Her, Grace
Some people are born into history. The rest of us have snapshots.
Interview with Director/Producer GRACE and KATRINA LOLICATO
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
In Australia, migrant and 'multicultural' stories tend to follow a predictable pattern. They are slow paced, linear and often, culminate with the migrant's increased happiness in the new homeland. Visual media is often used as evidence that the narrative is watertight, universal and ensures the story is read as nostalgic, banal or quaint. Audiences start to make the images fit their expectations.
We wanted to explore the possibility that technologies of storytelling might offer subtle disruptions to the expected.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
Because it gives you the confidence to make your own!
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
The film begins as the viewer might expect. But with time comes disjuncture. Homeland traditions can be seen reimagined on, and imbued into, the Australian landscape. Rather than laying to bare the obvious, we utilise editing techniques to visually depict moments of continuity and change.
Repetition of visual motifs such as pasta, the hills hoist, the camera, birthdays, ceremony and the embrace along with the audibility of our storyteller's breath hint at continuity through generations while also evoking a sense of the tension between the brevity of life and the enduring impact of death. The home archive is edited to evoke the experience of memory itself - fleeting, patchy and in 'bits and pieces'.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
This started out as an exercise in oral history. There was really no script before our interview with our storyteller started. Our challenge was to try to weave together moments of really familiar and familial history into something that a general audience could recognise as a story.
Working with our Dad as the storyteller, it at times became difficult to recognise the difference between creating space for the unsaid and just leaving the audience out of the conversation. So time away from editing between attempts really helped to create enough distance to (hopefully) strike a balance.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
So far, the feedback has been fairly consistently polarised.
There are those who 'get it' and there are those who want to make it fit more neatly and evenly paced into the usual narrative. We have found that some filmmakers tend to want to enhance the nostalgic aesthetic, we guess, in a bid to get the audience to connect to the characters. But connection to our storyteller was not really the goal. We have had editors want to add sad and quaint 'ethnic' sounding music, slow down the pace of the editing and smooth over our storyteller's speech pattern. We think the goal is to make the story more recognisable as a 'multicultural' story. To put it neatly in that pocket. Maybe the aim is to use nostalgia as a hook.
Researchers and artists working within the multicultural art framework as well as general 'CALD' audiences tend to better understand that we don't really need you to connect to this story in particular, but to instead think about those themes - mortality, the notion of agency, the brevity of life, continuity and change within families through time. They will more readily sense that we are asking them to think through what constitutes a 'normal life'. They are more likely to see that this isn't a story about a boy meeting the queen, but instead about the contrast between the promise of 'a better life' and the reality of carving one out for yourself. Audiences who deal with being represented as 'multicultural' or CALD and who are frustrated by the usual suitcase-to-integration narrative see it as a subtle undermining of the grand narrative through the use of the personal.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
It surprised us in that we assumed the feedback would be reversed: We assumed filmy types would be more likely to dig our approach and general audiences and academics would be more confronted by it.
From a critical perspective, it's made more obvious just how steadfast the 'multicultural' approach to storytelling is.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
We want to contribute to that discussion about what defines innovation. Is it fancy effects that make the ordinary look more extraordinary? Is it offering an exceptional story that counters but might also strengthen the definition of 'ordinary'? Or is it possible to nudge boundaries by putting a slightly difference lens over the top of the familiar? In our case, we are attempting to represent the process of memory and storytelling itself, to see if that made a slight difference to how the migrant story might be received.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
Unlike most makers of films, this film was not intended for world domination! But if we want these stories to be celebrated beyond what they can demonstrate in terms of migrant contribution to the mainstream then the answer is all of the above! We need to start bending the boundaries between categories of people and their stories. We need to stop thinking about experience purely in terms of what is marketable. Remaining independent and low fi gives us an opportunity to experiment without risk. With no dollars at stake, as long as we can be in a conversation, even if it is amongst just a few like-minded people, it's still a win for us.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Her, Grace is a request for audiences and cultural producers alike to really explore the home archive as an archaeological resource. We want people to dig around their own material, ask a few of their own questions and think beyond the narrative to see where there might be opportunities for connection across our seemingly impossible-to-bridge social, cultural and economic differences. There is beauty in the losses and in exploring the everyday. Look closely. Beyond the nostalgia.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Ultimately, what we would like audiences to consider is, What can we learn from the homemade-banal that the made -for-the-masses-grand narrative might miss?
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
We are currently working on another experimental oral history which explores how we make collective memory in Australia. In this next film, we document our storyteller, Phillis' difficult relationship to the only home she ever knew - Ballarat Orphanage. Abuse, isolation and loss contrast sharply with Phillis' desire to have the Ballarat Orphanage site listed as a place of significance and for a memorial garden to be instated. Her grief is really palpable. We again use personal and lost and found archive and a single voice to piece together the story, in bits.
Interview: July 2022
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
Her, Grace
Length:
8:32
Director/Producer
GRACIE LOLICATO and KATRINA LOLICATO: Two oral historians with the same face and super similar voices investigate what it means to be Australian. Working across media and always in partnership with others, our podcasts, short films, zines and exhibitions seek to analyse some aspect of Australian culture, society and identity. Working together as 'ARC UP Australia' since 2012, the pair have presented their work across Melbourne's various public spaces, libraries, galleries, festivals and pubs.
Key cast:
Santo Lolicato; Grace; The Queen of England (all as themselves).
Looking for:
film festival directors
More info:
Where can I watch it now?
July 23rd Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Shorts Session 2. Cinema Nova 1.10pm