Vera Brunner-Sung

Quite a few of your works are film; did you grow up with film cameras? How was your introduction into filmmaking?

I grew up with only still cameras around the house, 35mm and Polaroid. I took a black and white photography course in high school where we hand-processed film and printed our own images. I didn’t actually make a film—or shoot any—until after college, when I took a 16mm class from Brent Coughenour at the (now-defunct) Detroit Film Center. By then I was getting involved with the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which was my awakening to the possibilities of cinema and celluloid.

As a director, have you always had a sort of natural influence on others to come together for projects? Was that something you had to practice, and how was that process in your early days of filmmaking?

One of the reasons I was so compelled by experimental filmmaking was that it could be totally autonomous. I’d had no idea you could make a movie, something so larger than life, all by yourself. I grew up an only child of immigrant parents, which I think made me very comfortable being self-sufficient and going solo. Probably the only proximate experience I had was when I sang in jazz combos in my teens and 20s. There I really felt and worked with the shared energy of the group. Still, it took me a long time to discover the pleasures of a collaborative practice, and my skill for it.

Reflecting on your experience as a female filmmaker, do you ever encounter moments where you feel yourself or your ideas or your input is not held in high regard? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, whether it’s about personality or about being a woman, and I’m wondering if you have ever thought about this and if you can share how you navigate this pretty male-dominated industry?

Not too long ago, I visited a rental house and not one of the guys (it was all guys) working there even looked at me—they only acknowledged my (male) DP. I was just at Sundance with a film, and the (male) shuttle driver from the airport spent most of the drive lecturing me about what a producer does; he never even asked what I did. I’ve been teaching at the university level for nearly ten years and, from time to time, people still presume I’m a student. These experiences are all minor irritations, but what they teach me is that what I look like, or what I present as, does not correspond with what they believe to be a person with authority. Things may be changing, but the default image of authority still tends to be a white man. That said, I’ve always felt supported and respected on my own projects. I think that’s because I’ve had a lot of control over what I work on and with whom I work. And probably a bit of luck.

Would you consider yourself a feminist, or your work feminist?

Yes, I consider myself a feminist. Feminism is complex, of course. For me, it’s about reconfiguring our debilitating social, economic and political structures, and creating meaningful solidarity between marginalized and privileged people. It’s likely that my politics feels present in my films, since they inform the way I see the world, but I’ll leave that to viewers to determine. As far as reimagining the hierarchical structure of a movie crew, well, I’m not there yet. But my creative process, which involves a lot of exchange and collaboration with people on both sides of the camera, might be getting there in degrees.

I noticed almost half of your crew on Bella Vista were women. How do you choose who to work with, and do you find yourself working with women more on certain projects than others?

Although the circumstances of a particular production can determine the staffing to a degree, creating opportunities behind the camera for underrepresented people is a priority for me. Bella Vista happened to grow out of a collaboration with three female friends, so I suppose it is a bit of a reflection of the company I keep!

As someone who has felt like an outsider, I very much resonated with the tone and mood of your film Bella Vista. I’m also interested in the themes of westerns and the sort-of forgotten westerns of other ethnic groups, so it was so fantastic to see this portrait of Montana both as a place to think about your sense of home, and as an expansive landscape to think about your origins and identity— especially as a person from a mixed background. Could you talk about your film, and perhaps how your identity has played out in your work or works over the years?

Thank you, I’m very moved to hear that. There’s something about growing up “in between” – cultures, geographies, races – that has become a touchstone for me as my practice has evolved. It’s there in the content, such as the drifting protagonist of Bella Vista, and in the form, or strategic approach, as far as this edge of documentary and fiction that I’ve found so productive in my last few films. It’s a journey that’s still evolving.

With that, I’ve really enjoyed seeing the themes in your works like Fallen Star about the idea of home, which you definitely explore in your other films as well. For this one in particular, more so about displacement, as the art installation resembles a house thrown onto a building by a tornado. But the idea of people interacting with this house, and also the people in Bella Vista interacting with their new environment— can you tell us more about your thoughts on these and what it means to you?

It’s all closely interrelated for me – this question of “how do you belong?” How do you adapt to your surroundings? What makes you feel at home, in the end? These inquiries are also at the heart of the creative practice of Do Ho Suh, the artist whose work is the subject of the short, Fallen Star, and the feature Fallen Star: Finding Home.

The history of the places in your films seem really important to each film. That scene [in Bella Vista] in which Doris meets a Salish man and they talk about the reservation and feeling connected to the place still because of the cultural sites and stories down there really stood out to me. Both because of his ending sentence about it being dangerous to lose your history, and also because your other film Common Ground also touches on themes of land ownership and sacredness, in keeping with the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians’ beliefs. Could you talk about what it is about the places that you film that draws you into them?

I’ve been fairly obsessed with iconic western landscapes and the myth of the frontier in this country. So much of American identity has been founded on this lie that white people were somehow meant to be here. For me, place matters because it is fundamental to our emotional and psychological formation. It’s in the physical characteristics, just in terms of literally what comes into our field of vision every day, but also psychically, because the landscape is where we encounter traces of the past, and it seems to me that in some way we must be absorbing that energy. The indigenous presence – or lack thereof – is always a part of the narrative, because we cannot talk about place or belonging or the way identity is connected with landscape without recognizing Native peoples and the machinery of colonization and genocide.

I kind of assume that Montana is not known as a film hub, so I’m wondering if you enjoyed that about it, and how you think that community has contributed, influenced, and received your work?

I did enjoy that it is a quiet place to work. There is just not that much competing for your attention the way it does in Los Angeles, which is where I’d moved from. So I had time to stretch out, to think and feel deeply. In my experience, the community was welcoming and overwhelmingly supportive. That kind of good energy had an effect on my outlook, my sense of what was possible. After Bella Vista premiered at Rotterdam, we got a grant from the Montana Arts Council to do a tour to bring the film to other towns and cities across the state. The experience was really profound for me, having conversations around this pretty unconventional narrative film with ranchers and other non-filmmaker folks. It was inspiring, because I saw just how much cinema can connect us across experiences, that we really are not as alone as we can sometimes feel.

I just want to congratulate you because I heard your film Character is going to Sundance 2020, and that’s huge and so thrilling. As I understand it, the film is centered around Mark Metcalf, an actor and producer, and it’s about his relationship to his sort of life-long experience with his type-casting as an actor. I totally see the draw to this idea, and it’s pretty universally relatable because of how we think others perceive ourselves, yet so personal. I really wanted to ask you about your process for this film: about how you heard his story, how you decided how to visualize it, and how you feel about it?

I’d been wanting to make a project about an actor for a while. As I’ve leaned further into fiction, I’ve been curious about their experiences of the casting process, which can be so emotionally brutal. It was just luck that Mark came into my life when he did, through a mutual friend. Thankfully, he was willing to entertain my curiosity. We started with a series of audio-only interviews over a year and a half, discussing his life and career. I eventually built a sort of script out of it, editing down the transcripts to build a kind of essayistic first-person exploration. We worked together to figure out what we could shoot that could develop or enhance the ideas that were emerging in the narration. It was a pretty fun, playful process, involving Mark and my DP Ori Segev – sourcing props and costumes, figuring out lighting concepts, with the knowledge that we’d be shooting almost everything in a studio. Looking back, it was a very intuitive process for me, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

With that, it looks quite different than your other work in that it is mostly narrative in a studio or stage setting, with quite artfully minimalistic set-ups to show Metcalf’s various character experiences. Could you tell us about your approach, and have you built performative spaces before? Were those sets inspired by typical scenes that he has acted in before?

It was indeed a radically different endeavor for me! It was all shot in a studio, on the fanciest camera I’ve ever worked with, in a slick 2.35 aspect ratio, and with a lot of stylized lighting. After all my discussion of landscape and belonging, this film is really placeless; it’s more about creating a psychological space for the audience to inhabit. Maybe the most salient connection to the rest of my work is its mining of the edge of fiction and documentary. There are moments where it’s not very clear if he’s being himself, performing, or performing a version of his actual self. The vignettes you’re describing were indeed inspired by the archetype, if not the exact roles, that Mark has played over the years. You could say that the film’s “placelessness” also relates to the construct of his archetype: does this person, or the idea of this person, come from somewhere specific? I don’t know. Making this film, I thought a lot about what an intimidating, powerful white man is supposed to look like – or at least, what movies tell us they do. This really links back to your previous question about being a female filmmaker, doesn’t it?

I was thinking the same thing. When it comes to directing, are there great differences in the ways that you direct your crew for this film in comparison to your past works?

I produced and directed this film, and approached it as I do every project with a crew: make sure I know everyone, that we’re all invested in making the same movie, and that there are lots of snacks, good coffee, and time to eat.

And to talk about the idea of “niching-out” and sort of working with what he’s got, which Metcalf explains in his type-cast journey, how does his story resonate with yours? Have those things come through in the process of filming with him?

Among many other things, this project got me thinking about success and failure, how we define it for ourselves and others. As an artist, thirty years from now, what will I be proud of, and what will I still long for?

I also enjoyed the return to Metcalf resolving that all of his life experiences has given him a little more character now, as opposed to the beginning when someone had told him his face lacks character. Your visuals really conveyed so much emotion, and it felt so heart-warming to see a shift in pursuits, in a way, from recognition to seeing his legacy in his fatherhood. Have you thought about the seasons you have gone through, what you value in life or in your work, and what hopes you have?

I had a baby almost three years ago and, as thrilled as I was about becoming a mother, as an artist I was also anxious about what it would mean for my work. Was childbirth and motherhood going to be so life-altering that it would fundamentally change my creative interests? It sounds silly, but I really worried about it. And ultimately, I think it has deepened my practice by giving me a more profound connection to life and emotional, human experience. So to answer your question, my sense is that I’m in a new creative/life era now. And we’ll see what happens next.

Are you currently writing or making something that you’re excited about?

Yes, my second fiction feature, which will bring me back to Montana to tell a story set in a Hmong community. I’ve been working on it for several years and am excited to shoot it soon.

Are there people that you have been inspired by, or have really enjoyed working with that have grown you as a filmmaker?

I was really privileged to work with Thom Andersen, Rebecca Baron, and James Benning in grad school, and learned so much from them. More recently, my collaborator on the Fallen Star films, Valerie Stadler, has been hugely influential on my growth. I consider myself very fortunate to have these brilliant and generous mentors in my life.