New films by Josephine Decker @twofilmsbyjd - Tumblr Blog

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‘Deep Sleep’ dir Basma Alsharif 2014

‘Moon’s Pool’ dir Gunvor Nelson 1973

‘Footnotes to a House of Love’ dir Laida Lertxundi 2007

I’m just wondering why,

Why you don’t talk to me anymore,

Like you used to.

A Zine by Sorta Kinda Maybe Yeah

In the bathroom the girls come to purge. SHITPISSBLOODVOMIT.

Could I just be me and let you be ....

I do not know that we would be friends now ....

On being a black girl from the Midlands watching Butter on the Latch by Aduke King

I know Josephine Decker’s films will be described as dream-like but to me, they’re more permanent. Can’t everyone relate to the anxiety of not knowing whether they're coming or going? I couldn't get a foothold while watching Butter on the Latch but so often that's exactly the feeling I want. This, and the ability to both escape and relate. Maybe there haven’t been many bare portrayals of twenty-something women on screen, especially ones with women interacting with one another. Or maybe I am the twenty-something woman that's portrayed – self-involved, a little unaware.

In fact, there are easy comparisons that could be made with Decker and other young women filmmakers but this is the only line I’d draw between them; their age, gender and circumstance. Until we start to recognise the work of young women filmmakers in the same way we do men, these simple comparisons will continue to be made. Josephine Decker’s films don’t really remind me of the work of those women except for the universality of post teen/pre motherhood grappling with life.

In Butter on the Latch, Josephine Decker beautifully snips away at the veil that masks quarter life – a time when friendship is desperately important. Decker's depiction of the relationship Sarah and Isolde have is both conflicting and resonant. The switch between forgetfulness, selfishness, spitefulness and compassion, forgiveness and love is not only mirrored by the friends but is something that may be par for the course in any friendship. The two seem so close and then so distant and yet there isn’t need for a paint-by-numbers explanation. As a viewer you’re jolted wondering what’s dream and reality, the most disturbing point, being able to recognize, first hand, the actions of a self-involved twenty-something when a friend is crying out for help but you’re either unaware or uninterested.

I feel as if Decker is slyly indicating both how formative your twenties may be and how unimportant yours may be to another. When you’re discovering your own interests, identity, sexuality and testing your limits as a woman, there may be no space for you to be nurturing and caring. Butter on the Latch shows how expectations of female friendship can conflicts with personal pursuit. It is unsettling how relatable Sarah and Isolde’s friendship is.

On the surface, a film about two white girls going to a Balkan folk festival in the woods in California might not have much to resonate with a black girl from the Midlands but the predicament of not quite being told what to do with your life and having so much opportunity is universally overwhelming. When I tell people to watch Butter on the Latch, I hope they’ll realise why. It’s a twisted opportunity to reflect, to jump ahead and look at yourself, an interesting portrayal of female subjectivity.

Through her eyes

A letter to my daughter by Martin Scorcese

Dearest Francesca, I’m writing this letter to you about the future. I’m looking at it through the lens of my world. Through the lens of cinema, which has been at the center of that world. For the last few years, I’ve realized that the idea of cinema that I grew up with, that’s there in the movies I’ve been showing you since you were a child, and that was thriving when I started making pictures, is coming to a close. I’m not referring to the films that have already been made. I’m referring to the ones that are to come. I don’t mean to be despairing. I’m not writing these words in a spirit of defeat. On the contrary, I think the future is bright. We always knew that the movies were a business, and that the art of cinema was made possible because it aligned with business conditions. None of us who started in the 60s and 70s had any illusions on that front. We knew that we would have to work hard to protect what we loved. We also knew that we might have to go through some rough periods. And I suppose we realized, on some level, that we might face a time when every inconvenient or unpredictable element in the moviemaking process would be minimized, maybe even eliminated. The most unpredictable element of all? Cinema. And the people who make it. I don’t want to repeat what has been said and written by so many others before me, about all the changes in the business, and I’m heartened by the exceptions to the overall trend in moviemaking – Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, the Coen Brothers, James Gray and Paul Thomas Anderson are all managing to get pictures made, and Paul not only got The Master made in 70mm, he even got it shown that way in a few cities. Anyone who cares about cinema should be thankful. And I’m also moved by the artists who are continuing to get their pictures made all over the world, in France, in South Korea, in England, in Japan, in Africa. It’s getting harder all the time, but they’re getting the films done. But I don’t think I’m being pessimistic when I say that the art of cinema and the movie business are now at a crossroads. Audio-visual entertainment and what we know as cinema – moving pictures conceived by individuals – appear to be headed in different directions. In the future, you’ll probably see less and less of what we recognize as cinema on multiplex screens and more and more of it in smaller theaters, online, and, I suppose, in spaces and circumstances that I can’t predict. So why is the future so bright? Because for the very first time in the history of the art form, movies really can be made for very little money. This was unheard of when I was growing up, and extremely low budget movies have always been the exception rather than the rule. Now, it’s the reverse. You can get beautiful images with affordable cameras. You can record sound. You can edit and mix and color-correct at home. This has all come to pass. But with all the attention paid to the machinery of making movies and to the advances in technology that have led to this revolution in moviemaking, there is one important thing to remember: the tools don’t make the movie, you make the movie. It’s freeing to pick up a camera and start shooting and then put it together with Final Cut Pro. Making a movie – the one you need to make - is something else. There are no shortcuts. If John Cassavetes, my friend and mentor, were alive today, he would certainly be using all the equipment that’s available. But he would be saying the same things he always said – you have to be absolutely dedicated to the work, you have to give everything of yourself, and you have to protect the spark of connection that drove you to make the picture in the first place. You have to protect it with your life. In the past, because making movies was so expensive, we had to protect against exhaustion and compromise. In the future, you’ll have to steel yourself against something else: the temptation to go with the flow, and allow the movie to drift and float away. This isn’t just a matter of cinema. There are no shortcuts to anything. I’m not saying that everything has to be difficult. I’m saying that the voice that sparks you is your voice – that’s the inner light, as the Quakers put it. That’s you. That’s the truth. All my love, Dad

Decker’s Camera - a black queer female filmmaker’s perspective by Dionne Edwards

As a black queer female filmmaker I am always seeking to create work that presents a fresh perspective and pushes the cinematic form, having heard a lot about Josephine Decker’s two subversive films, Butter On The Latch and Thou Wast Mild And Lovely, I was surprised to find that the films were such a challenge for me to sit through and enjoy. I was even more surprised to find myself thinking about the films for quite some time after and questioning my own intentions as a storyteller - is Decker not pushing the form? Exactly how am I willing to push the form?

The two films were screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2014 and both share qualities in terms of mood and aesthetic. Decker’s first film Butter On The Latch was my favourite of the pair. The film set in a Bulgarian Camp is centred on Sarah who attempts to escape city life and reconnect with her best friend Isolde, but her attention is quickly diverted when she meets a tall and handsome dork, then the relationship between Sarah and Isolde disintegrates as Sarah is slowly filled with jealous and sexual fear. Decker’s scenes feel loose and improvised. Her visual language inventive and irrational, evoking the mental state of the characters in a way that is hard to articulate. In Butter, the camera work seems to verbalise Sarah’s paranoia and instability. Shots are handheld, shaky often out of focus. Frames are often dirtied and the subjects obscured. Decker also cuts whilst characters are in the middle of sentences. Ultimately you feel an intimacy and yet a distance from the characters, which makes the films feel both subjective and objective.

I really couldn’t get down with Decker’s second film Thou Wast Mild And Lovely, a Kentucky set film about a seasonal worker Akin who gets work on a farm ran by Jeremiah and his daughter Sarah. The film utilized the same bewildered and disoriented framing and echoed the feminine paranoia and erotic tension present in Butter. A dizzy horror narrative with interspersed still and serene shots of cows, plants and insects - yet there’s a feeling of dread, sex and death throughout. At times the camera focuses on Sarah’s crotch and later on Akin’s wife’s chest. There’s something of male gaze distorted and channelled through a queer gaze channelled through a female gaze. It’s hard to gauge what Decker is really trying to articulate with her gaze, but it certainly has made me think about my how my gaze as a black queer female and will next be approached in my own work.

Martin Scorsese, recently claimed that in the age of digital the way of old cinema made for the Odeons is fast becoming ancient history, he says it’s now time to take what you have and “make your own cinema and break open the form” – it seems this is exactly what Decker is doing, even if that is subconsciously. She as an artist untainted by conventional cinematic reference and is unafraid of using the camera in a way that seems to defy all sense of logic. Her films evoke a charge and a feeling, but they do not spoon-feed us. Decker’s camera is subversive. If anything, it makes sense to conclude that her films are both frustrating and freeing to watch.

As a trained filmmaker, a little more by the book in my tastes, I cannot say I’m not taking notes - or looking out for her next film.

I am unable to look away or hide from the images on screen, a visual essay by Isabel Moir

“Watching Decker’s work, I find that I am no longer safe as a passive viewer” by Isabel Moir

I read in an interview Decker talks about being a voyeur and how she ‘loves to watch women who were Sexy and Sensual’. This interview helped me understand Decker as a filmmaker and her approach to capturing women on camera. Decker films her female character unlike any other female director I have encountered. She adds multiple layers when asking who holds the gaze; female characters are often watched by men but when Decker is behind the lens she adds a further layer, making the question more complex'. In Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, Sarah’s character loves to be watched and be the object of sexual desire of those around her. The camera often lingers on her and films her in provocative poses; Sarah walks the fine line between being innocent and aggressive and raw. When we are first introduced to her she is covered in blood from playing with a dead chicken with her father, making this bloody thing appear to be playful and innocent.

Sarah is very comfortable in her skin and her sexuality, she is confident and naturally at ease with herself and with strangers. I feel uneasy watching a female character like Sarah as she reminds me of someone I know but what she presents is so far away from how I feel that it places a distance between us. In one scene, we see her lying in the grass in complete elation and abandon. It is beautifully shot, raw and unforgiving, and quite rare for a woman to be filmed in this condition. Although we see Sarah's state through the male character's eyes, this doesn’t take anything away from how personally liberated Sarah feels in this moment, her behaviour reflecting the wild untamed nature of her surroundings. Although she is desired by Akin and the men around her, they are also threatened by her presence. The men are unable to control her sexuality, just as they are not always able to control their environment.

In an interview, Decker described her films as ‘Films about seeing and witnessing and not necessarily being part of what is happening.’ I feel she lets us eavesdrop on intimate moments as if the characters do not know we are watching them, particularly in Butter on the Latch. However the world and the characters she creates do not allow the viewer to sit passively, but provoke and challenge us by creating characters who stare straight back at the camera and audience. Decker is very creative with her use of filming technique and often surprises the viewer with the movement of the camera. The way Decker films her characters makes them feel as though they are included in this game of creating an uncertain world of dreams or reality. In Butter on the Latch, we see the female characters stare back at us, whether that is with quick cutaway shots or the memorable prolonged scene of the group of women in the forest. In this forest scene, the woman are engaging with the audience and inviting us, welcoming us to this all female world they have created. However, there is an underlying feeling of uneasiness where I feel their gaze and the sense that I am being watched and I find that I am no longer safe as a passive viewer. Much like Decker’s work, I am unable to look away or hide from the images on screen.

View oughta know: Manish Agarwal pinballs between Butter on the Latch’s dizzying perspectives

Decker’s 2013 debut is something else again. Butter on the Latch operates on two distinct levels. There’s an easily graspable and often deeply pleasurable reality. This is the bucolic world of the Balkan song and dance camp that Sarah (Sarah Small) and Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence) have separately come to California to visit, full of verdant beauty and rhythmical, rapturous music. Delighted to run into each other, the city-dwelling friends reconnect through a series of frank and intimate conversations – notably Isolde’s wickedly funny recollection of her trip to a massage parlour back home in New York, and Sarah’s awestruck fireside reading of a dragon-gilded feminine folk tale.

Plum brandy by day and forest walks by night, their shared pastoral idyll is complicated by the presence of Steph (Charlie Hewson): a prettily blank-faced, banjo-strumming boy who catches Sarah’s eye while the two women are in the middle of an awkward discussion about Isolde’s relationship woes. As Sarah’s affair with him arcs from drum circle flirtation to a heady make-out session in the marshes, fissures start to form in her bond with Isolde. And so the picture’s other, remarkable layer is repeatedly triggered.

An insert of a strange witchy figure fractures the women’s drunken small hours ramble through the woods, which rapidly devolves into an argument. By dawn Isolde has become uncommunicative, only speaking when it suits her. Sarah slides into an alternate state of anxiety that’ll resonate with anyone who fears estrangement from a dear friend. Her isolation manifests itself onscreen as a slo-mo sequence involving Isolde, the aforementioned white-haired figure and similar dancing spectres. The viewer is sucked into a vortex of everyday terror, unable to discern what’s real and what’s the product of a distressed, understandably panic-stricken mind.

We’re initially exposed to this rupture in the pre-credits sequence, where a disturbing phone call causes the exposition-free narrative to collapse into Sarah’s psyche. It isn’t a case of POV. We’re not merely seeing what she sees, but rather experiencing what she experiences: a nerve-shredding montage of continuity gaps and audiovisual disorientation. “I’ve always been deeply influenced by my own dreams,” Decker told Sight & Sound recently. Her editing style in Butter on the Latch channels the inexorable logic of a nightmare, creating an extraordinarily rare and empathetic film that you feel as much as you watch.

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