{"id":27552,"date":"2013-09-23T11:30:11","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T18:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=27552"},"modified":"2013-09-26T22:44:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-27T05:44:49","slug":"haifa-international-film-festival-2013-future-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=27552","title":{"rendered":"Haifa International Film Festival 2013: Future Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lauduree<\/a>
Lauduree (Perla Haney-Jardine) in Future Weather by Jenny Deller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

13 year old Lauduree is already running her own experiment in an attempt to find ways to combat global warming. Living with her rather less grounded mother Tanya pretty much in the middle of nowhere, several miles from town, Lauduree is smart, independent, and determined. When Tanya takes off to pursue her dream of becoming make-up artist to the stars, Lauduree decides to go it alone. Not the wisest of choices, perhaps, but she is<\/em> just 13 years old. Enter her hard-as-nails hard-drinking Grandmother Greta, just as determined to do what\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

Jenny Deller\u2019s debut feature Future Weather<\/em> takes an honest look Lauduree (Perla Haney-Jardine) and Greta (Amy Madigan) as they cope with the disappointments and disasters in their lives, figuring out how to envision a future when everything seems to be falling apart. Imbued with warmth, humor and strong performances, it\u2019s an independent film that follows its own path all the way, much like the film\u2019s writer\/director Jenny Deller. Deller attended the film\u2019s Israeli premiere at the Haifa International Film Festival and talked with Midnight East about film-making, science and the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had kind of a non-traditional path into filmmaking,\u201d said Deller, \u201cI knew I wanted to make films pretty early on\u2026 but I didn\u2019t go to film school, I was in a liberal arts college when I decided I was interested in film so I luckily was able to design my own major there where I could incorporate film, because they didn\u2019t have a film major. I learned how to edit on the old fashioned flatbed editors which was kind of my gateway drug I think. Editing was like magic to me and it also pulled me into the story world completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jenny<\/a>
Jenny Deller\/Photo: Gustavo Hochman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pursuing an acting career in New York City after college, Deller made short films as well, always knowing that her \u201creal dream\u201d was to make a feature. It took seven years to make the dream a reality, the script for Future Weather<\/em> was first written in 2006. Although the film discusses environmental issues and global warming, it\u2019s very much about character and story, originating in Deller\u2019s \u201cdesire to see women depicted onscreen more truthfully and authentically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very daunting as a young woman to start out on that path because you\u2019re instantly faced by the fact that you\u2019re being judged by your appearance all the time and that you have a very short window in which to make it happen. Hollywood considers you an old woman by the time you\u2019re 40 – that\u2019s ridiculous! It creates a lot of pressure, and if you have some sense of truth in you and as an actor, most women do, that\u2019s why they go into it, you feel in your gut that that\u2019s not right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Future Weather<\/em> is Lauduree\u2019s story, but as it developed, Deller said, \u201cthis character Greta her grandmother came to be and I think it was kind of a rebellious impulse. She\u2019s in her 50s or 60s and she\u2019s strong and she\u2019s funny and she\u2019s not always likeable, she\u2019s not a cuddly grandma, and she\u2019s still sexy. I thought: that\u2019s an exciting part, that\u2019s something I don\u2019t get to see very often.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the process of working on the film and trying to raise the money for it, Deller made a very striking short in 2009 called Saving the Future<\/em><\/a>, reflecting the film’s themes.\u00a0When I noted that Lauduree (Perla) appears much younger in the short as compared to the film, Deller laughed, \u201cShe grew up! It was actually a kind of thing I try to embrace in film-making, this x factor. It could be with an actor, it could be with a location – something happens unexpectedly that you didn’t actually plan for but you have to embrace it and let it into your story rather than try to mold it. I met her in 2009 and we did the short and I realized she\u2019s fantastic! She was 12 at the time. We didn’t know when we\u2019d get the money, we thought we might even get it that summer\u2026and it took us really another year\u2026 It\u2019s such a blessing to capture a kid at the age that you write them. In many bigger Hollywood productions if you have a 13 year old they\u2019ll try to cast a 16 or 17 or 18 year old to play them. That kind of defeats the purpose of film which is about capturing something in the here and now, and we had that and I thought that\u2019s magic and let\u2019s go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lili<\/a>
Lili Taylor as a warm and supportive science teacher in Future Weather<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s rare to see the practice of science depicted in a film as such a part of everyday life, especially when the practitioner is a young girl. Deller drew on her own experiences to create a character with a love of science and nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to a math and science high school,\u201d she said, \u201cand it\u2019s a very unique high school, Illinois Math and Science Academy, it\u2019s run by the State of Illinois as a lab for math and science education. At the time I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, at the age of 14 or 15, and it seemed like an exciting place to learn and I wasn’t going to be labeled a nerd for liking to study\u2026 I realized it wasn’t quite my path and I really loved the arts, but I loved being there and soaking it all in and it was a place where I learned a lot of independence and I developed an appreciation for math and science. Lauduree could have had any interest I suppose, but I knew this character was connected to nature and environment and I just thought it would be interesting to see this young girl who\u2019s good at math and science. She\u2019s good at it she doesn’t apologize for it and she\u2019s too young to even be self-conscious about it or think twice about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe global warming component came in after I was envisioning her and I read an article in the New Yorker, this is before An Inconvenient Truth<\/em> came out and it wasn’t really talked very much at all in the US. I’ve always been drawn to environmental issues so after I real this article I was completely overcome with anxiety and anger and all of these emotions – why is nobody talking about this? Why is nobody doing anything about it? And realized this whole storm of emotions I was having is completely parallel to the character in my film who has just been abandoned and this light bulb went off: oh! And she\u2019s interested in biology and the environment, she would know about this, and then all these connections started to happen and I realized I have to do my homework and figure out an experiment that a 13 year old really might conceive of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I was writing and getting interested in this topic I realized how much science was being kind of vilified in the US as well by a lot of right wing groups, and began to see the film as a way to champion science as a discipline, not just for professionals, that we all can take part in and we all can have curiosity and portray science in a slightly different way [as a discipline] that requires imagination and creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing that I found interesting was this division, the wall that scientists are supposed to build up where they do experiments that are unbiased, they have no agenda, and somehow that means somehow that they\u2019re not allowed to be spokespeople or have political views, and science has been very politicized through this issue of global warming and I thought that\u2019s terrible, and so you have a scientist like James Hansen who was the head of NASA realizing \u2018I’ve seen the data, this is a serious issue and as an expert I\u2019m going to talk about it\u2019 but somehow then his position as an scientist is discredited because he\u2019s stepped into the realm of activism, and I think that\u2019s a really interesting gray area.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jenny<\/a>
Jenny Deller\/Photo: Gustavo Hochman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I couldn\u2019t resist asking Deller: What does the future mean to you?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh man\u2026 well the film in a lot of ways was a way for me to confront my own habits of anxiety and worrying about the future and in a way it allows me to kind of let go a bit\u2026and not fixate on it. We can\u2019t predict the future but I\u2019ll tell you \u2026 it\u2019s hard: on the one hand I see so many positive things, really through getting to take the film out there and meet kids and get people to talk about this topic of global warming, and I\u2019m encouraged by the work that a lot of people are doing in the fields of science and technology. I do think that science holds a lot of possibilities for us to maybe come up with some sort of work-around, do you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut on the other hand I get very discouraged because I think that our systems of power are so beyond people\u2019s control in a way and are so corrupt and so entrenched in a way of doing things that has nothing to do with problem-solving that I get discouraged about what the future holds in terms of how we\u2019ll be able to live in our habitat and live on this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

There will be a second screening of Future Weather<\/em> at the Haifa International Film Festival on Friday, September 27, 2013 at 19:30. Tickets and additional information may be found on the festival website.<\/a><\/p>\n

Future Weather<\/em> (USA, 2012, 100 min, English with Hebrew subtitles)
\nWritten and directed by Jenny Deller; producers: Jenny Deller, Kristin Fairweather; DP: Zak Mulligan; Editor: Shelby Siegel; Music: Eric Friedlander; Cast: Amy Madigan, Lili Taylor, Perla Haney-Jardine, William Sadler, Marin Ireland, Anubhav Jain.<\/p>\n

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13 year old Lauduree is already running her own experiment in an attempt to find ways to combat global warming. Living with her rather less grounded mother Tanya pretty much in the middle of nowhere, several miles from town, Lauduree is smart, independent, and determined. When Tanya takes off to pursue her dream of becoming […]<\/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-27552","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\/27552","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=27552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}