I Is Another: Relational Documentary Practices with Ollie Launspach

00:00:07: Hello, and welcome to DOK Industry Podcast season number seven, your podcast about the creative documentary and animated film industries. It is in collaboration with our dear friends, the Programmers of Colour Collective, What's Up with Docs, and Talking Shorts. Big shout out to our partners, supporters, and contributors. Please check them out. And hey, it's good to have you here again. Thank you for listening and enjoy the conversation. Here is your DOK Industry Podcast season number seven.

Savina Petkova: It's very rare to be able to have conversations like these about films like these, so I'm very, very thankful for you joining us, Ollie.

Ollie Launspach: Thank you for having me.

Savina Petkova: So, this film was your graduation film from the Netherlands Film Academy, right? From your undergraduate in film directing. That's a very revealing film to go with. I'm wondering about the support you felt and the need to tell your story through the story of your partner as well. How did that journey begin through the institution that you studied in?

Ollie Launspach: And I read her diary, she sent it to me, which is crazy, in retrospect, that she did that. And I read those diary entries, and as a partner, personally, I was getting pretty scared, because I was reading stuff that I didn't know that was happening within her. But as a filmmaker, I was very, very excited, because I had just found something that was interesting and dramatic, and so at that point, I decided that the film should be about my own partner. And the film school was pretty supportive of that, because they understood that it was important for me, and I think they also saw the potential in the story. Does that make sense?

Savina Petkova: Absolutely. I was going to ask you about the role of diaries in the film, and also in storytelling, because a diaristic way of looking at the world is very introspective. It's supposedly stuff that people write for themselves only. But everybody who's written down even a page in a diary knows that you're imagining a reader in your head already. So could you talk to me a little bit about that opening of the world, maybe before we get into particulars, in terms of the role of Sterre's diary in your film, just that opening of a dialogue within a documentary kind of filmmaking?

Ollie Launspach: It resonates with me, what you just said, writing personal stuff down and imagining somebody reading it. I can sometimes think that there's something wrong with me, that I imagine those people, but maybe everybody does. I think so. I think so. You think so?

Savina Petkova: Yeah, it seems to me that that's what making a film out of nothing is. Turning a personal story or personal introspection and giving it the shape and form of real life through cinema is a bit of a process of opening up, I guess. That comes from nowhere, but it comes also from a deep place inside of you.

Ollie Launspach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do you mean the desire of, what do you mean with opening up, the desire for a story to be told or to share something?

Savina Petkova: Yeah, both. I think because telling and sharing go very much hand in hand, especially in your film. It's so much about articulating the inarticulable, in a way.

Ollie Launspach: Um, so she herself has the same, um, the same desire to use text as a way to kind of get a hold on her life or her thoughts. And does that make sense?

Savina Petkova: In a way, it feels to me that filmmaking in your practice has something to do with bringing order into chaos.

Ollie Launspach: Mm-hmm.

Savina Petkova: And before we get into talking about the editing and how that put an order, a very beautiful kind of order in your storytelling, I want to ask you about the process of filming. Because, as you said, the camera is there as a companion, as a tool to figure things out. But how does the camera come into the scene from the very beginning? I guess with all these intimate moments and the intimacy shared in the sequences, can you tell us the practical hurdles and circumstances that were needed to capture all these moments on camera?

Ollie Launspach: I started recording. Um, that's a strange thing to do, but in this intimate setting, it was kind of all right because it was still just the two of us, but the conversations we had, the white wall conversations, I call them, she in front of a white wall, a whole camera crew was here in my house. And we had kind of built this set where she could sit and they were downstairs in my hallway, listening to our conversations. And, uh, I'm not sure if it helped us to understand each other, honestly, but one thing is sure. And that's that a camera kind of forces you to do something, to say something. Um, so that's what happened.

Savina Petkova: Yeah, what you say, I find really profound. It speaks to the nature of cinema and to documentary, of course, that the camera is never a fly on the wall. It actually exacerbates and intensifies the situation that you find yourselves in. But how do you make the call of what is ultimately good for you in a scene? In that case, for example, in these conversations, what's good for the film? And what may be good for your conversations? I feel like that's, um, that's a part of personal filmmaking that is very hard to give advice on or pin down. But I guess it has to do with the way that you would process these scenes that are maybe different from what we see as viewers.

Ollie Launspach: Um, let me think, because this has been the question, I think, while making this film, figuring out which role to play when. And the idea that those conversations I had with Sterre, with the hallway full of crew, were intimate, that's a false notion already. Um, I was a filmmaker during those conversations. And as a filmmaker, and she was kind of, she was the protagonist and she knew that she was.

Savina Petkova: The question is, how in those moments of intimate conversation, you make the call, what's good for the film? And what's good for the conversation that you're having then and there with your partner? That seems almost impossible to figure out in the moment.

Ollie Launspach: Well, I chose the film every single time, I think. And I think she did too. But it's good for the film to be sincere and vulnerable and authentic. So I was trying to be, and she was too. But in that way, it's a sort of performative authenticity. Is that something that resonates with you?

Savina Petkova: I can only imagine this was a one take thing, the whole film. I cannot imagine it being a take after take. So can you let me behind the scenes a little bit?

Ollie Launspach: Behind the scenes of those conversations, you mean?

Savina Petkova: Yeah. I guess what I'm trying to ask you is whether there's been any script or scripted moments or take one, take two, let's do it again. Behind the scenes, whether this kind of conventional way of making a film applies at all to what we've been talking about.

Ollie Launspach: Uh, the first day of shooting, it was actually a test day. We still needed to convince the kind of board at the film academy that we, that we, uh, we still needed to get permission to make this film. And we were testing and she was in front of the white wall, Sterre, and we were talking and it wasn't going anywhere. It was just, we were only fighting basically. And then I got a call and it was the gender clinic that was calling to make an appointment with me. And I was waiting for that phone call for, I don't know, six, seven, eight months. Um, that wasn't scripted. Uh, I think God exists now because that happened, but, uh, no, that wasn't scripted. Does that answer your question?

Savina Petkova: Yes. Thank you. It makes me want to ask you about the formal aspects of the film and the aesthetics because it is made out of collage, photos, diaries, written text, typography, home video footage. That is a very different kind of quality than the scenes that we were just discussing, different aspect ratios as well. But yet it all feels very uniform moving with the feelings as they are arising and are being processed. Did the variety of aesthetics came into your mind at some point as, as an obstacle or it just came out, came up together naturally? What do you think?

Ollie Launspach: I like ugly stuff. So for a very long time, I thought that the film was going to be very ugly because of the, you know, the variety of material you just named. But then I started working together with a very amazing cinematographer, Tarzan Rutgers, and he was able to, in the visual language, kind of create this overlapping aesthetic. And the film has this analog tactility. Is that an English word? Tactility.

Savina Petkova: Tactility. Yeah. And texture as well. It is very textured.

Ollie Launspach: We took the time to think about how to visualize it. So I think that makes the film, in the end, aesthetically pleasing instead of very chaotic and ugly. But I really have to thank Tarzan for that because I wouldn't have done it.

Savina Petkova: What was the process like? Did you rewrite things? Did it help to see them out of the context of a diary? What was the process like and what did the process feel? Because these are intimate personal words. Of course, you've shared between yourselves. But this was for the film, in a way, bringing them to new light. Did it feel therapeutic or did it feel scary?

Ollie Launspach: I'm not sure if I succeeded in telling a very good story with them, because I didn't change them. Does that make sense? Hmm.

Savina Petkova: I wonder whether this may be a natural consequence of working with yourself as primary material, though. That with time you would come back and be more critical about it, because you said it's not changed, it was raw.

Ollie Launspach: Mm-hmm. I think it's just a bit dramatic now. When I read those diary entries, I'm like, oh man, it's so dramatic. And... But maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe that's because they are my diary entries. Maybe I'm so critical because I wrote them myself. But they are, in that sense, very authentic. Even the diary entries of Sterre that are very curated, in a sense, they are still very authentic because that's the way she writes.

Savina Petkova: What was that decision like to see through each other's eyes?

Ollie Launspach: She knew all this time that it was me, I think. I think she knew from the very beginning that I was making something about myself. She's clever like that. So, it really happened, the thing that happens in the film, me getting kind of stuck in my storytelling because I don't know where the story is going or what the actual problem is. She was telling me what the problem was. So, it made a lot of sense for her to do that in the film as well. And then, to add, she is a fantastic writer and creator. So, I would be crazy to not use her creative mind to make something, to write something for the film. So, that's what we did.

Savina Petkova: And I guess that is what is reflected at the end credits as well, a film made together.

Ollie Launspach: Yes, because we really did. I mean, this film wouldn't have been possible in any way without her. She, I mean, in any way. She is so, so very important to the film and to me. Yeah.

Savina Petkova: And I guess what really struck me in the film is the way that it presents storytelling as a collective endeavor. And being together with someone in a relationship is also a similarly collective endeavor, obviously. And it's never easy, and it's really beautiful to see a relationship put at the center of a film, not as a narrative drive or something that we, as viewers, are voyeuristically part of. In fact, would you say that having this radical intimacy approach by showing all of this with the audience is actually a gesture of inviting us in?

Ollie Launspach: I'm not sure.

Savina Petkova: Yeah, because that might mean something that is rather invasive as well. All my questions are from the point of view of curiosity and seeing how this act of bravery, because making films from such a personal standpoint, whether it's a relationship in your body, your transition, your moments that are going to live forever in this film, is brave. So I'm very happy when you're hesitating in how to answer.

Ollie Launspach: Yes.

Savina Petkova: It's, I think it's a beautiful thing to capture on a podcast.

Ollie Launspach: Oh, really? Okay.

Savina Petkova: Because it's really, it's good to say, well, I don't know if I want that.

Ollie Launspach: So I'm curious what, because you, you just, you just said something about radical honesty. Is it really that intimate to you, the film?

Savina Petkova: some of us have first-hand experience, some of us don't, but there's a lot to connect to in many ways. But we don't think about them until we see them on the screen. That's what I mean. It kind of, it brings up the reality that you feel recognized. And this is, of course, very different for cis people in relationships and with trans people in relationships. So it's going to be like watching maybe two different films, depending on who's watching them. But I'm curious, the conversations that you've been having with people after the screenings, I bet they've been very interesting and intimate as well. Yes. Do you feel like people have been coming forward encouraged by the form of the film? And I mean, it being intimate to share with you.

Ollie Launspach: Yes, for sure. It took us a while to find the right audience for the film or the right audience, an audience that it resonated with so deeply that, I mean, the stories I've heard, people are very, people, I mean, it's weird to say about my own film, but people are touched. And especially trans people and their partners, they see something of themselves reflected on the screen. And I think that something about the giving the doubt space, the doubt whether transitioning is the right thing to do. And I think people find it very comforting to see that because it's something that is not often talked about in my experience.

Savina Petkova: Yeah, I can certainly imagine that. And in one of your interviews, you had said that there was an explicit move away from body centered imagery when it comes to transition. So I want to ask you because all the process seems very intuitive, the way that the film evolved. But can you elaborate on this particular decision? Because that seems like it was something that you wanted to move away from intentionally.

Ollie Launspach: And that wasn't interesting to me at all. Maybe it wasn't in that way a very conscious decision. I just wasn't interested. I didn't want to make a film about my transition. So I think it kind of happened intuitively. Do you recognize that desire I had to not focus on the body too much?

Savina Petkova: They are hungry. The camera in these films is hungry for the changes. And that's worlds away from the way that body is present in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, of course. But I'm also wondering about the relationship between authorship in the film, and I guess I'm going to come back to the collaborative factor as a film about a relationship, by a relationship. Because it seems to me that this deciding not to focus on the body and not to make a film about your transition, but a film that features that part of your life and is documented there, is also choosing a different kind of narrative for yourself. Did you ever feel that way, like the film being really intertwined with where you are, right then, right there, in your life, and how this becomes an archive of your own, too?

Ollie Launspach: I feel so shallow because, no, I didn't think about that. I was thinking about that when we were making the home videos. I think they've always been a way to archive the important or interesting or kind of vulnerable moments between us. But the film, no, now I can see that this might be a lot of fun to watch in 30 years.

Savina Petkova: What is it about the home video footage that speaks to archive for you straight away? Is it because it's a nostalgic form?

Ollie Launspach: But people will see that version of myself. So, no, I think I'm regretting it more. Yeah.

Savina Petkova: it teaches you a lot of lessons. So I'm wondering if you want to share some of them. Um, it's a, it's perhaps a very different kind of lesson than if you had made your first film in a narrative fashion with an animal protagonist, let's say.

Ollie Launspach: That's a good idea.

Savina Petkova: So something really, really specific to the form of the film that you would like to pass on to as, as knowledge.

Ollie Launspach: And those teachers, they told me, when you do it, when you write something down, try to make something out of it, film it, edit it, put some music underneath there, just kind of find out what the story is, instead of sitting down behind your computer and just trying to write it all down. So, I think that would be my advice.

Savina Petkova: No, that's wonderful. I think it's very well put. And when it comes to your next projects, do you feel like you're more inclined to move away and do something quite different? Or do you think you're still more, or do you think you're more inclined to go deeper into the paths that you're already carving?

Ollie Launspach: I'm afraid that it's the latter one. I know that it's the latter one, no. For some reason, I'm not done with looking at myself. I say shamefully. But no, I'm working on something. I'm making a film, actually, with Sterre again. And it's becoming a bit personal again. And I'm making something about and together with my father. So, no, it's definitely something that I'm still exploring. And I really hope that it will stay authentic and vulnerable. I really hope so.

Savina Petkova: Wonderful. I think that's a wonderful way to end. Really, really nice.