Three girls are playing in a forest almost completely alone. They explore the terrain, investigate a pool, experiment with
art and encounter death. The universe Luz Olivares Capelle has managed to create in poetic fashion and deconstruct consistently
is both carefree and eerie. Forest of Echoes, a short film by this filmmaker – who has an Argentinian background and studied at both the Vienna Film Academy and
the Academy of Fine Arts – is the Austrian contribution to Future Frames, the platform for young filmmakers initiated by the European Film Promotion organisation that will present ten
young talents at the Karlovy Vary festival.
We are admitted to Forest of Echoes by means of a fast travelling sequence through the woods: a game of catch or a pursuit, playful or serious, dream or reality?
The film doesn't allow itself the time to engender doubt in the viewer gradually. Would it be correct to say that participating
in a film by Luz Olivares Capelle means entering the world of uncertainty from the very beginning?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: I regard the machinery of film as a tool which enables us to dismantle and rearrange the pseudo-stability that surrounds us
in our invented reality. In Forest of Echoes I was exploring the question of how the figure of a narrator can be split between the audience and the filmmaker. What do
I have to do as a filmmaker, from the very beginning, in order to draw the audience’s attention to this idea: “Look
out, here's a narrator who can't be trusted, here's a story that can't be trusted“. In this case you have to produce
the film yourself with your own perception.
The trees, the dark water of the pool – Forest of Echoes presents worlds which have an eerie quality particularly during
childhood and can generate a whole host of fantasies. What prompted you to enter this imaginative world of childhood, the
world of these three particular girls? How would you describe the fascination of the child’s world?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: The forest is an interesting place, because it exists throughout time – 100 years earlier or later, it's the same –
and it's a place which lies outside all locations or within all locations. The forest is a stage beyond time and space which
makes a great deal possible. The anthropologist Elisabeth von Samsonow has an interesting approach to young girls: she regards
girls as outsiders. A girl isn't yet a woman and isn't a man, so she breaks through the binary system. A girl has not yet
become anything and carries with her all the possibilities of becoming everything – while at the same time also being
inherently unstable. What I like about children, girls and boys, is that they haven't yet learned our adult games. They still
have one foot outside the geography of the adult world. In that sense, for me they represent anarchical elements which can
smash through our system.
The film contains a whole series of references to painting which are recreated by the girls in their games. Why did you employ
this clear and humorous reference to fine art?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: In my mind the film is criss-crossed by a large number of thematic vectors. The idea of children recreating great emotions
and solemn moments amused me. I didn't want the film to tip over into the dramatic, but I found it interesting to create moments
where it is possible to talk about death without drama, for example. It was a kind of de-dramatised drama. On top of this,
there is the idea of film as a time machine. If somebody stops moving and suddenly starts moving again, that corresponds to
exactly what film does. Film creates an image and then sets it in motion. These children stop the film: the narrative moves
forward. It's filmic self-reflection. The aspects of painting, statues and sculptures contain the condensed elements which
are processed by film on a different level: the meek inherit the earth, the Statue of Liberty, the Virgin Mary cradling the
dead body of Jesus, the redemption and the resurrection. The film considers the possibility of resurrection through a statue
which becomes alive. A large number of ideas intersect in this element, including concepts of the image. A being which dies
becomes an image. The body is no longer there, as flesh, but an image appears in everybody’s minds. Whoever dies ceases
to move and becomes an image. And "becoming an image" is a powerful subject for me. One of the consequences of death is to
become an image in the minds of other people.
Forest of Echoes won the Thomas Pluch Screenplay Award for best short feature film. Your visual language is full of poetry and must be difficult
to put into words. How should we envisage the screenplay?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: I'm not an experienced scriptwriter. Forest of Echoes was the first screenplay written in the usual form. The forest, for example: I had decided that the opening sequence should
feature the forest, and I wanted to put the audience in the middle of the action immediately. It was necessary to find a forest
without green branches, with very clear vertical structures, so the young girl with the red dress and long hair would merge
with it. So I wanted that striped structure and a certain rhythm. That's how I approach the imagery. Other writers are very
concerned with the psychology, and that's how they approach the matter. I attended a large number of photography courses.
One of the tasks we were given was to photograph 10 objects in such a way that it told a story. In Forest of Echoes I confronted the question of how I could use objects like a forest, three girls, a drowned man, a pond, mud, dying, statues…
the question of how elements can create a space. How can 10 objects be arranged in a certain position so that suddenly everything
begins to resonate? It reminds me of a bicycle wheel with spokes: you have an epicenter, with images radiating outwards from
it, and other elements interact. You let them intersect with each other. The film doesn't create the narrative; the narrative
is the pretext necessary to create this central point, which is not identical with any single one of the objects but is the
point of intersection for all of them.
How did you find your three protagonists? To what extent did you work through the scenes together with them?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: The children brought with them openness and pleasure in experimentation. The willingness to transform yourself is the most
important quality for an actor. With the children the point was also to play, in the most naive meaning of that word. Filming
was very tiring for the children: sometimes it was hot, sometimes cold, sometimes there were too many gnats, sometimes it
took a very long time. They were dedicated in the same way great professional actors are. Finding them was a long process.
I distributed over 1000 flyers, visited schools for three weeks and invited children aged between 6 and 12 to audition. Throughout
the whole process I set myself one rule: I would spend at least half an hour on each child, so I could observe what the child
was bringing along. And that really turned out to be valuable. One of the girls couldn’t say a word at first. But when
I suggested she should think of the camera as her best friend, suddenly something changed inside her. It was a kind of revelation.
On the other hand, there are children who walk into the room and you know immediately that the chemistry will work. When we
had settled on the three girls my task was to find out what kind of actors they were. Each of them needed a different kind
of instruction. I've learned so much from them for my future work, and now I've also written my diploma thesis about working
with children on a film set.
There are childlike gestures like dividing chewing gum, and then a cut takes us to worms in a soil-covered hand. Constantly
edging the viewer out of his comfort zone seems to be a direct reference to your teacher Michael Haneke. How strongly did
he influence you? Where do you feel you found other sources of inspiration?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: Michael Haneke has definitely been an important companion during my development, also because he is so experienced and always
has a very critical attitude towards the medium of film and the task of making films. There are many people who have provided
extremely important impulses for me, some from the realm of theory. At the Academy of Fine Arts they included Andreas Spiegl,
Ruth Sonderegger, Elisabeth von Samsonow and then Gunter Damisch. At the Film Academy I would certainly also mention Kathrin
Resetarits, who plays the mother in the film. She is a very self-reflective person who constantly questions the process of
filmmaking. When I go back to the history of film I can point to a large number of encounters. I'm thinking of Eisenstein,
who said that the world in its totality should be shattered by the "chisel of the lens". I find approaches like this very
interesting. Luis Buñuel has such a fundamental mistrust of our social games and lies. I would also mention at this point
Björk and her way of producing music in terms of sound, or Pina Bausch with her choreography. As far as literature is concerned,
I regard Jorge Luis Borges as a great thinker. You find yourself at the intersection of so many vectors and people.
You come from Argentina originally and began to study film there. Can you distinguish between the Latin American and the Austrian
influences in your work?
LUZ OLIVARES CAPELLE: I regard my film studies in Buenos Aires as more a kind of technical training, a process of becoming aware of positions on
the set and the creation of a film as a technical object – a bit like baking a cake. To some extent making a film is
always like baking cakes: you mix various ingredients, make something from it, and everybody perceives the taste in a different
way. It was only in Vienna that the door was opened for me to make films myself. That had a lot to do with my studies at the
Academy of Fine Arts. Working in a studio with colleagues – we constructed installations from paper and various objects
– enabled me to find a way of making things I hadn't developed previously. I've always drawn and painted, but film is
a different world for me. The fact that I studied art and film at two places here and was able to learn from so many people
brought the two things together. You're always in a kind of balancing act involving losing yourself and finding yourself,
no matter which medium you use to express yourself. I definitely found access to art here. That doesn't mean my life in South
America had no fundamental influence on me, but it was definitely here that I learned to activate this influence in order
to produce artistic works.
Interview: Karin Schiefer
June 2016
Translation: Charles Osborne
