Blackstar Film Festival 2018 - PIU PIU
A routine trip to the city turns into a surreal nightmare when a restless young woman tries to escape the confines of romance in order to find her superpower.
Interview with Writer/Director Naima Ramos-Chapman
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
PIU PIU was created to examine how confronting the injustices faced by women can help empower them. Although the story is deeply personal, while writing it developed into a piece about experiences had by all women.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
PIU PIU inhales the world’s most undervalued and misrepresented, and exhales the banal horrors of violence through their eyes, body and psyche. This film demonstrates the dormant yet eventually empowering truth: that no one is coming to save women, but redemption is there for us to take and define ourselves. No matter who you may be or what you may look like in this world, you play a role in these experiences. Watching this film means you have taken a stance to at least acknowledge them, and this recognition is just the first step in us moving closer to the harmony and justice necessary for women’s stability and survival.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
PIU PIU explores themes of escape, agency, alienation, diffused responsibility, retribution, and morality. Through the film’s framing and composition, dance choreography, and sound, as well as through the subversion of the damsel-in-distress tropes, we are immersed the protagonist’s continuous confrontations with violence which triggers her journey through each of these themes.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
Because of the tight budget, we had to go guerilla-style and steal a lot of shots on the street and on the train and hustle to make do with last minute locations all over Manhattan. It was an ambitious shoot but as a team we all made it work. After we shot it, there's always the edit room and since I write, direct and edit, I ended up with 3 different ways in to try to creatively get my intention across.
I always wanted PIU PIU to encapsulate tonally what it means to feel boxed in by a world dominated by hierarchical abuses despite having this perceived freedom of movement at your fingertips. Sometimes daily life feels that way to me. We wear these masks that say one thing but deep down we feel hemmed in by society. In the script, there were way more scenes that had to get cut for various reasons but I think in the end we got what we came for.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
So far, it's been great. I try to think of telling stories that feel very resonant to my experience that maybe doesn't get the treatment I think it deserves – stories that I believe will resonate with women in particular. Right now in my work, I am interested in convincing people that we should also worry about what that psychic trauma looks like, not just be moved when we see our (women’s) bodies mutilated on screen or on the news.
When we think of high mortality rates for women, post traumatic stress disorder, and stressors that compound overtime due to poverty, it's hard to visualize and discuss because it's not the sort of conflict you always readily see. But so much of what connects our lives to one another are about the unseen, the mundane, the normalized brutal parts of our existence…I think if we start to envision change in the landscape of our minds and spirits than what's manifested in reality has a better chance too.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
Sometimes the feedback has sort of highlighted that people will read into my films in a way that takes into account their own experiences – they participate and create other narratives because it has a more poetic vibe. You read a poem and it moves you and you're intrigued but you don't always know why so you make up some meaning to make sense of it, or kind of the way you wake up from a dream and try to retell it to a friend.
I always have very direct intentions when making a film but it's not always super clear for the audience what they are, which can be challenging, but in general I think it's for the best. I like to invite people who watch to have a sense of authorship too over the film, to participate in decoding it as a collective. It has a higher frequency that way.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I understand that part of We Are Moving Stories’ goal is to show new films that solve old problems. The story of PIU PIU is nothing short of an old, yet ongoing issue. Accompanied by its innovative elements assembled to create the dual psycho-surreal world of PIU PIU, it is the conversation that the world needs to have. It is a story about women, but not just for women. This story speaks to the young, the hard of hearing, and people of color. A story that embodies physical movement, but aims to create social movement as well.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
Oprah! Sike, a publicist would be great. Cast and crew have been delightful and right now we are still in post-production. Sound design has been a bear and I really want to get it right because it is so essential to the storytelling on a subjective level and it's taking longer than expected. We welcome support from people who believe in the film, and who want to help take it to the next level! Our Kickstarter launches August 7! Come PIU PIU with us!
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
The impact I want this film to exert is a disruption upon society’s silence and submission to male domination and its result in mental, physical, and even spiritual abuse. PIU PIU will be the mirror held up to the daily injustices and threats that have been devalued, ignored, and thus normalized.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
While writing PIU PIU, I asked myself, are we, as women, only to endure or evade the routinized machinations of patriarchy and domination politics, or is there another state of resistance that can guarantee a sustainable sense of freedom and spiritual, physical and sexual freedom?
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
At the moment, some of the team are working on HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness, airing August 3rd, and Production Coordinator, Natalie Clunis is working on The Sinner.
Intreview: August 2018
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, 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
PIU PIU
A routine trip to the city turns into a surreal nightmare when a restless young woman tries to escape the confines of romance in order to find her superpower.
Length: 7 minutes
Director: Naima Ramos-Chapman
Producer: Terence Nance (executive), Jason Hightower, and Natalie Clunis
Writer: Naima Ramos-Chapman
About the writer, director and producer:
NAIMA RAMOS-CHAPMAN makes movement with body, word, image, silence, sound, and technology, telling stories of transformation and understated bravery that stem from true events, and incorporate magical realism.
TERENCE NANCE is a New York based artist from Dallas, Texas. Best known for film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, Terence also makes music, installations, and friendships.
Key cast: Natalie Paul, Jermaine Small, Terence Nance, Trae Harris, Zoe Silverio-Charles, Cayden Campbell, and Santana Benitez
Looking for: Publicist, Sound Designer, and Supporters!
Facebook: piupiuthefilm
Twitter: @NaimaRamChap
Instagram: @piupiufilm
Funders: None yet! That's what we’re hoping to achieve soon.
Made in association with: MVMT FILMS
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? PIU PIU was selected to show at the Philadelphia Blackstar Film Festival! The screening took place at the International House Saturday, August 4th at 4:30pm.