Sundance 2022: Mahboobeh Kalaee
Mahboobeh Kalaee talks us through the making of her short film, The Fourth Wall, an animated family confined to a household kitchen. She tells us about taking over her own family’s kitchen for the shoot and which filmmakers inspire her.
Tell us a bit about your journey as a filmmaker so far – what motivated you to start making films?
I have to say a little bit about my background: my high school education was in the field of graphics, while I was very interested in literature, too. In my undergraduate studies, I studied industrial design, where I thought of projects that could be a medium for conveying lived experiences and the truth of people’s lives. After much brainstorming, I realized that cinema and filmmaking, especially experimental films, was exactly the medium I was looking for. Given my background in illustration and graphics, and my keen interest in literature and the form of the experimental view, I realized that the medium in which I can express myself is cinema. Like a potion, it has all my interests in it, and the most beautiful moments when I am busy with it, because it confronts me with my own truth.
What inspired you to make this short film?
After creating the minimal and experimental films that I did as a class activity at university, I was looking for a space where I could do deeper experiments in making mixed media films. I wanted to challenge myself. I was trying to look for an unknown space and discover it. This desire for a deep connection with work seems to me to come from my lived experience. I believe filmmakers make films similar to their way of life. At that time, I was thinking about the relationships between people in the family and their relationship with the home. Because there were issues in my family that I thought about on a daily basis. So more than anything else, what motivated me to make this film came from my desire to explore life.
What was the most exciting part of the whole filmmaking process for you?
The best moments were when I was solving the challenges of the film. Like the moment of coming out of a dark well! For me, the process of making a film is a process of going from whole to fraction. At first, the outline and general direction I had in mind were outlined, but creating it that way presented a lot of challenges. The simplest challenges were not having the right tools or not having a production team. I easily solved these challenges with creative alternatives and solutions that I designed. But the more difficult parts were deciding on the structure of the image and the formation of meaning due to time and space constraints. Because, at that time, I was making this film as my first professional project, and at the same time it was my graduation project, too.
Did you encounter any new challenges from making this film that you had not faced before?
This project was completely a challenge for me. I didn’t have enough tools, such as lighting tools, proper lenses and etc., so it made me constantly look for alternative solutions to make images, and this creative process and solving small and large equations gave me a lot of energy. In addition to finding the space I needed, I occupied the kitchen of the house we live in, and I constantly had to negotiate with my family during that time. That’s why the film process itself was an independent film that showed my experience in family relationships and negotiation!
But my biggest challenge was to create a highly hybrid image. I wanted to represent a world that exists perfectly, and that is on the fine line between the real world and the world of meaning. Because I think animation is not a medium for representing second-hand worlds, at least for me, it is a medium for showing my way of thinking, and the way of thinking is the same way I observe the world and this view is real as much as I am real. I must say animation, for me, is a dream that becomes real and I was trying to promote such thinking through my film. That’s why making this film was like being in a great film school for me!
What does it mean to you for your film to be a part of the 2022 Sundance Festival?
First of all, thank you to Sundance for their attention to my film. It was a great warmth and encouragement for me. It definitely means one thing to me: to continue the path I live in. Because I handled the distribution by myself, the correspondence with Sundance was a really exciting experience from the get-go! Very important and excellent films are made by top filmmakers around the world every year, but the fact that Sundance selected my first professional experience as one of the selected films in the animation category has given me such encouragement that it has healed the hardships and bitterness of this time. Sundance works very differently and seeks difference as well. Also, the wonderful programs, discipline, and the lovely atmosphere that it seeks to create are truly admirable.
Is there a current filmmaker out there whose style of work particularly excites you?
In general, works in which “thinking” is clearly visible are very valuable to me. I see this feature in the works of Paul Driessen, the famous Dutch animator, and also in the works of Gil Alkabetz. In terms of visual innovations, the works of Daisy Jacobs, a great British director, are my favorite. I also like the poetic features of Daria Kashcheeva’s works, and the enjoyable intelligence in Michael Frei’s works is admirable, too. There are so many artists where watching their works is like a classroom to me, like Paul Bush and Thomas Renoldner.
Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self at the very beginning of their creative journey?
I would tell them not to be afraid to experiment. Their focus on their life is seen in their works. So, it is best to live with all your being. Then I would invite them to observe the world. Especially those who are interested in animation. Because animation in the sense of moving things is the soul of the world. Observing ever-changing things will gives them the power to realize the value of cinema.
And finally, what sort of project would you like to undertake next?
I am currently working on an intercultural project that I am going to make during my residency in Japan. Because Japanese writing is full of mysteries to me and is an interesting way of visualizing content, I like working with it as filmmaking material. Also, I’m very interested in projects that are space-based and explored in place. That’s why I like traveling filmmaking. I believe that such a thing enriches the knowledge and experience of the filmmaker. I’m interested in projects that have a strong connection between the chosen techniques and the content. Clearly, this does not mean that I am not interested in storytelling. Instead, I am referring to a kind of storytelling that is cleverly blended with form and you will understand it intuitively and logically, because it was created through design thinking. A kind of experimental filmmaking based on intelligence that is full of design thinking and acquaints the audience with a beautiful and new form of worldview.
