Usually, queer films depicting graphic or naturalistic sex scenes require a conversation that makes the shooting of the film safe. Activist-filmmaker Kami Chisholm, director of THE WELL, doesn’t feel a need to do that. Doing so could undermine the ideological intent behind the film in the first place. For example, there’s no need to go into the ways that the filmmaker “earned the trust” of the naked and vulnerable actor. More interesting is the way that the ideas are communicated through the plot and action of the story, which in this case presents a politically correct coupling of interracial women (asian Anna and caucasian Jane) having casual sex, but perhaps a non-politically correct aftermath. Chisholm moves the focus of the conversation away from the sex act by highlighting the discomfort inherent in the relation itself. In other words, there are other, perhaps more important conversations to be had here, not focusing on race or identity politics – though those are very important as well – but one focusing on that dirtiest of words, class.
Very often, queer films represent issues faced by “the other” but it’s rare when race and class are also discussed explicitly. I feel like this film is a fracture and a crack in that tradition.
Right now there is a lot of attention in the media about the lack of diversity amongst directors in the North American film industry. Much of that is focused on gender inequities. To a lesser degree, people are also looking at the lack of racial diversity amongst Hollywood as well as independent writers and directors. While I think these conversations are important in some ways, in others I think it misses the point. For me, the biggest problem with film and television is the almost exclusive representation of stories of white people. Mostly white men.
However, the problem of a lack of “diversity” in representation is not going to be solved by ensuring that more women – who are overwhelmingly likely to be white women – are able to write and direct. We need to do better, and part of that is ensuring that that diversity behind and in front of the camera also takes into consideration issues such as race, class, and ability in addition to gender.
There are now, indeed there have been since the invention of motion pictures, incredible opportunities to tell a wide variety of stories. The majority of people, even in North America, are not white men. For me, although I am not a person of color, I view it as utterly irresponsible, and quite frankly unabashedly racist, to only make films about white people (much less films and TV shows about wealthy white men). So for my filmmaking practice, I’ve made the decision to only tell stories, in both documentary and narrative forms, that center themes that challenge the white supremacist, racist, sexist, and ableist representational politics that characterizes the overwhelming majority of visual media production.
Can you talk about your decision behind representing the story in a frank and direct manner? The first line of the film is “Take your clothes off.”
As a queer, masculine-identified woman, I’m perpetually mystified and frustrated by representations of queer female/trans sexuality in films. While there are always notable exceptions, the stories told about queer women tend to recapitulate traditional,
homonormative gender and sexual roles as well as focus on romance over sex. In other words, more and more I see so-called queer films that look exactly like mainstream Hollywood heteronormative films. I find these films to be quite boring, not to mention pointless to watch or make. In this film, I wanted to strip all that away and emphasize the sex in queer sexuality, as well as tell the story of a relationship that eschews conventional notions of monogamous romance, gender identity, and sexual mores.
Usually, films depicting graphic or naturalistic sex scenes require assurances from the director to the audience that what they’re watching is not pornographic. You don’t offer that here; in fact a sex scene acts as a narrative centerpiece. Did you ever feel the need to tell the audience “don’t worry, this isn’t porn!”? How do you feel queer films ( for example Blue is the Warmer Color) have handled this give and take with the audience in the past?
I’ve been fascinated to hear debates from people who have seen the film about whether or not this film falls into the category of porn or not. For me, as a filmmaker, it is definitively not porn, but maybe that’s because I’m fairly certain if I ever do set out to make porn, it will look quite different than this project! That said, I like the uncomfortable tension that the film creates, where it’s not clear whether we are watching two people actually having sex or not (even some members of the crew were wondering as we were shooting!). But I think a lot of that tension comes from the fact that the scene is durational; as you mention, it doesn’t fade out quickly, returning to a romantic narrative. Nor does it involve quick cutting with lots of music to cue the viewer as to what they should be feeling while they are watching the scene.
My intention was to make a film that had an authentic depiction of the characters having sex, with authentic meaning that the way the characters interact would be recognizable to people in my community as involving the kinds of sex acts that they (or people they know) engage in. In many ways, THE WELL is a response to BLUE, which I saw not long before making this, and, like many other queer viewers, found to be a rather ridiculous depiction of queer female sexuality. But the problem with Blue, as far as I saw it, was not only how the characters interact and relate to each other, but how the film itself is shot and constructed. As such, I drew from the work of iconic queer and feminist directors in the construction of “The Well” in order to unsettle what we might understand as traditional/male heteronormative modes of spectatorship.
I’m interested in the mechanics of how you worked with actors in a setting that required a high emotional IQ. How did you measure which actors would work for the piece? What kind of prep work was involved, if any? What was the audition process like for you?
I did two rounds of auditions. First, I primarily auditioned actors I found from posting an ad on film casting websites. That did not work well. I initially offered one of the lead roles to a person who stopped returning my calls when I talked with her about what the film would look like! So I decided to go another, more “neorealist,” route and posted on social media sites frequented by queer, trans, and genderqueer people in my local community who I felt would have a better understanding of what I was trying to do, as well as be comfortable with the kind of sexual portrayal I wanted to create. From there, I narrowed the casting down to three great people, and I auditioned all of them together in different roles to see where there was the most chemistry.
For rehearsals, I worked collaboratively with the two actors I ultimately selected. It was crucial that they feel comfortable with each other and what we were doing, so we negotiated and crafted what the scene would look like together. Then I left the two of them alone together for a couple of hours to rehearse. After they worked out many of the details of the scene, we ran it through several times and I helped tweak the blocking and some of the elements, until I felt like it was working.
The film moves the focus of the conversation away from the sex act by highlighting the potential discomfort/alienation felt by the protagonist. What kind of conversations did you have with the actors about how to portray these differences ? Their performances were quite subtle.
There was actually a whole scene in the script, which we shot, that followed Anna’s arrival at Jane’s house. This scene was supposed to develop through dialogue the tensions, differences, and disconnects between them. But once in the editing room, I found the scene too didactic, and wound up feeling like it was also unnecessary because everything I wanted to say about their dynamic comes through in the way they interact in bed. So, there was a backstory that was developed that didn’t make the final cut, but perhaps was quite useful in terms of anchoring and developing the characters without using hardly any dialogue.
Tell us about your new projects.
Right now I have several features/long form films that are in varying stages of development and completion.
Pride Denied: Homonationalism and the Future of Queer Politics should be released in a few months. It is a documentary about the history of the emergence of LGBT pride events as a response to police violence, and how many of the larger pride events today have traded in this history of community focused-activism for a culture of partying and corporate sponsorships that excludes, as well as outright harms, many of the most precarious and marginalized queer, trans, and people of color who live in the neighborhoods taken over by these events.
I’m also in the early stages of production right now on a doc called Citizen, which explores the ways in which the regulation of citizenship and the enforcement of borders is used to deny many disparate groups of people access to basic human rights. From Indigenous sovereignty claims to migrant labor organizing to the fight to end immigrant detentions, Citizen traces sites of struggle against state structures that routinely restrict the freedom of movement, the right to self-determination, and access to fundamental survival needs (such as work and health care) for many across Canada and the US.
I’m also working on several shorts, as well as a hybrid fiction/doc feature that I’m adapting from my PhD dissertation about the cultural trauma of racism, so I’m not struggling for things to work on at the moment!
ENTER THE WELL HERE.
