Interview with visionary Catalina Gutierrez
Welcome Catalina, we are very excited to have you today with us to discuss about your work.
Who is Catalina Gutierrez and how did the passion for filmmaking begin?
I grew up in Latin America. When I was nineteen, I traveled abroad to Mexico City. There, I visited the Museum of Anthropology and saw Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington’s paintings. At night, I would attend independent screenings and eventually watch Luis Buñuel’s films. The surrealist landscape opened a new window for me. Three years later, I returned to Mexico City with the purpose of studying traditional painting. During that time, I photographed colorful characters in the Zócalo and toured with a puppet company painting sets. On one of my trips to Xochimilco, I met a theater director from Ohio, Angeles Romero, who was working on a multimedia piece about poet and scholar Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Catholic nun from the 17th-century. She hired me to be her camera assistant and work on the storyboard. A week later, she handed me my first video camera and we began filming. Through this collaboration, I realized that I wanted to tell stories and moved to the United States to study film. I’ve lived in New York for the last two decades.
Can you tell us about your previous work? How did your background in photography and sociology influence your approach to storytelling in film?
When I studied Sociology, I was interested in understanding how power structures condition individual and social behavior. In class, we did some analysis based on our field research. When making a movie, we also study our characters and their environment. I see a close relationship between quantitative methods of investigation in anthropology and observational techniques in documentary filmmaking. A keen eye is inclined to engage in deep observation whether it is anthropology, film or painting. Our vision is enveloped by a world that it seeks to embody and transcend. Andrey Tarkovsky wrote that “The image is indivisible and elusive.” That infinite quality emerges in photographs as well as paintings. I am interested in the indexical quality of old film negatives. I think about the framing for a photograph similar to how I plan the composition of a painting. My experience with painting and photography brought me closer to installation and multimedia work. I began making movies through collaborations with other artists and performers. Today, I am still interested in experimental cinema that contains different languages, art disciplines and theater.
CONVERSATION ABOUT: OPHELIA
What inspired you to choose Shakespeare’s Ophelia as the focal point for your film, and how did you come up with the concept of connecting two women from different times through a painting?
I wanted to give Ophelia power through a narrative outside Shakespeare’s Hamlet. During my research, I discovered Elaine Showalter’s feminist essay on this subject. Showalter describes Ophelia as one of the most frequently illustrated and cited of Shakespeare’s heroines. Historically, there have been multiple representations of Ophelia. I wanted to bring some of them into the film to confront the validity of these narratives. There would be two women in the story. One from the past, Ophelia, and one in the present, Celeste, who become entangled. Their alliance becomes a form of liberation from the historical myth that associates femininity with madness.
Symbolism often plays a significant role in conveying deeper meanings. Can you share any symbolic choices you made in the film and the intended messages behind them?
Before I start working on a project, I look at books and paintings that bring me closer to the atmosphere that I want. I have been fascinated by paintings such as Island of the Death by Arnold Böclin, which is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The mystery and dream quality of these landscapes feels very cinematic to me. For the set design, we had paintings by John Everett Millais and a reproduction of “Hamlet and Ophelia” by Dante Rossetti. Also, I created an oil painting of Ophelia. While I was working on this painting, I was writing the script and scouting locations. The painting has two profiles side by side. One of Celeste on the foreground surrounded by flowers, as a reference from Hamlet’s novel, and one of Ophelia in the background. The ephemeral nature of Ophelia was somehow spectral and luminous to me. Metaphysical entities have a vivid nature in the representations by Symbolist painters from the 19th Century. In the film, Ophelia is a powerful, yet silent figure that remains invisible to the living.
Every film production faces challenges. What were some notable challenges you encountered during the making of ‘‘Ophelia’’and how did you overcome them?
We had two actresses: Rebecca Schall and Allison Plamondon. Allison is a Canadian dancer and choreographer. They are both familiar with my shooting style. We worked together for a couple of years. Rebecca was very involved in the production, but she was part of multiple plays when we were shooting Ophelia. First, we worked with the actresses on a film called “Second Light,” where we developed different aspects of both characters. For “Ophelia,” I wanted the actresses to look almost identical. When we were ready to do the dream scenes, we encountered some obstacles to convey the look from the storyboard. We had to change the framing to allow the characters to blend with the space in a way that felt natural and mysterious. Our art director, Eunji Jo, worked with me creating a particular look. We also looked for remote locations to evoke a spectral encounter between them.
The visual elements of a film often play a crucial role. Can you discuss the decisions behind the cinematography and set design in ‘‘Ophelia’’ and how they contributed to the overall atmosphere of the film?
I did not want to evoke a particular time or location. The image that came to me was of a house built in the 19th Century so we shot the film in an old neighborhood called Forest Hills in New York and Hackensack, New Jersey. In this house, the image of Ophelia would emerge on the painting. The portrait plays an important role in the film. I can think of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” where the painting is central to the narrative. I was looking for something of that nature. We used certain colors from the paintings to light the rooms’ atmosphere. Then rooms and objects have a blue tint that resembles the ghostly presence in the house. I am a big fan of surrealism and experimentation. During the shoot, we filmed the same scenes at different times and locations that we intended to match later in the editing. In order to achieve that, we had to pair certain shots in different settings. Sometimes, it would work better than planned, or not at all. I like this experimentation more than the predictability of making these changes in post-production. The image making on set is a subtle process where objects and characters change through a glimmer of light. There is poetry and mystery in images that express spiritual and universal notions.
How did you go about the process of translating Shakespeare’s character Ophelia into a contemporary context? What challenges and opportunities did you encounter during this adaptation?
Although the film was inspired by Shakespeare’s Ophelia, I wasn’t interested in an adaptation. I wanted to portray an archetype. This work explores some historical gendered representation of women in classical literature and painting and how we still carry many of these tropes. I am very interested in the work of Sally Potter and her film “Orlando.” In this film, Tilda Swinton plays characters from different genders and backgrounds throughout history. Time in history blends in this film in a unique way. Our notion of time can limit our experiences and understanding of life as a progressive chronological line of events. Films break away from that linear understanding of time. In “Ophelia,” time is blurry as in dreams. The line between death and life is very thin. There are no boundaries between dream and reality.
Can you give us a glimpse into any upcoming projects you’re working on? Are there specific themes or genres you are eager to explore in your future films?
I am interested in making a film about the life of Argentinian poet and diarist Alejandra Pizarnik. I began writing a series of vignettes inspired by Pizarnik’s diaries. Then I met actress Nicolle Marquez who lived in Argentina and was also interested in the project. We created an experimental piece called “Path to the Mirror’’ inspired by a poem by Pizarnik. This experimental piece combines video, multimedia and photography. Although it is inspired by Pizarnik’s life and poetry, the film is not a biopic.
How do you hope audiences will engage with ‘‘Ophelia’’ Are there specific emotions or thoughts you wish to evoke in viewers, and what do you ultimately want them to take away from the film?
Nothing in particular, really. I can’t anticipate the viewer’s experience. I think about the film, the story and the aesthetics. “Ophelia” is a meditation about the dissolution of the self as an individual identity. The twins represent a duel between two mythical parts of a single self.
This marks the conclusion of the interview featuring our esteemed artist, Catalina Gutierrez. Our community is growing steadily, with a continuous influx of skilled filmmakers and screenwriters joining us. Explore our other interviews, and consider scheduling one for yourself to showcase your creative endeavors.
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