The boldly disorientating while still endearing, “Discontinuity” by director Lori Felker concerns the details that get lost in the edits of life. We asked Felker about the original inspiration, her interest in things that don’t make sense, and how she created the unique mix of tones…

1) To start, can you talk a bit about your background, and how you first got interested in movies?

I grew up watching a ton of TV, lots of MTV, re-runs, PBS, everything, and I loved it all, especially the Monkees and weird stuff like Lancelot Link.  I never thought it was an option for a job or even a hobby though, it seemed too magical and distant.  Eventually, through studying English literature and language in college, I found my way to film studies classes, and those lead me to see weirder and more inviting films (Peter Greenaway, George Romero, Maya Deren, German Expressionism and Jonas Mekas at the forefront), and after graduation I gave myself permission to take a film class at Pittsburgh Filmmakers to see if this whole filmmaking thing would work for me.  It clicked for me immediately.  I felt like I had a knack for reading images, investing myself in characters and all of the equipment wrangling and puzzle-building it took to make it all happen.  I think my brain was wired (by TV) for making moving images.

2) What about this project? What was the spark, and how did it get rolling?

The initial spark comes from teaching Continuity Editing to college students over and over again.  One day, after teaching the rules, I said something along the lines of: "But none of this really matters because at the end of the day, we're not stupid viewers and as humans we will ultimately follow emotion and character to make sense of a scene...and besides, real life makes no sense, so why should editing?"  I then got the idea to set up a simple situation (two people, 15 minutes of time, one room) in which their misunderstandings, emotional states, and awkward attempts at communicating, guide the way time is recorded and presented. At the time, I also had a cat and I would notice how this living being could interrupt the flow of my life.  I could be having a serious conversation with my partner, in which I'm totally confused and wrong, and my cat would saunter through the room like "whatever".  Her time was her own, beyond us, beyond something I could capture within the forced logic of the film system.  I put all of this together into a script and applied for grant money from Fandor.  I thought that if I didn't get the money, it was a bad idea and I would probably shelve it.  To my surprise they decided to fund it!  

3) There’s such a unique mix of naturalism and surrealism here. It’s kind of hard to imagine how you found this tone. How much of that tone came from the writing process vs the production vs the editing process?

First of all, thanks!  The mix and balance between the two is very important to me, but I think that's where I live.  It definitely starts in the writing and was something I tried to maintain all the way into editing and even in the music (by Fred Frith).  I guess I just think that weirdness, interruptions, emotional shifts, misunderstandings, and stupid ideas are normal, constant and everywhere. These are the reigns we have to hold onto.  It's a bumpy ride.  Most of the weirdest pieces in this film come from things that I've said or someone else has said to me.  Many people have asked me if this is a representation of my relationship with my partner, and it some ways it could be, but it's moreso that every character is me (sometimes the best of me and sometimes the worst).  I also love to purposefully squeeze in lines that function as 90 or 180 turns ("anyway...." "oh yeah, i forgot about this thing:_____") so that the film could feel like a pretty wild ride when really, nothing much happens in this 15 minute moment. 

4) The way you reveal information is also intriguing, and you kinda never know what’s real or not, the cats, or the little boy, etc. What was your interest in creating this kind of disorienting experience? And what were some techniques you employed to keep the audience on their toes?

Life really does feel surreal to me.  Or, I should say, what we call "surreal" always strikes me as familiar, at least in tone or sensation. Even if an emu didn't actually walk through my bedroom, so many things happen that feel like how it would feel if an emu walked into my bedroom (shameless Bunuel reference).  In Discontinuity, the emu is a ten year old, so it's actually more possible, more realistic than some classic surrealist gestures.  Cats are very real, and can scurry and hide quickly, especially if we're not paying attention.  An easy way to distract the audience long enough so that they miss something is just to cut away.  Anything could happen on the other side of the camera or during the edit.  

The audience never has control.  Their access to a 360 degree space and endless time is through a 2D, limited frame and the cut up little pieces that we provide. This feels like life to me, in that I could look away from a friend and they might make a face at me behind my back, or when my partner goes to work, I can only have a vague idea of what he's doing, he couldn't possibly recount it all to me when he gets home. There are so many disconnections and gaps in our lives and it's really fun to play with that using film structure.  

Someone once said that "every edit is an abyss".  I can't remember who said it (googling has not helped me find it), and I'm probably paraphrasing, but I love the idea of an endless chasm of time and energy occurring every time we use the little razor blade tool in our editing software.  What happens in that space?!

5) What’s next for you?

I shot another short  "living room film" (as I'm calling them) that I've slowly been editing.  Last year I finished a feature documentary (futurelanguagemovie.com) that I've been going around with, so that's been taking up a lot of my mental space. This summer, I'm going to hunker down and work on the two feature scripts I've been playing with for a little while, one that's also full of interruptions (and cats!) about a woman who works at a Public Access  TV station and the other is a fiction that takes place in a Standardized Patient Facility (where actors play fake patients for student doctors as a way to help them learn about bedside manner). 

Contact Info:

Website: http://www.felkercommalori.com/ 

Email: lorifelker@gmail.com

IG and Twitter: @FelkerCommaLori