17 years of concerts, performances, provocative songs, revisitation of operas, and a sweet relationship with a sick sister, all enclosed in 73 minutes. It is Peaches Goes Bananas, a documentary on the feminist icon and Queer Peaches, known for his electroclash songs as Fuck the pain away and for his texts on gender identity. The film has been in the hall since March 19 thanks to Valtellina Distribuzione, and for the occasion we interviewed the director, Marie Losier, a documentary veteran specializing in film portraits of artists of all kinds, who after The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Cassandro, the Exotico! and Felix in Wonderland has reached his fourth feature film.
You followed Peaches for 17 years, during his concerts, his performances and also in private life. Where did you think you could stop with the shooting, and especially how did you manage to put all these years of material together in a film just over an hour?
Yes, I filmed it for 17 years, but not constantly, because in the meantime I was making other films; I also had budget limits, so the time needed was important. Time takes time and, at the same time, time creates a story. It is essential that time is a positive element of my portraits, because it is also a way to tell stories. At one point I realized that what I was recovering began to be repetitive, I had already concerts and enough interviews. It was a remarkable effort because 17 years are many, especially from the sound point of view, since the register always separately from the images. There were so many interviews, so many recordings, so many moments of life I had to listen, decipher, transcribe and then cut. The sound of 17 years ago was of very low quality. The recent one is better. So it was also very much about choosing based on the quality of the sound. Suri (the sister of Peaches, ndr), for example, had a lot of trouble talking and it was very difficult to understand what he said, so we had to make a collage based on energy, on the emotion of his voice. The assembly itself then took three months but not continuous because in the meantime I had other jobs. Taking time between one assembly session and the other, however, helps to build a movie. And by a strange coincidence, all my feature films are 72 minutes long, so when we stopped we saw it was 73 minutes long. I suppose it’s my number!
During your career, you have filmed many film portraits of musicians, composers, directors and artists. What drives you to realize them and what are the most important qualities you look for in your subjects?
The idea of portraits has been defined only recently. I never thought about what I was doing. I started very young, without studying cinema, making paintings, portraits and photographs of my friends. The first film I filmed was a portrait of Mike Kuchar and then George Kuchar in 2003, and it was like painting a painting, but using sound and movement, and with a touch almost to George Méliès. Without realizing it, a portrait led to another portrait, and then to another and another. Somehow they talk to each other, in the sense that some of the artists know each other and meet one while taking another. I never go to someone who’s meant to make him a portrait, it’s never a commission job. He was not with Cassandro, either with Genesis or Felix, and the meeting was never organized. Simply, I know a person and that person has a story to tell and share. Or it happens that I spend time with that person and since we are both artists – they make music, I film – and we need to create, we end up working together. That’s how it works, and that’s why it takes years: there’s no production behind, there are no deadlines. Your way crosses with that of another and this generates a spark that, in turn, generates a film, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.
Like the works of Peaches, this is a film about finding a connection with your body, about our relationship with it. How has this relationship evolved in your opinion over the years?
Since it is a film about the body, it is also a film about age, about being an artist and continuing to fight, to create. For me, more than about sex and things like that, it’s more than just a film about evolution over time, about how the body ages, and what I find so beautiful about Peaches is that she doesn’t care to get older. It always has the same energy, continues to rise on stage, to find new connections and to experiment. For me this is the key to being an artist: trying to maintain a relationship with your audience and experiment with time. It is a political act, of resistance, but also a beautiful act of life. That kind of energy is what stimulates me, but it is also something I question. Because over time, of course, I’m tired. It is difficult to sleep on the ground during a bus trip or something. But it is about being tenacious, and tenacity is nothing but perseverance. So go ahead and this keeps you young, keeps you creative.
Always turn with a Bolex 16 mm, so that the film becomes an integral part of your films. How did you realize this was the best way to turn them around, which was the most suitable style for you?
I learned how to make movies with that room, I used it since the first I did. It’s a magical feeling, the simple keeping it in my hand gave me a writing style right away, because it can’t record the sound. That is why I worked a lot on the sound and became very connected to it, to how it can portray a person and the surrounding environment. Using that room requires a lot of creativity. Some use watercolor, I use it. In the longer films there is actually a mix between my footage and archive videos, and maybe in the future the 16 mm will not work well on one of my next films, who knows. I don’t have a fetishism, but I’m very tied to writing style, to the brushstrokes of this room, because it has its own rhythm. And then you never see what you’re recovering, which makes everything electrical. It is created as a moment of energy, and I have never felt it using a digital room, also because with that you can turn endlessly. My instead allowed me to go to places where to resume was forbidden, because people had no idea that they were filming them. It is a non-intrusive tool and allows me to make a sort of tourné-monté, that is to mount while I turn. It’s like I dance with the character, and I could never do the same thing in digital.
You have a long career in documentaries and have participated in many of the most prestigious international festivals. How do you see the situation of the documentary genre today? Is he still healthy? I think in particular about distribution, since there are many films that struggle to get out of the festival bubble and get to a bigger audience.
That’s very true. Peaches Goes Bananas was in the movies only one week, and many people couldn’t see it. For so many films it’s the same thing, either they go to festivals or are television productions and end up on TV, which has never happened to me. Although I would have liked it, because you can afford to live differently and your films come to more people. But it is very difficult to make documentaries, because fiction films attract more people to cinema. The documentaries remain very little in the halls, so you have to run to see it, otherwise you can only recover it in a festival. It’s a constant battle. I continue to love documentaries, so I will always go see them. I have a big thirst. Sometimes, however, I irritate myself to go to festivals and see documentaries that seem more made for television, which have forgotten about cinema: making a documentary means creating a cinematographic object, means thinking about the use of the camera, the use of sound, the way to approach people and creativity. And I think the magic has been lost in this. I don’t want documentaries to be simply wise about specific topics, I think they can be poetic, more abstract and even political.
L’articolo Peaches Goes Bananas – Interview with director Marie Losier proviene da SentieriSelvaggi.
