MUFFPick: Midnights

Filmmakers Rita Ferrando and Solange Desrochers need your support!

Published in

MUFF Blog

8 min readMar 1, 2017

Very soon after MUFF was founded, we realized we wanted to not only celebrate the movies we already know and love but also champion films from filmmakers who audiences might not know already. So in July of 2015 we launched our miniMUFF short film program, where we pair a short film from a local female filmmaker with our monthly feature and invite the filmmaker to the screening to introduce her work. We want to continue to support the local and up-and-coming filmmaking community and so it is our pleasure to announce a new blog feature called MUFFPicks.

MUFFPicks will be our chance to highlight crowdfunding campaigns from women-led projects that we feel deserve our community’s attention and support. We will share the campaign on the blog along with an interview of the filmmakers.

Our first MUFFPicks is a beautiful short film from filmmakers Rita Ferrando and Solange Desrochers called Midnights. The story is about a deteriorating relationship and will focus on power dynamics, abuse, and feminism. Rita and Solange have put together an amazing team and we can’t think of a better project to kick off MUFFPicks.

Thee Indiegogo campaign ends on March 9th and they are over 65% funded right now. Help them make it to 100%!

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with filmmaking.

Solange: I got into filmmaking when I took a film camp offered by the Women In Media Foundation when I was 10. I was hooked right away — it changed my life! I’ve always loved the arts, and was a violinist and dancer before I came to Ryerson to study film. I love how film incorporates so many aspects of the arts — it’s multi-faceted nature is to me what makes filmmaking so rewarding. It feels like the fullest, most complete way I could express what I want to say.

Rita: I started making short films when I first got my hands on a small Canon digital camera at around 13/14. I remember it could only record about up to 30 seconds per take. I always loved creating small narratives, mostly little essay pieces on personal subjects. I think film really spoke to me due to the fact that I could sort of culminate everything that inspired me, be it dance, painting, music, or literature. There seemed to be an ability to never get bored, to compose something in a sort of ultimate choreography.

Tell us about this project! Where did the idea come from?

Midnights is inspired by the short story “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story has timeless issues at play within it regarding gender and power. Unlike the story, the film is set in a more contemporary world (though the exact time frame is unclear) in order to discuss the societal issues it brings up in a modern day context. It explores themes such as the obsession with human perfection, gender roles, and abusive relationships. We feel it is important to express the subtleties behind the elements of sexism at play in the film in order to educate those that do not understand it.

What excites you about using crowdfunding?

How loved and supported we feel! When you’re creating films you can really be in your own world which can leave you feeling quite isolated from your audience. We’ve put a really personal and passionate project out there and have received such incredible support…it really makes us feel like we’re truly connecting and sharing stories — which is what we love to do. Crowdfunding is an amazing way to interact with communities and support what you believe in. It can provide opportunities for underrepresented demographics in a really powerful way, which is a beautiful thing.

Tell us about some/all of the other amazing women who worked on this film!

We’ve had so many amazing women working on Midnights! Steph Sinclair is our AD and has been helping with our Indiegogo — she has incredible energy and drive, and we can’t wait to see what she does with her career. Ana Popova is our incredibly talented Production Designer who really helped bring the story to life. Molly Jenne is our Production Manager; without whom we couldn’t do anything! And Claire Allore was our casting director. We had two fantastic women as our gaffer and grip on a few of our shoot days: Khanh Tudo and Weeda Azim. They also head a film collective at our school called She Films which is awesome! Mel Wright is our actress, and she is such a bright light with incredible innate talent. We are incredibly grateful for these women and there are so many more that we wish there was room to mention here as well!

From the crew shot, we can see it’s fairly gender-balanced, which is awesome! Was this a goal?

It was, but it wasn’t hard to do! We’re actually even missing a few key players in those shots which were also women. We always aim for a 50/50 split minimum but the more talented women and LGBTQ crew members we can bring on the better!

Tell us about why you are a feminist and why it’s important to your filmmaking.

Rita: I’m a feminist because women’s stories need to be heard and women’s struggles need to be brought to the forefront and treated as valid issues. I’m a feminist because men operate in positions of power and privilege within a society that propagates that privilege. As a filmmaker, I aim to create stories that bring forward issues within intersectional feminism. There are so many stories to be explored which are central to women, women hold the key for the future of filmmaking; they are stories we’ve never seen before and that, to me, is incredibly powerful. We have the capability to capitalize on something new, monumental, and real.

Solange: I enjoy thinking about the big picture behind feminism, which is that we can never see the world completely until every voice is heard equally. As an artist I aim to always keep my mind open to new things, and I believe this has given me such richness in my life. I hope that all people can find happiness that way. At the same time, feminism has allowed me to look into myself and realize what is truly important to me beyond the haze of expectation. Feminism is about acceptance and empowerment, and if my filmmaking can convey that, I have succeeded as an artist.

The clips/stills on your Indiegogo page are so striking. How did you go about deciding on the look/feel for the story?

Rita: Thank you! I have an endless backlog of images that I save and go back to. For Midnights we took a lot of inspiration from the painter Vilhelm Hammershøi as well as a Polish film called Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski. It was really important that the film have a more minimalist yet painterly style. The concept of gesture really interests me within cinematography, small details that make up the construction of a person or a memory. For example, conveying the details of a second, then sculpting and revisiting those fleeting time signatures.

Solange: To add to what Rita said, the look/feel of the story is so intrinsic to the story itself. Its narrative of fragmented memory cannot be expressed without it. The visual details are often important symbols that we used to express Ada’s (the main character) emotions. None of our visual choices are there without reason, and we put a lot of work into that thought process.

Who are your favourite women working in the industry?

There’s an endless amount to list but here’s a short attempt:

Jane Campion, for the power, mastery, and grace within her films.

Andrea Arnold has a undefinable quality, her work is always surprising and pushes our perception of the emotional capability of film. she’s challenging but in a very free formed and rebellious way.

Miranda July: her films can be quite painful to watch, mostly because they are brutally honest. Her background lies in a very different formation than Arnold and Campion, since July has worked mostly in performance art and writing. Her work is playful and she never really censors herself.

What’s the best advice about filmmaking you’ve ever received?

Solange: Always prioritize truth. Not necessarily realism, but emotional or artistic truth. I feel like everything else can fall into place after that. There’s a lot of crap in the industry — intimidation tactics, patriarchy, ego — it’s easy to get swallowed up in that. But keeping your eye on the truth can help you see clearly.

Rita: Above all communicate, create a safe space for those who work around you, apply nurturance in your work (especially if you are a man). Take care of yourself because if you work in film you will most likely be working around the clock. Surround yourself with people who respect you and have similar values as you.