Q&A WITH ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI
Athina Rachel Tsangari is an award-winning filmmaker whose work often explores questions of displacement and social organization. Before she started directing films, Tsangari studied philosophy and performance studies. Both subjects continue to influence her practice, which often grapples with existential questions and foregrounds body movement. Films she directed, like Attenberg (2010) and Chevalier (2015), showcase this dual attention to the intricacies of social and spatial arrangement. Her newest film, Harvest, was based on a script that Joslyn Barnes (producer of Nickel Boys and Zama, among other great films) adapted from Jim Crace’s celebrated novel of the same name.
Harvest screens in New York this week and will be available on MUBI next Friday, August 8, in addition to select theaters worldwide.
Q. You’ve stated that space is often the most important character in your films. Moreover, displacement often features prominently in your work. Where does this interest in space — its depiction, demarcation, and occupation — stem from?
A. The novel takes place during the Scottish Clearances and although that’s a historic event, it really is a condition that hasn’t stopped. I found it to be a very contemporary issue, one we’re dealing with all over the world. As someone who has always felt a sense of not belonging — since my first film, The Slow Business of Going — space has always been a preoccupation of mine. You could say that Slow Biz is my most autobiographical film — I still feel like Petra, the main character — but I feel kinship with any character who lives in the fissure between space, world, borders, languages, and silences.
Q. There’s a spontaneous feel to the performances in Harvest, as though you’ve stumbled upon, rather than staged, what’s happening on screen. What does your rehearsal process look like, and how much of it involves improvisation?
A. There’s lots of playing around and improvisation during the rehearsal process; it’s the most important part of the shoot for me. But when I say rehearsal, I’m not talking about rehearsing dialogue or scenes. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Usually we just dance the first week. We play, listen to music, and figure out how it is that we will perform the film in a physicalized way. What you see is that by the time we get on set everyone has physicalized their characters and removed all of the dialogue that was fat, that was not needed.
On the set, there’s actually no improvisation. It’s quite a rigid process. And when I say rigid, I’m not speaking in terms of shots, but in terms of going through three or four takes maximum for each scene in its entirety without stopping.
Q. This is your second collaboration with Sean Price Williams as a cinematographer. Could you speak to your working relationship and how you came up with the visual language for this film?
A. We worked together on Trigonometry and had already established a code, which is basically not talking very much about how we’d do it. We’re both really big on references and research, so we started by bringing all of our inspirations together. For about a year, we kept exchanging pictures, photos, and movies. We had decided from the very beginning that we would shoot on film, Super16 specifically. He also came to rehearsals — which is an incredible gift for a director — to get a sense of what was happening.
For Harvest, we walked the terrain together and our big decision was to follow the day. It was a great collaboration between our assistant director, Sean, our line producer, and me. We scheduled the shoot according to the movement of the Sun. We didn’t have a lot of light and only a very minimal kit, which we did not end up using most of the time. At night, we knew that we were going to light with torches and fire.
I love the way he works, because he’s very intuitive and I also work in a very intuitive way as well. We don’t have to chat; in fact, none of us really like to chat on set. It’s like a dance between us, the cast, and the light. When we start, we keep going for a couple of hours without stopping.
Q. What have you been listening to?
A. I’ve been listening to a lot of Rebetiko. Rebetiko is the Greek blues from the ‘20s and ‘30s. My husband, who was one of the composers and musicians on the soundtrack of the film, has been learning the bouzouki, which is a traditional Greek instrument. It’s been nonstop live bouzouki in our home, but also where we’ve been travelling.
We were touring the film in Armenia and Poland, and he brought the bouzouki with him. It’s nice to travel with an instrument, because wherever we are, he just brings it out and plays these incredibly sad mourning songs which are very fitting for Harvest since they’re all about dislocation, exile, mourning, longing, and missing.
Q. Who, or what, is the future of filmmaking?
A. The future of cinema is humans.
Q. What’s a piece of advice that you’ve never forgotten?
A. Be slow.
Q. How far back do you usually sit in a movie theater?
A. Usually the second row, in the middle; sometimes, the first row. It all depends on how big the theater is. But never behind the second row.
Q. What is the last film you saw and loved?
A. The Love That Remains by Hlynur Pálmason. I just saw it at New Horizons in Wrocław, Poland. I loved it. I felt this great sense of love for the place, for the land, and playfulness in the tone. I also felt the process because he had the story, but, at the same time, he was shooting for a long period of time by himself with a film camera.
It is one of the best films I have seen in the last years. I was deeply moved and just had so much fun with it, because it has a great sense of humor. It’s an unexpected humor thrust in the middle of this heavy story about a family trying to stick together.
Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?
A. I want to include the Harvest poster made by Midnight Sun’s poster brigade using exclusively paper, scissors, glue markers, xerox. Midnight Sun Film Festival was founded 40 years ago by brothers Aki and Mika Kaurismäki and their close friend film historian Peter Von Bagh.
