A conversation between Emmanuelle Antille, Jean-Luc Manz and Franz Treichler

Jean-Luc Manz : The first thing I would like to ask you before we start is: why did you choose to bring us together today? Emmanuelle Antille : I’ll start with you, Franz, because it’s all linked to music. Especially the Young Gods’. In the band you’re the songwriter and also the lead singer. Franz Treichler : I am. E. A. : In fact, the Young Gods’ music has been a part of my life ever since your very first album, back in ’87. I was 16 when I listened to it for the first time, and it has accompanied me ever since. I was listening to it again only the other day and I was struck by the same strength, the same energy that had so completely overwhelmed me when I was a teenager. The only thing is, maybe, that today I’m better able to describe this energy, and to absorb it. There are several elements in your music : the melodies, the lyrics and the sounds. And they complement each other and become something tangible, build sceneries in which the listener is invited to dive. There exist very complex links between the lyrics and the sounds that underline the melodies, like sound effects. For example, on “Percussionne” one can hear breathing sounds. And on “Envoyé” gunshots, explosions. These elements, together with the rhythms, the melodies and the strength of your voice, turn into living tissue. It’s very tactile. Your music operates like a trigger, a catalyst that allows me to plunge deeper into myself and dig up feelings that I can then let free. I feel very close to this creative process. With you, Jean-Luc, it’s also linked to my teenage years, since we met when I was 18. I was just starting my artistic researches and we’ve followed the developments of each other’s works over all these years. You’ve often given me your opinion, and especially on this project that you’ve watched grow, as it were. We’ve also worked together. And our respective artworks have got one thing in common: everyday life, its details, tiny actions, repetitions, the tension or emotion that can arise from perfectly banal items. This conversation is a way of carrying on our exchange. J.-L. M. : Emmanuelle and I had a Young Gods afternoon the other day. F. T. : You did? E. A. : It was quite amazing listening to that first album because it’s… F. T. : Intense. E. A. : Very intense. Energetic and alive. Extremely powerful. F. T. : Indeed, it’s like raw material. At the time, it was also due to the fact that the technique of sampling was new, and people would only use it as additional flourish on their compositions. For us it was a revelation, a discovery, to see that it was possible to give a rhythm to illustrative things. That’s why it has remained one of my favorite albums to this day. E. A. : And the band’s image, too. For example, the CD cover, it’s still very up-to-date now. On one side the band’s name carved on stone, and on the other on a human torso, presumably with a cutter. F. T. : Yeah, it is raw. These are simple pictures, without any graphic design. E. A. : Your identity thus affirms itself in a very powerful and intuitive way. With regard to my current researches, this type of approach is a great source of inspiration. J.-L. M. : This cover is very close to what some young artists are doing at the moment. E. A. : Yeah, that’s funny. J.-L. M. : We were wondering how, at the time, you got the idea for this cover. Do you remember ?

1 / 8 F. T. : I wanted to avoid any graphic work by taking a picture directly, that would show something concrete. In this case, it happened to be stone and skin. Other times it was metal. I wanted to develop a whole series on the elements. The idea was to reveal a content via a single picture. Today I would have a different approach, maybe, but back then I wanted people to be drawn to the sheer simplicity of this cover. It was pure picture, full stop. If I could have avoided putting the band’s name on it, I would have left it blank. E. A. : What appeals to me most is your identity, going all the way with such strength. It works so well. F. T. : Yes, I guess it’s the basis of it all. A conjunction of individuals. I was bringing more from an artistic point of view, others from a technological one. That’s how the Young Gods began. But to go back to the texture of the sound, at the beginning we were talking about sound architecture because we were trying to work, as you just said, on visual and tactile impressions. We were making collages of sounds in order to create environments in which it would be possible to enter. E. A. : An engulfing space. F. T. : Yes, made up of several rooms, through which one could walk. E. A. : That’s really what one feels when listening to your music. J.-L. M. : About sound architecture, and about Angels Camp, the soundtrack is very important for me. There’s the music written by the band Honey For Petzi, the backgrounds, the characters’ voices and also sounds from nature getting mixed up in there. How did you feel all this ? F. T. : As soon as music is written for another medium than vinyl or CD, it’s there to support an image, to add emotions. It’s an approach that I’ve never attempted myself, but in Angels Camp it’s done in a very subtle way. The Honey For Petzis have really managed to develop an atmosphere. They did a great job. J.-L.M.: Emmanuelle, what’s behind this development of the sound? E. A. : Well, it all started when I first saw Honey For Petzi on stage. Completely by chance, I went to one of their concerts as I was writing the scenario for Angels Camp, and I immediately fell in love with their music. I knew at once that their melodies would be perfect for my stories. One month after the concert, I contacted them and asked to meet them. I presented my project and invited them to write the music for the whole movie. We talked about the scenario and the characters. I had shot next to nothing yet, but I described some of the scenes to them, like the one with the dead girl lying on the snow. The softness and the melancholy of these images. A few weeks later they sent me a proposal with eight original tracks. It was a ‘draft’. Then I started shooting. It was done on five different occasions, throughout the year. After each session, the images were edited according to the storyboard. And then we would think about the music, how it was to fit in so as to best build links and give a rhythm to the narrative. The Honey For Petzis would bring me new proposals, based on the original ones, which I would paste onto and coordinate with the images. We looked at what happened with the melodies and remixed, if necessary, to intensify the links between them and the images. This kind of work is very close to what the first cinema and radio sound-effects people were doing, and I like this idea a lot. One theme per character is developed throughout the movie, like a musical alter ego. The melodies become the characters’ souls. It was great to be working with the band over a whole year, to watch things take shape little by little. J.-L. M. : It is obvious that the movie functions at the level of the emotions, of the perceptions. Very often, it’s the music that brings us closer to the characters. One can feel the scope of your collaboration there.

2 / 8 E. A. : Collaboration was of three types, in fact, as far as the soundtrack is concerned. The first was with the band, as I’ve just explained. Our conversations, my suggestions and their proposals. There was real complicity between us. I was moved by their sensitivity. They got into the story and into the atmosphere of the movie at once. I felt that we were able to understand each other tacitly. They were able to render through their music all the emotions and sensations present in the images, and even beyond. Another instance of collaboration was with the movie-maker, Sandrine Normand. We worked together on the editing. She helped me with placing the sound with regard to the images. I learned a lot from her and it was fascinating. How to produce an emotion, stress a feeling. The third instance of collaboration was with the sound engineer, Alexander Miesch, who mixed and masterised the entire soundtrack. He balanced or intensified the different voice overs and the tensions between them. But to go back to the band, an important aspect of my collaboration with them was the relationship between their interpretation and the stream of images generated by the movie. They wanted to give their music a sort of raw energy. A bit like Neil Young did for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. F. T. : You mean they wanted to record live, with the images directly in front of them ? E. A. : Yes, exactly. After the proposals and the editing, they worked in a recording studio for nearly a month. They had a screen on which they could watch the movie. And they recorded their music. It’s the sound effects again, or like the beginnings of the cinema, when an orchestra would be playing in the room during the screening of a silent movie. This also gave me the idea that the band could play live in the pavilion during the three days of the opening at the Venice Biennale. F. T. : It makes sense, given that they also appear in the movie, between the episodes. E. A. : They do. As soon as we started working together, I asked Sami, Philippe and Christian whether I could film them playing on stage in a strip club. I chose the place to create a contrast with the rest of the movie, which is chiefly set outdoors, and also to bring a timeless element, a notion of show, euphoria. We shot several short scenes at the club, and integrated them as pauses between the four stories. It was also a way to give the band and their compositions the status of narrator. It reminds me of this text by Marguerite Duras, called La pluie d'été. It’s the story of a large family of migrants, in which nobody can read. But they all, parents, brothers, sisters, have a song. It comes from their mother and it’s their only root. Throughout the story, the mother sings that song, at home, in the neighborhood, in the village. And all the inhabitants of the region begin to sing it too, without knowing where it comes from. Without remembering that they’ve heard it at all. The melody invades their heads and their homes. It dwells in the air they breathe. I like this story a lot. That a melody should be alive within a person, and define that person at the same time. That’s what we tried to do. That the characters should each appropriate a melody, and the viewers, too. J.-L. M. : Speaking of the viewers, how are you going to present Angels Camp in the pavilion ? E. A. : What I like about exhibitions is to get the spectators to enter a tactile world through the lives and dreams of the characters. As soon as I started working on this project for the pavilion, I wanted my piece fiction to take over the place, so that the architecture would be given a memory, that of a whole region and of its inhabitants. The idea was that the viewers would be visiting not only a house, but also a story, a narrative. On the basis of the Angels Camp movie I imagined this double stroll the spectators would be able to take, that should allow them to perceive what’s behind the story, to get more perceptions and sensations out of it. There’s the idea of creating a memory, but also of a cognitive experience through deconstructing the fiction. So, to describe the exhibition in concrete terms, the visitors will walk into the pavilion and be greeted with a sound installation : music, natural sounds, and voice overs of the characters whispering their secrets. This installation will take up the

3 / 8 entrance and the whole patio. There will be cushions in the garden for the visitors to sit on and let themselves be taken away by the tales. In this way, the visitors will experience the narrative as sound first of all, before seeing the images. Then they will reach the main room, in which they will get a first taste of the images, via a large video installation with several projections. This approach will be very physical, tactile. They will be bathed in the Angels Camp atmosphere, entirely surrounded by the sceneries and characters. It’s a way of getting them inside the story. This video installation, called Into the purple circle, will focus on the meeting of all the characters, the point at which their destinies get tangled up together. Then there will be the corridor with pictures of the protagonists. A way to reveal more about them, to show their bond to nature. In the last room, turned into a small cinema, the movie itself will be shown and thus all the stories told. So the whole project includes a movie, installations, objects, pictures, music, as well as a novel I wrote which takes up the narrative and expands it. J.-L. M. : What I like about your work is that each element can stand on its own. E. A. : Yes, each element is independent of the others, but with the idea that taken all together they form a family. There is a will to give life to a world, to an imaginary place called Angels Camp. When I wrote the novel, called Angels Camp – First Songs, I wanted the story to have a life of its own, so that the readers would be able to get into it even if they hadn’t seen the movie. J.-L. M. : Did you have the project worked out in its entirety, down to its smallest details, from the very beginning or did you manage to leave some space for chance and improvisation? E. A. : This project, like all my previous projects in fact, is about discovering and experimenting. It was triggered by the desire to tell a story. When I started writing in August 2001 I only had the skeleton of an idea: to write a saga about a region and its inhabitants stretching over the four seasons of one year. There are four parts in the movie, four little scenarios that I developed as I went along. I was totally free to include new scenes or even new characters at any time. And that in fact happened in January when I met Arantxa, an amazing actress and dancer whom I enrolled for the second part of the movie. Her interpretation was so powerful and moving that I decided to have her appear again in the fourth part. I thus developed her character accordingly. The same happened with the two teenagers, Hanni and Marie-France, whose pony I was borrowing for a scene. I was told that they did mounted gymnastics, went to watch them and decided to give them a part. So it goes. Each project is entirely flexible and open to external stimulus. I always pay attention when I meet new people. Nothing is definite, I’m always seeking new experiences. And there are chain reactions. During the shootings we take pictures. Once developed they start forming a whole. I decide to pursue in this direction. Then I need to stage parts of the movie which I find particularly touching and strong. An installation begins to take shape. Nothing is set up by force. Everything comes from experimentation and from what is needed for the fiction to come to life. J.-L. M : Is this where you draw your energy from? This interest for what’s around you, your quest for novelty in each project ? E. A. : I just want to experience something new each time, to share even more with others and go beyond my own limits. It’s the life I chose. And this choice lies behind all my scenarios, behind the Angels Camp stories : to go beyond, to reach one’s dreams. In the movie the characters all feel more or less uncomfortable with the world they live in. So they decide to change their lives by defining their own codes and values. They settle on a wild beach as a community, as a new family. There’s one scene in which they all start barking like lunatics, heedless of what anybody may think. I love that moment. It’s liberating. And it reflects the way I work.

4 / 8 J.-L. M : What’s so extraordinary about you is this notion of a learning process. Paradoxically, one would think this would rhyme with vagueness of purpose, but in your case it leads you to greater control over your work. E. A. : I’ve learned a lot with this project. I had never worked with a cinema crew and so many actors. Or so many collaborators, in fact: nearly eighty people helped me and never before had I trusted others and my own intuitions that much. I really took the plunge. And that was a learning process in itself. For my first movies I had only worked with small crews – hardly crews at all! There was my boyfriend Marc and a few pals. Four or five people in all. It was very cozy. Until this project I was afraid that working with a greater number of people would make me lose this intimacy which gives such strength to the images. With Angels Camp I also got to test a new type of technical equipment, more complex and sophisticated. On my previous projects it had been important that the equipment be light, easy to move around, so as to give a documentary aspect to the work and stay close to the actors – for Angels Camp I wanted fantasy, a touch of magic in the images. We also shot a lot of scenes at night and we needed professional lighting, a generator and a very good camera. I’m very pleased with the result. The texture of the images reflects their contents : the kind of violence and mystery that one finds in fairy tales. I’m happy I took those risks. Each project is a new step for me. To make this movie there were about twenty of us working outdoors night and day. We would sleep in the family house I have over there. That’s what I’m always looking for : to experience strong unusual moments with people who are close to me, and to learn from them. F. T. : To be able to live your dreams, that’s a total luxury. Better than the actual process, maybe ? E. A. : There are two parts : first the experience, to do the work, to live the dream. Which in itself is already very rewarding. Then there is the presentation, or representation, of the dream. To create a bond with the viewers, to make them share the experience. To make it come to life. To communicate an emotion and offer thoughts on life. I like telling stories that move people, that are close to them. When I get a wonderful feedback, it’s great. I can tell myself that I’ve succeeded in getting the spectators to enter my world. I also discovered something with this film. Something very important, that goes beyond the shared experience. It was when I wrote and then shot the last scene, the one with the octopus. I wanted the movie to end on a cathartic moment. All the characters would get things off their chests and be seen for what they are. I thought of a night scene in which one of the characters discovers a dead octopus lying on the beach. He calls the others, who come running. They’re all excited and filled with wonder by the discovery. Tension builds. They start to play with the dead thing. It’s a new game for them. Then one of them wants to blow it up. He brings firecrackers and the game gets out of hand. Completely. Violence wins and the scene takes a tragic turn. F. T. : That’s linked to childhood, when one discovers that some things are irreversible, like death. E. A. : Yes. But I had a lot of doubts about that scene. It seemed all right on paper but I knew that it would be very difficult to stage, that a mere detail could turn it into something totally farcical or absurd. I was very anxious because it was the end of the movie, its conclusion, and I couldn’t afford to ruin it. Besides the sense of alienation in that scene, the strange fact of an octopus on the beach, the difficulty lay in showing the emotions building up, the feelings running amok. First excitement, fun, then letting off steam, cruelty and finally violence, powerlessness, despair. Each character had to show a deeply personal response to that violence. And that had to happen naturally and gradually throughout the scene. The actors’ performances had to be very complex, and the staging too. The knack for improvising was required. So 5 / 8 I was very anxious. I talked to the team and to the actors, arranged several rehearsals, and then we decided to give it a go. And I was astounded. To see that scene suddenly come to life. It was incredible. When I edited it, this impression became even more intense. I can’t describe the experience it was. That scene becoming real, as if it had always existed. What a shock! The actors were impressive. It’s in such moments that I know why writing and directing stories is so vital for me. J.-L. M. : What makes such a scene possible, I should think, is your own presence, and the way in which you direct the actors. E. A. : As I said, I function very intuitively. On this movie I worked with professional actors, but also with friends, like Celya and Dani, and relatives, like my mother, my aunt and my grandmother, who had never acted before. What I look for in a team is harmony, because that provides energy and makes productive interaction possible. It creates a sort of family spirit. The group has to be tight. Most of the time I write parts especially for the people who are going to play them, because they move me, because I like them and what they radiate. I try to bring out what touches me about them. And also to discover more about who they are. It’s intuition again, on a human level, and I take great risks with my casts. Mixing professionals and ‘non-actors’ often gives very powerful results. It makes the performances and the images extremely intense. I also want everybody to take part in the making of the movie. J.-L. M. : So your collaborators are more deeply involved in projects like yours than in normal movies? E. A. : Yeah, that’s for sure. J.-L. M. : It seems to me that usually the actors only realize what the movie is all about when they see the final version on screen. E. A. : I’m very interested in the actors’ opinions about their characters and in their suggestions, their interpretations. I like it when their personalities are blended with the roles they have to play. I leave them a lot of freedom to improvise, to surprise me. That’s nothing like usual movies, in which everything runs according to the storyboard. Of course I give my actors a scenario and I prepare an outline, but my main goal is to render emotions and to go beyond certain limits with the actors. It all depends on how much they’re ready to give. F. T. : One can feel that they are immersed in a particular atmosphere, experiencing something strong together, as you were saying. They don’t do one or two scenes and then go home. J.-L. M. : It seems to me that there are three key moments in the movie that are linked to the part you play: at the beginning, when your character appears in the underwood, in the headlights, then when you kill the cat, and then at the end when you vanish at the bottom of the lake. The scenes in which you appear are very powerful and help structure the story. E. A. : It’s quite paradoxical because in this movie I have a short part, with no lines to speak. My character is the most abstract one. It’s a sort of angel, a lost young woman, half real and half imaginary, who appears to the other protagonists in their dreams. She’s one of the landmarks in the story. You see her at the beginning of the movie, singing her song in the strip club. It’s about a girl waiting by a river for angels to come and fetch her. She’s going to die and is addressing her mother one last time. The story that’s told in that song is present throughout the movie, between the lines, like a kind of prophecy. It’s the same young woman in the picture hanging in the Woman with a Torch’s bedroom. And then the final scene where she dies and the prediction is fulfilled. I’d say this character functions like a catalyst and embodies the others’ torments and sense of despair.

6 / 8 J.-L.M. : Now that you’ve made this movie, which is much longer and more complex than any of your previous works, and which is a whole by itself, how do you perceive your video installation ? Is it as necessary as before ? Do you want to develop it further ? E. A. : What I’m interested in with a video installation is very different from what I look for when I make a movie. A movie is there to tell a story, which implies a certain time- frame, a chain of events, a structure of moments. It is a linear experience for the viewers. In an installation, the modes of perception are different and I always try to convey a direct emotion, some sort of physical impact. The spectators are surrounded by images. They can project themselves into them and get directly involved, let themselves be carried away by what they see. Sound is very important too, I try to create environments between reality and dreams, hypnotic spaces. It’s fascinating, a bit like writing music. I have a completely different outlook on film editing. I often include the same scene, shot from various angles, that can be seen simultaneously on several screens. The spectators become actors, they’re caught up in the scene. I use this type of work to try and understand narrative and emotional processes. In fact, I always work on a movie, a story, before setting up an installation. The latter always springs from the former. J.-L.M. . Could we imagine that the movie could suddenly overwhelm the installation ? In a reversal ? E. A. : It depends on the context. I think that in contemporary art installations are still one of the most powerful type of devices, because they allow for a more direct, immediate sharing of emotions with the spectators. A movie is a space unto itself, which requires a particular environment and takes up a certain amount of the viewers’ time. It’s better to show it in a movie theatre. But both things are possible. I personally don’t want to choose. I do what I feel is necessary and vital. J.-L. M. : What about your models, your references ? E. A. : They’re mostly cinematographic, musical and literary. In literature, I find Sound and Fury by Faulkner infinitely moving. It has been a trigger for Angels Camp. The story is conveyed through the eyes and words of various characters. Each part of the narrative yields another approach, a different view. Each character has his or her own truth, understanding of things. Many elements of the story belong to the characters proper and remain their secrets. I was interested in such a structure and it’s what informs my project. In the cinema I look to Antonioni, Fellini, Jarmusch, Cassavetes or Huston. The Misfits by John Huston has greatly influenced me. It’s one of the most mature movies I know : there is the magnificent psychological development of the characters, but also adventure and fantastic landscapes. Wild. There’s also Altman’s Short Cuts or Fellini’s Amarcord. It may seem very eclectic but I find strong connexions between these works. And Cassavetes, in another genre, cannot be overlooked. I think no other male director has ever described femininity so well. Female points of views and emotions are shown and felt like nowhere else. When I started making movies a few years back I immediately felt like talking about women and their feelings and I quickly noticed that it was something of a taboo, that some scenes I’d shot shocked people because most of the time in films the female parts are only foils to the masculine characters. Women usually exist in a men’s world. I wanted to break down that institution and give feminine perceptions a space of their own, without external references and without concessions. F. T.: That comes across very powerfully in the movie. J.-L.M. : Finally, could you tell us something about all the rituals in the movie, with blood, snow, earth, marks on bodies ? E. A. : I’ve always been fascinated by everyday life. The relationship, at once intimate and so banal, that one can have with people or things. The simple nature of everyday actions. I’ve always looked for a way to capture the notion of everyday life by

7 / 8 creating gaps, skids or repetitions, so as to give it a measure of poetry, of hardness or of depth. In my movies the characters are defined by their actions and by their physical interaction with the people around them. Very seldom by words, because I want their worlds to be delineated by what’s most intimate about them, by who they are deep down inside. Using words tends to be too descriptive, illustrative. My characters have an autonomy, dreams of their own, with which the viewers can identify but which ultimately remain theirs alone. In Angels Camp for example, there is this weird relationship between the two cabin girls. They have set up their own codes and modes of communication in order to survive: every day they wash up with snow in front of their cabins. They cut their palms and mix their blood with the earth. Those rituals, at once tender and cruel, help them strengthen themselves physically as well as psychologically. We all have an unusual sort of relationship with snow, or with the act of washing, but when the two are conflated there occurs a shift and the action takes on a very strong meaning. Another example is that of the Woman with a Torch, who lives locked up in her bedroom. She can’t go out so she has invented a whole imaginary world. She sits in the closet, plays with her clothes and hangs them in front of the window. The room is then bathed in the colors of the fabrics through which the light filters. I don’t want to explain or justify such moments in too many words. I think that it’s more powerful for the spectators to watch these things, that belong to the characters only, functioning freely. I don’t want to get into any schematizing of social interaction, or into judging or identifying with society. My characters are free, they’ve won their freedom and their role is to ‘pass it on’ to us. This makes me think of childhood a lot, of desacralising one’s actions, of a certain creativity. With regard to the rituals, nature and the settings of the movie are also important. They are mirrors reflecting the dreams, the psychology of the characters. The woods, the caves, the creek make up an architecture of the mind that shelters the characters’ intimacy. As one of them, Marie, says at the end of the movie: “Angels Camp is our bond. Angels Camp is our cry. The place where we buried our dreams, our soiled virginity, and all the lost things we’ll never again see.” J.-L.M. : Young Gods. That could be the title of one of your works, couldn’t it, Emmanuelle? E. A. : I must say it’s quite a name for a band ! Beautiful and ironical at the same time. F. T. : Indeed. What I like about this name is that people always respond to it. It’s a mirror. Angels Camp isn’t bad either.

This conversation took place in Lausanne on January 14th 2003.

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