5 Questions with Artemis Shaw
An intimate documentary portrait by Artemis Shaw, “Safari Video” captures a mother and a daughter squabbling over the length of a home video edited together from footage of wild animals in Tanzania. We asked Shaw how the project began, what the biggest challenge was, and a recent film she’s loved…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
In middle school, my older brother got a hi-8 camera that I quickly claimed as my own. I mostly made TV spoofs, my magnum opus being the Metro Gurlz which I like to say was a satire of Peter Engel sitcoms but probably was just an imitation. I enlisted two friends from my all-girls school to act with me over a sleepover weekend, and because we knew no boys, the love interest, “Bobby,” was an unseen entity on the other end of our flip-phones.
This isn’t to say I’m one of those people who always wanted to be a filmmaker. It’s probably partly due to being a first-generation American and partly to being a woman, but pursuing an artistic career seemed both unviable and self-indulgent. It took many years, and a lot of art and film-adjacent jobs, to gain the confidence to admit I wanted to make my own work.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
My mother started losing her eyesight a few years ago, and made the bucket list-y request of going on safari. For months after, she kept asking me to make a “documentary” of the trip and insisting that it would get into a film festival. Obviously, I was angsty and resisted, like, “you don’t GET me, Mom!!!”
Infinite Football and Act of Killing both beautifully start difficult conversations by documenting their subjects watching. I knew my mother well enough to guess she would be hyper-critical of anything I made, and I realized I could make something about high vs. low art, documentary vs. video in an economic way.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the best, and the least?
Editing this film was hard. There’s about an hour of footage, so there was a lot of berating to cut down, and it’s tough to separate what’s funny because it’s your mom, and what’s funny objectively. I knew I had to film my mom secretly to make it work, so I also felt guilty, especially holding on vulnerable moments like the last one.
After the movie got into a festival, I had to tell my mom it existed, and get her blessing to screen it. The first time we watched it together, she laugh-cried all the way through; she kind of seemed too emotionally overwhelmed to process it. Then she immediately asked to see it again, and said it was good. That was the best part.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I just watched Joanna Hogg’s first feature Unrelated and was bowled over. First, I’m in love with her working process and restrained means, and how amazing the resulting performances are. It’s a process I really want to emulate for my next movie. Second, while I do not think representation is enough, I’m always struck by how moved I can still be by work by other female filmmakers with female protagonists.
5) What’s next for you?
I’m in post for two movies. The first is my thesis short, Real Talk, in which a woman goes on a talk show to confront a famous music producer, and he delivers the "perfect apology." It was a real family effort with my classmates at Tisch Grad Film, and I have high hopes people in the future will see the film’s “live studio audience” and spot many great filmmakers.
The second is a feature I produced directed by Prashanth Kamalakanthan. It’s a road movie starring Prashanth’s mom and Lucy Kaminsky that we shot on a teeny budget in North Carolina this summer. On that note, we’re still fundraising! You can learn more & make a tax-deductible donation here.
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Instagram: @artemoula