Robyn Candyce
Much more than an animator, Signe Baumane is usually recognized for her award winning short films, such as ”Love Story” (1998) and ”Teat Beats of Sex” (2007). Originally from Latvia, the New York City based filmmaker is known for her hands-on, fearless approach to animation.
Her most recent success is ”Rocks in My Pockets”, a comedy about depression, and her first feature length film. I caught up with Signe at a coffee shop this past weekend, where we chatted about what inspired the film, her battle with depression, budget, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and acclaimed theatre director Sturgis Warner.
The art you chose for this film – papier-mâché, stop-motion, and hand drawn animation – are techniques rarely used today. When you were deciding which forms of animation to use, were you taking into consideration the fragile and forgotten characteristics these forms have, or was there some other reason for your choice of animation which came into play, such as budget?
Well, you know, I do make cheap films. I mean fast, and cheap, and furious, right? But I think the main reason why I choose this form is that I am a very tactile person and I like that involvement, like physical involvement with objects. I feel like it makes me more intelligent; it’s a more intuitive approach other than creating things digitally. Around 2000, I made a choice not to learn [Adobe] Flash because I hated the program. I hated how everything made in Flash looked, and I made a point not to learn it, because I knew then I could get a lot of jobs to do Flash work, and I didn’t want to. So I kind of stick to the handmade because that is what appeals to me, and if I wouldn’t be making animation I would probably be knitting – which is nearly the same thing – because knitting is also a lot of little crooks joining together in a sweater, the same way animation [is] a lot of drawings joining together in a comprehensive story.
The papier-mâché choices – this is the first time I used papier-mâché in my [animation] work – and I know it’s a long story, but a few years before, an Italian fashion designer, Aspesi, he saw my film Teat Beat of Sex and he said, “I love your film. Can you do a mural for me, for my store, for Christmas?” and I said, “Sure.” Although I had never done a mural, but I would do a lot of things for money, actually I would do almost anything for money. Meaning, you know, as an independent artist you sell anything you can. Although, there are a couple of lines that I will not cross. In any case, I went to Italy and I made a mural, and while he was watching me do the mural, he was like, “Oh my God, you are an artist! You are a true artist. I want more of your work in my store, can you do papier-mâché sculptures?” and I dabbled in papier-mâché. I would make objects as big as this [coffee cup].
You know its fun to do, fun to try – you know we artists, we try different things – but he said, “No, these small things, I can’t do anything with them, I need big! I need your size,” which is like 1.67 meters tall. So, I was like, “Okay,” and I made a couple of those for him. He was very excited, and I eventually ended up making 30 of those for him. He said, “Signe we have to stop! My store is turning into Signe Baumane Museum.” So we stopped. But it was really amazing fun to do these sculptures, and I thought, I would love to bring these sculptures into my story-telling work, my animation work, but I couldn’t figure out how, because papier-mâché doesn’t bend, it isn’t fluid. Then it hit me that I could use them as the background, but also when you make films cheaply you want to tell the story. You also want the viewer’s eye to be bound to something, and you want them to believe [in] this three-dimensional reality because it brings the viewer in much better than flat drawings. So I started building forests and cities, and just planning these camera moves – it’s a three dimensional space – so that was the two considerations.
I still feel I haven’t explored everything papier-mâché can do for my work. I still want to do, in my next project, something totally insane and crazy, like really surreal. You know images, but not like real images. Maybe images of backgrounds, but you know, that’s like a year from now.
You mentioned that you make cheap movies. However, this was a fully animated feature length film, with a crew, that was paint and paper heavy, so Rocks couldn’t have been so inexpensive to make. Who were backers? How did you find them?
The production budget for the film was around $286,000, which is very cheap for an animated feature. Of course, there will be marketing and distribution costs added up on top of that. I was able to save a lot of money by doing most of the work myself; writing, directing, animating, producing, making sets, etc. [The fewer] people you have to pay salaries to, the cheaper the production.
Early in the production, the project received a grant from NYSCA that had to go through a non-profit organization. The non-profit organization that agreed to support the film was Women Make Movies; I think this is their first animated feature project – they mostly work with documentaries. After the project received a non-profit status, the donations it received were tax deductible. It was a great fundraising tool.
On top of NYSCA and Jerome Foundation grants, we raised around $160,000. In Sept 2011, [we] started to work on the film full-time. Towards the end of the production – around Dec 2013 – we started to run out of money and decided to run a Kickstarter campaign, which we started in early 2013. In 30 days we got support from 800 backers and raised a little over $50,000. There were about 150 Kickstarter backers from Latvia who supported the film, and we decided to [release] the film for Latvian audiences as well. In early 2014, we asked the National Film Center of Latvia for support and received it, and now we have Rocks in My Pockets in Latvia, that had a Latvian premiere on August 21st, and is having a theatrical run in Latvia right now. As to who are Rocks’ Kickstarter backers; they are people who are interested in the subject of mental health, who believe that the message – my personal journey towards hope and redemption – has to get out into the world, and believe that animation is a perfect medium to do it.
So every day for seven weeks, until you were ready to record the voiceover, you worked with acclaimed theatre director Sturgis Warner. Why did you decide to work with a theatre director as oppose to a voiceover coach, and what was your journey like working with him?
One of the really cool things about this project is that it kind of blends two art forms together, like theatre and film, you know, like animation. For me it’s cool, not everybody understands how much theatre has influenced this particular project. Everybody takes it as a film, but there are elements of theatre there; first there was the theatre and voiceover director that came and worked with me, but also the lighting. The sets were lit by a theatrical director who knew more about the lighting than I could have ever possibly known.
Talking of working with the voiceover coach, you know, you work with what your given because you are — I am an independent artist, and one of the things about being an independent artist is, first thing, you don’t have a lot of budget; second, you work with people you know; and third is you just work with whatever is given, and you just make the best out of it.
It just so happened that I had met Sturgis Warner in 2000; it was a long time ago, and we have been in relationship since. So he is a person that I trust. I have seen his theatrical work, he directed one-person shows, and he knows a lot about dramaturgy. He also helped me to get the script in shape. When I was writing the script, he was the one who insisted that I write how depression feels from inside, because I didn’t want to go there for many reasons, because it’s just too painful to go there. Once you start thinking about depression it kind of comes to you, but he said without that particular part there would be no film. Which is right, but when we started to work on the voiceover– as an American theatre director, which is different than a European theatre director, he has a huge respect for the words and the writer. A European theatre director would have no respect for the writer at all, but he had total respect for the words. We changed a lot of words as we were progressing, but he said, “Let’s just take it calmly, let’s not force any concepts on the script, let’s just read it calmly without drawing anything and lets just see where it takes us,” and that’s how we started.
I started to read aloud quietly, and then we would discuss chapters; what they meant to me, what was important, why was it important, and so every word kind of got shaken. The writing– every word had a meaning, and it had a purpose, so that my work as a reader was to reveal that meaning and bring it to the audience. Also as a theatre director, he believes in stakes and raising stakes. Whereas in a normal movie you hear a voiceover actor and [there is] this kind of mumbling, this kind of hurried, kind of mysterious, and weird – and quiet and pushy – voiceover. This is not what it was, this is very theatrical. This is very right in your face and I’m not ashamed to raise the stakes and scream at you, you know? So that’s how it works, and in some ways I feel we should have brought down the stakes from the film, but then it wouldn’t be…I don’t know, I would have to make two films to see how it works.
Also, when I started to work on the film, a lot of my friends, people who I really I respect in the animation industry and the film industry said, ‘Signe you are making a big mistake. First, you are having so much voiceover and you are not an actress, and you are reading it yourself. Second is, nobody knows you, why don’t you get [an A-list actor] to do the voice over?’ So I said, “Well, first it’s a personal story, and I have this Latvian accent,” and they said, “Well a good actress can fake a Latvian accent.” Well, I was like, “If [an A-list actor] is faking a Latvian accent and faking being me, then it is a fake story. But it has power when I’m telling it; you can tell I’m not an actress, and there is rawness in it.” Anyway, the voiceover is a little bit stilted. It is ‘raised stakes.’
Rocks in My Pockets first appeared at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It not only was the first animated film to be entered into the film festival, but it also won the FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) prize. Tell me a little bit about being the first animated film in the festival, what the FIPRESCI prize is, and its journey to KVIFF?
Before we got accepted into the Karlovy Vary [International] Film Festival, there was a lot of anxiety, rejection, and confusion, but then Karlovy Vary said they wanted the film, they were very certain they wanted to have it in competition, and I looked online and I couldn’t find a history of any animated features having been screened there. So I asked, and they said, ‘no we’ve never, there haven’t been any other features’. It’s very strange because it’s the Czech Republic, and it’s a festival that next year is going to celebrate 50 years. So 50 years ago it was Czechoslovakia, and Czechoslovakia use to be a capital of animation, and [it] still is, in Prague. A lot of American animators go to study animation in Prague, because it’s a mecca of animation. So how Karlovy Vary, a festival in the Czech Republic, could never have an animated film come into the competition is a mystery to me, and also a great honor.
It meant that the film really broke from the ghetto of animation, because you know, the animation community could be a little bit like a ghetto, which is secluded, and it just broke through. It spoke to people who were dealing mainly with live action films, and for me that was a thrill and an honor definitely. I think there were ten films in the competition, so it was a great honor; that alone was amazing, to be screened alone, in front of a lot of people, that was just an amazing experience.
The FIPRESCI Prize is an award given by the International Federation of Film Critics. They join together and they decide who they want to get the award. So, that was amazing because I did not expect any prizes because its animation.
There is another prize, commendation of the Ecumenical Jury, which was very interesting for me. The Ecumenical Jury is a jury where different parts of religion come together – five representatives – and they look through all the films in the competition. It’s like a congregation, so they recognize the film as a spiritual journey, and I am not a religious person. I grew up in a communist country; religion is not part of my life. So I consider myself not religious, I wouldn’t say atheist, or agnostic, I wouldn’t even say that, it’s beyond that. Religion is a kind of habit, an involvement in certain communities that I’m not part of. So for them to come out and say this film is of spiritual value– all five members came up to me and said, “Your film has spiritual value, we want to have the film for our purposes, we want to show it in our parishes.” I was like, “Really? But there is no mention of religion or God in the film,” and it puzzles me, it just puzzles me; and then I realize spirituality doesn’t have to have organized religion or a parish. Spirituality is just something that, like what the film says is that you have to be part of community; you need to be part of people and that you don’t give into your personal needs, into your immediate needs. Anyway, I still haven’t formulated it myself, but that award really struck me, I was like,
“Wow.”
Zeitgeist Films (a prestigious United States, independent film distributor), is handling Rocks’ American release. How did Rocks and Zeitgeist become involved?
One of the Rocks in My Pockets Kickstarter backers suggested to Zeitgeist Films that they watch Rocks. They did and were mesmerized (their words). Of course, they knew that it was a difficult film; how do you sell an animated feature, a funny film about depression? But they felt compelled to work with it. A great honor for us.
In the film you talk about getting labeled as “being too mentally unfit for society,” whereupon you were institutionalized without ever been told what the original diagnosis was. What was that like for you?
Now that I’m in different place, when I look back and I try to comprehend what exactly happened, why I was checked into mental hospital, and why I was labeled like that, I don’t know and it’s very hard for me to say. It’s funny, because now with all these interviews and that, my name came up online and old friends came out from the woodwork. One friend, who is really my best friend – always felt she was best friend – last time I saw her was in 2000, and she comes out and she says, “Last time I looked in your eyes in 2000, I looked in your eyes and I saw insanity, and so I stopped talking to you because you were insane,” and I thought in 2000, that was a very good year for me; I was on my way out of insanity, and I was doing good, really very good. So what people see when they look in your eyes it’s really…it’s [very different] right?
I’m trying to be honest with myself, really very honest with myself. At any given moment of my life I try to stop and look at myself, and say, “Is this insanity in me or am I being reasonable?” because it’s very important to me right? So I’ve been keeping [my] hand on the pulse pretty well, checking my mental health, and so I don’t what happened. I don’t know what this friend saw, what this psychiatrist saw, I don’t know.
From inside, I can say that I was lost, and I wasn’t in good place. I was in bad mental shape, that’s for sure. But once I got out of the hospital, and I knew that for me that was the bottom, like how far you can go. I said, “I will not go back to the mental hospital.” I was now diagnosed. I was crippled for the rest of my life. But I have seen the cripples. In that mental hospital I saw what happens when you [go] back, and I was determined not to [go] back. It’s kind of weird to say, what, the other people were not determined and I was determined, and really that’s all it takes? I don’t know, really I don’t know because I never tried the other way, which is to give in to that diagnosis; to say, yes, I am crazy, and let me just take that path.
I said, no, it’s going to stop here. You know, like a wake-up call, and I started to do research. I said, not only do I not want to come back, but I want to be happy, I want to sort my life out. I want to organize my life the way that I can be happy and functioning, but just mainly happy, because I was suffering so badly. So I started to do research, because I have a philosophy degree and I learned how to study, and so when I put my learning skills into learning how to be happy… I mean it wasn’t the work of one day; it’s a work in progress. Every day I have to measure myself against that pole, and I feel like I walk very thin line, and that at any moment… because the thoughts of self-destruction are ever-present. Once, I got up to get tea, and I had thoughts of killing myself twice. Just like that, it’s just like that, it goes…I sit very quietly, and it comes into my head and it leaves, and it comes and it leaves, and I think, “Where did it come from and why?” It’s an everyday reminder that I can snap; it can cross into something more dangerous.
You did later find out what that diagnosis was, and you originally were labeled as schizophrenic. Your parents bribed the doctor to lower the diagnosis. What was it like for you to find out that the original diagnosis was schizophrenia, when it was actually bipolar disorder?
You know, I think I fit into the [diagnosis] of bipolar disorder very well. I never had a doubt [it was] manic depressive bipolar disorder, and then when my sister said schizophrenic, I was like where did that come from? Really, you just slap on a diagnosis? Maybe she just slapped it on because she hoped for a bribe? I don’t know exactly where the diagnosis came from, I mean maybe because she knew about the case of my cousin before, I mean I don’t know about what the diagnosis was exactly – it wasn’t pure depression – so maybe she thought schizophrenia was more inheritable at the time, I don’t know.
I also feel like schizophrenia was not that well know at the time, it was a long time ago. It was not well known, and at that time a lot of people felt it was maybe…if you don’t understand something, just label it schizophrenia. I think maybe that was the case. In any case, I would take it as a badge of honor because it would make me more interesting, because a lot of very talented people were schizophrenic, but at the same time, I’m old enough to know I’m not, because you can kind of control your bipolar tendencies, but you cannot control that kind of schizophrenic-manic episodes, it’s just not how it happens. Anyway, that’s my take on it.
Have you begun to treat your depression differently since the film’s original release?
Right now, with the film’s US release, it’s a whirlwind of activity, an avalanche of information that I have to process. I haven’t had much time to think about my inner state, and that may have a backlash later on. Quiet contemplation is essential for my wellbeing and I haven’t had that in the last few months.
I made the film not for my own therapy, but to entertain an audience, to make them think and engage them in a conversation. For me a film is a form of communication; yes, part of it is a self-expression, but it is also an exchange of ideas, a dialogue.
You did all the sculptures, and 30,000 pen-and-ink drawings for this. What was that undertaking like for you? Did you have help?
Yes, well, the film all together took four years. When you measure the film altogether, you say that two years was pure production, the creation of it; and then two years was distribution and marketing, and that’s four years. The two years of the creation…you know I’ve had 15 short films, so I knew how to make short films. When you enter the very beginning of a big project like that and then one month passes by, and two months pass by, you see you only have three minutes of animation [and] you realize you have way more to go, and you say,
Wait, it’s not supposed to be like – wait how many years is this going to take? You feel like you’re standing at the bottom of a very big mountain. It’s as though you try to cross with your feet, the earth. But yeah, I had help.
I got Wendy Cong Zhao, who was editor, compositor, and early on she colored; and then Rashida Nasiar who was color designer, and early on also colored films. I just focused on making papier-mâché sets. Sturgis Warner helped me with the stop-motion animation and the lighting, and then I did the drawings. It was a lot of work, and you can’t do it by yourself. Also, the team was so small that it’s like you can count them on two hands. I’m proud of that actually, because it’s uncompromised vision. You know, I didn’t have a producer – I’m the producer. I don’t have to compromise this. I just went ahead and did what I felt at that moment.
In the first five minutes of the film you make the point to state that you have frequently had very well thought-out plans for suicide. In doing this, you reveal two very detailed ways for someone to kill themselves. Did you worry about criticism you might receive for this, or were you hoping viewers would see past what’s in front of them, and understand the purpose for you revealing that part of yourself in the film?
Do I think someone would hurt themselves because they watched my film? I don’t think so, because there is so much information on the internet about how to do things, or when we read about how another person did it in news. There are plenty of sources where you can get the inspiration on how to do this or not. So my film is just making fun of it, and I think that’s a good thing. Meaning, the thoughts that enter your head, they don’t have value or power if you can laugh them out of your head, that’s my point.
Something very enjoyable about the film was your use of animals, and how you metamorphosed the more innocent human figures into rabbits and the scarier, more manic figures into animals like bears. What were some of the reasons behind choosing to depict so many creatures in the film as animals?
The animals for me are…I wouldn’t say a theme, but actually I think in animals. For me animals are more than just animals; I love animals… I wouldn’t say more than humans, but you know, I love animals. For me animals have symbolic meaning. Bunnies with a heart on their face, for me symbolize innocence and a vulnerability and fragility, and that is a character that appears in my work from time to time.
As for the other creatures, there are two other creatures; I wouldn’t say animals per se. One is the “will to live” and the other is the “will to die.” It’s kind of the depression spirit that tries to lure you into the water- and for me the water is also symbolic. For me, it presents a symbol; it’s the very ancient symbol of the emotion or feeling that if you lose control of it, you can drown yourself and die, so you always have to keep your head above it. It’s a very meaningful symbol for me; the depression spirit lives there and tries to lure Ana inside.
Was that the gray, shadowy figure with the small, round ears?
Yes, like a snake, yeah. Latvians, although they’re a Christian nation, they have animalistic views, like everything is alive, and they also used to have a long time [ago], the spirits of the house. They are these long snakes with yellow ears, they would feed the spirits – they were good spirits, not bad spirits – and if that snake leaves your house then you are doomed and your house has no prosperity.
Anyway, this is a snake-like creature, and it lives in the river and it tries to lure you in, also [it’s a spirit] of insanity, depression, of all the feelings you can’t control. The other spirit lives in the forest, and it wants Ana to be fed, and he wants her to feed her children; he’s a more warm color and he’s more animal-like. You can sort of recognize him as some sort of dog, or bear…wolf, something that is warm and green. He wants Ana to live, and he is sort of Ana’s “will to live.” So the two spirits kind of fight over each other and who is going to win over the person. So, yeah animals are important to me and my work.
You focus so much on Ana’s story, even more so than your own, why?
I think it’s fascinating. When I started to write the script, I thought it would be more about me, my train of thought, and about how I feel; make fun of it. I thought it would be a comedy about depression, and I thought I could make fun of me. You know, that’s what I do. I do comedy, my shorts are more comedy, you know. Then of course I wanted to write a script, and of course it’s a feature film, you want to write something that’s 90 minutes. I thought I should go into where it started, I should go a little bit into my family history, right – touch up on it – so I start to write about Ana and I just couldn’t stop.
When I was showing the written parts to Sturgis – who of course was the dramaturge – he was like, “Oh my God, this is fascinating! I want to know more. What happened then? What happened then?” and I’m like, okay, and it’s interesting for me, and it’s about me, and I’m not interesting enough…and that’s how it happened. Of course, later we [realized] the script is disproportionately about Ana and Indulis, and of course Indulis shouldn’t be there at all, but then without Indulis you don’t understand a couple of things later on. So of course we left him in. He’s an interesting character as well.
In some ways, Ana is also the tinder of the affliction; it’s the gene that she passed. When you examine her life, and then you examine my life and my cousin’s life, it’s because we are all women and it’s hinged on that women fall in love easily. They are eager to give themselves over, to submit themselves to the man, and then society expects them to do certain things. Then they are willing to do that at the expense of someone, something…and they pay the price.
When you see Ana in hard times, that is the story that repeats. So I felt that it had the right to stay there for these 40 minutes, it had the right to be told. You watch it and you say, okay well, that’s her time, that’s her society, that’s her situation. Then okay, that’s then, but you see how it repeats in different times and you say, oh it’s the time, and you just continue on.
How do you hope this film will benefit the people that see it?
The main message of the film, the main feeling of the film is hope. I hope that people will find that hope. I really want them to find that hope. When you say that the depression is genetic, the question is, is it genetic? Are you really in jail by this genetic combination? Do you really have no exit from this suffering? Is there a way to exist that can lessen the suffering or make it lighter?
I feel that the film says, “Yes, there is a way to exist, that you don’t have to suffer so much.” I mean, I believe in some suffering, but I don’t believe in suffering this [all] the time. I believe in certain existence, a certain arrangement of life so that you don’t have to suffer. So, I believe that there is a hope, and I want people to walk away from the film with that hope, but I don’t know everybody is different. Everybody has their formula. This is my formula; how I live.
Rocks in My Pocket had its New York City premiere Wednesday, September 2nd, 2014 at the IFC Center. For more information about Rocks’ times, tickets, and screening locations visit this websites: http://www.rocksinmypockets.com.
