5 Questions with Sam Kahrar ("Salt Mom")
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I grew up in Newark, New Jersey living with my grandparents and mom who immigrated to the US from Medellin, Colombia in the late 1970’s. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, who worked professionally as a janitor, but in his time off was a very talented and prolific artist. He created a huge archive of films recorded onto VHS tapes from TV. He put a white sticker on the front of each tape and labeled what film or episodes were recorded. I found this to be extremely cool and generally speaking always enjoyed films and television.
I studied film at Pratt Institute and found my first editing sessions to be endlessly absorbing. I had always drawn and made collages growing up and I remember feeling really excited and overwhelmed by all the possibilities of editing.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
The film was originally conceived of as a narrative film called “A Problematic Picnic with Ants”. That script was inspired by a segment from a home movie in which me and my parents go on a picnic. I was really interested in the power dynamics at play in the footage and how my parents use the camera to provoke some sort of response from each other. I also was interested in how the act of filming prompted everyone to start performing for each other.
Before starting the film, I had mentored a 16-year old filmmaker at the organization Reel Works, which pairs young filmmakers with a mentor in the film industry. My mentee Elena was a very fun, smart, creative girl and we would often gossip about our respective relationship dramas together. Somehow this interest in home movie dynamics and my experience getting to know Elena morphed into a hybrid documentary, which followed Elena and her friends hanging out while leaning into the dynamics I was interested in from the home movie footage. I wanted to represent the ambivalent experience of straining to live up to the ideal of the teenage years and stance of ironic detachment one assumes in relationship to that hyperawareness.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
I did not have any sort of script for this film, which made the experience of shooting the film very enjoyable and the process of editing somewhat difficult. I knew I wanted to set up scenarios that felt like they were typical of teen movies and have my teen actors sort of inhabit and live out those set ups. Since the performers in the film are not actors, I felt like scripting anything out would be asking too much and would feel corny and weird. I wanted the performances to feel as authentic as possible and for it to be a “no pressure situation”. In the edit I became very fixated on figuring out a structure that retained the levity and freeform nature of shoot, while still having moments that ground the viewer in some sort of “narrative”.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I really loved Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World by Adam Curtis. It was released two weeks ago and it’s the first honest, optimistic new release I’ve seen in a long time.
5) What’s next for you?
I’m currently working as an Associate Editor on an upcoming doc for HBOMax. I’ve also edited a few short form projects that will be rolling out in the next couple of months.
—
www.samanthakahrar.com | IG: @samkahrar