Henrietta:proposal draft

Proposal for my graduation project to get MA at Piet Zwart Institute in the year 2018-2019

Title: Spaanse Kubus - Requiem for a rape

Genre: A short movie which shows different faces of a female being, trough frequent sacrifices of her personas. An absurd drama, a psychological thriller about violence and physical abuse, lingering on the border of fiction and non-fiction.

Idea: Since I had the fortune to grow up in a post communist and highly racist, but mostly chauvinist country, I saw many ways of domesticated violence and gender discrimination — like the main theme of my movie — I always wanted to talk about this matter. To talk about it in a form which doesn’t end up in a poetry, a music track, a painting or a design of mine. In a form which gives me the most freedom to reach and turn my audience around. To challenge the most obvious expectations about victim characters. As Gaspar Noë in ‘Irreversible’ (2002) and ‘Enter the Void’ (2009), David Lynch in ‘Blue Velvet’ (1986), ‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001), Ana Lily Amirpour in ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’ (2014), ‘Bad Batch’ (2016) or Kim Ki-duk in ‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring’ (2003) were able to question and break up with the usual conventions of fatality in their films. The complexity, the wide spectrum of movie making and the love of capturing and recording my audio-visual fantasies guided my graduation project into the form of a short movie. Another inspiring filmmaker is David Firth, who’s surrealist, dark humour and satire style always confront me. I’m practicing to be able to give a similar but unique impression into the art world. During my first year at Piet Zwart Institute I experienced multiple adaptations of intermedia, progressive design and visual art. I engaged with the always strange and unusual thriller form of visual expression and now I’m committed to expand this more during my second year, trough working on my short movie. To reflect on my relation —as an Eastern and Western European artist— with “rapeism” (Urban Dictionary), as part of our culture, like the resent #MeToo movement or the sexual violence by the Red Army and during wartime in general.

Technique: For creating my movie I invite three camera men, Davids Danoss (LV), Zhibin Qin (CH), Demeter Loránd (HU/RO), two editors, two sound engineers and one light technician to work on the shootings. The idea is to work with full frame, start in B&W scenes and finish it in colour, as the story of the movie is starting in a dark atmosphere and slowly transforming into a resolution with a slightly lighter tone. We’ll use three cameras (Sony A7S with Gimbal Crane II, Sony A7RII, Sony PMW-300 XDCAM-renting from Theatre Rotterdam), for lights and stands I’ll rent the equipment of our University. I feel the necessity to use three cameras, but mainly we’ll shoot with two, in few scenes with three, but we’ll also take some photos, videos for documentation. For the sound recordings we’ll use a combination of directional microphones and stereo surround setup (Electrovoice BL37 with a jecklin disc), since I’m focusing on the soundscape of my movie, we’ll experiment with the combination of foley technique, field recordings and voice over. For making this possible we’ll use our home studio, the PZI sound studios and location recording. For the sound design I invited Jorrit Westerhof to take part. We have been working together before on different audio-visual installations, exhibitions and short videos. This time I’m asking him to experiment with drone music and heavy French trip hop beats. Further, the main character of the movie: Yvonne Sonne a young german girl, the musicians of MILD (BE,NL,LV) winners of the Codarts Jazz Prize 2018, the naked boy: Thijs Meindertsma, singer: Helene Richter, clarinet player: Johanna Monk and the crowd (35/40 ppl., volunteers of the Rotterdam art scene). To find the overview and a stronger communication for this project, I want to learn from the experiences of all of my teachers.

Timetable: This autumn I’m applying for funding in NL trough an independent production house ‘92ProdH’. For the movie I have 12 scenes, 8 indoor, 4 outdoor. The outdoor scenes we’ll shoot during late September and one scene in early March (for this last scene, I need a permit from the city council). The rest during the upcoming months, October, November, January, February. I’ll keep few days open for reshooting. ‘Scene 007’ is a facial operation video taken from an Indian website about a medical operation. For editing: On a few scenes I already want to start to work simultaneously with the shootings. After we shot all the scenes in March and June we’ll work on the editing for all the scenes and sound. For few scenes we’ll use date moshing to create the visual effect I want. The dynamics of the movie will drastically jump between fast-slow and short-long scenes, I try to wake up the audience and their emotions. The movie will be ready for screening in July.

Story: This movie is about a young girl, who can’t escape from her dreams, which are alternating between reality and mystery. I want to direct this short movie based on my script, with help of Davids Danoss (filmmaker) to write the screenplay, to find the best angles, and cuts for the scenes. I want to create a “dream in the dream” infinite transition and a “scream in the scream” sound effect. Trough the text about my method I already started to develop the main character, her way of being lost, scared and confused. In the script we see her developing painful memories and dreams more pragmatically. The plot is about the girl who infinitely wakes up from her nightmares and memories about abuse and sexual fantasies. Utilising abstraction such as She is crawling herself trough a wide office room and suddenly she morphs into a naked boy’s body, and reality-based events such as the story of the exchange student, who got attacked and raped in front of her house while locking her bike by a young guy on 22.07.2018 in Rotterdam at 5:30AM. In my thesis, I’ll focus on the cultural aspects of rapaciousness, dominance, primitive sexual acts and the victim-predator relationship. Therefore, I started to analyse the works of Helke Sander (feminist film director). With my movie and thesis I would like to honour the two million german women who have been raped during WW II.

parts from the storyboard:

location images: