The experimental “Daydreaming” is a collection of stream-of-consciousness visuals about a bored and anxious young office worker. We asked Gülfidan about the project’s origin story, the way she uses looseness and free association, and a recent film she loved…

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and used to go to the movies every Sunday with my dad. It was our ritual. Sometimes we’d see two films on the same day. I think it was somewhere along there, in my early teens, I thought I’d like to make my own films one day. I remember watching 400 Blows by Truffaut and feeling blown away. It had such a deep impact on me. I did a lot of theatre in high school; wrote and directed plays. In college, I studied in creative writing and took some film classes. After graduation, I started working at an online film distribution platform full-time. In my free time, I made some performance and music videos, and then moved onto making experimental and narrative films once I went freelance. When I look back, it feels like a deliberate and gradual process.

2) What’s the origin story here - what was the original inspiration, and what were some of the first steps to get it rolling?

Daydreaming was originally a short stream of consciousness essay I wrote for myself while I was at work. It started like this: “I kept daydreaming, because I read somewhere that it was good for me.” I was in my mid 20s and struggled with depression and anxiety. Writing seemed to help and felt like a brief escape, which brought comfort. In Daydreaming, I pictured myself in different places like Minnesota, even though I hadn’t (and still haven’t) been there, or a motel room eating a tuna sandwich (an image from Nabokov’s Lolita, which I was reading at the time), or my parents’ apartment, looking out at the sea (a memory from my childhood). In the midst of writing, I heard my boss speaking on the phone. He said, “We don’t carry anything sexual, and we stay away from violence,” which threw me off. I was like, what the hell is he talking about? I wrapped up the essay and forgot about it. Years later, I found the word document on one of my drives and I sent it to my friend, Bradley. He seemed to connect with it and encouraged me to make a movie out of it. So that’s how it started. I made a brief visual pitch deck, reached out to a cinematographer, went location scouting, and before I knew it, we were shooting. I had to fund it myself of course. Oh! And I taught myself how to make a brain prop from scratch, which was one of the most fun and rewarding aspects of the process for me.

3) I love the free association and looseness of the film. I’m curious how you developed the structure in the writing process, and did it end up feeling as you imagined it? Any last minute changes or edits that you feel strengthened the piece?

Thank you. I used the original essay as a blueprint and the associated images came along pretty naturally. Some images are quite literal, such as eating a tuna sandwich in a motel room or imagining an empty highway with streetlights and electric poles. Though I would say the majority of the images are looser or for the lack of a better word, made-up. For example, in the essay, the co-worker does ask the main character where she is to snap her out of her daydream, but the image of her being in a beauty pageant on TV is a visual interpretation of the text. The same can be said about the brain falling from the sky. It's clearly symbolic. I would say the film is a loose interpretation of the text but I stayed pretty loyal to the images I came up with during filming, so the final product did end up feeling like the way I imagined it. Since I edit for a living, sometimes I approach directing with an editor's eye and I'll see all the cuts in front of me while I'm filming. Some might say this is limiting, but it creates an all the more vivid experience for me. One thing that strengthened the edit last minute was putting all the close-ups of the brain falling later in the film. Originally, I intended to put those earlier, following their matching wide shots, but including them consecutively towards the end had a stronger effect and tied up the film nicely.

4) What’s a film you’ve seen, new or old, so far this year that you really loved and why?

I just saw The Souvenir by Joanna Hogg, and it blew my mind. I don't want to sound cheesy, but it was one of those films that felt more like an experience than a film. I felt like I was living it rather than watching it. It was super visceral and I felt like I was in the room with the characters. The only other time I felt this way was when I saw Love Streams by Cassavetes.

5) What’s next for you?

I made a short narrative film called Evening News last year, and I'm currently waiting to hear back from festivals. It's about three sisters spending an evening with their grandmother who has Alzheimer's disease. I'm also in early pre-production/fundraising stages for my next short, Chaotic Terrain, a sci-fi/fantasy set at an all-girls middle school on Mars. Last but not least, I'm writing a fantasy feature set in medieval times.

Contact Info:

IG and Twitter: @erengulfi