Jacqueline Goss

An Interview with Jacqueline Goss

Conducted by Phillip Henri

The following is an email exchange between myself and the filmmaker Jacqueline Goss. She is a professor of film and electronic arts at the Bard College and has won numerous awards for her films which are characterized by the way they delve into the complexities of the supposedly simple processes we take for granted. Her most recent work, The Measures, is a complex retelling of the quest to create the metric system. It is a film that blends both history with modernity and theory with reality as Goss and her collaborator, Jenny Perlin, replicate the same journey undertaken by 18th century French philosophers Delambre and Mechain.

When did you first become involved with film? Is it your primary medium of artistic expression?

I started making Super8 films in college (Brown University). I also had a work/study job with media services working with video, so I thought of film as the real medium and video as the one that I worked with so I could buy film stock. These are still my primary mediums as well as animation.

Often I find that many students involved with film define success with film as ending up in Hollywood or working with a major production company. You have found success in a very different way while making a very different type of film. How might you define success as a filmmaker?

Success is a concept that is ever-evolving for all of us. Twenty years ago I was happy to see my name in print and get my work accepted into film festivals. Now it's harder to know what the markers of success are. I'm happy if my work finds an audience, if someone notes what I was trying to convey. I long for some sort of life for my work that extends beyond my own-- I think I would consider that "successful" but, then again, how will I know?

Do you consider yourself to be a feminist filmmaker, and if so, what does it mean for you to create feminist film? How do you feel you incorporate elements of feminism into a film like The Measures or another topic that doesn't explicitly deal with issues we traditionally think of when we hear the word feminism?

I am a feminist, but I don't know if I consider myself a feminist filmmaker. I do incorporate elements of feminism-- how could I not? The Observers casts two women in traditionally male occupations, and The Measures inverts a male-dominated genre of the film essay, most explicitly by taking on Chris Marker's imagery of women and observing men through the lens. The Measures is also a collaborative work made with another woman about the collaboration of two men, so themes of feminism run like veins throughout the work. Any film or media work that makes one think about women's lives and work with more complexity is a good thing, whether it's labeled "feminist" or not.

You seem to have a lot of films that deal with theory and actuality, whether it's scientific theory in the real world or politicians and everyday people, I felt very much that your films share a common theme of being critical or questioning of things we think we know. Is that a fair assumption?

Yes. I am drawn to stories that show how complex simple things can be. I particularly like stories about people who work to map out or measure the world and fail in interesting ways. These are often the stories behind simple things like the metric system, for instance.

There was a comment on your film How to Fix the World in which a viewer interpreted the piece as antithetical to "progress" and "mocking a genuine effort". Personally, I thought they weren't critically thinking about what the film was really saying. Is this a surprising reaction from an audience member?

It's not surprising. I heard it many times when I was showing "How To Fix The World." I think it's a fail comment and is usually made by someone who cares deeply about literacy. It always sparked interesting conversations. I was not interested, however, is making a film about the Soviet literacy programs. I was interested in the cognitive scientist who measured the results of these programs and his innovative work. I think often viewers who are critical of "How To Fix The World" are also reacting to the fact that it's animated and see it as an infantilization of its topic. But I don't think that animation is only for children. Animation is much closer to writing that filming for me and can bring a lot of complexity to a media work.

For me, when I set out to make experimental work I know that it will not always make sense to the viewer or seem important. However, I find that it's the work I find myself the most confident in my own creative vision as opposed to when I'm working within the conventions of narrative practice. How do you reconcile this in your own mind? Do you think that there is any value in adhering to conventions, or now that they are established do you think it's a filmmaker's duty to subvert them?

I think there's value in all of those ways of working. Narrative filmmaking is hard and often demands resources that filmmakers don't have. There's definitely value is knowing how narrative films are constructed, in trying to work with those confines, and also in subverting them.

In Hart's Location you blended observation and fiction to tell the story of the 2016 primaries: could you elaborate on why you chose this method of filmmaking over a more observational approach like you did with the 2008 primary?

I felt like telling a story, to work with some basic grammar of fiction filmmaking and to hybridize it with stuff we were seeing on the streets in Manchester, NH that winter. Fiction can really get to the point in an efficient way sometimes! You don't have to find the image, you just make it up. The Observers is also a blend of fiction and observation, by the way.

Could you speak on the casting of the solitary voter we follow throughout the film? Was he chosen for a special reason?

Well, he's an old friend of mine in NH who said he was going to vote for either Sanders or Trump and I thought: I have to make a movie with him. I love his face -- it's beautiful and ugly and he's sort of the perfect New Hampshire guy in ways: confounding and quixotic politically.

What was the significance of the song, "Show Me the Way to Go Home" at the end of Hart's Location?

It's a song my mom used to sing to me at bedtime and evokes a strong sense of nostalgia for me. Figures my mom would pick a drinking song. Very northern New England of her.

The Measures and The Observers are both particularly unusual stories to tell in that they are almost forgotten by modern society. What drew you towards these topics?

When people try to make sense of something and fail in interesting ways, when the noise and color of the world prove to be overwhelming-- I'm in. That’s my favorite way to see the history of our species: our sometimes ridiculous efforts to make sense of something so much bigger than us and our systems of knowledge.

A few of your films take place in New Hampshire. Besides being your native state, what quality does it have that you feel is important enough for the state to be the backdrop of your films? Is it a matter of necessity/fact that it's the setting for films on American elections, or does it provide something more?

New Hampshire is beautiful and complicated politically. It's where I grew up in a very rural area in a working-class family. I think this is something I understand that not a lot of other filmmakers understand, so I figure I have something to say by working here.

Jackie’s films are shown worldwide and are available at the vimeo link provided here.