Film
Lisa Gornick - filmmaker
Still from Tick Tock Lullaby GB 2007Lisa Gornick is the only out lesbian filmmaker in the UK who has been consistently making feature films dealing with lesbian life experiences. Her work goes beyond the coming out stories and deals with the complex and contradictory feelings women have for each when sustaining long term lesbian relationships.
You started out as a stand up and actress why the move behind the camera?
Before I got into performing, I was making things up with drawing and words. It was only by the good chance to find a great Saturday drama class that I began to perform too. As a teenager, I was shy and a little frustrated by things so the spontaneity of improvisation was such an amazing release.
I’d always loved going to the cinema more than the theatre in a way - even though I acted mainly on stage - so, I did some studying of video at Battersea adult institute and then went to Bristol University’s post graduate course to study filmmaking - but with the advent of digital filmmaking I really began to take risks and to think maybe I liked this move behind the camera.
You have a ‘just do it’ attitude to filmmaking and you have made 2 features using guerilla filmmaking tactics. Why this route and not the more formal one?
With the low cost of digital and the fact that I had a camera and a computer with editing software, I thought why wait for the green lights of external approval in making a film. I have to say I was feeling pretty depressed about things and it did seem the only was up, to quote Yazz, in terms of just starting to shoot a film.
I saw Festen and was amazed by the potential beauty of shooting on a Sony PD100 - the same camera I had and still have.
Acting to me seemed about waiting. I didn’t want that to happen to me again. I also realised that once I started and had people, like Campbell, who did camera in both films - give me not only practical help in terms of shooting but also encouragement in terms of the production of the film and getting on with it. I thought to go for it.
I never really explored the formal way because in the early days of making my films, I wanted to do it, not spend ages talking about what I was about to do. I’m now ready to attempt the pitch and I think now I am intrigued to explore the more formal route in terms of waiting at the red light for it to turn green in terms of getting funding.
How would you describe your filmmaking style?
In terms of Do I Love You? and Tick Tock Lullaby my two features I’d describe my filmmaking style as using film/comedy/performance to work out something that is troubling or worrying me. My first desire is not STORY. Everywhere I go that is the sacred filmmaking mantra - what is the story? For so so long, I used to get bored when people asked that. I’d make up a story just to please them with an answer and realised as I was speaking that it wasn’t working.
I’m more interested in using film to explore human dilemmas. Both my films so far have centred around questions around female sexuality - if I want to really give it a label which I know my instincts resist.
I would start by getting up early and writing dialogues around the subject. Then when I get hooked on various characters, I would begin to dream up scenarios and build a certain trajectory for them to follow. So I can’t totally rule out narrative elements.
When I felt I had enough dialogues, or more I was getting lonely, I decided to find the actors. I would say that my films tend to be performer focussed. I am more excited by the actors than I am by smooth and perfected camera moves or exquisite set design. It’s what comes naturally to me and I find it the most compelling part of the filmmaking process.
Where do you draw your influences from?
We are drawing influences all the time. The majority are from friends and family members who often remain unheralded in this type of question as filmmakers tend to trot out Chantal Akerman, Jane Campion, Dorothy Arzner, Jean Luc Godard, Woody Allen and John Cassavetes - all of whom I have watched over the years and been hooked into (as well as countless others).
So many other filmmakers, playwrights and writers have found their way into my pscyhe. You look at how they work and see if this fits with you. But they are the named ones. There are masses of influences from comments friends and family say. Or a picture in a gallery. Or something briefly seen on the internet or television. Or a moment in the street that influences me greatly.
Why do you do the risky thing of mining your personal life for your films?
I’m sure so much goes back to those early improvisation classes as a teenager. The sense of focus that I seemed to get when asked to improvise around my own experience was so intense that it stayed with me as a creative source.
I have always loved the honesty of the writer. The first person writing of cartoonists, authors and filmmakers. A lot of them were men, worrying about the women in their lives. I would still relate to them even though they were often skinny yet macho heterosexual men. A slight irritation as they described their antics was overcome by an intense wonder at their honesty.
I suppose the biggest risk is the fact that it seems to be reality. Once your own personal dilemmas have been routed through into a creative act/performance - they really aren’t objective realism. They are portraits not photographs. There is always a fictional coating on it.
Who is the intended audience for your work?
I don’t work in the way that funders and the market analysers say you should work - that is know who your audience is. If I said my audience was women from the age of 18 to 45 lets say. Then what about the 75 year old heterosexual couple that came to see Tick Tock Lullaby with Obama badges, or the sixteen year old Korean boys or the 22 year old men in Johannesburg who came up to me after my film.
I don’t like targetting audiences. Let people find you and relate to the film however they want to. I love it that teenage boys who are always fed guns and rushing and shouting want to see a group of thirty something women worrying about whether to be a mother or not.
What was the response to your last film Tick Tock Lullabuy?
The producer in me just wants to mention the good moments - those teenage boys who loved the film, the women that came up to me and said keep making films and the young girls who loved the honesty in the films.
There are retractors (don’t worry I hear you) - I presume some tend to worry about my organic process of filmmaking - it’s not a conventional STORY - with beautiful people doing beautiful things and being ecstatically happy about it. Or in terms of the lesbian characters in the film, they are rounded people, women who question things in their lives including their past and present feelings about men. Some lesbians are a bit disturbed by that, but it’s my honest expression. We are none of us perfect.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on two new features and also writing some episodic ideas. I soon will start talking about these on the web. The most I can say is that if anyone is interested come to my MySpace page, I’ll keep you hooked in with my new projects. It will be really lovely to have you there.
Links
Tick Tock Lullaby MySpace page
Valliant Doll
Valliant Doll YouTube
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