Meeting on the patio of the Irish Embassy ((Not the actual embassy, but a nearby pub where Fantasia-types gather most every night.)), I enjoyed an extended conversation with Karen Skloss, the director of The Honor Farm (2017, reviewed here).
All right, this is Giles Edwards from 366 Weird Movies here with the director of The Honor Farm, Karen Skloss. We’re going to discuss the first fictional feature she’s directed, having previously directed Sunshine, a 2009 documentary that played on PBS and elsewhere concerning the nature of pregnancy, your daughter…
Karen Skloss: And changing family values, I guess, and looking at motherhood and women’s place in the family and structures…Kind of like a personal essay film. A very personal story; the “personal is political” kind of thing.
366: I read, courtesy of IMDB, that you did a little of previous work in film editing. Is that how you started in the filmmaking business?
KS: I still do it, right now I’m editing Andrew Bujalski’s new movie, I’m really excited about it.
366: Now is what do you think will be your future career? Focusing on editing? Focusing on directing feature films?
KS: I guess it’s a slow transition to… [At this point, bar noise grew excessive] …I kind of wonder if we should be outside.
I guess we’ll take a field-trip with this recorder and keep our fingers crossed. [Traveling outside, far quieter.]
Now we’re talking! I had a vision, and no one separates a director from her vision.
366: Except for the producers and money-men, right?
KS: [Laughs] Right! Now, this is more like a cafe interview.
Yes, 2009 was my last feature, my directorial debut, with lots of editing in between, and now some more editing. But it’s cool, because I’m going to get another one off the ground soon. I would love to direct as my “bread and butter”, but I also love editing, so it’s totally fine.
366: Your preceding movie went back about a decade, with the family ponderings. You mentioned [at the screening] your daughter was a teenager now, so I presume she was born well before the movie that concerned her and you.
KS: Yeah. It’s funny, I started shooting while I was pregnant. It was one of those projects that happened slowly while I was working as an editor and doing other projects. I was slowly doing this personal essay over many years.
366: Obviously getting into film is a dream for a lot of people. Did Continue reading HIGH ON THE FARM: A CHAT WITH KAREN SKLOSS (2017)
Nikias Chryssos: My grandparents had a holiday house in Switzerland. It had this big bunker room in the basement with a thick iron door as a shelter for wartime. I imagined it would be funny if someone wants to rent a room and he basically gets locked away. I wanted to build a story about a place like this. Initially, the film was set in a kind of fairytale house in the woods but when we found the entrance to this bunker during our location search, we decided to put the whole story underground. The limited setting gave us a lot of control but also provided us with specific challenges. My production designer Melanie Raab, the cinematographer Matthias Reisser, and I then did a lot of research and the main challenge was to make the setting interesting even though everything takes place in one house. We wanted to give the different rooms different colors and moods but still keep it coherent. We also worked with different lighting set-ups, like more contrast during the night scenes and softer light in the day, even though the light might not change that much underground. As the student, our main protagonist, is working on some big scientific work, it was also interesting to work with patterns and build little connections there, whether it is the wallpaper, the walls, his blanket, the door frames or Klaus’ pajamas. Sometimes, these patterns also give the feeling of a prison cell. Thanks to great production design team, I never had the feeling something I wanted wasn’t possible. Another challenge was to not go mad in such a claustrophobic set during the shoot.