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Female Human Animal

Alonso Díaz de la Vega @diazdelavega1

A rarity, in the best possible sense, will be screened within the program of the 16th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). Female Human Animal (2018), by director Josh Appignanesi, is a documentary and fiction hybrid where Mexican novelist Chloe Aridjis plays herself while curating a retrospective of artist Leonora Carrington. In the process, a mysterious man appears and establishes a bond between them that suddenly turns to a persecution. We spoke with the film's director in order to delve into the themes and some of his aesthetic decisions, such as the use of a VHS camera. Read the complete interview below.

From the film’s title, you’re already dealing with femininity. What ideas about it drove you to make the film?

The title comes from one of Leonora Carrington's own essays, in which she refused to be confined to any one of those 3 definitions: Female, Human, Animal.  Her work is full of hybridity and refuses or complicates all categories, and I think Chloe Aridjis, the Mexican novelist and subject of our film, who knew Carrington when she was still alive, is also someone very concerned with hybridity.

Perhaps the most noticeable element in the film is the texture and quality of the images. Why did you decide to shoot it with a VHS camera?

VHS is the texture of our youth, of our nostalgia, and like all nostalgia it is romantic. The film is about Chloe, a Romantic, someone who says she is "perhaps born in the wrong century" about herself - so VHS was a way to give the whole fabric of this portrait a unique texture of nostalgia and lurid graininess that suits her inner life, the story. And it also helps with the integration of artworks (Carrington's paintings) with live action characters that I wanted to see as almost  "imaginary"; as if the work of art has come to life.

Overall the film seems to embrace exploration. Many of the actors on it are working as such for the first time, including the protagonist, Chloe Aridjis. What effect did this decision have on the film and the shooting process?

We shot piecemeal, over 2 years, a few days here, a few days there, no script at first, just looking at what happened in real situations but also fictionalising some elements of them. They're "real people" but playing an exaggerated version of themselves. And then seeing what resonances reality gave to the wider story we wanted to approach and writing or creating new elements to link everything together.  It's a surrealist approach to the practice of filmmaking - one you couldn't possibly do if you had a budget and some sort of commercial schedule - it was total freedom, totally liberating.  In the end, I wrote a script just to make sure the whole thing hung together and fill in certain gaps.  But as far as possible yes, the practice was one of exploration, the narrative was one of exploration. The whole point was to keep a space for indeterminacy - as the Chloe character says in the conclusion of the film itself.  "We have to keep a space for indeterminacy open" and I think in these very over-determined political times that's a crucial thing to do.

Another very important element is the blending of documentary and fiction. How did that help you reflect the film’s themes? On the other hand, both Aridjis and Leonora Carrington are inevitably linked to Mexico. Did Mexican culture and identity have an impact on the storytelling? Or perhaps you could tell us how it has influenced you as an artist

For me what's particularly Mexican about the film is its syncretism, its transitional quality of having both old world and new world, about a dialogue between old worlds and new worlds, a hybridity.

There’s footage in the film of Leonora Carrington saying that a woman has to own her soul, not give it to a man. In the times of #MeToo, do you believe that Carrington should become a sort of guiding light?

I think she herself might have resisted the notion of a guiding light. She led us, for sure, and lit up our lives, but she was incredibly suspicious of hagiography, of essentializing people, of closing things down in that way.  So the film wants both to rehabilitate her as a kind of proto-feminist icon and at the same time just try to normalise all of this as an intergenerational discussion between 2 generations of creative women, frustrated in some respects by the patriarchy but surviving it creatively. And that dialogue and creativity are key to this survival. It's not about becoming an authority, it's about dialogue and creativity and change.