed the trailer had actually gone on to rent the movie. We’ve got a lot of interaction. We’ve got comments, we’ve got 4,5 out of 5 stars after a month of being up, so we’re doing very well. The exiting thing however is that I’ve been approached by Gravitas films, a distributor with tremendous projects in their library and they approached me on taking the film to the next level. I’m really excited about that because my one platform is going to be extended to many, many platforms.

Is that kind of distribution a completely new way of communicating?
I really do think this is the way of the future. In 5 years no one is ever going to buy dvd’s anymore. I don’t even think you’re going to find them. The days of having to worry about not going to be able to have a dvd distribution is over and I think, especially for young filmmakers or people who are just getting started, it’s a beautiful thing to have the opportunity to know that they can follow their passion, make their film and having a platform for people to see it. You don’t have to wait anymore for someone to come along and handle your movie.

When hearing about all those people who’ve watched ‘Anatomy of a love seen’, can I assume you’re much appreciated within the lesbian community?
I think I am. But distributing my movie in such a matter was a bit of a risk. I’m not a Josh Whedon, I’m not worldwide news. If I release my film the day after the world premiere, I have to work my butt of to make sure that every single person knows that it’s out there. At the moment I’m doing a little experiment because I’m curious to see how much the lesbian community supports someone who creates projects just for them. I sometimes think it’s something that is taken for granted in a certain way. We all go to the movies, buy dvd’s. But do people think beyond that? Are they conscious about the fact that they are supporting the artist who created this, allowing him or her to go on and create more? Just for them! For 5 dollars any lesbian out there can contribute, in order for me to be able to go on and make the next film. If I were going to be able to send a message to the lesbian community it would be, please please please support the artists who are creating just for you. Weather it’s by renting my movie, or buying a subscription to an LGBT magazine, it doesn’t matter. Just as long as you know that the reason that these entities exist, is for you. They can’t exist without you. So rent the movie!

What would you like to accomplish with your movies?
We’re doing final editing on ‘Raven’s Touch’ as we speak and my desire is to make another film starting the end of the year. My dream is for ‘Soul Kiss Films’ to be synonymous with quality lesbian cinema. I really dedicated the last 3d of my life to bringing women’s stories to the screen and that would make me very happy. I actually would like to create a film a year, would like to be able to bring a new film into the lesbian library every year.

That’s very ambitious since you are running ‘Soul Kiss Films’ all by yourself.
It is, but it’s doable. I try to get out of thinking in terms of small. I’m trying to live the rest of my life big. ‘Soul Kiss Films’ is just me. I don’t have an assistant or secretary, it’s literally just me. It would be easy to think I’m not going to be able to accomplish much this way, but I would rather think in terms of being able to operate in a way that a larger production company would. In terms of what I want my output to be. A company like ‘Focus features’ is not sitting around working on one project at the time. They’re in postproduction on one, pre production on another. They have multiple things going on. So that is the way I’m running my business. At some point I will have some support but right now it’s not in the budget so I’m just trying to make sure that I stay big. Think big. I think that’s the only way to be successful.

www.soulkissfilms.com
www.anatomyofaloveseen.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 11.

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Jennifer Nehrbass

door Fleur Pierets | mrt 25, 2013 | Art

Jennifer Nehrbass

Text JF. Pierets Artwork Jennifer Nehrbass

Someone once wrote that she was dismantling the roles and stereotypes of beauty and femininity, examining the psychology that leads women to go to extremes to maintain beauty and style. Needless to say that our brain got tickled so we checked on some of her thoughts.

On habitat.
I love living in New Mexico. It may seem cliché but the light is dramatic and the landscape boundless. The contrasts of people and their culture are always inspiring. We are at the center of the oldest cultures in the USA with the ancestral pueblo people, but we are also the birth place of the atomic bomb. One has the ability to isolate when necessary and engage with culture when inspired to do so.

On technique.
The photorealistic aspect occurs primarily with the figures in the painting. I choose to have them painted this way to represent the physicality of being alive. We can pinch our skin and know we are physically here. The physical aspect to life is tangible. To contradict the tangible I place figures within abstract areas that refer to the thoughts desires, dreams and perceptions of life. The viewing of my work is meant to be a push and pull exercise between these differing painting styles.

On women.
A lot of my older work dealt with the experience of being a woman in contemporary society. They were primarily self- portraits, with homage to Cindy Sherman. Since that is my gender I felt the critique was a more honest. My experiences as a woman are not unique. The more personal I explored the more universal the paintings became. Currently I am working on paintings that incorporate both genders, which I find to be liberating to the process.

‘I try to reexamine how women are portrayed both in current culture and throughout art history.’

On stereotypes.
I try to reexamine how women are portrayed both in current culture and throughout art history. I am interested in expressing what it feels like to be held up to current ideals of beauty. I create narratives that illustrate a woman’s experience using emotions such as humor, fear, or melancholy. What other thoughts, desires or contributions are ignored when one is overwhelmed with one’s one image?

On intimacy.
Painting is very intimate. Every decision is mine alone on what to put into the painting. Every color is mine to mix, every brush stroke is the coordination between my eyes and the canvas.

On inspiration.
We hike through much of New Mexico and Colorado. The landscape always reinvigorates. I find film and music always a inspiring.

On the future.
Dreams: To design the set for an opera production. Plans: keep painting!!

www.jennifernehrbass.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 5.

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Sworn Virgins

door Fleur Pierets | mrt 25, 2013 | Portrait Series

Sworn Virgins

Text JF. Pierets Photos Jill Peters

Northern Albanian women, faced with a culture that subjugates females, live and dress as men in order to provide for their families. These sworn virgins took a vow of chastity, wear male clothing and live as men in the patriarchal northern Albanian society. In an ongoing series, photographer Jill Peters has captured the fascination of a tradition dating back hundreds of years.

When and where did you come up with the idea of making this series?
In late 2008 I was reading a book written by Serena Nanda about gender diversity around the world, and came across a chapter about the Sworn Virgins of Albania. I was intrigued by the idea of such a tradition. I knew nothing about them, nor had I ever heard of their existence. The general consensus that they would soon be dying out made me act quickly. I had to meet one and I was determined to photograph at least one. This idea soon expanded to making a documentary film and I put a crew together. We all traveled to Albania in July 2009 and some of these portraits were taken then. I returned again in late 2011 to continue the project.

Was it easy to find these women?
It was not easy to find them. The Sworn Virgins are very proud but extremely private people. The majority live in very small secluded villages not often seen by outsiders. They remain suspicious of foreigners and their trust must be earned over time. Once they accept you however, they are talkative, warm and hospitable, often offering coffee, tea or cigarettes to their guests.

They live as men yet I guess everybody in the village knows they are women – otherwise you would not have found them. Or am I wrong?
The most remarkable aspect of this tradition is that everyone knows they are women. In this culture however, the way one dresses dictates how they are perceived. A woman who cuts her hair short, wears men’s clothes and adopts masculine traits is accepted as a man. Because this practice has a long history and is associated with family honor, inherited wealth and clan survival, the burneshas are well respected and regarded as a benefit to the family. For the most part, villagers in these areas are so accustomed to knowing a Sworn Virgin, or “burnesha”, first hand that they often wonder what all the interest on our part is about.

What do they think of this paradox?
I was drawn to this project because of the paradox of a strident patriarchal society accepting a woman who switches her gender by choice. I want to make it clear if it isn’t already, that this has nothing to do with sexual identity. As westerners we tend to jump at the chance to label someone gay or straight because those seem like the only two options in our culture. The remarkable thing about these women is that they are beyond labels.

‘In this culture however, the way one dresses dictates how they are perceived.’

I read that this decision is more related to gender roles than to sexuality. Nevertheless they have to remain virgins. Why is that?
I believe swearing to remain a virgin for life and thus avoiding any kind of romantic relationship altogether was their only way of circumventing such labels. Regardless of any orientation, they could not be with a man and still be considered a man. Nor could they be with a woman, as that would technically be a homosexual relationship since they were known to be biologically female. Also, the Kanun, which is the tribal code still influencing many in the rural north, states that a woman is only worth half as many bags of grain as a man, but a virgin is equal to the value of a man. I find it sad in the broader scope, as a woman, that this extreme sacrifice was necessary in order for a woman to exercise her free will. Because a woman wears a pair of pants she is “suddenly” deemed capable of inheriting property, driving a car or running a business. It simply amazes me. I think the injustice in that is evident to everyone today.

Some women became burneshas when they did not want to marry the man their family had chosen for them. Again this is a sad reflection on what it meant to be a woman in those times. Once the vow is taken though, it is forever. To go back on a vow would be to disgrace the family and could result in a deadly feud between the two families that could perpetuate generations of honor killings. I was relieved to discover that for the most part, the burneshas did not regret their decision and insist they have led happy lives. Most would make the same choice given the same circumstances. They are pleased with the progress women have made in the past 50 years and understand why it is a custom that is dying out.

You said in an interview that this is an ongoing project. What are your plans?
My future plans for the project include finishing my documentary film. I’m proud to say I have a good relationship with my subjects and have developed a level of trust over the years.

www.jillpetersphotography.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 5.

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The Guerrilla Girls

door Fleur Pierets | mrt 25, 2013 | Causes

The Guerrilla Girls

Text Wendy Donckers Photos Courtesy of The Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls are a group of anonymous estrogen-bomb dropping, creativily complaining feminists. They fight discrimination and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture with ‘facts, humor and fake fur’. Behind their scary gorilla masks you can find women of all sorts and kinds with pseudonyms of dead female artists. Let’s take a look at the Guerrilla Girls’ deadly weapons.

Facts.
The Guerrilla Girls started off in 1985, after a protest against an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The exhibition included only 17 women out of the 165 displayed artists. A bunch of female artists made posters that stated these facts of discrimination and put them up throughout art neighbourhood SoHo. The Guerrilla Girls were born. The group started making statistics of women artists and artists of color in museums, academies and art galeries. They committed themselves to counting, writing letters, and researching museums and galleries. “There’s a popular misconception that the world of High Art is ahead of mass culture. But everything in our research shows that, instead of being avant garde, it’s derriere.”, the Guerrilla Girls stated in an interview on their website. The GG’s even did a ‘weenie count’ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They came to the conclusion that less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections were women, while 85% of the nudes were female. A new Guerrilla poster was made and showed the back of a naked gorilla-headed woman that lies down and seems to say: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” A quarter of a century later the same updated poster demonstrates figures that have hardly changed: female artists at the Metropolitan Museum dropped down to 4% and the female nudes became 76%.

Many other posters came up, as well as stickers, a website and fun fact books. The GG’s hung up female named banners over the generally male artist names on European museum façades, invaded the Venice Biennale with giant banners, launched a anti-film industry billboards in Hollywood right before the Oscar Awards, put up an interactive feminist banner outside the city art gallery at the Art Boom festival at Krakow and many more. With their striking statements and provocative appearances the Guerrilla Girls continuously endeavour to undermine the reigning stereotypes in the art world and other areas. “One poster led to another, and we have done more than hundred examining different aspects of sexism and racism in our culture at large, not just the art world.” In their campaigns the ‘girls’ don’t avoid other sensitive subject that are important to them such as abortion rights, the gulf war, racism, queer issues, homelessness and (sexual) violence. “We are a collaborative group, we don’t work in an orchestrated way. Members bring issues and ideas to the group and we try to shape them into effective posters.” 28 years after the start the Guerrilla Girls have become a habitual -and sometimes notorious- presence in exhibitions, film festivals, newspapers, university aula’s, museum bathrooms and on walls and billboards all over the world. “What started out as a lark has become an ongoing responsibility, a mission. We just can’t abandon our masked duty! It’s been a lot of fun, too!”

Humor.
Another main mission of the Guerrilla Girls is to modernize the word ‘feminism’, their own proclaimed ‘f’ word. Although they call themselves ‘girls’ and sometimes wear short skirts and high heels, the Guerrilla Girls consider themselves pure feminists. “By reclaiming the word ‘girl’, it can’t be used against us. Wearing those clothes with a gorilla mask confounds the stereotype of female sexiness.”, one of the members confirms drily. With their –let’s say- remarkable appearance the GG’s hope to shock and provoke the world. “Our situation as women and artists of color in the art world was so pathetic, all we could do was make fun of it. It felt so good to ridicule and belittle a system that excluded us.”

‘Our situation as women and artists of color in the art world was so pathetic, all we could do was make fun of it.’

To the question of how many the Guerrilla Girls are, their answer is that they secretly suspect that all women are born Guerrilla Girls. “It’s just a question of helping them discover it. For sure, thousands; probably, hundreds of thousands; maybe, millions.” Over the years the Guerrilla Girls have become one fluid and crazy but close family off all ages, As they work anonymously they hardly ever accept new members. They rather stimulate their numerous fans all over the world to take them as a roll model and start up their own actions and strategies. And most of all motivate them to complain, complain and complain, but rather in a funny and creative way. To give an idea, they published their Guerrilla Girls’ Art Museum Activity Book, wich is stuffed with funny games, facts and tips like ‘putting up posters and statements in the museum bathrooms’ and ‘dress up and give a do-it-yourself guided tour in your favorite art gallery about the real story behind the displayed art.’ The Guerrilla Girls’ website has several downloadable posters and stickers, like for example the call to drop a new weapon on Washington: the Estrogen Bomb. ‘If dropped on the super-rich trying to take over the country, they would throw down their big guns, hug each other and start to work on human rights.’

Fake fur.
Shortly after their first actions in 1985 and the following press attention, the group members decided to hide their identities when appearing in public. As most of the members are active in the small art world, they prefer to avoid career problems and to bring the focus to the issues, not to the Guerrilla Girls’ personalities. And it seems to help: the mystery surrounding their identities has attracted attention ever since then.The GG’s give themselves names of dead female artists like Frida Kahlo, Eva Hesse, Kathe Kollwitz, Gertrude Stein and Georgia O’Keeffe, in order to reinforce these women’s position in cultural history.The slightly aggressive gorilla masks with sharp teeth were an accidental idea that emerged after a bad speller wrote ‘Gorilla’ instead of ‘Guerrilla.’ The masks immediately became symbol of the Guerrilla Girls’ strength. The good avengers are not afraid to use their loud voice or roll their muscles. But at the end the day, each Guerrilla Girl hangs up her mask and returns anonymously to her daily life. Untill the next mission comes along. And looking at the world today, these kind of missions will still be required for a while. So if you see some Gorilla heads popping up behind the corner of your street, don’t get scared and run away. Just join and play.

www.guerrillagirls.com

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 5.

Read the complete issue here.

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Children of Srikandi

door Fleur Pierets | jun 25, 2012 | Movies

Children of Srikandi

Text JF. Pierets Photos Courtesy of Laura Coppens

Children of Srikandi is the first film about queer women in Indonesia, the country with the worlds largest Muslim population. Eight authentic and poetic stories are interwoven with beautiful shadow theater scenes that tell the story of Srikandi, one of the characters of the Indian Mahabharata. This collective anthology transcends the borders between documentary, fiction and experimental film.

A little girl wants to be a boy. A bench becomes a home and a witness to life. A house does not feel like home anymore. A veil makes you reflect on religion and sexuality. A verse of a poem is like a day in your life. A love can be in between. A female stereotype can be deconstructed. A label can be changed. In Children of Srikandi, participants collectively worked as crew members or actresses in each other’s film, with individual stories ranging from observational documentary and concept art to personal essay. We see that change is possible on all levels of the film: personal, political and formal. Transformation is always inscribed in the narrative; form and identity are fluid; perspectives are shifted. The moving individual stories are interwoven with the tale of Srikandi, an ancient mythological character of the Mahabharata, a well-known Indian epic, which is still frequently used in the traditional Javanese shadow puppet theatre plays (wayangkulit) throughout Indonesia. Srikandi is neither man nor woman, moving fluidly between both genders. When she falls in love with a woman, she has to understand that the only way to survive is to become a “female warrior”. She is one of the few prominent wayang women figures, and while other women in the tales are devoted mothers and wives, Srikandi is the ultimate model of independent womanhood; strong and brave, heroic and active. She is a female warrior. This explains her popularity with many Indonesian queer and feminist women. The puppeteer Soleh gives his voice to Srikandi, while the singer Anik expresses the character’s emotions. As transgender queens they reinvent themselves within the classic Indonesian perception of women, while the short films deconstruct the classic picture. It is the opposed representation of gender that creates an impression of a fluid, oscillating advancement of the film. A spectacular linguistic and religious diversity is revealed: the original languages are Indonesian, Javanese, high-Javanese and Sundanese. The religions involved are Muslim, Christian and Buddhist. Children of Srikandi brings this tale back to the screen and reminds viewers that homosexuality and gender variety wasn’t imported from the West, but in fact forms a deep and ancient aspect of Indonesian society.

When did you come up with this idea?
Laura Coppens Since 5 years I am programming Indonesian films for film festivals and in that function John Badalu invited me to attend the Q! Film Festival – the Indonesian queer film festival – in 2009. I talked to many people there and especially to queer women. Many were complaining that there are not enough lesbian movies, especially no Indonesian productions. This gave me the idea to organize a film workshop and teach basic filmmaking skills, so they have the means to tell their own stories. But of course I could not do it on my own. I am not a trained filmmaker and I knew that I had to find professional help. This is when Angelika came into play. I asked her to join the project and from the start she was very engaged and did a wonderful job teaching others and editing the film. On the Indonesian part I approached in-docs, a Jakarta based organization that arranges documentary workshops to support the local film industry. They helped us to set up the workshop in Jakarta.
Angelika Levi At the beginning of 2010, Laura Coppens asked me if I would like to direct a film workshop for young Indonesian lesbians in Jakarta over the summer. Her idea was to make an omnibus film with six to ten women presenting their personal experiences by means of autobiographic short films. Our first joint meeting took place in Jakarta. Some of the women came from Yogyakarta or Bandung. All of them brought different social and religious backgrounds. Most of them had never met before. We spent the first weeks of the workshop watching hand-picked documentaries and short films. We discussed different topics: gender, ideology, religion, memory and class. The women began to develop their proper ideas. We worked on the dramaturgic emphasis and narrative style of each tale and developed different narrative strategies.

Why Indonesia?
Stea Lim There is not a lot of visibility of queer women. I feel that it’s a lot better than many years ago but there are still issues in this society when talking about LGBT, or overall sexuality actually. In recent years there have been some violent incidents from ‘religious’ mass organizations against the LGBT community. One of them attacked an LGBT conference and the Queer Film Festival in Jakarta, 2010.

Yulia Dwi Andriyanti Indonesia is a country that considers itself to be an archipelago consisting of different races, ethnicities, religions, social statuses and economic backgrounds, but sexual orientation and gender identity still hasn’t become part of its concern. After the Soeharto dictatorship collapsed, the political situation encouraged people to reclaim their rights and identities. It invoked a sexual identity movement that started with the health issue regarding HIV/AIDS, making gay, transgender and MSM become its main concern. However, it didn’t make queer women more visible within the movement itself. That’s why this film workshop became an opportunity for them to reclaim their voices as lesbian, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual alike. This film could contribute as a way to reconstruct women’s identities in Indonesia that tend to be perceived in a binary gender role and that are stereotyped within the social, economic, political and religious structures in society.

‘I think it’s both aesthetically engaging and politically empowering. Hopefully popular stereotypes about Muslims and LGBT-people are deconstructed and challenged.’

How do you see this film in the context of Indonesia as a country with high Muslim population?
Yulia Dwi Andriyanti I see it as an opportunity to challenge all the norms and the structure that has existed within the society, not only due to religious stereotypical thought on heterosexual and queer women, but also as a way to reflect the whole “inheritance” idea about faith identity so that people won’t put stereotype on faith that is often perceived as conservative.

Did it take a lot of conviction for the people to collaborate?
Angelika Levi No it didn’t. There was a huge interest in the workshop from the start, and after short time everyone wanted to tell a story. It was amazing for me to see social and religious boundaries vanish right from the beginning, while commitment and true interest in the other women’s experiences arose. Although most of them had never worked with film before, it was quite easy for everybody to get used to the technique, do the acting and transform personal experience into the medium. We developed a way of working which I had never experienced before and which you might call a non-hierarchical pulling-together beyond all difficulties.
Yulia Dwi Andriyanti I found that the film workshop process was a great way to hear and understand different experiences of diverse queer women. It stated that everyone’s story was very unique and showed the different layers on how queer women struggled for their identity and also its conflict towards society, not only in the level of state, friends, and families, but also inside the queer community itself. Those different experiences became the basic thing for me to collaborate with other queer women. It’s a learning process to hear, support and criticize both as a group and as a subculture.

What do you hope to achieve?
Stea Lim I really hope the film will help people, especially Indonesian women, to be inspired to make more films. We have such talented people here. Hopefully having this film play out in international festivals will inspire some people to go and do it too.
Laura Coppens When we started the workshop I did not have any expectations about the result. Most of the women had never worked with film before. It was an experiment and it also could have failed easily. But within a very short time the group developed a very amazing dynamic, even though most of them did not know each other before and came from very different religious and social backgrounds. Everybody was eager to learn the technique and they all helped each other, from the development of the script to the actual production of the film. So it is this collective effort that made our film possible despite many obstacles. This makes our film very special in a way. I think it’s both aesthetically engaging and politically empowering. Hopefully popular stereotypes about Muslims and LGBT-people are deconstructed and challenged.

CHILDREN OF SRIKANDI started with a workshop which lead to a collaborative film project reflecting the directors’ lived experiences as queer women in Indonesia and at the same time provides them with the means for filmic self-representation. Over a period of two years and under the guidance of filmmakers Angelika Levi and Laura Coppens, the filmmaking became a truly collective act.

Anak-AnakSrikandi | Indonesia/ Germany/ Switzerland 2012 | 73 min | 16:9 | HDCAM

www.childrenofsrikandi.com