Inside Out Festival 2017: Monja Art
“For many years, this story was floating around in my mind and my heart and never let me go.”
We all remember being teenagers and we all remember being teenagers in love. Blissful, painful, beautiful, manic—we never want to be young again yet a the same time we long for it. Capturing that truthfully on film is a challenge, particularly all of the ups and downs. One minute we were living the most outrageous comedy—the very next, a sad melodrama.
Seventeen (Siebzehn) is a rare film in that it captures all of these moments, these tonal shifts, in a thoughtful, relatable story that while watching, you can’t help but feeling nostalgic for your own youth. In Seventeen, Paula is one of the most sought after girls in school but she only has eyes for Charlotte, who has a boyfriend. Paula clashes with her friends and classmates as she attempts to navigate her feelings.
Everything about Seventeen is beautifully assured, from the story and characters to the cinematography. Given that, it’s hard to believe that this is writer and director Monja Art’s first feature film. Prior to this, she studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Vienna and wrote her dissertation on the Austrian writer Meta Merz. She graduated from the Film Academy in Vienna with a degree in Screenwriting and Dramaturgy.
So far, Seventeen has won the 2017 Max-Ophüls Prize for Best Film and Best Young Actress (Elisabeth Wabitsch), the 2017 Thomas Pluch Special Jury Prize, and the Audience Award at the 30th Konstanz Queergestreift Film Festival. We imagine, and hope, that it will continue to win many awards!
You can see the Canadian Premiere of Seventeen at this year’s Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, screening at 9:30pm on May 31st. GET YOUR TICKETS TO THE FILM HERE.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND HOW YOU GOT INVOLVED WITH FILMMAKING.
Monja Art: I was always a writer. In kindergarten, I let my parents teach me the alphabet and from then I always wrote and read. Thus, my first big passion was writing. For this reason, it soon became clear to me that I wanted to study German studies and philosophy. At the beginning of my studies I submitted a manuscript for a novel to an international contest for screenwriters and made into the finals. Only the winning script got the chance to be filmed but then I thought, “Why don’t I myself turn my screenplays into movies?”
Shortly after, during a Queer Studies course at university, we were told to make an art project. And so I started to write a screenplay, look for actresses and actors and then I shot a film with a tiny video camera and with more or less only myself as crew. And regardless of how sporadic and inexperienced the whole thing was, I quickly realized that this truly was exactly what I would like to do: writing and directing…ideally not always without a budget and with everything done by myself!
More than ten years have passed since my first steps in making films and it has taught me one thing: Someone who is not wholeheartedly into filmmaking will not last in this shark pool of film industry. But in principle, this is, at least for me, the greatest job in the world.
TELL US ABOUT SEVENTEEN. WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?
MA: For many years, this story was floating around in my mind and my heart and never let me go. There are links to my own youth, naturally, although these—as always—became less and less from the first draft of the script to the final film. I wanted to make a film about youth because there is a manic-depressive side of youth that excites me a lot. And I wanted to make a film about desire, about being desperately in love with somebody but without daring to confide oneself in this person, or, respectively, maybe too late.
I tried to pack a lot of what interests me personally and what I would like to see in a movie into Seventeen. I tried to show the many different constellations of love and tried to portray very diverse characters. The film, after all, is titled “Seventeen” and not “Paula”. Youth is manifold. And so is Seventeen.
YOU WROTE, DIRECTED, AND ALSO CO-EDITED THIS FILM. IS THERE A PART OF FILMMAKING THAT YOU PREFER OVER THE OTHER?
MA: I love directing! For me there is no better job in this world than directing a movie. Writing a script is a lot of work; directing is the gift you get for your hard work on the screenplay. And I really do enjoy editing. For me, editing is like writing the last draft of the screenplay. But what I love the most is directing.
THE LOOK OF THIS FILM IS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING, PARTICULARLY THE CINEMATOGRAPHY AND PRODUCTION DESIGN. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW YOU FORMED THE VISUALS?
MA: Caroline Bobek, the DOP (director of photography), and I always work together on a concept of colors, movement, dynamics, and framing during pre-production. We always prepare ourselves together very precisely for a shooting. When it comes to shooting, I can fully rely on Caro, as we have the same idea about the image language of a film. And if we have different opinions, we usually find a common solution.
We wanted Seventeen to be very dynamic and light. Therefore, Caro used old lenses that were very soft and had a very nice bokeh. The handheld camera style was used to express the lively, unstable parts of youth, where everything can change any minute. Caro is always keen on focusing on the person and their feelings. That’s why she likes to be close to the actresses and actors. The camera movement is always motivated by the inner feelings of the characters. There are also static long shots in Seventeen for things and places that stay the same and that you can rely on them. So we wanted to express this manic-depressive side of youth also with a combination of handheld and static camera as well as with static long shots and scenes with a lot of cuts.
We also didn’t want strong colors in the movie. The only strong color, red, was used to portray Paula’s love interest, Charlotte. Her car and also her swimsuit were red.
ALSO, THE MUSIC! IT REALLY CARRIES THE FILM AS WELL. DID YOU HAVE PARTICULAR SONGS IN MIND WHEN MAKING THE FILM OR WERE THEY ALL FOUND LATER?
MA: Music is very important to me and I already think about what music I want to use in a film while writing the script. I started to write the screenplay while I constantly listened to the album Only by the Night by Kings of Leon. After listening to their song “17,” I knew it would be the title of the film. I tried for a very long time to get this song for this film, but we couldn’t afford the rights unfortunately, due to our budget constraints. (The scene that I had wanted for the song was dropped during editing anyway.)
In choosing the music, I picked songs I liked and which I believed fit thematically with the film. For this reason, I mainly chose young bands and musicians. I also focused on Austrian music, which likely is not that well-known internationally.
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME/ALL OF THE OTHER AMAZING WOMEN WHO WORKED ON THIS FILM?
MA: Caroline Bobek, the DOP, and I have know each other since 2005. Back then I just had finished shooting my first film. We got along so well that we soon founded an association for freelance artists, as we wanted to create films together with other young people. In 2007 we applied together to the film academy in Vienna and both of us got accepted. From the beginning we have made films together—it is a big shared passion. Caro and I complement each other wonderfully; we understand each other on set almost without words.
I met Iris Steiner about one month before shooting on Seventeen started. Her job started off in the script/continuity department, but she ended up becoming far more involved than this. She became kind of a dramaturgical advisor to me. We love to talk about screenplays together and I really appreciate her feedback and her ideas. It became obvious to us that we should work together again.
And of course I want to mention my three wonderful main actresses: Elisabeth Wabitsch, Anaelle Dézsy, and Alexandra Schmidt. It took me one and a half years of casting to find them and I was really lucky that they came to the casting sessions. It was a pleasure to work with them. They are really talented young women and I believe we’ll see and hear a lot of them in the future.
TELL US ABOUT WHY YOU ARE A FEMINIST AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO YOUR FILMMAKING.
MA: I’m really interested in female film characters. I love to tell stories about (strong) women. I think for young girls in particular there still aren’t enough strong female role models. Seventeen hopefully changes that situation a little bit.
I also enjoy working with women. I think there are still far too few women working as directors, cinematographers, editors, and producers.
And what I really don’t like is that women get reduced to their looks so often. It would be nice if it was only about the movies—the work.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVOURITE WOMEN WORKING IN THE FILM INDUSTRY?
MA: There are so many great women working in the film industry that I cannot mention them all! To name a few, I love the movies by French writer and director Céline Sciamma; German writer, director, and producer Maren Ade; and English writer and director Andrea Arnold. There are also so many actresses I’d love to work with one day, like Kristen Stewart and Diane Kruger…
WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE ABOUT FILMMAKING YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?
MA: Be yourself and make movies you love.
IF A MOVIE ABOUT YOUR LIFE WAS CREATED, WHO WOULD STAR AND WHAT GENRE WOULD IT BE?
MA: Three times in my life I’ve been compared to a young Julia Ormond. Once I was sitting in a bar when I stranger approached me and asked me for an autograph because, “You have to be Julia Ormond!” I didn’t even know Julia Ormond back then. About a year later a former student colleague of mine called me telling me, she was just watching Legend of the Falls and was thinking that I looked a lot like Julia Ormond. And then about two years after that, a woman approached me on a holiday in Finland and said that she couldn’t help being reminded of young Julia Ormond when she looked at me. So, maybe young Julia Ormond would have been a good choice! But as there is no young Julia Ormond anymore, Elisabeth Wabitsch would be a great option, too. ;)
What genre would it be? Maybe a dramedy.
IF YOU WERE REINCARNATED AS AN ICE CREAM FLAVOUR, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
MA: I don’t know. Maybe hazelnut?
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW/NEXT?
MA: Among other projects, I’m working on my second feature film, which will be a Seventeen sequel, but in a way, I guess, no one will expect it to be. I’ve also started working on a sci-fi story. And in general, I’m very much interested in working on TV series.
RECOMMEND ONE #MUFFAPPROVED FILM FOR OUR BLOG READERS!
MA: The first film I’m thinking about is Toni Erdmann by Maren Ade. The second one is Water Lilies by Céline Sciamma.
Learn more about Seventeen via the film’s website and Facebook Page.
