Em Baker discusses her new film, I Am No Bird

Having first met by chance at the Sydney Film Festival Program Launch, Addy Fong sat down in a Melbourne cafe with Em Baker to chat about her film, I Am No Bird, and the challenges women face:

Firstly, as a female director, do you think female directors have a different style of directing?
I haven’t worked with a ton of different directors because I guess I’ve been the director (laughs). I’ve worked on a couple of different things but I don’t know if I’m the best person to answer this question…

What about the way they deal with crew?
In terms of documentary, this is something I was speaking about with my DOP for my next feature two nights ago, we’re filming a documentary in India, she’s also a female director and cinematographer. I was like, ‘I feel like in documentary in a sense being a woman can give you a real advantage, because you get access to places that I don’t think men get access to.’ Even if they get physical access, they don’t get emotional access or trust with subjects. I went and filmed four women, trying on their wedding dresses, talking about their, to a certain extent, their sex lives or their hopes and fears around their marriages. I wouldn’t have had that if I was a man I don’t think. That’s not somewhere that you can really access. I think in that regard women do have a distinct, not an advantage, but we have a path that men don’t have of access.

On the other side of that though is that, particularly with documentary, we get told again and again it’s super dangerous, you shouldn’t be travelling to these places on your own, you shouldn’t be going in this and that space on your own, you know. For my last film, I rode my bike across America and people were like you definitely should not be doing that. I was 22 and they were like ‘you’ll get killed, you’ll get raped, you’ll get murdered’ and I feel like, from the beginning, there’s just this kind of push onto women particularly in documentary that’s like ‘you can’t, you can’t do it, it’s dangerous and not something you can do’ and I think it’s wrong. It’s worth acknowledging that pressure exists for women and that it complicates the process.

I understand. I have this fear of travelling somewhere faraway by myself in case I get attacked. I don’t know if men think about this, attacks can happen to anyone really, but it just limits access to experiences, to subjects, not just with film-making but generally because sometimes I’m fearing for my safety.
Yeah, absolutely. In the entire world women have to exercise some level of vigilance for their own safety. I like to think that doesn’t necessarily limit us but it definitely changes the experiences we have access to. People were like you must be really into weddings and that was never the impetus for this film. I think what I’ve always been interested in is how women negotiate a world that’s not set up to benefit them, and I include marriage and weddings as an example. Honestly, this is the most quintessential experience of being a woman and this is exacerbated when you get into intersections of race and class and sexuality and other things. The experience of being a woman is really to experience trying to move in a world that’s not built for you. I think that I Am No Bird was basically taking weddings as an example of this and looking at how women create meaning in those structures. It’s women finding some sort of validation with their sexuality or an ode to their family in a tradition which realistically was setup for the trade of women, that’s essentially what it is, was. Some people would argue still is but I think that it’s emblematic of how women negotiate so many other structures like the education system, the workforce, the medical system. Everything is setup as an obstacle for women to navigate. I don’t know if I’m answering your questions but I’m just going where my feelings take me. (laughs)

I’m just feeling super empowered by your answers.
That’s great! I think there is this negativity with women, you can end up trapped in this place where once women actually do engage with a system it is patriarchal. They can be discounted or looked upon as giving in or serving the oppressor but I think the reality is that change is slow. Women, realistically most people, aren’t just going to burn down the world today, they have to take what they can and that I think is where you find a lot of women’s resilience and power. I think it’s cool and worth examining and shining a light on. That’s why I always seem to make films about women.

One thing I’ve come to think about regarding feminism or equal rights for women is there’s this resilience and strength in being quiet. I used to think it meant a woman had to be really loud, although they might be following tradition it’s ultimately their choice and I love that.
Yeah absolutely. I feel like that is kind of a common halfway understanding of feminism and I’m not a gender studies expert but I feel that it is this idea that feminism is the power for women to act like men and I don’t believe that is a hundred percent it. Feminism is the power [for women] to act however and also the power for men to act however, because what we end up doing when we say there’s a freedom for women to act like men is that we’re saying that the feminine is still shameful.

For women and men there’s this embarrassment of, look around here are women wearing skirts and women wearing pants but there’s no men wearing skirts because it’s still embarrassing to be feminine. There are queer men who are beaten up for being too effeminate, there’s more of an acceptance of women embracing what we see as the great masculine than of women or men who are seen as feminine, because there’s still that whole Plato’s dichotomy that feminine equals weakness and quietness and everything that is anti-capitalist. You can get really far into it but I really feel like there’s a common misunderstanding of feminism and that’s capitalised upon by people who are anti-feminist that feminism equals loud, cruel, and awful and that you hate children and you hate people who have children. To me feminism has always meant just being seen as a human being. I can think of thousands of times where I’ve felt like I’ve not been seen as a human being. I think most women probably can, again I’m saying this as like middle class white woman, I feel like more with other intersections, it really is just about fighting for our basic humanity to not be seen as a consumable object by society for people’s critique or men’s consumption but actually to be seen as an autonomous powerful being.

Talking about critique do you feel this sense of vulnerably whenever you make something? The anxiety of putting yourself out there for the world to see now you’ve made a feature, or is this just a part of being a filmmaker?
I guess both. On one hand your dream is that lots of people will see your film but on the other hand it’s your nightmare as well. At times I’m so over the moon that this is happening… that we’re going to go into theatres and it’s huge, and other times I’m like, ‘what if people hate it?’

At the end of the day this was always what I wanted, and it was always the film I wanted to make. I think that’s what you have to come back to, if you’ve made what you wanted to make then you can’t really feel bad about that. There’ll be some people who won’t get it from all sides. The whole way through making it there were people who were like ‘I don’t get it’ and I’m prepared for that but it’s a film that I always envisioned and it was done on basically zero budget so I feel pretty happy about that.

You say zero budget, but did you get some funding from different places for it?
I mean no (laughs), essentially it was paid for by me but it took four years. I was working as a schoolteacher and paid for it, used savings, my partner put in some of his savings and then eventually (it was funded) through the PEP.

What’s PEP?
PEP is the producer equity program which basically is like a tax, you get money back for, I think, 13% of your budget.

Is this just in Victoria?
No, it’s a Screen Australia initiative but the rules for PEP have changed. We got money from PEP at the very end, and by the time PEP came it was like reimbursement which was really nice. I think the rules have changed basically because Screen Australia don’t have as much money as they used to and that’s going to affect the real little guys, so it’s a real shame, PEP really saved us, it was really helpful. I feel really proud to be at a festival like Sydney Film Festival, considering that this is a film that was largely made in my living room. It’s pretty amazing, I was trying to compare it and explain it to my parents, it’s kind of like running laps of your backyard and then being like, ‘now I’m going to compete against Usain Bolt at the Olympics.’ Almodovar and Jarmusch have films at this festival, and then there’s my film. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it.

Did you travel to the different places and film by yourself?
Yeah, I filmed it all. Well, with the exception of a very small amount of footage in Turkey. We had two cameras going at once. Someone filmed a little bit of additional footage in Turkey but for the most part all the Super 8 and all the digital stuff on the Blackmagic, I shot all of that.

You used the Blackmagic for the main camera?
The main camera was a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema which has been really good, everyone has different views on what kind of cameras they want to use but for me that worked well as a documentary camera. You don’t want a camera that takes 10 minutes to setup when you’re filming a street scene in New Delhi, you need to just get it out and go.

Run and gun film-making?
Yeah absolutely. I think with documentary, depending on who’s your subject, like if your subject is Beyonce then she’s gonna be used to having a camera around, but I was working with people who were not at all used to being constantly filmed, none of them felt really that comfortable at the start. I think having a smaller camera helped them feel comfortable and happy to have me around. You don’t want to shove a huge camera in someone’s face.

How long did you spend with each subject?
It really varied and it was really hard. One of the reasons, to be honest, when you’re basically self-funding a film is you have to make a lot of choices around practicalities. I knew I wanted to have a diverse representation of women and we achieved that but it took a lot of time because one of the other things taken into consideration was that I mostly needed to film during the school holiday period, because I’m a schoolteacher.

You’d film during the holidays?
As much as I could. Three of them I did then, but for the final one I was like, ‘please give me some time off. I’ve found this wedding and I really want to go’. Which is kind of weird because your job’s like ‘You’re going to a wedding of someone you don’t even know in another country?’ and I’m like ‘yeah.’

Did you record sound with the Blackmagic or separately?
Oh no, separate. We had someone with a microphone, a sound recorder I should say. The sound to the Blackmagic’s really tinny, it’s really reference audio only.

So you travel to countries and film weddings but they’re a one-time event. Do you worry if there’ll be issues? I’m always thinking technically what could go wrong, what do I need on set, that kind of stuff and how you’ve gotta be creative.
Yeah, it’s really hard because there’s moments where you really have to get the shot. You can’t turn around and be like, ‘can you just walk down the aisle again?’ You really just have to get it. The shoots were really intense, because there was no do-overs or anything but we got there (laughs).

Did you have the Blackmagic on a monopod?
I basically used a harness. It was literally a harness made of plastic and metal that sat on my shoulder just to add a little bit of stability. It’s still not a super stable film but for a lot of this film was it kinda just me, which is crazy but I guess it worked.

Where did the Super 8 come in?
So the Super 8 was like a weird thing, I’m a big believer in fate

Like some sort of nostalgia with using it?
Yeah 100%, that’s what it is. I think the Super 8 makes things feel kind of magical and nostalgic and plays into the romantic notions around a wedding, that it’s this beautiful moment. I guess just trying to get people to really tap into the romance and the nostalgia of it. The Super 8 kind of came into my life in a weird way though, I knew this guy in uni and he was a mover. I don’t know what his deal was but he would give me free stuff he found when he was moving people’s houses, he gave me like a bed, a projector, and one time he was like ‘I found this camera do you want it?’ and that was my Super 8 so I kind of just started shooting on that. I just thought it was magical when I got the footage back. I just think Super 8 is beautiful as a medium, I wouldn’t watch the whole film in Super 8 but I think with the vignettes it works in a way that’s almost dreamlike to give space to the characters to sort of reflect on all sort of things from culture to religion to marriage and love. It just gave a little bit of space for some footage that is beautiful, romantic, and not so literal.

I read that you also used animation. Is that animation on its own or over live-action?
No, it’s animation on its own. The whole film is really looking at the messages women receive their whole lives around weddings and marriage and what we take from that. I got the animator, Juliet Rowe, to do these sequences, one each for the girls when they were literally girls, to tap into their sort of formative experiences when they were children that formed the views they have as adults around marriage and so they’re kind of done in this way that’s Disney-like and that’s deliberate to kind of nod to Disney princesses and stuff that kids grow up with, these kinds of ideas that you form in childhood. Well, one of the sequences isn’t set in childhood but most of them are, I guess it’s to nod to that innocence.

How did you choose your subjects and get access to your subjects?
When I started, I was toying with the idea, I didn’t know where it would go. The first one I shot was Anna, she’s in Melbourne and that was just through a friend of a friend, like ‘this girl’s getting married, she’s a Christian, she’s saving her virginity for the wedding’. To me from kind of a very secular upbringing that was really fascinating. I just don’t know many people like that and so I started shooting with her and then the idea kind of percolated to do this film and contrast the experiences of multiple women. I found a few of the others through Facebook, through friends of friends basically. Friends of friends connected me to places like India and to Mexico and then through Turkey it was through a collective that I’m in called Film Fatales, which is women filmmakers around the world. They have a chapter in Istanbul and through a few degrees of separation they connected me to Benay in Izmir so that was how I found them. It was always really important to me firstly to have a representative, a bit of a cross section, of women from all different ethnic backgrounds, religions and class, sexuality. I liked the idea that none of the women are a stereotype of the country they’re from, because I think that those kind of nationalistic token ideas don’t really serve people. I don’t know if you think that you’re like the typical Australian woman, I don’t know if I am. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I don’t feel like a typical Australian woman, I have this stereotype of an Australian woman having blond hair, blue eyes and they go to the beach all the time.
Yeah, I don’t wanna buy into that, because I think that’s a load of shit. I mean, I know Anna is white but she’s a devout Pentecostal Christian which is not really the majority in the country. I think that’s good for secular Australians to come face to face with, particularly in the aftermath of the recent horror-show election, I think it’s important to say ‘well we do have this diversity in our community’ and it was the same with other countries. Luthanlu, for instance, comes from a Naga community, they’re a persecuted community in Northern India. A lot of people in India will say they’re not even Indian basically because of the way they look and because they’re not Hindu. They come from what’s called scheduled tribes and I wanted to include her. Benay is a moderate Muslim woman and I feel that was important to include. We have some really bizarre ideas around, some monolithic ideas around Muslim women. I kind of wanted to show that in every community there’s diversity there too. In Mexico I think that a lot of people didn’t realise at the time gay marriage was legal in Mexico and not in our own country.

Back when you filmed?
It wasn’t legal here when I filmed but I was in post-production while the plebiscite was happening. I shot all of those while gay marriage wasn’t even legal in this country. I think that’s important to look at too, we have these ideas that Australia as being white, secular, and progressive and at least in some way I hope to challenge that. Maybe we’re not as secular or progressive as we think we are.

I think the idea or definition of progressive depends on who you are, for example I’m a Christian and that’s my upbringing and beliefs, but what I love about how you’ve chosen your subjects is the diversity of views. I think the danger of making films is that sometimes it feels like filmmakers are forcing a particular view instead of just telling the story…
I wanted people to draw their own conclusions, I wanted them to see the diversity of what marriage can mean to people and that that’s okay. It’s okay that what marriage means to you is that it is a union between yourself and God, it’s okay if what marriage means to you is that you get to have a big party with your family, I think that’s a good thing and a beautiful thing. That was always my intention, to present people in a way where they can kind of tell their own stories. I’m not really interested in a witch hunt, I don’t want people to hate any of the women and I don’t think that people would. I would be disappointed if that was their takeaway but you can’t control audience reaction. One thing you’d notice when you see the film is that the women, they’re never actually interviewed to camera. That was very deliberate because I wanted it to kind of seem like they were kind of narrating.

So, no talking heads?
There’s no talking heads in the film and I was criticised for that by a few people. They said it feels like maybe disembodied or something but I always wanted it to feel more like the women were kind of removed, that they could tell the story to the audience almost from a position of power over the narrative.

So your voice is never heard? Sometimes in documentary there’s narration…
No, I did that with my last film a little bit, I mean I didn’t do voiceover but I was in it. It was about us riding our bikes across America and I kind of thought that was fine but now I don’t need to be in my own films anymore. I’m definitely done with editing footage of myself and seeing myself on screen for two years and I’m glad I’m not in it at all. I think a couple of times you might hear me laugh of camera but that’s about it. I wanted it to feel like you were hearing it from them and to feel almost like you were sitting down and having a conversation with them. That was always the aim for the style of the film. One thing I’m happy with is that I went into this film with very clear stylistic aims, I knew it was never just ‘oh I’m gonna make a film about weddings’ it was like ‘I want to use the Super 8, I wanna use animation, I wanna use this deep rich score, I wanna use narration to make it feel more than the sum of its parts and I feel like I achieved that and I feel pretty proud of that and it’s what makes it different.

I think the lack of talking heads makes it a different type of documentary to traditional documentary, or possibly news reports? You’d usually have the interview and film cutaways to put over…
It’s very different. It made it tricky in editing, so my editor (laughs) had some thoughts about that… but it was always how I wanted to do it. I really wanted to mirror the feel of a narrative love story, they all follow the same, kind of subversive nod where it’s like well, the story you hear as a kid that you meet somebody and then you fall in love and then it ends with a wedding. That was how I wanted this film to play out, it follows that but in a way, that’s more real where sometimes you are questioning, is this a good thing? Is this person happy? Or that’s a really hard moment for that person. There was a lot of thought put into the way that the film would come out, it wasn’t just all about the story and the subject, the style was heavily on my mind.

You said you studied journalism and worked in visual effects in America. Did that inform how you decided to make the film, like how journalism is done a certain way? Do you think that’s informed why you’re interested in documentary? That curiosity?
I think I studied journalism because I was interested in making films. I’ve always wanted to make films but everybody told me ‘that’s a bad idea, you’ll never make any money’. I mean fair point, I haven’t made a lot of money but I love it. I did journalism because it seemed like the slightly more sensible version of film-making to be honest. I’ve never studied film, I’d like to at some point. I studied journalism and it gave me the confidence to just go up and talk to someone and be like ‘can I film you?’ When I first started studying I didn’t know you could just do that, you could just like go up to someone and interview them I was like ‘do you need a permit for this or do you need a licence?’ You can just talk to people, I didn’t know that. I guess it gave me confidence.

I’m always nervous when I first start talking to people and thinking about it, when you meet somebody and you get along almost immediately it feels natural and that’s pretty awesome.
There’s obvious things like consent so you can’t just go around…
Oh yeah, you have to be ethical, I always ask people. You’re not legally bound to get someone’s permission to film them in public but I always ask, because it’s polite. No one wants a camera shoved in their face, although some people would jump in front of the camera. In India people were like ‘I wanna be in the film’ and I was like ‘you’re ruining the shot, you can’t just walk in and be like “hi.” You have to be respectful, you have to be conscious of the fact not everybody who is involved in film-making understands the power that a director and an editor have. You can make people look however [you want]. You can make them look like monsters but then how are you going to sleep at night? You have to take that responsibility very seriously and make something that is authentic and reflective of the subjects and treats them with kindness, that’s how I feel anyway.

Do you have any words of advice to aspiring female filmmakers?
Yes, there are people who will support you and believe in you and help you and then do it. Just do it. Seek support because there are people out there, myself included, who want to see more women making stuff. We want to help you and we’re excited to have you and we wanna make stuff with you. Just come find us. I’m probably gonna get a lot of emails now (laughs).

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I AM NO BIRD will be screening at The Classic Cinema from Nov 14 (with a Q&A session on Nov 15 @7pm, Dendy Cinemas, Newtown, Canberra and Brisbane from November 14-17 and The Thornbury Picture House November 17 (Meet The Filmmaker) SOLD OUT and new session added Thursday November 21 @ 615pm.

Following a successful run at the Sydney Film Festival I AM NO BIRD will be released nationally on November 14.

Keep up to date with Em on Twitter.

Interview by Addy Fong.