{"id":14115,"date":"2011-08-12T02:15:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T09:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=14115"},"modified":"2011-08-20T12:30:45","modified_gmt":"2011-08-20T19:30:45","slug":"debra-granik-portrait-of-a-filmmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=14115","title":{"rendered":"Debra Granik: Portrait of a Filmmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Debra Granik - Tel Aviv Cinematheque, August 7, 2011\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAs an American filmmaker in the American filmmaking tradition it is very hard for me to leave a film without some kind of hope, and yet I was trained and taught by someone who comes from the Russian tradition and he can deal with the nihilism, he can deal with the protagonist dying at the end\u2026Obviously we don\u2019t want to be having a stamp that says \u2018Have a nice day\u2019 when it\u2019s not a nice day and at the same time I do want to believe someone demonstrating that kind of resolve in her life has a chance to build something,\u201d said independent filmmaker Debra Granik in a conversation with the audience after the screening of her film Winter\u2019s Bone<\/a>, sponsored by the Jerusalem Cinematheque Israel Film Archive in collaboration with the International Women\u2019s Film Festival, Israel and the U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

Granik was in Israel from August 2 \u2013 10, 2011 as part of a program to promote \u201cWomen in Film\u201d, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. In person, Granik expresses many of the qualities that have given her films \u2013 Down to the Bone (2004) and Winter\u2019s Bone (2010, based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell) – a distinctive look and feel. Unsparing in the open expression of her opinions, Granik speaks with a warm and relaxed manner, her strength of vision built on a foundation of meticulous observation. Although Winter\u2019s Bone follows Ree Dolly, a young girl living in excruciatingly difficult circumstances, through a quest that tests the limits of her endurance, one of the striking elements of the film is its beauty. A young girl\u2019s hands cutting potatoes into a frying pan, a tangle of branches against the sky, the sound of water; attuned to nuances, the beauty lies in the act of observing, the underlying belief that there is something worth getting to know.<\/p>\n

Screenings of Winter\u2019s Bone at the Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Holon Cinematheques were followed by Q & A sessions with the audience. Granik displayed unflagging energy throughout a week in Israel that included workshops for students at the Sam Spiegel School in Jerusalem and Minshar in Tel Aviv, a tour of the Ma\u2019aleh Film School in Jerusalem, travel to the West Bank to promote women in film and meetings with Israeli filmmakers, from high school students participating in a greenhouse program to industry professionals.<\/p>\n

In a meeting with Israeli filmmakers at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, moderated by Ruth Lev Ari, Granik first wanted to hear from each one about his or her background and interests in film, taking time to discuss their current projects. When Lev Ari informed Granik that many in the group had recently returned from Hollywood in the context of the Tel Aviv Los Angeles Partnership, Granik unhesitatingly launched into an extemporaneous speech, \u201cI operate exclusively outside the industry. I feel conflicted about the results\u2026 I remove myself from that. It\u2019s toxic, I feel suffocated. It ignores most of the country\u2026 This system exploits this mega product and sometimes the mega product doesn\u2019t have any soul in it. Sometimes it does, and I love it when a big film comes out that actually tries to talk about something\u2026But a lot of these romantic comedies that make one definition of what a beautiful woman looks like – look what we\u2019ve done, we\u2019ve made monsters! People that cut their face and rearrange it – what is this?! It makes me not want to cry, but leave the country\u2026In my lifetime I\u2019m so excited to see that a woman over forty can be filmed in the United States without her being a witch or a shrew or someone\u2019s grandmother. I love that they\u2019ve allowed some women to have wrinkles. I want to make films with only women over forty because do women become unmentionable after 40? There\u2019s a lot of censorship that comes out of the West Coast system that denies a lot of people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Lev Ari asked Granik to discuss her background and approach to film, Granik smiled, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve already kind of divulged my political leanings.\u201d Cutting through the the fa\u00e7ade of formality often found when famous (Winter\u2019s Bone won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at Sundance and received four Oscar nominations) directors address audiences, Granik\u2019s openness goes a long way towards explaining her success in eliciting the cooperation of such a closed community as the one depicted in Winter\u2019s Bone. Her honest presentation \u2013 this is who I am \u2013 lends credence to her expressed desire as a filmmaker: I\u2019d like to learn more about you.<\/p>\n

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Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly in Debra Granik's Winter's Bone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is a close connection between Granik\u2019s two feature films and documentary films, both in their close observation of real people, situations and environments, and in the way the film allows the story to reveal itself. Granik said that she is currently working on a documentary, which she describes as \u201ca portrait of a human being.\u201d Acknowledging that there is a risk in making a film in which, as she says, \u201cthere\u2019s no plot\u201d Granik\u2019s comments on the project perhaps contain the key to her raison d\u2019\u00eatre as a filmmaker, \u201cWill anyone care? Will anyone be interested? Will anyone have the patience to learn about the different aspects of this person? and yet it\u2019s visually so strong for me, his life and his visual world is different enough from mine that it taps into my essential pleasure of filmmaking which is: Oh my God, your life really is so different from mine! I was born on one path – middle class, Jewish American person on the East coast of the United States – that is one specific path. What happens if I go to the heartland, of this big, big country that I live in, and I\u2019m in the Bible Belt? And I don\u2019t know if this person is going to like me because I\u2019m a Jew or not and I don\u2019t know if am I going to be freaked out by their extreme Christianity\u2026What\u2019s going to happen when this person and I meet? But for whatever reasons, I like him. I like him very, very much and I care about his life \u2026 I guess that\u2019s my yearning, to see how many scenes in his life I can try to record and at the end of this collection of scenes you\u2019ll be introduced to someone that you\u2019ve gotten to meet or something about the way he tells his story will provokes you to think about something\u2026 so thinking or feeling, if we do that in a film, we\u2019re good. If we do both it\u2019s even better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, talking about the experience of making Winter\u2019s Bone, set in the Ozark Mountains, and filmed on location in people\u2019s homes, Granik said, \u201cIt\u2019s the house of a poor American in rural America, and the house is not attractive. The house is very small and there\u2019s things in the front yard. And it\u2019s very easy for a lot of Americans who live on the coast, a lot of Americans who have money, to drive by a house like this and use a really mean word and say: \u2018Oh God! White trash,\u2019 you know? Or they might say: \u2018God, how come those people can\u2019t clean up their yard? Are they lazy? Are they slobs?\u2019 There are so many negative assumptions, and I always say: What happens if you stop the car and you get out? What would happen if the girl or boy or woman inside that house would come out and we would get to know them? What would happen? What would you find? You would find many different houses, many different lives. There\u2019s a little bit of hope in the world, you stop in front of someone\u2019s house and the person is different than you thought. This story appealed to me, this girl who was different from what I thought, because when I read about her I could tell I cared about her. I cared because I care about anyone who is trying to survive\u2026 to protect a few small things, a house, a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Generous with her words, time and attention, there is much to learn from Granik\u2019s generosity of vision as a filmmaker and as a person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAs an American filmmaker in the American filmmaking tradition it is very hard for me to leave a film without some kind of hope, and yet I was trained and taught by someone who comes from the Russian tradition and he can deal with the nihilism, he can deal with the protagonist dying at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}