Colombian/Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez is the writer-director of narrative features “Señoritas” and “This Time Tomorrow,” which have been showcased in festivals and cultural venues including TIFF, Locarno, and the Mar del Plata International Film Festival. Her credits also include documentary shorts “Ante Mis Ojos” and “Aquí y allá.” Rodriguez is currently in post-production on her fourth feature film, “So Much Tenderness.”
“Mis Dos Voces” (“My Two Voices”) is screening at the 2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, which is taking place April 28-May 8. Find more information on the fest’s website.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
LR: I’m not sure that my words are just mine given that we are connected to each other, I come from somewhere, from the people before me. My ability to combine words into meaning is probably my own. I am constantly learning to speak. You are asking me to speak English, which is my second language. Nevertheless, I will share the film’s synopsis in English, which I wrote: The film is a poetic reflection on the fluid nature of identity that focuses on Ana, Claudia, and Marinela, three Latin American women who share their intimate experiences of immigrating to Canada while reflecting on themes of violence, belonging, motherhood, and reconciliation.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
LR: After meeting Claudia — who works as a settlement worker with the immigrant community in Toronto — I was so inspired by her incredible leadership that I wanted to make a film to celebrate her and the work she does as a community weaver. I approached her about the possibility of making a movie together and asked her to introduce to me other Latin American women who had supported their immigration journeys. She introduced me to Ana, and Marinela. After many months of chatting with them I decided to focus the film exclusively on three women and make it a triptych portrait. I focused on building connections with them, spending time together with their families, sharing stories and visiting their homes.
I am an immigrant and made this film to show the coexistence between the many places, times, identities, and people that are part of my journey as an immigrant, always on unstable ground.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
LR: This question is difficult to answer due to the film’s methodology and formal approach, as well as my interest filmmaking as a process for discovery. Throughout the process of making the film, I intentionally did not want to put myself or anyone in the position of the “knower,” which I find a problematic perpetuation of patriarchal structures that expect directors to be the inventors, creators and controllers, to extract something from people and places, as well as tell others — actors, collaborators, audiences — how to feel and think.
I had to find ways to capture the complexity of these three inspiring women. As I spent time with them after they generously opened their homes to me, it became clear that it was impossible for me to define them or “tell their stories.” It was then that I decided to focus on the very cadence of their voices, on their gestures, and on the objects, textures, and sounds of their everyday lives as a strategy to trace their respective biographies and journeys.
Inspired by [Vietnamese filmmaker and literary theorist] Trinh T. Minh-ha’s invitation to “speak nearby,” instead of speaking about, I sought to work with a delicate touch, without grabbing, capturing, or enclosing. My aim was to create an impressionistic tapestry that resists a centralized perspective and echoes Ana, Marinela, and Claudia’s fragmented and hybrid identities. The film invites the audience to engage in this way, to accept that we cannot “know” or “consume” identities and stories and draw specific and clear conclusions.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
LR: This film was produced by Brad Deane, my partner in cinema and life. What a film is about, for us, is intrinsically linked to how it is made. Therefore, it is important that we pay attention to every detail and make conscious decisions about what kind of atmosphere each film should create. We strongly believe in the importance to resist industrial practices through mindful collaborations around camera that emphasize respect, care, and so that all of us can learn from each other.
Since the beginning, we knew we wanted to work closely with a small team on this film. Even though there were always challenges, such as equipment-related emergencies or weather delays, the filming process was an enriching and wonderful experience.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Please share your insights on how you got the film made.
LR: This film was made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council. [former executive director and COO of TIFF] Michèle Maheux, who received the Technicolor Clyde Gilmour award for service to Canadian cinema in 2019 from the Toronto Film Critics Association, and named me as the recipient of post-production services, which I used for this film.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
LR: I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. I felt like an outsider throughout my childhood and adolescence. My mother said it was part and parcel of teenage anxiety, and that it would pass. It didn’t. I found cinema when I moved from Bogotá to Toronto to study film production. It was an amazing thing. After all the years of feeling lost, finally I felt like I had my own space. Even though I still feel out of place in the world, cinema has allowed me to confront it and challenge it from my perspective. Since then I have been developing my voice in my own way and to my own rhythm.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
LR: Worst advice. As a director, you must know everything and be the boss. You must be able to answer all questions.
The best is a quote from Picasso: “I do not seek, I find.”
W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?
LR: Filmmaking, like all things, is a journey. We are constantly learning and unlearning. Even though it can seem scary, you can create your own method of directing, your way of making films, and your production model. You don’t have to follow the way “it’s done in the industry”. You don’t have to copy existing formulaic structures or methodologies. Instead, you can create your own.
You should surround yourself with people who can see you. Filmmaking is a human activity. Make sure you create a space for your team to meet each other. This will allow everyone to take something away from the experience and leave something behind.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
LR: I don’t love this question about picking a favorite film, as it implies a sort of fixed point in space and time. Given that I am in a constant oscillation from feeling located and dislocated — emotionally, geographically, physically — and that I am always changing, learning, and unlearning, I connect to different films at different times in different ways.
A film that has accompanied me for a while is Lucrecia Martel’s “La Ciénaga.” I connect to it because it is not concerned with telling us what to feel when, who to trust, or who to follow; instead, it uses sound, framing, and editing to create a lack of order. The film is filled by sounds and micro-events, both on-screen and off. They dislocate us and yet give us a moving sense of the bewildering experience that is living and being. “La Ciénaga” reminds me that “reality” is not singular, solid, or organized: it’s chaotic and has endless gaps.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Is creativity something you do?
LR: Part of my interest in filmmaking has always been to pay attention to the seemingly unimportant things — domestic spaces, gestures, glances, textures, body language, the objects in our houses, the sounds in our neighborhoods — and reflect on how these details can speak the unspeakable. These details can reveal a lot of our inner lives. Despite things seeming to have settled down during the pandemic I tried to maintain my interest in observation and listening, to make this an attitude of living and learning as much as possible. To be present and grateful for each moment.
Filmmaking is my way to process the world. I am grateful for the opportunity to keep working and thinking. During the first year I finished “Mis Dos Voces” and started pre-production of a new feature called “So Much Tenderness,” which we shot last year and will be releasing this year. Three short films were also made as part of a correspondence I had with Jorge Lozano, a Colombian-Canadian filmmaker and artist. They were all commissioned in Montreal by Cinema Public. I also was hired to write a pilot for a TV series, which is still in development, and started development on two feature films, one of which I will make with my mother, and another which I’m co-writing and will be co-directing with Brad.
W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What steps do you believe are necessary to make Hollywood and/or doc more inclusive?
LR: Although I understand what you mean when you say Hollywood, I looked it up in the dictionary because I am interested in “definitions.” Britannica.com says, “it’s a district within the city of Los Angeles, whose name is synonymous with the American film industry.” A synonym is to be a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word. Perhaps that is part of where the issue is, that we not only think of Hollywood as “the American film industry”, but as “the film industry”.
Indeed, there’s a history to why this is the case, why and how Hollywood has been placed at the center of it all, and how this placement has in part enabled the erasure and disfiguration of entire cultures and histories on screen. So yes, there’s definitely a lot to re-frame for those in power positions making decisions — in Hollywood and elsewhere — based on patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist frameworks that center and value certain perspectives and marginalize others. This involves those who get to decide what to fund and why, what to distribute where and how, what to program at either festivals or cultural institutions, and what films to cover and how to engage with the films and the filmmakers — the specificity of the questions asked, the space given, etc..
Given that change is a community effort, I also feel it’s important to think about how each of us, from our different positions, all with limitations, can also challenge the standard modes and re-frame how we do what we do. This involves re-engaging in care as a politics theory, ethic, and a praxis to find new ways of living, relating, making films, and for me, this is about re-engaging in care as a political theory. Brad and I use our sets to foster mentorship, generosity, and reciprocity. We also try to strategically mix experience levels, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities and expressions, so that we can create new and inspiring connections and share our knowledge with each other.
Sometimes it seems like those in power and audiences and media think that there is a new formula for diversity. They want the same stories with different voices behind the camera and extractivist production models. They also want the same authoritative colonial narratives of winners and losers that can later be sold on the red carpet and in the meta universe. While it is important to have more diversity behind the camera, we can also hope to instill a deeper curiosity and sensitivity towards different cultural and aesthetic frameworks, and ways of caring for one another so that we can all work together respectfully.
Source: Women And Hollywood
