Tiana from Film in Revolt spoke with director Ana Kokkinos. Her powerful film Blessed based on the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class is screening in the Essential Australian Women Directors: 10 Trailblazers retrospective at the Sydney Film Festival.
What first led you to get involved in the film industry? I read that you worked as a corporate lawyer and so was wondering whether film was a passion that you pursued alongside your career or rather something that you truly wanted to do and pursued later in life?
I was a lawyer for about four or five years but I realised at a certain point that law was not my passion. It wasn’t my first love. From the age of about 14 I fell in love with cinema and I used to go and watch a lot of films. But I found the whole idea of becoming a filmmaker at that young age, kind of impossible for me to do it. I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know whether or not it’s even possible to have a career as a filmmaker. So I did law and I pursued law for many years and then at a certain point I just realised that the filmmaking thing was still kind of in the back of my mind and I thought well if I’m going to follow my passion I’ll have to do something about it. I decided to throw in law. I prepared a couple of short films and then I applied to the VCA School of Film and TV and I was accepted. So I made a big change. Pretty much from there on, after that year of filmmaking course, I came out and have made film and TV ever since.
Wow, so were you perhaps apprehensive before you made the leap into the industry and started pursuing actively pursuing it?
Totally. Yeah. The first thing was I didn’t know if I had the talent. That’s always a question mark. But also I came from a migrant working-class background and, the whole thing was to get a job that was safe and secure. That was uppermost in my mind when I was young but I got to a point where I just thought well look, if I have any talent at this and if I’m good at it, then I should at least give it a go and see if I can actually make films that are important to me and make a film that connects with audiences. So that was something that I wanted to explore.
I always felt that if that wasn’t going to be possible, I could go off and do other things. But eventually, the real drive for me was wanting to tell stories on film and also tell stories that really mattered to people.
Right. You mentioned that you were 14 when you really started watching films and that motivated you to become a filmmaker. Was there a particular film and filmmakers growing up that inspired you to pick up the camera?
At that time the films that influenced me were very much European arthouse cinema. The films of filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky. There was also a lot of really fantastic independent American cinema that was evolving over that time and in a way it was an explosion of new talent and new ideas and new ways of making films. Those films influenced me because what they showed me was that cinema wasn’t just about entertaining but cinema can also inspire and provoke and make you think about things. And I experienced it as an art form as opposed to just a purely commercial sort of business art form and that’s what I found inspiring. That was my motivation to become a filmmaker. In the end I thought well if I want to tell stories that I think are important or relevant then this is the medium to do it in. I was probably around 28 or 29 when I finally realised that that’s what I wanted to do.
Wow, so that’s nearly 14 or 15 years of you having that dream in your head! So were you writing or dabbling in any aspect of film at the same time or not?
No, mostly it was just an idea. I didn’t write or make any film during that whole period because doing a law degree and becoming a lawyer was pretty full on. That took up a lot of my energy and my time. I just literally made the break. I just thought “I have to see whether or not I can do this”. I took a risk but I also felt that I was young enough that, if I found I couldn’t do it for whatever reason, I could always go and do something else. But I think the key thing for me was following my passion and dream and then saying “okay now is the time I’m going to put my energy into this”. I just couldn’t do it before that. But I watched a lot of films. I was very involved in an appreciation of films even though I wasn’t writing and I wasn’t making it either.
So you made a few films during film school. How did you end up getting financing for your first feature?
I got funding for Head On through what then called the Film Finance Corporation, which is the government body that helps to finance films, and from Film Victoria. But we also got funding from a sales agent and a distribution. So they’re the four main sources of funding and the only reason I was able to get that film up is because I made a short feature before that called Only The Brave. That film was a very low budget fifty nine minutes film. That was funded through Film Victoria and what was then called the Australian Film Commission. That’s a long time ago now but they used to be an organisation that funded films particularly for emerging filmmakers. That film was incredibly successful. It was screened at the Venice Film Festival and it travelled the world and that film was the reason people had the confidence to put money into Head On. So there was a stepping stone before Head On.
I’ve previously conversations with directors who are women who wanted to get funding for their films and several times they have mentioned resistance to financing for their ideas by contrast to their male counterparts. Did you at any point feel there was resistance to your ideas, especially since no one else was making the types of films you were making at the time?
That’s an interesting question. At that time there was a lot more openness about women making films and there was also a desire to see different voices and new voices. I came to film making at a time when basically it was a very white Anglo centric film industry and to a large degree, unfortunately, it’s a bit like that now. But I think the reason why people wanted to support me was because I was coming from a different cultural background – I had Greek background. I was [also] interested in exploring sexuality and at that time it was not really being explored very much in Australian cinema. I was also dealing with issues of class and again that wasn’t really being explored. It was that kind of intersection of class, ethnicity and sexuality that I was exploring in my films that people were responding to and wanted to support. We went through a period where that stopped being a reality in it in terms of what was being funded here. With the post “MeToo” movement those questions and issues have come up again in a way that mean that there’s a lot more space for that stuff to be explored. But as a woman, I did feel [it]. Look, there’s always resistance when you are on some level an outsider and my outsider status wasn’t just that I was a woman but also that I was Greek, that I was a lesbian, that I came from a different class background and all those things made me an outsider. But ironically they also make me stronger because I had something very particular to say. I was coming from a very unique set of circumstances that informed all the work that I did including Only The Brave, Head On and Blessed.
Have you felt that since you’ve made Head On which had LGBTQ+ representation in film, that exposure has increased on those particular voices or not?
Well disappointingly in the feature film landscape there has been an increase in an exploration of LGBTQI stuff at all really. I haven’t seen recently a sort of more contemporary Head On for example. Sure, there are more queer stories being told but I’m not seeing a huge shift in that area. And so in a way it’s a difficult question to answer because I had hoped when I made Head On 20 years ago that there’d be another five Head On‘s coming after but that hasn’t happened. There is reluctance to see stories on the screen that are coming from a place of difference. And it’s not that it’s impossible for that to happen but as a filmmaker if you want to make stuff that a bit more relevant to what’s going on in the world right now, it’s still a huge struggle.
I read that Head On received a bit of a mixed reception from the Greek community for its depiction of gay sex and drug use. Yet are definitely individuals who the film impacted in a very positive way through depicting this reality. How do you feel about this reaction two decades on?
It certainly really divided the Greek community. There were people who were really angry about the film because of its portrayal of a young Greek boy expressing his sexuality in the way that he does. There was a lot of anger about that because you got to remember that there aren’t too many representations of Greek people generally in Australian cinema. There was a sense that I was portraying him and [as a byproduct] community in a negative way. But at the same time there were a lot of young people when the film came out who really responded to the film because they felt that it really captured that conflict of what it feels like to grow up with two cultures and what it feels like to not it quite within the mainstream Australian community but to not quite fit in the sort of the mainstream Greek community. For a lot of young people it also opened up the possibility of them talking to their parents about this stuff. And it had a very positive effect in terms of an expression of Greek Australian culture [because] it talked about how hard it is to be who you want to be without the cultural constraints of conformity and as well as the cultural constraints of not being allowed to even assimilate in mainstream Australia. For a lot of kids, for example, a lot of Greek girls who were not allowed to go out with Aussie boys and if they told their parents then those things were forbidden. The idea of culturally mixing, even marrying someone outside the culture, was kind of not accepted. It was a very conservative culture. You could imagine when Head On came out it was kind of explosive because it wasn’t just talking about heterosexual marriage or sexual stuff it was talking about a young man dealing with his homosexuality and the issues that came up for him as a result of that.
Yeah it’s wonderful and I’m sure it had reverberating effects now.
Yes and it still is. The incredible thing about Head On is that it’s still very relevant today. I still think that despite same-sex marriage there are real issues for young people who are dealing or grappling with their sexuality. It’s all very well to say there seems to be a kind of a more a greater acceptance of sexual difference now but every young person still has to go through their own journey in terms of coming out or being different or being able to express that difference.
Like Blessed, Head On was adapted from another work, in this case a novel. Do you think, nonetheless, that aspects of your own context and story regarding sexuality comes through in your work and how did it affect your decision making on set?
Absolutely. In fact, I think that all my films have come from a lived experience. They’re not autobiographical but because I came from a Greek Australian background I knew Ari’s journey intimately. I felt like I knew him. I felt like I knew him from the inside. Same with Blessed – I grew up in in the outer working-class suburbs western suburbs of Melbourne and all the characters in that film come from that ordinary working-class background. I have tended to be drawn to creating films that I feel I know something about that and [this aspect] makes them a little bit different or unique because they’re coming from a particular set of experiences right.
My purpose is to connect with audiences and to engage with audiences emotionally and viscerally. And hopefully my films so far have really had something to say to people, speak to us as human beings, speak to it’s cultural impartially and reflect something about the truth of who we are. And it’s been my aspiration as a filmmaker so far as to show they definitely do.
I really love that. You mentioned before how you grew up in the working class in Melbourne and that source of experiences informed the multitude of social issues examined in Blessed. What other forms of research did you conduct during pre-production?
I didn’t really do any extra research. I felt like I knew those characters. We developed the screenplay for Blessed over a long period of time, eight years, and it came from a play called Who’s Afraid Of The Working Class. As we developed the screenplay we found that there was a really interesting batch of stories in the play but as we developed it into a film what we realised was that the script didn’t have a core or a centre. And eventually we came up lost and then we found that the theme of the screenplay was really around this question of the relationships between mothers and children. What we did from then on these we divided the film into two halves. The first half we tell the story from the kid’s point of view and then the second half we tell the story from the mother’s point of view. Each and every young character in the film I felt I knew something about. I felt I knew something about the kids who have a mother who is on welfare and who in a way forced to live on the streets because they feel that they’re not safe at home. I felt that I understood that the two teenage girls who are shoplifting and behaving badly. I understood those characters because I certainly went to school with girls like that. In a way, all those kids were known to me on some deep level but they all are struggling with stuff that I think we all struggle with when they’re teenagers – you know, behaving badly, pushing the boundaries, having fun and sometimes you can get into trouble when that happens. But I was also interested [in regards to] those kids journeys is that they’ve all had some issue with their mothers, whether it’s not feeling their needs are met. All of them need something from the mothers and that’s what the film explores.
And in terms of directing these children and teenagers especially such confronting and harsh realities what specific techniques that you used in terms of directing these young actors?
I’ve always worked with non-actors and certainly still work with some young actors as I love doing it. Young talented actors have a certain freshness to a role. But these roles were much more complex and dealt with big issues. What I did and what I always do is to set up a very lengthy rehearsal process. That rehearsal process is where the kids get to explore who the characters are an also I work with them to really help them discover what the heart of each scene is and then really provide a safe space for them to be able to explore what their character is in relation to the story. That rehearsal process is really about empowering them to be able to breathe life into those characters but also to find the truth in those characters. Young Eva Lazzaro who was only 13 /14 at the time was a really intelligent young kid who had an intuitive sense and understanding of that character [Stacey]. She just was able to tap into that character and I spoke to her a lot about loving that character you know, remembering to love who she was with all her will her kind of issues or things that she was struggling with. All the kids were able to honour those stories and their characters in the way that goes with the truth. Ultimately it’s about me as a director providing a really safe space for those kids but also working with them and talking to them about their characters and then letting them express themselves in a way that feels true to each moment.
That’s a big part of what we do. It’s the most important thing the director does because ultimately most stories have characters who are generally human and so working with actors is one of the huge tasks of being a director. That’s one of the most important things you have to do because even if you make the film look absolutely beautiful and amazing, it the performances are not right for that story then you know you think you failed as a director.
How do you feel the Australian film industry has evolved since you first entered on the scene and what direction do you think it’s heading right now, especially with independent filmmaking?
Well, it’s been has been a huge change. When I started out there was still a very lively and healthy independent filmmaking, which is kind of where I have been – that’s the space I’ve inhabited for a long time. There was space for independent cinema to be made. But increasingly I think that has changed. Streaming and the revolution that’s happened in TV has meant that a lot of a lot more energy and money is going into the creation of long-form TV. That has meant that there are less and less independent films being distributed. There’s a lot of films being made but only a few are seen by audiences around the world and that’s partly because distribution has changed. In the old days we used to have at least four or five distributors, or six/seven distributors in this country who would distribute films. That number has now been reduced because the market place for independent films has reduced. It’s a very different landscape now to what all say 20 years ago and so there’s less opportunity for, even if you make a film, there’s less opportunity for people to see it in the cinema now because literally you can only get your film [seen on ] maybe one or two screens now. The number of screens that you can access now have reduced unless you’re making a film that is you know really super commercial. And those films are still being made. There’s a radical change now in the number of folks who are making in this country but also the kinds of films we’re making and the manner in which people are actually watching those films. For TV, this is where it’s all happening at the moment and that’s the big shift. That’s the big change.
On that note do you have any piece of advice you would give to young filmmakers?
Well, the first thing is you’ve got to be very passionate about wanting to do it. But passion alone won’t get you there. Hard work learning your craft. Learning the skills involved in being a filmmaker are critical. There are a lot of people who you know there’s always a debate about whether you go to a film school or not go to film school. I personally encourage people to go to film schools because I think that at least it’s a space for you to explore your passion. At least it gives you a framework to create things you do learn things from school. And also most importantly you get to hang out with your own cohort. And from that you make contacts that potentially can actually help you to set yourself up in terms of making stuff. The big thing to remember about filmmaking is it’s a collaboration. It’s you know it’s not like if you’re a visual artist and you want to paint you can do follow in your own bedroom but if you want to make films generally speaking even small low budget films or web series or whatever yet or short films or whatever it is you want to create to start with. You still need a producer or someone who’s going to organise the shoot for you. You still need people to shoot this or to edit it or to be in it. Film making is these and at the very heart a collaboration. If you have no contact or no context for what you’re doing it’s much much harder to however you create that, whether its through film school or creating it within a group of likeminded passionate friends, you have to have a team that you are working with and that’s probably the biggest bit of advice I could give you – that as a young filmmaker, if you really are passionate about it, you got to find likeminded people that you can work with.
On ending note, are there any pieces of work that you are currently working on that you would like to share?
For sure. I have just finished working on A TV show for SBS called The Hunting. It will screen sometime in the second half of this year. It’s about a social media scandal that affects four teenagers, their teachers and parents. I’ve just been working on it in Adelaide and I directed the first three episodes of the show. it’s a four-part series and it talks about this whole issue of social media, what happens in social media, issues around consent, use of images etc. So it’s very contemporary and very relevant.