Marta Pulk photo by Sigrid Kuusk
Amy: A Year Full of Drama documents the experience of Alissija in her exposure to an overwhelming number of 224 theatre productions in 365 days in Estonia, how do you believe that art can impact one’s life and perspective?
Marta: Well, most of all, art has the ability to expand our limits, to direct our thoughts to new paths, and to open up other perspectives on our own lives, other’s lives and the world.
Therefore, the most significant impact it can have is to just widen how you perceive the world around you, the role you see for yourself in it and how you can affect it. And that’s the important thing for me in A Year Full of Drama as well.
Absolutely. This year’s Sydney Film Festival is featuring a significant focus on Women in Film, and notably on European female voices, so illuminating contemporary personal and cultural stories, what would you like audiences to gain from your documentary A Year Full of Drama?
That’s a very good question because I’m not a very political filmmaker, at least not anymore. I make my creative choices based on some principals, but I’m not an activist per se. Even though I absolutely believe that different voices should be present and different stories should be represented. And the strange thing with casting Alissija is that I was imagining a man as a protagonist for no specific reason and I think that tells a lot about my own unconscious bias and is a big lesson for myself.
All of us who were involved in the casting process were imagining a man and, but as soon as we saw Alissija, she blew us away. The choice to cast her was based purely on her character and what she brought to the table and the openness that she offered. It was a very lucky chance that we ended up with her story. If I were to make a generalisation I think it’s so important that we have both female directors and that we have female characters on screen who open up in all of their depth. And that’s what we achieved with A Year Full of Drama as well.
Alissija has a wonderful presence and a really interesting kind of wisdom that she conveys in the film. So, in terms of your experience with film in general, how have your personal experiences informed the stories you want to explore and communicate?
They absolutely have. It has a lot to do with, the maturing process of the author as well, because as long as we’re still in the process of our own individuation then as creators as well we use the stories we tell, to discover ourselves.
For example, this story for me was definitely a chance to revisit my own time of coming of age and becoming independent and finding my own way. It’s a very interesting position when you’re following that process of another person, especially if that person is a little bit similar to you. Even though we’re very different, I also saw a lot of myself in her and it was definitely a transformative process for me as well following her journey and, revisiting certain questions that I thought I had solved a long time ago. Up until some age, every project becomes personal. As we mature, we become more able to look at the world from more of an observer’s perspective, or if I could call it that. I’m still reaching there right now. I’m still a very personal filmmaker in everything I do. Because I’m mostly dealing with myself.
How did you become involved in this project initially?
That experiment was the idea of Kinoteater, they are the guys you also see in the film, they wanted to take someone who’s never been to the theatre and make them watch everything. It was supposed to be an experiment, trying to understand the impact of art and especially
theatre on a human being. And they’ve done experimental stuff before, but it’s always been on stage. But this time as it was an experiment spanning over the course of a year, they understood that the only way of presenting it could be a film.
They approached me with the proposition of would I like to direct this. As I really respected their previous work, it felt like something interesting to do and, and I liked the idea of working with them. But strangely, the whole process transformed into quite something else. Two years later, I just gave them a film saying so this is it. There was never any control mechanism, I had their complete trust. Even though the film they had in their heads when they started the project was more about the specifics of theatre and showing interactive maps of how Alissija travelled. They imagined it to be more about Estonian theatre, which is the one thing that doesn’t interest me at all. I hijacked the project and made it into something very different.
That’s a great thing because you get to combine two forces, two creative forces and you get something unexpected. What did you discover about yourself while travelling with Alissija and did you accompany her to every performance?
Not every performance, she watched over 220 plays, and we shot around 50 or 60. I made that choice myself. Because first of all, I wanted to have as much difference or as big of a variety of different types of theatre as possible. But also as the year progressed, you start understanding more of what topics and what styles related to her, what has the potential to touch her, but also as the story was building in my head and also thematically to see what connects to the point that she’s in. I was free to make those decisions and, I couldn’t have done 224 plays – that’s a full-time job in every regard.
And, the second part of your question was what did I discover? You discover a lot of yourself through their story, itself, but when you say travelling with her, one thing I understood was how specific are the skill set and personality traits that being a documentary maker require – especially when you’re making an observational documentary. It’s a profession that demands for you to constantly be on expedition and you have to be an adventurer at heart to do that, and that’s the difficult task at hand.
That sense of adventure really came through in the film, which gave it a really interesting quality. This film is universally relevant, and I found it to be a powerful personal story of Alissija’s engagement with family, Estonian culture, theatre, the country’s landscape and community, as well as confronting her own personal struggles and existential curiosities. How did you approach directing this documentary and what elements of Alissija’s experiences did you want to focus on?
That’s a very good question. Most of all, what interested me and what drew me to her character as soon as I saw her was that there was such potential for change, and not that the starting point was something to be changed. But in the sense that she was so open to be transformed by the experience itself. That was my starting point at first just documenting the status quo or trying to understand where she’s coming from, and then hoping to see how the environment she’s put in and the infrastructure and the experiments she’s put in, starts changing her, both her life and her own perspective on it and that’s what I tried to follow.
Would you say this documentary blends with performance art considering the public nature and documentation of Alissija’s experiences that were reminiscent of some forms of contemporary performance art, and I was wondering what you were thinking about that?
Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I also have a little bit of a paranoia that maybe it’s like a reality show because normally as documentary maker, you’re used to entering someone’s existing life and their reality and being a visitor there, then this is a film that pulled Alissija out of her environment and her life as she’s used to it and created a very artificial situation for her to survive in for a year. A lot of this activity is not provoked, but it’s invited. Then I absolutely see the connection with performance art, as you say, I never phrased it quite like that though. Yeah, but there’s definitely a connection.
So just to talk about the industry a little bit now. Film in Revolt is a platform for youth wanting to explore and engage with the film industry, do you have any advice for youth wanting to enter the industry?
It’s always a good question, should you study film? What’s the path needed and so on. And it depends so much about having the chance to make films, it has so much to do with the country you live? What’s the industry like? And how big is the competition? And what are the requirements for getting funded and so on. But I think most of all, filmmaking is a lifestyle, especially if you’re in documentary filmmaking. It’s a business of passion. And the best teachers on that path, are watching films and making films. School can teach you a lot, but school will never make you an artist and the only thing that really truly allows you to discover your own means of expression is the experience itself. Filmmaking has become so democratic. You can make a film on your iPhone, do it. Because everything you do, every story you paint on the canvas becomes a teacher.
Can you describe your experience in working under the mentorship of Werner Herzog on your short film Vida Alegre?
It was a masterclass in the Peruvian Amazon two years ago. Werner to me is a filmmaker that I’ve always looked up to and his documentaries especially Grizzly Man had a great impact on me when I was growing up and first became interested in film. To have the chance to follow in his trails in the Peruvian Amazon where he has shot, Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre. It was something quite extraordinary for me to have that opportunity. And as far as the filmmaking itself, it was funny because at first, I don’t think he was very enthusiastic about my idea. As we all gathered into the jungle, there were 48 of us filmmakers from all over the world. It was a lot of people and each of us had to finish a film in 10 days. The only requirement was that you cannot come with a script or an idea in your mind, you have to let the environment speak to you and see what develops. I had the thought of speaking with women who work in the sex industry. Because it’s an illegal mining area, there’s a lot of human trafficking and it’s a very difficult place especially for women. The idea was to combine it with a little bit of irony with kids singing love songs, because those two things somehow connected in my head.
I remember when I spoke to Werner about it. At first, I didn’t even pitch it, so he came up to me asking, so what are you shooting? I told him about the idea and he just said, you cannot fit this into one [film] because we had like six minutes of screen time. He thought this might be too big a story and was quite suspicious, and I said, Well, I’ll give it a try. And as it developed, I think he was quite surprised. Because even though the conditions were rough and we were working in a language that you don’t understand, and the equipment fails you because of the humidity in the jungle… There’s a lot of things that that could be better in the film technically but, somehow something in that story and in that concept of talking about love with women who have to sell their bodies for money, and then adding it up with children who were singing these Spanish ballads, about love and not really understanding what they’re singing about. It just somehow clicked. And it became something very beautiful and, I was very surprised and happy that Werner in the end was also very pleased.
It sounds like a wonderful film. What would you like to see change in the film industry both locally and for you in Estonia and internationally as well?
This is a worn out answer, but locally, definitely, it’s a question of funding. I hope that our culture overall moves in a direction that we value art more. Our democracies are based around culture, I feel it is the very essence and the very core of being human. And I hope that as
this world evolves, we become more able to value arts and culture and the stories we tell, instead of only seeing numbers. Because those are the things that help us give meaning to the world. So that’s what I hope happens both here and everywhere.
And as a final question, what is a film that resonated with you significantly in your formative years, that influenced your filmmaking and/or your life in any sort of way?
That’s the funniest thing. No one knows my favourite film. When I was 15, I was running to video rentals to rent VHS cassettes and I grew up in a small town in Estonia, it’s not like I had arthouse cinema in the video shops. You had Hollywood blockbusters, and then romantic comedies which were big in the 2000s, and so on. But there was a film that I accidentally stumbled upon and it’s called Igby Goes Down and directed by Burr Steers and not a lot of people strangely know that film. The film starred Kieran Culkin and it was about a young man who wasn’t willing to settle with everything he’d been given, the structure of life and the world that surrounded him. I think he was about my age when I saw the film. It was about that distress of questioning the world around you and the people around you who all seem to have it together. But, somehow living this way makes no sense to you. And that film in all of its weirdness touched me so deeply that I remember it deeply until this day. I’ve seen many films after that, and I have many influential filmmakers that I look up to. But if you asked me for the one film that had the greatest impact on not just not me as a filmmaker, but me as a person, that was the one where I felt that it’s not always about finding redemption in cinema, but sometimes we tell those stories to create some sort of unity or a sense of connection. And, hopefully someone gets to watch a film and feel that they’re less alone. That’s what that film did to me.
That’s a lovely story. Thank you, it’s been wonderful chatting with you. Thank you so much. And are there any final comments that you’d like to say about your film, and anything in particular for a Sydney audience?
I’m so happy that the film has reached Sydney Film Festival. Even though of course, I’m a little bit sad that I cannot be there myself due to the situation around us. But then again, if usually a cinema hall fits a few hundred people, then now the film can reach a bigger audience thanks to the fact that it’s online. I’m very happy that the Sydney Film Festival selected us. And I hope people enjoy the film. And I thank you for asking those questions.
Thanks so much. Congratulations on the film.
Thank you and good luck.
A Year Full of Drama
Sydney Film Festival
Director Marta Pulk was born 1988 in the midst of the Estonian Singing Revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union. She grew up listening to Pink Floyd, Backstreet Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers in her small seaside hometown. After high school she went for a job in the maternity ward assisting midwives at childbirth and from there on it was a short step to film school. She earned her Masters degree in filmmaking from Baltic Film and Media School. Marta’s films feature a strong visual handwriting and relentless interest towards the human spirit and what makes us fight. Her films often spotlight a sharp societal theme and combine together the robust and the poetic. Working in both documentary and fiction, Marta’s shorts have toured the festival circuit and in 2018 her film Vida Alegre that was developed in the Peruvian Amazon under the mentorship of Werner Herzog, was selected for distribution by Black Factory Cinema. She just finished her first feature length documentary called A Year Full of Drama, that has been selected for Docs Against Gravity, SFF and BAFICI among others and is now working on the documentary feature “Tell me” that creates a poetic portrait of humanity in isolation through anonymous voice messages collected around the world.