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Satyricon Beta

Satyricon Beta

Satyricon Beta

Text JF. Pierets    Photos Lukas Beyeler

 

“I’ve promised you the story of my adventures for a long time. Today I’m finally going to keep my word. My unhealthy curiosity and my depraved imagination are the true product of Roman immorality, which is the basis of your education.” These opening sentences are the start of a new video by one of Et Alors? Magazine’s favourite artists Lukas Beyeler. Satyricon or The Book of Satyrlike Adventures, is based on the work of fiction believed to have been written by Petronius Arbiter and shows us a highlighted version of Beyeler’s favourite scenes. 

 

The video is a bit like a painting; you observe very slowly.
Originally the book was huge, but they lost quite a lot over time. Basically there are about 300 pages left. Speculation as to the size of the original puts it somewhere on the order of a work of thousands of pages. In the video I wanted to show that there is something missing, like an unfinished puzzle. It goes from one chapter to another without a clear story line. There’s no plot, nor a narrative, nothing that resembles a story. We just observe the protagonist going slowly from one scene to another. The slow rhythm is accentuated by my use of 120 frames per second. The stationary camera makes you feel that there is no fixed time.

Tell me about your work method when it comes to story telling? 
After I read the book I just took the scenes which spoke to me the most. A lot of them are the ones that wouldn’t interest a hetero filmmaker. In one of them the witch provides the narrator with a cure for something you don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s syphilis, maybe gonorrhea, or maybe he’s just impotent. It’s a scene I very much liked, maybe it’s because you wouldn’t expect such scenes in a book where the action is happening before Christ. I often have the feeling that everything before Christ was in a way easier because there was no taboo, no religion, no morale, and everybody was bisexual. What you see is in that book is the sex habit and the social behaviour of the old Roman Empire. Most of them have no objective in their lives, no jobs. They just eat and have sex all the time.

Both Fellini and Polidoro tackled Satyricon in 1968 and 1969. 
If you watch Fellini’s movie, it’s only about twenty percent of the actual story. The minotaur, the labyrinth and many other characters are nowhere to be found within’ the book. Gian Luigi Polidoro is much closer to the original text but replaced the gay character by a woman.

A true Hollywood phenomenon. 
Indeed. When Disney makes a movie about Hercules, he’s of course one hundred per cent straight. But Hercules was bi in the texts. So there’s this straight-washing going on all the time. Same when movies or media talk about Da Vinci or Lincoln, there’s a lot of heterosexualising, if you can call it like that. I also guess that what we read now is very different from the original book. From BC till now, people copied the texts. And those scribes were often religious so sometimes when there was a sex scene, they would just leave it out. Some of them would even re-write the story the way they wanted it to be. Nobody will ever know how close the current text is from the original. So you know, after all this text massacre, incorrect Latin translation and straight-washing corrections: I thought, now I’m going write my own version where Ascyltos is the Main Character. And I’m going to let him having an affaire with whoever I want.

 

 

 

‘My work is about my environment, and of course part of it is a certain gay scene. It’s my life so in a way I just project my surrounding.’

You’re very outspoken about the gay-factor in your work. 
My work is about my environment, and of course part of it is a certain gay scene. It’s my life so in a way I just project my surrounding. My inspiration comes from the people I work with. When I meet the right person: it just happens. The idea for Satyricon Beta has been going through my head for about two years now but I didn’t act upon it until I met the right people to do it. As there’s no rush to execute a project, I do not believe in casting for this kind of artistic projects. But when I see the right actor or model that can match a certain project then there’s no way back. I think there’s a special actor for any project, you just have to cross paths. Unfortunately I cannot change my ideas after that. I get obsessed with that person and I can be a real pain in the ass until they agree to do the project. I’m a stalker without a budget, so I guess people just have to trust me, or not.

Why did you choose to make the video in Italian? 
I’ve read the book in Italian, in French and in English, and I chose to go for Italian because it’s the closest to Latin. Since my actor, Rocco Schira, is Swiss-Italian and is a voice talent, we had to use all that in the video. I wrote it in French, my mother tongue, translated it to Italian and subtitled in English. For me it was good to mix up all these languages because you really feel how it changes the text. I like to work with language and translations. They all have their different culture and colour which highly influences the image. You’ll find some text from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, some poems of Robert Lee Frost and of course some original parts of Gaius Petronius Arbiter. We also shot the video in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. The nature is beautiful there, very Roman and completely cut of from the rest of the world. Not an easy place to live in but a great location to shoot.

Satyricon Beta will be shown at the Queer Biennial II in LA. What happens after that? 
I’m very happy to premiere that video in Los Angeles at the Biennial, but ‘after that’ to tell you the truth:
I have no idea. Sometimes the work travels to other festivals or is screened in other gallery spaces but you never know if it’s gonna work or die there. My biggest problem in this creative process is that when I’m done, I’m done ! The showing of the work doesn’t interest me much, it’s not part of the work itself anymore. That’s why I’m not the best seller of my own work: I love to make it but I always feel way to vulnerable to take it on display. It shows too much of myself. When a project is finished, I’m just starting something else. My part is to create, to shoot, to edit and to spend time with people making it. You think I should get an agent?

www.queerbiennial.com
www.lukasbeyeler.com

 

Satyricon Beta
2016, Full HD, 16/9, 21min
Written and directed by Lukas Beyeler
Ascyltos Rocco Schira
Oenothea Nils Amadeus Lange
Camera operator Carlotta Holy
Voice over Rocco Schira & Ayana Glam
Subtitles Anja Draeger

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Rolla Selbak

Text JF. Pierets    Photos Rolla Selbak

 

Up till now she has made 2 feature films, a bunch of short films, a music video and 2 seasons of ‘Kiss her I’m famous’. The Spreecast ‘Grrls guide to filmmaking’ in which she interviews female movie directors, turned into a docu series and she’s currently writing a TV-piece. I guess we may call ourselves quite lucky that she found the time to talk to us, but most of all she left us highly inspired after our conversation about independency, feminism and religion. 

 

Why is it important to be an independent filmmaker? 
It’s very important to me because that’s mostly the only way a lot of people can work right now. I have a very independent spirit and the thought of actually being merged into the Hollywood system makes me cringe. The thing I hate about it is the fact that you give up all control and that someone else is telling you what to do. It makes good sense though, because essentially it’s someone else’s money so they want a minimum risk. Yet it really stifles creativity. Obviously it would be ideal to have your work in the television- or in Hollywood system without having to compromise, since a lot more people would be able to see your work. 

So the internet is sufficient at the moment? 
At this point, this is where my heart is. I think for filmmakers not to put their work online, if they’re independent like me, doesn’t make any sense. How is the audience going to know you? Who are you, where are you? You can’t just do only film festivals anymore and the internet is the most beautiful tool in the world. You can play. Everyone can see your work and hear your voice, I think it’s the best way to experiment. So before you send that script to Hollywood, to the show networks, it’s a great way for you to understand what your audience likes and doesn’t like. You can see which episodes have the highest rating, you see the comments, you see what people enjoyed. It’s fascinating. It’s a beautiful laboratory, one huge experiment.

You also have a Spreecast where you interview female filmmakers? 
Yes, live stream interviews where the audience can log in and chat, ask questions. I did that on a monthly basis and I now turned that into a docu series, which you can currently see on-line. It’s me, going to the filmmakers’ homes, having a very casual chat with them in the space where they create. I thought that was a more intimate way to actually get to know the filmmaker. It was very important for me to showcase and celebrate female filmmakers, to counteract the voices that say that there are no female filmmakers or that there’s only a small percentage because females don’t like filmmaking. Or are not interested. They keep on making excuses on why the numbers are so low. This series is meant to inspire others, showing aspirant filmmakers that if she can do it, you can do it. 

A happy feminist.
Feminist? Me? Nooo! Haha. I’m a very proud feminist card holder and I think any woman or man who is for the progress and equality of women in the world, is a feminist. Whether they like it or not!

Talking about feminism, a lot of your work handles the subjects of arrange marriage, homosexuality, Muslim-American subcultures. You’re quite a committed woman. 
That is one way to say it, certainly. I try to tackle all those subjects in my films. Sometimes that’s a little ambitious, but I try to do it in a very nuanced way instead of being exploitative. I really did want to cover as much as I could when it comes to a female experience in the Muslim-American subculture. That does include the idea of arranged marriage – because that definitely still happens – and the idea of being closeted in that community. You’d be surprised to hear how many people actually connect with that story line. And then the other story line has to do with abuse, which lots of women go through. I wouldn’t say that that’s unique to the Muslim subculture but I’m certain that happens internationally. It was important for me to touch upon all those subjects. 

These are also very personal subjects? 
I grew up Muslim, so it’s indeed very personal. My family is Palestinian and I grew up in Abu Dhabi. We moved to the US but I definitely have that perspective as someone who is from the Muslim-American subculture. It’s just something that I feel wasn’t being presented in cinema, in film, in media. I basically made a film that I myself would have loved to see when I was younger. I felt like there was nothing out there that I could connect with. That understood my experience, that made me feel like I counted.

 

‘It was very important for me to showcase and celebrate female filmmakers, to counteract the voices that say that there are no female filmmakers or that there’s only a small percentage because females don’t like filmmaking. Or are not interested.’

How did you grow up? 
To be honest, it was very lonely. Even when I was always surrounded by family, which is very common in the Middle Eastern culture. Everything is always everyone’s business and privacy is not a privilege you get. Certainly not when you are living in your parent’s house, parents who loved me, by the way. A Big Fat Greek Wedding kind of family, caring and loving. But when you’re growing up as a woman, trying to find your place, your ideas, and you’re trying to see where you fit in all of this, it can end up being isolated and lonely.

So what did you do at that age? Being without any role models? 
I lost myself in movies. That was my escape. I have a computer science background and the best part about being a geek was that I could build my own computer, put my own dvd drive in it so I could rent movies and watch them in my room. Where no one would know. Specifically the lesbian side of me loved Angelina Jolie movies like ‘Gia’ and ‘Girl Interrupted’. Also the movie ‘Fire’ (one of the first mainstream films in India to explicitly show homosexual relations. Ref.) was a big deal to me. So basically I got lost in movies. Which made me feel like I wasn’t alone. Because of that I thought film was the perfect way to tell such stories so other people wouldn’t feel alone. 

But at one point you did come out of the closet.
Yes, and it was a nightmare. I got kicked out of the house after my parents first completely ignored my existence and then send me to a psychologist. When that didn’t work, they wanted me to undergo an eradication of my supposed hormone imbalance. I’m telling you this in a nutshell, yet the humiliation was unbearable. 

Nevertheless you are calling your mother the bravest woman you know. 
At one point she got diagnosed with heart failure and had only a few years to live. Since then she really turned around and decided that she wanted to open her heart and mind. Can you imagine that you come from a culture that keeps indoctrinating you, saying ‘gay is evil!’ Where they keep telling you that having a gay child is even worse than having a dead child. When you have that kind of legacy in your mind and culture since you where a baby, you have to overcome a lot to open up. I always say my mother is the bravest woman because I know she had to almost stretch both her heart ànd mind. It really took a lot from her to do that. But I flew her out to San Francisco where I was living at the time and she even met my partner. We had a great time. She passed away shortly after that. It ended in the most beautiful note and she is my hero. It was very important that we went through that. 

What did that kind of indoctrination do to you? 
I would say that the number one thing I suffered from was me, hating myself. Not even other people hating me. I was torturing myself essentially. I’d go to school and pretend everything was fine and then I’d go home and would literally be hitting myself. Slapping myself in my room. I just wanted it to go away. I hated myself so much. I tried by reading the Koran, try to slap the gay away. But of course it didn’t work. In the end you just have to get into it. Saying; ‘this is who I am. What can I do? I can’t do anything about it except be myself and be honest, that’s all’.

Are you still religious?
I used to be very religious. It was a part of me and I would pray every day. But now? No. I’m not religious at all, I’m agnostic. I believe all religions have beauty in them whether or not god exists the way we want him or her to exist. The only thing I know is that we don’t know anything. I think anyone who claims that they know something is bullshitting, because they don’t. Yet I do love the sentiments that religions have about how we should treat each other, how we should go through life. And I acknowledge that religion is sometimes necessary for some people to keep going. Without religion some people are lost, have no clue about why they are here or what we are doing. But the truth is that no one has a clue. We try to explain it in a way that makes us feel better and that makes us feel sane. Having sanity and the knowledge that it’s all going somewhere. Especially regarding an afterlife. No one knows!! How is someone ever going to know? All those basic questions asking; ‘does this all matter’, ‘what was it all for’, ‘why was I here’,..  It began and it ended. So the idea or notion of an afterlife is essentially saying ‘we matter’. Our lives matter. Well, if so; hurray! Great! But if not, whatever. Religion was essentially a worldwide way of law and civility. Don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t do this and don’t do that, be humble, share your money. But do you really need a book to tell you all this? And if the only reason you’re behaving like that is for you to be able to selfishly go to paradise, then we’re kind of screwed don’t you think?

 

www.rollaselbak.com

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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 

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One Zero One

One Zero One

One Zero One

Text JF. Pierets    Photos Stefan Braunbarth, Till Müller & René Moritz

 

One Zero One is Tim Lienhard’s first independent feature film starring Cybersissy and BayBjane. This 90-minutes long documen-tale tells a true story about a most unique friendship, about survival at the edge of society and about the final triumph over mishaps and obstacles that seemed to have one marked for a life in the shadows. The movie follows a portion of the lives of 33-year-old Maroccaine-German Mourad and 48-year-old Dutch Antoine, two drag-performers, better known as Cybersissy and BayBjane, two otherworldly spirits, who light up the stages of the international party-circuit with their boundless creativity and their well calculated freakish-ness. We meet on the eve of their German movie theatre show in Cologne. 

 

Tim  I’m so excited! Tomorrow we’re going on tour to both queer and other film festivals. We’re also invited to the porn festival in Berlin, so that’s really exciting. We’ve received 25 invitations up till now. I guess we must be doing something good.

Tim, this movie is something entirely different from what you normally do.
Tim Indeed. I produced and directed more than seventy feature-documentaries and approximately thousand tv-magazine-features, mostly for German public television-channels ARD and ZDF. Since 1999 I have expanded my range of public recognition into the French-German television-network ARTE. After 30 years it was time to do something different from television and it’s the first time I’m doing something like this. Very free, very independent, 90 minutes of film for the big screen. You can imagine I’m very, very happy that it worked.

And why this subject? How did you meet? 
Tim I saw them perform in a nightclub in Cologne.
Antoine We were huge underground stars in Cologne.
Tim I’ve always loved eccentrics – because they dare to be different, because they reinvent themselves every day. Antoine and Mourad do exactly that… That’s why it was love at first sight, when I first saw them powering up the Cologne nightlife many years ago. I was thinking: “Oops! Is Leigh Bowery still alive?” I had visited Leigh, the iconic London clublife star of the late 80’s and early 90’s, in his apartment on the seventh floor of a London high-rise where I shot a tv-documentary about his living sculptures. That was in the mid-90s. Unfortunately he died shortly after that. To me Antoine aka “Cybersissy” seemed like the reborn Leigh Bowery. Antoine was a true icon of Cologne’s nightlife and it is about time for him to gain fame in the same line as Leigh Bowery did. When we first met I was intrigued by Cybersissy’s performances, he was buzzing in the back of my head. But only about two years ago I got in touch with Antoine, visiting him in Tilburg, his hometown in South Holland. Soon I was able to convince him of the idea of creating a movie-portrait of him. Next I had to gain Mourad’s trust because he doesn’t like tv.
Mourad Tv is just one big brainfuck. A manipulation.
Antoine And they always have a long list of stupid questions like ‘how long does your make-up take?’.Tv is like one big black hole that needs to be filled. Nevertheless we are very proud to have been chosen by Tim to do the movie.

Yet it was a leap of trust?
Antoine it was a leap of trust because somebody is doing a story on you. It could have been told much different and it could be turned out a scandal movie, which we didn’t want.
Tim With my camera I followed the two, who I like to call ‘my Cyberstars’ to the international locations of their performances. It rarely felt like work, as we had so much fun and love the party life. The three of us made a good team. And we still do. A team, that was joined by our highly motivated friends and colleagues of the crew and everybody else, who participated, to make this film happen.

Is the movie a collaboration between the three of you?
Tim The movie was a total collaboration, so if one of the actors didn’t want something, it didn’t happen. Mourad had set his borders? He’s a very unusual phenomenon. The tabloid press approached him on several occasions, but he refused to have his story exploited in freak-show-style. Instead he decided to confide to me. As he told me, it were my television documentaries on Leigh Bowery, Gilbert and George and on androgyny – in particular about Orlan, a French artist who got plastic surgery in front of cameras and transformed to unnatural shapes. That convinced him to collaborate with me. Antoine, on the other hand, was in anticipation of the moment. That’s why this movie became something else than just another documentary. One of my friends lend us this villa where we could film and I can say that was the turning point where it also started to become a fairy tail. One way or another everything came very intuitive. I wanted to give both of them the possibility to tell their story which, in today television, is almost impossible. It’s a new step for me to go to the big screen. 90 minutes to expose two characters with the freedom to show it the way I really want to. So I wanted to do something which I really connected to. It’s a passion and it has to be because we’ve been seeing eachother of almost 15 months now.  So that was my goal. And it worked.Fortunately the three of us were on the same page. This is based on the desire for transformation and self-determination. We know that we have much more possibilities than playing a given role dictated by society. We want to develop and grow beyond ourselves, to mythical creatures, as well as in always new self-inventions. Not predictable, not simple, but always surprising. That’s what our heroes do with each new day. And Antoine and Mourad are my heroes. Antoine aka Cybersissy was born 1964 in the dutch city Tilburg, where he still lives. In 1988 he graduated as bachelor of arts and soon his art was recognized by his hometown and supported through a number of awards and specific grants to allow him to work independently and strive in his profession. He designed sets for five different childrens theatre productions and got nominated for the Flanders Childrens Theatre price. In 1994 he added a new line of work to his flourishing talents and started designing costumes, props and stage sets for the Club Fuck in Tilburg. At around this time he invented his stage-persona Cybersissy and started developing her unique looks. He also worked for the famous It-club in Amsterdam, the Roxy and the Danssalon in Eindhoven. Subsequently he landed a permanent asignment at the Danssalon, making him head of the Entertaintment Group: A wild bunch of performers consisting of transvestites, dragqueens and dragkings. Here he staged performances and designed stage-outfits for 2 years at this party phenomena. Two years later he left The Netherlands to mix up the German party scene. Dawnproductions GmbH in Cologne called upon his talents for the Funky Chicken Club, the Crystal Crash and gay parties at the then famous club Lulu. And here, at the Cologne club Lulu he discovered his future counterpart Mourad and his skills for being a performer and helped him developing the stage-persona BayBjane to match his own alter ego Cybersissy, making him the perfect counterpart for their successful club-performances. Together Cybersissy and BayBjane were the perfect team to rock the stages at clubs all over Europe: in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.

Antoine, why did you choose to go into drag performing? 
Antoine I love the energy. Transvestites are men who want to look like a women but dragqueens are party creatures.  That’s a whole different kind of energy. It’s about celebrating the drag culture in it’s original form and even lift it a little bit higher so it becomes art. Leigh Bowery is another example, but the strange thing was that he was already doing his stuff and people told me I  looked just like him. When I came to London after he died, people thought he was still alive.

 

‘It’s about celebrating the drag culture in it’s original form, even lift it a little bit higher so it becomes art.’

Tim I met Leigh in London and I can say that he and Antoine have the same spirit. I believe that there can be connecting energies in completely different places. Like Leigh, living in the UK and Antoine in the Netherlands. Not knowing eachother but kindred spirits when it comes to creativity. Antoine made all the costumes for the movie. Regarding my work in television I think I have a sense of what’s art and what’s not. And I must say that Antoine is on the same level as Leigh. It’s the same level of creativity and he makes his pieces out of almost nothing. All these materials look fabulous but they are actually made of trash. The wonderful white hat for example is made of plastic spoons. 
Antoine You’re always surprised with second hand stuff. And then it’s the trick to see something else in it. Accidents happen so one thing lays to another and they get connected.  I started making clothes in 94 when the whole house party scene came up in Tilburg.

And now your story is adapted for the screen.
Antoine We had our premiere in Amsterdam and in Stockholm and the reactions are really fantastic. We had a queer audience and people where standing up and cried. They thanked us for empowering. And that’s why we do it. To inspire and to empower eachother. To create a fountain of ideas. But it was such a nice experience to stand in front of that audience.
Tim I’m happy that the movie is not only shown in front of a queer audience but also in mainstream cinema because we also handle universal issues in order to anyone to connect. That they can relate to it.
Antoine The thing is that we always worked in all kinds of places and I like the idea not to preach for your own church. To also go to places you wouldn’t think of.
Mourad We enjoy that the people love it and that the reactions are really positive. And that’s good because when you are handicapped and not like healthy people. You can give people to power by showing that you can do whatever you want to do. And not to be forced to be in the place where handicapped people are. I could do that. Just working, sleeping and taking my medicine. But life is more than that and I want to experience life in full force. I want to give people the power to do what they want in their life and not being short winged because of their physical inability to do certain things.

Mourad aka BayBjane is, at the height of 149 cm, ‘the smallest drag queen of the world’. Multi-disabled since birth, he has spent half his life in hospitals and homes for the handicapped. His legs are of different length, he has no regular toes, no regular fingers and just one eye. And yet he has managed to overcome the limitations of his disabilities and to transform himself into a performer who shares the stage of Matinée Group parties on Ibiza with perfectly built go-go dancers and shines even brighter than them. Mourad was born in 1979 in Bonn – Germany as a child of Moroccan parents. Mourad was physically disabled from birth and handycapped and spent many years in German hospitals, later in special homes for disabled people. But Mourad wanted to live his own life, so he left the home for disabled people and started a new life in Cologne. Meeting the dutch performer Antoine here, at the famous gay club “Lulu”, turned out to be a door to a new life and into a degree of independency and recognition nobody would have thought being available to someone like Mourad. The new invented BayBjane took her first steps at the legendary Funky Chicken Club in Cologne. But Café de Paris and Salvation in London followed. Quickly she became one of the most popular national and international party-performance-artists around. Shows all over the globe at the hippest clubs and cameo appearances in music videos are proof of her uniqueness and versatility. In 2009 BayBjane became the first official worldwide mascot of the legendary Pacha-club in Ibiza. Since then David and Cathy Guetta, Campino and Fedde Le Grand have become avid fans and are beloved colleagues. In the meantime BayBjane has moved to Berlin and expanded her colourful business into producing her own music and taking part in the Dreckqueen project of collegue Cybersissy, while simultaneously taking singing lessons. Who would be surprised, if this multi-talent were to land a dance-floor hit.

Mourad In the film I say: ‘I can stay home and my father can open a shop for me’. But I wanted to do different things. I can always go back to that when I’m fed up with the performances. I spend half my life in the hospital, I’m the only sick one amongst 4 brothers and sisters and I’m the one who’s always travelling, who’s never at home.

How does it feel to be on stage?
Mourad To be on stage is work. But the most important thing is that I have fun. And to show the people: look how I am, how my body looks like. And what I do with that.
Tim I’m so happy that people are really inspired by the movie. A lot of them told me they wanted to ‘do’ something when they left the theatre. And that was my aim. To give something positive and to trigger creativity. To inspire. In television it’s all about problems. We talk about problems but we also show how wonderfully they can be transformed into something creative. I could have made a horrormovie, but that wasn’t what I was aiming for. Colourful, playful, positive.  You can do whatever you want if you want to give it your very best.

 

One Zero One
In a colorful blend of documentary, behind the scenes-episodes from clubs around the world, private video-material, probing interviews, that reveal the inner life of our protagonists, as well as artfully staged fantasy-sequences of lush opulence, the movie celebrates the unique friendship and restless life-style of these two unlikely heroes and shows the triumph of individuality and creativity over the parts that society expects us to play.

 

www.onezeroonemovie.com

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