5 Questions with Kali Kahn
Photo by Natalia Molina
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I’ve always loved cinema, but my interest in it really took off during college. I studied philosophy and gender studies and one of the first courses I took was Queer Theory. The professor would assign films to watch and we would analyze them using the critical theories we were studying in class. That’s when I saw Y Tu Mamá También for the first time. As I watched it over and over, studying the themes of masculinity and queer temporality in the film, I became obsessed with the techniques and artistic devices that Cuarón and Lubezki were using: the intimate voiceover, the symbolic framing, the signature long-takes, everything. But even with a passion for film, I never considered making one. I didn’t have the educational background, the technical skills, or the connections. The whole process of producing a film seemed incredibly opaque to me and I didn’t have enough confidence in my ideas to attempt it. When a local film collective in Miami issued their biennial open call for film commissions in 2018, I applied with Fairchild and the project was greenlit by a panel of only women. Through the process of making the film, I was able to find a community of filmmakers in Miami whom I now collaborate with regularly. It has been a very special journey.
2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?
In creating Fairchild, my goal was to counter all of the one-dimensional representations of sexual trauma in the media that I had been exposed to growing up. Because these stories tended to only focus on a small, violent fraction of encounters and prioritize entertainment over nuance, they severely misled my friends and I as we were coming of age and trying to construct our worldview and figure out our boundaries. We didn’t have stories about the circumstances surrounding the violation, or the mundane moments leading up to it, or the psychological repercussions–only lurid depictions of the act itself, which none of our experiences conformed to. It was difficult to process our emotions within that limited frame of reference. To put it simply, I wanted to create an almanac of feelings that would have been useful to my friends and I when we were younger and struggling to grasp the nebulous concept of consent. I made the film with the intention of showing trauma as an intrinsically valid reality worth depicting, rather than an inconvenient afterthought.
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?
The biggest challenge that I faced was probably the insecurity that I felt as a first time director. Being thrown into the world of filmmaking, I didn’t know what a “martini shot” was, or how to block a scene, and I didn’t have the vocabulary to express myself to my crew members. I had to teach myself everything from budgeting to Director’s cues to Adobe Premiere. The learning curve was frustrating, but it ended up being my favorite part of making the film because it allowed me to develop a non-hierarchical practice, which I try to follow on all of my other sets. It allows the filmmaking process to feel like what it is: a humble collaboration instead of a singular voice.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I found Portrait of a Lady on Fire absolutely stunning. I love cinema for its ability to transcend language and Céline Sciamma’s tour de force does exactly that – the images in that film mercilessly launch you into a semantic void where feelings become slippery and deliciously feral. Portrait of a Lady demonstrates how effortless it is for a director to usher us to that point of truth when the film is a product of sincerity rather than hubris. That’s why great work usually comes from a place of personal experience.
5) What’s next for you?
My collaborator Claudia Rodriguez and I are in post-production right now on a music video for Miami’s favorite no-wave band Donzii. It’s a neo-futurist poolside performance turned surreal nightmare with a kitschy MTV Spring Break sensibility. I’m also in the process of developing a feature film about the psychological fallout between four teenage boys as they ride out a natural disaster together in the Miami suburbs.
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http://kalikahn.com
IG: @kaliyuga