"...I realize how collaboration is a huge gift. Working together and giving our time to others is kindness."

Lea Glob, the director of acclaimed doc APOLONIA APOLONIA has a Hopeful Conversation with us.

Back when I started this newsletter, I made some mistakes. Hell, I still am making mistakes, thankfully. One of my mistakes though was I wanted to fit circles into square holes — or whatever the apt metaphor is. I couldn’t just let something be.

I had seen a film that I deeply admired. I had reached out to the director to hold a conversation. It was more than I bargained for, as it didn’t fit my neat little five question format. I puzzled over it: “should I do it as two parter?” “just run it long?” and why I did that, I wrote other things.

Lea Glob’s documentary APOLONIA APOLONIA is a beautiful film. And she’s a very thoughtful and talented filmmaker. Please seek out this film.

I apologize that this slipped through the cracks — to both her and to you, the readers.

Better late than never?

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A close friend first described your movie to me as the film they had wanted "Boyhood" to be. Apolonia Apolonia is something quite different than that film, but it is a longitudinal study. You worked on this film for over ten years. Thirteen, was it? What do you do to stay committed and to keep lifting the work up higher? 

With the film we aim to show society’s hidden structures, such as the conditions of the artist. This only appears over time, and I had such a desire to make it very visible.

I am a very big admirer of Richard Linklater. When I was 16 years old, I saw the film Before Sunset for the first time, and I was so stunned by the atmosphere in this film. I felt like falling in love with cinema and the actors and everything. I was mesmerized. Actually, I broke up with my boyfriend at the time over an argument about the film. He said something really lame about Julie Delpy; “Is she supposed to be “the babe” of the film?” And that was it, I broke up. Looking back, I think I made the right decision to choose a Linklater-film over some local misogynist boy. So, for your friend to make a comparison to this director is a great compliment to me. Otherwise, who knows I might still have been in Aarhus feeding his kids.

Films influenced many of my big choices in life. I grew up in the mainland of Denmark, in the countryside province to a small town called Aarhus. I watched every film I could get a hold of, and I would read the conservative newspaper, as it was the only one to cover American independent cinema coming out. It was also a film that made me move away. It’s a bit funny, as I see that you were the one who produced American Splendor. It was the expected film of the year, and finally, the date of the release had come. And then- it did not play at any cinemas of the entire part of the country where I was living. That was it, I then knew Jutland was too small, and I broke up with that too. And I left for the capitol. I knew only one person there, but there was no other way.

So, I have always stayed very committed to film, I think. Maybe too much sometimes.

Apolonia, Apolonia I did film over a course of 13 years. When I filmed the first shot, I was very young. I was very ambitious too. And very scared of failing.  I was admitted into The National Danish Film School- as one of the 6 students that got accepted every other year for the highly desired documentary class. So, I needed to be good, to prove to myself worthy and to not be exposed as an imposter.

It was the first larger school-assignment. I was determined to find a great female artist to be the main character of the film. Women were very underrepresented in film, when I grew up, so it was an urge to see a complex woman on screen.

I was also a bit pretentious, and I took at an old poster of Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie starring Anna Karina and made it into a casting ad searching for this artist to the documentary. No one called me, so then I started to call the young actresses or artists I knew in Denmark. And they kind of all said no. One woman kindly explained me, that she was searching for both artistic and personal identity, and as only a young woman, it might be too much for her, if she was in a film as both her private and artistic self. However, she knew someone, a French girl, raised in Denmark, who had just moved back to Paris to become an artist. She lived in her child-hood home, an old worn-down Theatre in Paris. It a bit like a fairytale, and it turned out to be true. Her name was Apolonia.

I called Apolonia up on Skype, and from this first moment, I was convinced about her charismatic character. Next day I bought a train-ticket to Paris, and I entered her door with my camera recording. But it did not just as a short student-film. When the exercise ended, I was only at the beginning. I never met anyone quite like her.

When I graduated two years later, I was very dedicated to get a chance to make film. I did not have any money or family with any means, so it was a bit difficult. I had to work hard— and I remember my first encounter with the economic reality of the film industry as my graduation film “Meeting My Father Kasper Top Hat” was accepted to It’s All True Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro. I remember eating a bowl of oatmeal in my tiny room when I got the invitation and a pre-paid flight and Hotel. Next thing I was sitting in a luxury suite with a private outdoor pool, overlooking the most beautiful landscape just below facing the statue of Jesus- but I did not even have money for take a beer from the mini-bar while enjoying the view. It is a strange world of opposites. I did not know at the time, but it turned out to be a pretty accurate picture of what it was like to be a documentary filmmaker.

I made most income by doing the shootings on other directors’ greenlighted films. And I got taken under the wing by filmmaker Eva Mulvad and her producer Sigrid Dyekjaer in their new director-owned company. I put every dime I had into making Apolonia, Apolonia and to keep the shootings going. I did not really spend anything on my own person— just a rented room in Copenhagen, and that was it. So put all eggs in one basket so to speak. My friends began earning money, buying apartments and starting families.

We are easy targets as first time filmmakers. I met my own share of exploitation. After doing two feature films I was really, really broke. But I gained a lot of experience fast. And most importantly I got to go outside of the Danish Pond.

Creatively these collaborations were gestures of kindness and left me great treasures. I might have been a bit too young and stupid to understand it completely. There were moments of losing control and breathing in to a bag. But now I realize how collaboration is a huge gift. Working together and giving our time to others is kindness.

Petra Costa and I were put together to make the film at the DOX:LAB, a training program at CPH:DOX, where they mix directors up on blind dates to do a film together. They do the matchmaking without the directors knowing each other. We met in Copenhagen and had a week to find common ground to produce a film. Petra introduced me to the two actors Olivia Corsini and Serge Nicolai, and together we made Olmo and The Seagull. It was my second education. I was really outside of the comfort-zone, and that was an important experience for me. Defining. I learned how many of the rules I lived by as a filmmaker, could be very much challenged. It goes for the notion of talent, the notion of the Auteur, the way to structure- everything. And it also gave me another perspective on the Danish way of doing cinema.

What is the kindest thing someone did for you professionally?

The kindest gesture of all though, was when my husband, who is an editor, accepted to work with me on Apolonia, Apolonia. Being married, it was a bit fragile to try and work together, but I really felt how he took the love he had for me and helped me protect the film. He did so by insisting on keeping the love in the film. That was the key. Not structure, but story, love and rhythm. He made me a new version from all our edits, and for the first time I saw the film materialize. We called it ‘cut 11’- it had small issues and was not quite finished. But it became our reference until the very final cut (‘cut 33’). Had he not decided to be willing to mix everything, family and work, love and film, Apolonia, Apolonia had not been here today. As goes for Sidsel Siersted who produced with me and was fighting to keep the film open.

All the female commissioners and producers who trusted me. Klara Grunning Harris, was the first to really put money behind my two first films. Followed up by Cecilia Lidin, Tine Fischer, Malgozata Staron and Hanka Kastelicová.

What are some practical things we might be able to do to improve things in the industry?

I think that the directors of documentary films are too far down the chain of power in this industry. I think that we should start to build a more sustainable industry. Filmmakers sacrifice so much and end up being praised as heroes. But I think most would rather get paid. Take for instance all the pitching-forums. Filmmakers pay a lot of money to enter these markets, even though the whole thing is centered on their content. Like the farmers who bring the potatoes to the market. It should be the other way around, I think. At least, we should analyze together how to build a new form of trade model. If we don’t pay the filmmakers in every part of the process, we will lose to many valuable perspectives. People get worn out.

In Denmark I tried to count the number of documentary directors above the age of 45 still actively doing film. I think I counted 6 people. It wears you down if you are not of privilege or have the skills to take good care of yourself.

I think I only just now learned to do so. Now I practice saying no and missing out on stuff. I thought that it was possible to make a sustainable living as a documentary-filmmaker, and that I just had to work harder, and do more films at the same time. But it was too much. I got very sick at one moment, and I found out that I can only do one film at a time. My films suffer too much if I must do many at a time. It takes me away from my family and takes away important time for contemplation. And if I cannot make a living from it, so be it.

Where are the hinge moments in your life? In your career? What were those moments that you can see a clear before and a clear after? Where things were never going to be the same once you took that step? 

When I was younger, I think I was a little bit afraid of people. I think that I was raised as a good protestant, and work always came first, and efficiency and reason were the highest values. Also, I was really shy as a person. I felt best and most at ease behind a camera, working. But I think that I really lost this anxiety and social awkwardness after being both seriously ill and after becoming a mother. I really started to enjoy the company of people and feeling grateful for what the day brings. I am very happy to have become aware and to have lost other this approach to life. There was a “before and after” becoming a parent, and a “before and after” facing serious illness. But another deeply defining moment was the release of Apolonia, Apolonia. If I had not been lucky to survive against the doctor’s odds, this film would have been a bunch of hard drives and tapes in a box, for my son to look at when he turned 18. Art so easily disappears.

The great gift was receiving the respect from my peers and being able to share the film in cinemas all over. I had been making film for 15 years, but I was never able to be at the screenings. For the first film I was too poor, and for the second I was in the hospital. Meeting fellow filmmakers and being part of a community of filmmakers changed something for me. I do not need to prove myself to the same degree.

# me-too have also created a clear before and after for me in my career. Before, the kind of stories that I wanted to do, were rarely supported, and when they were, with less money. Now, there is another awareness. That is really an improvement. There was also so much sexism. To give you an example: when I first entered film school a person with an important position in the National Film Institute started rumors about me. He said that I had slept my way into film school and that I had an affair with my professor. To my face he told me that was I only accepted because of my big tits and my father complex. Or, as he corrected himself looking down at my chest, “medium size. So welcome to the film industry. Luckily, the new generations do not have to put up with that.

It is often said that the only thing that can be filmed, is someone who is being filmed. You seem to have incorporated that into your process; can you tell us a bit about how that friction played out in the process and how it balances with things like truth, naturalism, and context? How much do you want -- or not -- the audience to be thinking about the effect of having a camera in the ….

I really love the first-person perspective in cinema. I like the way a filmmaker can put the audience in her place. To me personally, meeting Apolonia, coming into her world and meeting the people around her, were like a fairytale. And as in all good fairytales, the story is revealed to you by the storyteller.

In documentaries, the storyteller knows what comes next — but the person filming does not, and within this friction there is such energy and beauty.

And in this film, this was the sensation I hoped to pass on the audience. To let them come along and be searching for meaning in chaos together with the filmmaker. For us to be at the exact same place throughout the film.

As if they were them who were asked to do their first film. Deciding where to go? Where to put the camera? So, in the beginning of the film, you witness meeting Apolonia through the look and the thoughts of the filmmaker. Later, I gradually disappear, but come back, at defining moments.

I filmed in a very defining ten year-period of our time. Especially for the female artists. It was during the so-called female spring, and all these changes were happening in society. But for me it was so ambivalent, because I just had a baby and got sick and was tied to a bed, so I had the feeling that this entire revolution was roaring outside of my window, and I was too sick and too stuck and too much of a housewife to be part of it.

Apolonia told me in a Q&A, that she felt, that the moment when I put myself into the film, from that moment she became a person as well. Not just an object for a camera or for a person for the viewers projections and fears and hopes or desires. I like that she said that.

By really showing that this is the story of a woman being filmed, the camera itself plays a role. It is heavy for one thing. Someone must hold it. If the body gets sick or pregnant, I might not be able to. I think that by adding the filmmaker, and putting my own story in the film, we all play a part in telling the story about what it means to be a female artist in the world.

Together we also become more than just one specific artist, but we hold the role of telling the story about what it means to be a female artist in the world. In our time, and in all times.

What did you learn about filmmaking, life, art, and yourself from making Apolonia, Apolonia -- or any other work that you've done? 

I think I learned to step into the shoes of the artist. And, how dangerous it is to lose your self-esteem as an artist. It was very hard to finish the film, and along the way, not many people supported the creative choices I made. I was quite alone at times, and it was hard.

I always felt that the industry was so busy telling me what I could not do, so this feeling stuck to me. It really broke me down. At the very end I just wanted to finish it, and never make a film again. But when the film came out, when the film premiered at IDFA, when the audience embraced the film, it was like a big, warm hug, and I felt so proud that I had insisted on following my own way. Showing the film and traveling with it made me realize, that I should no longer hold on to this lack of self-esteem, because now we had made the film. And it was good. Apolonia is always stressing this fact, that as an artist you must never lose that confidence, because then you lose your ability to create.

If you had to identify a quality that makes for a better film, but for one reason or another, is often ignored, what would that be? Why do you think it is not more embraced?

I really don’t know. I think that practice is very important, and sometimes I feel like I had to master so many different skills to become successful with a film. Sometimes I miss a flow of the work to get more experience without the long financing-periods. I am married to an editor, and I can see how much he develops his craft all the time from all the different films he edits. Sometimes, I wish I could find a way to do the same. I made a deal for myself, that every year I will do a short film, no-matter if there is any funding or time. Whatever, no excuse, even if it will be on an iPhone of my feet. Then, If I am lucky enough to get so many years, at least I will have made 80 short films before I die. That comforts me, when a greenlight seems far away.

There is so much uncertainty in documentary filmmaking, but even more so in character studies, and then even more so when the subject is engaged in a creative pursuit, and yet still more when you are following that pursuit over a decade. I love the "I'm turning the camera moment off," moment so much, but tell me beyond having a fascinating subject in a fascinating field, how did you deal with the uncertainty and just keep the camera on. It is such an act of faith when you don't know what may come next -- and you had to deal with significant tragedy...

I was always very driven. Maybe insanely stubborn also. And it was intoxicating for me to be with Apolonia, I had never witnessed a life of a female artist before. I knew the stories of the male painters very well because my grandfather was a painter.

And his father before him, and his before him. My grandfather never made a career so he could make a living from being a painter, even though he painted every winter of his life. Every year he would leave his family to be alone to paint in the Scottish Wilderness.

I never understood what it was, that was so important out there, that he just leave us all to go there and paint. But I knew that it had to be something powerful.

When he was young, he had attended the art-academy, but he could not deal with the pressure and dropped out.

So being allowed to follow a fearless ambitious painters rise up from rags to riches, on front row, that was to like getting to look into this other pathway.

When I met the young women of FEMEN and saw the personal sacrifices they made to speak out against Putin’s Russia, I was deeply moved. And I knew that I had an obligation to make the film good enough to pass on their fight somehow. In the film I pay homage to the philosophy of the young Oksana Schachko. It was in a personal tragedy I found the deepest connection. I almost died from an infection after giving birth. Later I found out, that Oksana and her co-founders, had made their first action to bring awareness to this very same phenomenon. My infection was overlooked by doctors, whom all thought that I was just another “hysterical” pregnant woman. A couple of hours later I was fighting for my life. I realized that under patriarchal rule, all female suffering is related.

I feared having to close the edit before the film was good enough. I tried with everything in my power, to get enough time and money, to make the film into the best possible version. In fact, I almost failed. We had closed the mix. But we realized that it was not good enough and reopened it. It cost us a lot of money. The films must be so good to stand out today. Even masterpieces are overlooked today.

How are audiences' tastes & consumption patterns changing and why?

I find, that once you have people of all ages in the cinema, then they all enjoy the film. In my utopia the cinema is the new town-hall. I dream of a counter reaction to big-tech and algorithms, where it is cheap and cool to go to the cinema, and that both producers and directors are part-owners it. Then we can sell admissions fairly cheap, and some income goes directly to making more films and keeping the lovely theaters. Optimistic maybe?

What is it that you distinctly strive for in filmmaking -- the thing that makes it yours -- and what are the typical barriers you must overcome to get there?

I strive for honesty. Which of course is a paradox, because good storytelling is always a construction. But if I make it personal, I don’t lose myself along the way, then I can insist on what I feel is sincere. And herein lies another paradox, because in making it personal, I believe, I sometimes succeed in making it more universal. To reach this there are a million of barriers to overcome. My desire to make something easy, something very commercial, something quick, something funny, something someone else writes, something objective and popular. And then my desire to do absolutely nothing at all. I must first overcome the fact, that I once again will write from a place of personal experience. And that most the barriers only exist in my head. Also, even though my body is not the same as before my injuries. I was lucky to meet filmmaker, sound designer and disability-rights activist Jim LeBrecht during the Apolonia, Apolonia tour, and he opened my mind to the fact, that I am not alone in this world, and that many talented filmmakers who have experienced hardship. Many have overcome and have built great careers even if something had to be done in a different way.

Someone told me that the best way to begin a new film is to make up a title, set a date, print the poster and invite everyone. So, when I come home from Hong Kong IFF, I will do that, and you are all invited too.