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

I studied visual arts quite a long time, first in the suburbs of Paris, then in Nantes, and finally in Geneva. I liked moving to Switzerland which is so different, but keeping similar markers of language and culture. During studies, I reflected on films as generators of cultural derivatives. I was focused on the device itself. But I eventually started to make a first one, with the actors, the «cut», the planning. 

2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?

I worked as a ground agent for EasyJet for 3 years. My job was to go on the tarmac with a yellow vest, wait for planes to land in the night, or to scan 180 passengers at 7am. It was a student job with flexible working hours, though exhausting. For many obvious reasons, the airport was a special universe. When I quit this job, I wanted to make something out of it, and I thought of a film project. I interviewed a dozen of former colleagues about their own perception of the airport, their job, their emotional work. From these written interviews, I wrote the scenes of The escape, and set the scenery of a deserted airport with only three agents remaining.

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the most, and the least?

Maybe to shoot everything we wanted. We shot on the airport field of Tempelhof in Berlin during my art residency there in early 2019, and we had some timed authorizations for shooting restricting possibilities to step back from a shot and think about it. Hopefully, I had on my side the best, Romain Rampillon who did the photography of the film and also helped me a lot with the « découpage ». 

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

I rarely endorse movies completely, but I’m interested in films where the work of adaptation (from a fact, history, or myth) puts both maker and viewer in a distanciation and a learning process. I enjoyed how J. Glazer transformed esthetically the story of  Under the Skin, for instance. More recently : Portrait de la jeune fille en feu by Celine Sciamma, in which I found the work of Claire Mathon very relevant; Nuestro Tiempo, bringing elements to a story depicted by the landscape temporality - like in Also Known As Jihadi by Eric Baudelaire. I also watched again the documentary Scuola Senza Fine by Adriana Monti, for the needs of a publication series adressing films, that I’m launching this year in Geneva with Clinamen editions ( Find here Issue 1: Entretiens pour un film).

5) What’s next for you?

I’m looking at future film projects, beside my sculptural/multidisciplinary studio practice. 

I’m trying to rethink my way of producing these films, to see whether my ideas would benefit better of a more mainstream cinema economy rather than the current support I can get from visual arts funds.

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www.camilledumond.com

IG: @dumondlcd