Q&A WITH MASCHA SCHILINSKI
Berlin-based filmmaker Mascha Schilinski represents one of the more exciting new voices in German cinema. Sound of Falling — her second feature and first film made since graduating from the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy — made waves at last year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival for its inventive approach to storytelling and visual daring. Set in a rural farmhouse in Eastern Germany, Sound of Falling weaves multiple stories together to create a decades-spanning look at the lives of women in Germany.
Sound of Falling is now in theaters across the country.
Q. Sound of Falling is a film that’s very much rooted in place, particularly in the central farm where all of the action occurs. What was it about this location that inspired you to make this film?
A. I had a lot of subtle questions that I wanted to explore with my co-author Louise Peter; we were asking ourselves what is written into our bodies and what determines us long before we were even born? But, we didn’t know how to turn these questions into a film. Then, COVID hit, we escaped the city, we went to the countryside, and we found this farm.
This farm is very special because it’s been empty for 50 years. We found one photograph with three women in it. It was unusual for the time. It was a snapshot from the 1920s in which there were three maids who were looking directly into the camera. It touched us deeply because we were standing in the same spot as them. So we asked ourselves what we had in common; we could feel this simultaneity of time. The farm became a vessel for all these subtle questions that we wanted to explore, because we were interested in all these invisible things that were unnameable.
Q. How did you choose the four different periods featured in the film?
A. That was very pragmatic. This was my first film out of school, so we were very restricted budget-wise. While we thought about showing when the house was built, in 1904, it became clear to us that we couldn’t show this. So we started to think about the people living there for 10 years and that became our starting point. 1914 was the start of World War I, and then we decided to skip one, or even two, generations. The different inhabitants couldn’t overlap because we wanted to see what was in our bodies over time — what echoes, repetitions, traumas showed up. So then we decided the ‘40s, then the ‘80s, and the present time.
Q. There is a unique quality to how alive the cinematography feels in Sound of Falling, as it shifts between different textures and shades of light. What considerations went into planning the look of the film?
A. We wanted to shoot on film, because we were looking for this special kernel texture. I wanted this patina, this roughness, this material dirtiness because it was all about building layers for the women in the farm. Like curtains, veils in front of your memory. But, it was not possible because of the budget.
Because the film is about how memory works, and how memory and imagination flow into each other, Fabian Gamper, the DP, and I discussed how to create a stream of consciousness — a stream of images from all of the people who lived in this place. We wanted to create the feeling that they were all remembering at the same time, so that one memory gives way to another, as if all of the ancestors were dreaming at the same time.
We talked a lot about how the pictures that we see in the film are important, but how the pictures you don’t see are even more important. We were concerned with what is in the black box of memory. What can’t you reach anymore? The feeling, for example, that there are beloved ones who’ve passed away that you can’t remember the face of in your mind, even if you know their face very well.
We also wanted Fabian’s camera to be like a character. It’s like a ghost that goes from one time to another. It was like he was dancing with the actors. He has the gaze of a character from the future who is discovering what’s happening as he is shooting. We really wanted to explore something about time and how we, humans, really know nothing about time.
Q. You’ve stated that the American photographer Francesca Woodman was a major inspiration on this film. Were there any other figures that inspired its look and feel?
A. There were no film references. We worked with a lot of photographs from the region and historical material that we could find from the farm. We watched tons of found-footage from the different time-periods.
But Francesca Woodman was a big inspiration because I could find in her photographs this ghost-like illumination. I found it interesting that she committed suicide and she had already shown her own suicide in her photos. You could feel that her photos are all about the imagination of not being there anymore. I found this very interesting, because as we discovered the photograph of the three maids, we were confronted with our own mortality — our own melancholy about how we will not be here anymore.
Q. What’s the last film you saw and loved?
A. Unfortunately, I did not see the last film I loved in the cinema because I just gave birth to my son. But, I had this excellent viewing experience with my six-week-old child of The Girl with the Needle. I didn’t know that it was about killing babies and it was a really intense viewing experience. It was a stunning film.
Q. If you could shoot a film anywhere, where would you travel to?
A. I’m looking for a dystopian island that doesn’t exist for my next project. So, that’d be the place I’d love to go.
Q. What’s a project you’d like to make someday, however impossible it might seem now?
A. I would love to do something that’s the complete opposite from what I’ve done so far, like a dark version of James Bond or Batman.
Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?
A. Untitled (1976) by Francesca Woodman.
