Flickerfest / Ethnografilm Festival - The Muse of San Francisco
The San Francisco underground’s leading lady takes a starring role in art and in life.
Interview with Director Katrine Holmgren
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
Thank you! I came about making my film as a final project for my Masters degree. I had to do a character driven documentary film and began thinking about who could be an interesting subject. I had various ideas, but began to think about a curious woman I had met 6 years earlier in San Francisco while I was an exchange student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her name was Linda Martinez and she was a performer/actress in many student productions taught by the legendary underground film maker George Kuchar.
At the time Linda was around 73 years of age and often playing seductive, femme fatale characters and absolutely loving it. I remember meeting her in the school bathroom while she was putting on very exaggerated drag-style make up and her enthusiasm for becoming a new character really fascinated and inspired me at the time and I was intrigued to find out more about her. I got in touch with her about my idea of making a film about her and luckily she loved the idea.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
I think The Muse of San Francisco offers a unique insight into an underrepresented environment of San Francisco’s underground, whose films have inspired a lot of more well-known artists/filmmakers such as David Lynch and John Waters. Linda has been and still is a part of a larger history associated with this scene. She is an eccentric lady, who has had and still is living a fascinating life full of art, creativity and performing her way through life. I became very close to her during the two months of filming and so the film is both very honest, personal and definitely not boring at any moment!
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
I think we have a very defined idea of what a 79 -year of age person looks and acts like and this film offers an alternative to this stereotype in displaying a woman who has completely freed herself from conforming to any of these preconceptions. She doesn’t see herself as a ‘grandma’ type in relation to me, but instead a sister - I think this precisely describes how she thinks of herself.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
As my film is a documentary type film I didn’t have a script as such - it’s more reflexive. I certainly had an idea before going to San Francisco to meet Linda and start filming - I thought that I was going to make a more traditional documentary, but I had to change the idea a couple of weeks in due to the fact Linda was used to creating roles for fiction/art films, so she was behaving in quite a theatrical way - creating and performing as different characters for my film. So I decided that instead of trying to avoid this approach, I should make it a part of the subject and form of the film.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
I have received much positive feed back from all the screenings (Los Angeles, New York, London and Copenhagen) and was pleased to also win a couple of awards too. At L.A. Underground Film Festival it won the Best Picture Award, Best Documentary Short and Linda Martinez won a Lifetime Achievement in Acting Award. Also it won a Directors Choice Award at the Black Maria Festival Tour.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
I have been very pleased that the audience loved Linda and her free spirit as much as I do and that my ideas for the film have been understood well.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I am hoping to generate even more publicity around my film, maybe get it shown in a couple more places - and that if someone happens to be in Paris in April that they will stop by Ciné 13 Theatre and watch The Muse of San Francisco.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
Fortunately the film has already been shown a few places and so I’m no longer stressing about getting it shown, it would be fantastic though if someone was interested in distributing the film, to get it out to a wider audience.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Again I hope that it will challenge expectations as to what it means to be almost 80 years old and inspire people to think about the old but true cliché that life truly is what you make of it. Linda lives by this and even when life have thrown her curveballs she finds her own way of making them into positives – I really think a lot of us could lean from her playful and uplifting attitude towards life.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
To what extent are we all performers? I think this is a key question to pick out. Rather than hiding performance-based aspects to the filmmaking process, this film tries to uncover how documentaries are often performed, events staged or re-enacted. I think this is also a relevant debate in relation to social media and how many of us use it to portray and perform ourselves and our lives.
Would you like to add anything else?
I just want to encourage everyone with a (film) project in mind that they feel strongly about to go out and do it. Sometimes it seems unrealistic from the start that everything will fall into place, but if you are passionate enough and willing to take some risks, the outcome is so rewarding. I think that is the most important thing, especially if you are a DIY filmmaker, to be passionate and excited about what you are doing, and to pursue it regardless of budget concerns.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
I’m currently working on a collaboration, which will probably be shown in more of an art context with an artist called Sam Derounian who also happens to be my partner, but it’s at a very early stage.
Interview: January 2018
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We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTIAQ+, scifi, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
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The Muse of San Francisco
The San Francisco underground’s leading lady takes a starring role in art and in life.
Length: 22min.
Director: Katrine Holmgren (also editor and producer of the film)
About the director: Katrine Holmgren b. 1984 Aarhus, Denmark, is a visual artist living and working in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London (MA Visual Anthropology), Glasgow School of Art (BA Fine Art Photography) and San Francisco Art Institute (BA New Genres).
Key cast: Linda Martinez, Dennis Dooley
Music by: Jamie Ward
Facebook: themuseofsanfrancisco
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month?
The Muse of San Francisco will next screen during Ethnografilm Festival at Ciné 13 Theatre, Paris April 3rd-7th.