Elisabeth Subrin

Elisabeth Subrin is a New York based filmmaker and artist whose body of work encompasses multiple formats. She works in both the experimental and narrative form. Since the mid 90’s, Subrin has been creating feminist work that explores the relationship between history and female subjectivity. Her award winning short film Shulie (1997), a shot by shot recreation of a 1960’s student documentary about feminist icon Shulamith Firestone, gained critical attention and continues to be widely screened. Her work has been shown extensively in the U.S and internationally including at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Vienna International Film Festival, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Harvard Film Archives, Cambridge, The San Francisco Cinematheque, Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Whitney Biennial, The Guggenheim Museum, The Walker Art Center, The New York Film Festival, The European Media Arts Festival, VOLTA/NY, Mercer Union, Toronto and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Subrin has taught at numerous colleges and is currently an associate professor in the Film and Media Arts program at Temple University. Her first narrative feature film A Woman, A Part, which she wrote and directed, was released in 2016. She’s currently working on a film about the late French actress Maria Schneider, best known for the controversy surrounding her treatment on the set of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris (1972). To learn more about Elisabeth and her work, visit her website.

This interview was conducted via Skype on February 17, 2020 between myself, in Santa Cruz, CA, and Subrin, in Paris, France.

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Ana Lubura: I’m interested to know what your goals for your career were when you were my age. How did you get into film?

Elisabeth Subrin: I went to UW Madison, and I studied history and literature, but started getting into photography. At that time, there wasn't really such a thing as interdisciplinary studies in the same way there is now. I was taking feminist theory and creative writing and history and media studies. I transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago for a year and decided I was more interested in filmmaking and film art.I was also kind of freaked out about becoming an artist because my plan was to be a journalist when I was your age. So when I started moving towards being an artist, that was kind of shocking to me. I then went to the only state run art school in the country, Massachusetts College of Art. It's a really incredible art school now, and it had a really, really strong experimental film program. That's where I finished my undergraduate degree, and because I kept switching schools and took time off I think I was probably like 24 or 25 when I graduated. I always tell my students stop stressing out about your “career.”! You don't need to know what you're doing when you're 20 years old; take your time. You could stop doing anything for the next 10 years. Travel around the world. It really doesn't matter. In my opinion, trying to figure out what you’re going to do with your life when you're 22 is almost ridiculous. You have no idea, and you might as well just be who you are as a person and that that will be much more worthwhile.

AL: For film students there’s sometimes the attitude of “what have I done so far and how is it going to get me to where I want to go?”

ES: That’s so funny, it’s exactly what Shulie asks in the film. Well, to answer your first question, I think that what I wanted at that age is to understand what the point of being alive was. I wasn’t thinking “how was I going to make it?” because at my school they made it very clear that if you wanted to be an artist that you should not expect to have recognition. You should not expect to have the money. You should not expect to have anything, really. I've gotten so much more than what they warned me. They told me how hard it would be, and I didn't listen. I just went ahead. But mostly I did that because I was really depressed in my early twenties. I was just like, this is the only thing that makes me feel alive, so I'll figure it out. I would recommend just staying out of big cities and living somewhere you can afford. Spend time learning how to be a good artist and how to support yourself so you can keep exploring.

AL: How do you think your career has changed throughout your life?

ES: It has dramatically changed within the little bubble of the filmmaking and media art world, because first I studied experimental film and made avant garde films. Then I made video art and had a whole career as a video artist. Then I started writing screenplays, which was completely new. I didn't go to film school, so I was really self taught as far as screenwriting and narrative production. I started writing screenplays about 10 years ago. Working with actors, working with narrative structure and form, that was something I never thought I was going to do. Other people thought I was going to do it, but I didn't know that I was going to do it. What was strange is that during the time of writing screenplays and trying to get films financed, I actually then had a whole gallery career. I started working with a commercial gallery, so that was very strange. I was obsessed with getting financing for my films, but a commercial (and feminist) gallery approached me to do what turned out to be a retrospective, which was quite rewarding. Suddenly my video installations and photographs were starting to be presented in art fairs and more commercial kinds of exhibition contexts. So then that was not expected that I'd be making a film that was on Netflix and shown theatrically around the country. That was not part of the plan.

AL: Speaking of your feature film, A Woman, A Part, I was wondering how creating long form narrative was different in process and production compared to any other work you've done?

ES: Actually, it’s very similar in that I feel like I'm an artist, but just with a lot more help. Of course, it's very different because you're working within a codified structure. No matter how much you experiment with the form, narrative is still codified. Naturalism is a style. As we all know, it's got a long history that's created all these conventions. So even if you're experimenting, you're kind of speaking to those conventions. The economics of it, the way you work is also very codified and structured in ways that can work against creativity. But I love working with actors. There were things I found that I couldn’t communicate in my experimental work, especially around emotion, that made me want to start working with stories and characters who said things in a more traditional form.

AL: How is the process for an installation work different than something you would traditionally screen?

ES: I don't choose a form before I start making it. So I don't set out to create, say, a narrative film. The ideas dictate the form. I did make installations when I was in art school as opposed to only single channel things. It's very fun to create pieces in an environment. They’re more immersive, and people have time to look, and it's less controlling in a way than single channel theatrical pieces. But I also think that single channel works force people to engage more rigorously. I don't think gallery viewers are very careful viewers, so I like to create little tricks to make people have to be more careful viewers. There are things that are really fun about both forms. I have some friends who really think more people see work when it's in a gallery than when it's in film festivals. I do think that, for experimental filmmakers, there's not that many ways for people to see your work; one thing that's very compelling about narrative form is that if the film does well, a lot more people see it.

AL: You kind of talked about how you felt you didn’t even think you were allowed to create a narrative and how that almost felt gate-kept to you...

ES: I think that’s because I was in art school in 1990 and don't think I even really knew about film school. When I went to see movies, I really didn't think of it as something that I would have access to. I can't actually really articulate why, because that sounds completely ridiculous. I think part of me also was in a context where narrative filmmaking was considered corporate, literally the devil. I was suffused in such an experimental ideology. Not only did I think that I couldn’t do it, I don't think my mind even understood that that would be something that I'd want to do.

AL: Do you think that after making a narrative you understand them in a different way or that you would be interested in pursuing that form more?

ES: I've written three screenplays and two have gotten made —one feature, one short. I feel like I know how to do it. I also teach screenwriting and directing, so I think about it a lot. I still think like an artist where what I make, what form I make, is in service of what I want to talk about. So for example, I'm here in Paris doing research for a project and it could end up being a gallery installation, it could be a short film, it might be a book of essays or it could be a feature narrative screenplay or it could be some kind of hybrid doc/fiction form. I literally have no idea. I'm prepared to write another screenplay, but I'm also prepared that this could end up being a much smaller form. I would be happy to direct again if I ever liked a screenplay that was not my own, but I don't ever want to make a half a million dollar film again. It's just too physically brutal. It’s just too low of a budget. So if it was the same circumstances, I think the answer would be no, unless it was like a much more minimal film, like one location or a soundstage. For A Woman, A Part we shot across the country,in New York and LA. We probably had like 30 locations, which was a big task.It was such a grueling production. I couldn't do that again.

AL: I also read that while you were writing the script, you kind of had a “WHY DID YOU LET ME WRITE A SCRIPT ABOUT AN ACTRESS?!” moment. What was it like to write a script that you were self conscious about? Did you ever change direction in the script or were there multiple drafts?

ES: It was a very strange way that I ended up writing a script about an actress. That was a little torturous. I really had to keep revisiting why it mattered, and the blog I made, Who Cares About Actresses, really helped me understand the politics behind talking about a woman who represents women. Actresses are the ultimate representation of women. But yeah, I think it made it a lot harder. It made it not fun a lot of the time, because I had such doubts about it. There were probably like 50 drafts of the script. I wrote the script over four years.

AL: A Woman, A Part kind of talks about women's friendships and how women experience friendships. Do you think that's a neglected space in film? Do you think it's important to show how women may experience or view friendship differently than men?

ES: I feel like the film is about friendship between women and the hazy lines between friendship, love, shared history, and intimacy.The relationship between Kate and Anna is more complicated, perhaps. I really see it as a triangulation between the three characters, because I'm also interested in how men and women are friends with each other—not to get really binary about things. I do think it has been neglected probably in the past, but right now there's just so much amazing work by women so it seems less so. I just rewatched one of the best films I've seen about friendship recently, which is Celine Sciamma’s Girlhood. I don't think it's neglected more than other cliched genres, but I do think that in our culture it's an underrated or under-acknowledged area of profound meaning. Friendship is really kind of still thought of asf secondary to primary relationships in the family. There’s much more books about letters between lovers than there are about deep relationships with friends.

AL: You identify as a feminist filmmaker and have worked in the experimental form. How would you define the term feminist? How would you define the term experimental?

ES: I haven't changed my definition for a long time. The definition I use, I don't even know if it's mine or what I think is helpful for students, because the only time I ever define it is when I'm teaching. What I say to students is if you believe that our culture is organized predominantly around gender, whether we're talking about government, law enforcement, finance, family, etc. and if you think the way we organize our culture through gender privileges men, and you think that it is a problem, then you're a feminist. One thing I think is useful to say to feminist doubters is, you can thank a feminist for the fact that you vote or that you have your own bank account or that you can have an abortion or you can get divorced or that you can be a CEO. All of those things, even if you're not a feminist, are thanks to feminism. For a definition of experimental, I think that it means working outside the dominant codes, tools,and logic of narrative form. You’re using the medium freely, using the medium as art. It’s a medium that you can do whatever you want with as opposed to as a kind of corporate format that fits to 90 minute movie theater slots and has a beginning, middle, and end.

AL: Do you find it necessary or important to be political in your films? Do you kind of go by “the personal is political phrase” that Carol Hanisch popularized during the Second Wave Femininst Movement?

ES: Of course, but I also feel like I don't want my works to be manifestos. I feel like writing or activism is more effective for political action, so I don't want to glorify my work if we consider politics actually having a literal clear impact on policy, i.e. “to change the world.” Films have to be political to be legitimate. There are a few documentaries that impact public policy and there are works of art that make us think, but art doesn't literally change things. But that doesn't mean it's not important. For example, with A Woman, A Part, I created a blog Who Cares About Actresses, which allowed me to get all those much more ideological and literal politics out on a platform that made more sense. It’s not kept out of my film, it’s clearly there. As a writer, it’s definitely a lot of heavy lifting to be able to talk about political ideas without them just being really literal. Like the scene where Anna is with her showrunner and her interaction with him is clearly my political position. That was a great deal of writing to make it not just be like, “here is where we hear what Elisabeth thinks about everything.”

AL: In your early work Swallow (1995), you address eating disorders and mental illness and in A Woman, A Part you also take on topics like addiction and autoimmune disease. How do you approach difficult topics like this?

ES: I just dive in deep. I am comfortable being uncomfortable in terms of subject matter. I’m not comfortable with every kind of discomfort, but I like to deal with difficult subject matter. I like to deal with things people don't want to talk about. I just try to be honest. I do a lot of research. I did a ton of research about anorexia. I did a lot of research about depression. I worked on one screenplay for years about a woman with bipolar disorder, so I read every book on that. With A Woman, A Part, I spent a lot of time interviewing actresses and asking them “ why do you act?” I knew about autoimmune diseases because I have my own, but I also talked to actresses about them, because a lot of them have really compromised autoimmune systems from the work that they do. I try to put myself in the position of my character.

AL: From Sweet Ruin to your Who Cares About Actresses website being dedicated to her, I noticed you’re quite a fan of the French actress Maria Schneider. I read out about her abusive experience on the set of Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris and was horrified. I'm interested in how you heard about that story and how you developed a connection with Schneider? I also noticed on your Vimeo page you're currently working on a piece about her…

ES: I can't really figure out when I first thought about her. I think I might have vaguely known about her from a paperback of Last Tango in my parents house when I was a kid. I think that I got more interested in her when I made Sweet Ruin, which was a commission where a group of artists were given this script by Antonioni and all were invited to respond to it in any way. Sweet Ruin was my submission to the project. What's funny is now the story has become quite public. At the time, in 2008, nobody knew about it or cared about it. So then I just did more research on her and found interviews and just thought this woman was so ahead of her time! For a while now, I’ve wanted to make a film about her. I realized this just suddenly: oh my god I'm working on another project about an actress. So that's why I came to Paris. I've always found her very compelling and kind of both a precedent and an omen.

AL: Your film Shulie (1997) still relates to most college students today. Do you think it would hold up if it was to be recreated again today?

ES: That’s a great question. If I recreated it, and I've thought about that a lot, I would put women on the critique panel. I'm so not interested in painting so I would probably also change what was being critiqued. But yes, when I show the work, it seems to continue to make students feel very understood. A lot of the people who were acting in that were non-actors who had a relationship to the Art Institute, and a lot of the teachers they were performing as were still alive and teaching, which in itself is just kind of mind boggling.

AL: A lot of your works show the relationship between past and present like Shulie, Sweet Ruin, and Lost Tribes and Promised Lands. What draws you to history? You’ve mentioned you studied it in college, is there something that drew you to it back then? What is the value in using the past as content for the present?

ES: I've always been interested in history. I've always felt like the past is in the present. I think that the way history emanates in our present is so meaningful and fascinating. I think it sounds ridiculous to say, but the nature of time feels like this impossible and obvious fundamental truth of existence. I don't know how to answer besides that I find it endlessly fascinating.

AL: To close off, I want to ask who your inspirations are and are there any current female filmmakers you're excited about? Have there been certain films or directors that inspired you growing up?

ES: I think Lucretia Martel is a genius, she’s an Argentiania filmmaker. Celine Sciamma is another one. In terms of experimental, there’s Akosua Adoma Owusu. She’s a really interesting Ghanaian-American experimental filmmaker out of Cal Arts. Cassavetes was huge for me. Antonioni was huge. Chantal Akerman is huge. Agnes Varda is huge. Lizzie Borden’s film Born in Flames was incredibly mind-blowing for me. Julie Dash’s short film Illusions is one of my favorite films ever. Those are some of the big ones for me.

Subrin's feature A Woman, A Part is available to watch on Amazon.

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About the Interviewer

Ana Lubura is currently completing her bachelor’s degree in Film and Digital Media with a minor in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She, too, is interested in history as a rich source for filmmaking. Her other areas of interest include Yugoslav cinema, queer cinema, immigrant experiences, female friendships, comedy, and production design.