Just returned from the Peter Greenaway luncheon at the Atlantic Film Festival, and as usual he has my head spinning. I met him when he spent an afternoon at AMMI in New York screening Pillow Book way back when, during which he advocated heavily against film adaptations of books. Grossly simplifying his views -- Books are books, and by design are a text-based form of storytelling. Films are films and should have their own distinct non-textual form of storytelling. And never the twain should meet. Today, he took it further to say that most people don't know how to read a film, which is why they remain so heavily based on recognizable narrative structures, which he thinks, and I agree, stifle the form. Which is why I love documentary and the expanse of possibilities of form it brings.
DAUGHTERS OF WISDOM lacks a traditional 'arc' structure of narrative and character where something 'happens'. Rather, it requires a viewer to settle in and be transported to this special place. From the feedback I've gotten, audiences seem to be very appreciative of the 'experiential' quality of the film - how the film unfolds organically the way it would if one were to be plunked down in the middle of Kala Rongo Monastery and left to explore. A Columbia University student whose class I previewed the film for even said 'Thank you for not making a film that shoves agenda down our throats. We crave subtlety', and her classmates nodded in agreement. Fantastic.
Yet apparently, the distributors I've spoken to so far who all think the film is beautiful and special and worthy of an audience, also say they don't know how to 'sell' it. Ugh. I am so fortunate that my collaborators helped me make the film I wanted to make. I don't want to make my next film about precocious penguins ballroom dancing on melting ice caps. So I'm left wondering -- will I ever, like Mr. Greenaway, be able to make the films that I want to make, in forms that don't fit 'commercial' structures, without having to eat ramen noodles for the rest of my life?
