Making Yourself Vulnerable: Alex Anna On Her Short "Scars"
Alex Anna is a director and script supervisor in love with cinematographic language and words in all their beauty. As a queer and feminist filmmaker, she signed her first short film “The Fruit of Our Womb” in 2017 (as Laurie Mannessier), and uses art as a way to fight for a better world. Her latest film, Scars, is an intimate portrait of the directors’ own personal battles with Mental Health and Self Harming.
Blending documentary and animation, Alex Anna’s courageous, distinctive, and poetic reflection of her mental health struggle brings to light a new story of self-harm that is both impactful and intensely intimate.
This film, which brings awareness and stresses the importance of discussing these topics, will be having its world premiere online at Toronto International Film Festival in September. We had the pleasure of talking with Alex about the film, its origins, the importance of being vulnerable, and much much more!
This is such a personal and intimate film, and it’s incredibly powerful. I imagine it must have been as nerve-racking as it was liberating to share your story, since it required you to be very vulnerable. Has the film’s release been cathartic for you?
It has! I really feel like it has empowered me, and I think that’s what making yourself vulnerable can actually achieve. Before I started making this film I couldn’t even use the words “self harming” when talking about myself, and that’s something I can observe in other people struggling with it as well. There’s a reason why AA (for instance) have people saying “... and I am an alcoholic”; and I see it now. Admitting your acts through words said out loud has an incredible power; it pushes you to face yourself and your issues.
Did you feel any fear or apprehension about discussing your past initially? How were you able to overcome them?
Yes, for a long time after my High School years (which for me correspond to “the worst” years, self-harming and being really depressed), I was still ashamed of it. My scars were finally healing, and because I started University with whole new groups of people that didn’t know my past (unlike people in High School), I thought my new friends would eventually ask. But no one did. I had a girlfriend for over three years when I eventually dared opening the topic myself. It was met with nothing but silence… It all made me feel like my story wasn’t interesting, like my struggles were a tantrum, like nobody cared and I should just grow up and never ever talk about it.
In my family, I was reminded to hide my scars whenever I’d visit my grandmother, for she didn’t know I had been through it and she could “misjudge me” for it. Sometimes a doctor or a nurse would make a clumsy shaming comment that would insinuate that adolescences is a time of pure immaturity, invalid feelings, and acts , like: “you’re not a teenager anymore, I guess you stopped right?”
It took me years to understand how wrong it was, and how scared people are to talk about mental illness and sadness. It came along with realizing, little by little, how so many people were or had actually been struggling with self harming as well — but got shamed and silenced by the society too.
That’s when I thought I needed to dare talking about it, even if it hurt and felt awkward and ridiculous for a long time.
Did you uncover new truths about yourself or the subject matter through the making of the film?
Yes, I think making this film helped me understand better “why” I did this — “why” I self harmed — and that there’s actually no “why.” It’s not a person or an event or a reason in particular; it’s a multitude of feelings and internal conflicts that have led to it and “nourished” it until it became my only response when I couldn’t cope with reality.
I really love how the piece combines documentary filmmaking with animation. How did you work with your animators to find an approach that maximized the emotional resonance of the short?
After a long period of graphic research, and once we had the first cut of the edit, we put together an animated “storyboard” and discussed details of the style we wanted — that is when, for instance, the evolution of colors following the evolution of tense in the editing structure was born. After that, we worked shot by shot, and mostly chronologically, to ensure the logical evolution of these “ink drops”. At that point we already had most of the other components of the film done — we had the voice, the real-life action picture, the music; so we’d always be looking for a way for the animation to add another layer of meaning, and not be just “a pretty adornment.”
The editing by Valérie Tremblay does a terrific job of shaping the story, arching it from pain to healing. How did you two get connected, and what was your process for finding the film’s rhythm and shape?
Valerie and I have been studying Cinema together at the UQÀM (Montréal) in 2014, and we’ve been good friends ever since. I have always been very impressed by her editing skills, but never had a chance to work with her before. She has such a great sense of storytelling, bold and efficient.
The first step of making this film, which nobody knew about yet, was for me to record myself, on my own, talking about my experience with self harming. By then, I thought I’d edit these recordings myself, before giving them to anybody — to cut off the parts I felt ashamed about. But when she entered the project, I decided to actually give it all to her, as well as giving it all to another close friend, who could give a third ear. I had never talked about these subjects with neither of them and it was a lot of things to process. We took notes of what felt the most relevant for the film - Valerie crossed our notes and hers and came out with a pre-structure for the film that was already incredibly good. We used it as a basis to shoot the pictures we needed, in thematic adequation with what we wanted to say and where we wanted to go with animations.
What drew you to the visual arts? How did you get into directing?
Ever since I was a kid, my mother took me to movies and encouraged my siblings and me to explore our artistic needs. I’ve had a soft spot for theatre and poetry for as long as I can remember. After spending a couple of years playing with the family compact camera (it was the beginning of digital cameras accessible to everyone), I got my first ”bridge” camera at 15, and started to take pictures and videos all the time. I would edit them into musical montages and I just loved it: capturing moments, the hours spent digging up every second of the rushes to find a funny detail, a nice movement, a rhythmic pattern, and most of all, how wonderful it was for my loved ones and me to have these little films as a rewriting of a moment we spent together. After taking Theatre and Cinema classes in High School, I went on to study Editing & Post-production at University, then Producing & Directing. I discovered the wonderful job that is script supervisor, and it became my main occupation, in parallel with directing. I love that it allows me to be on set a lot of months per year, close to the director, and how I always learn by working on new projects, with new teams and new perspectives. It’s very inspiring.
What films or filmmakers have inspired you, your style, or your approach to telling a story?
My favorite film is Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe — I can’t tell how many times I’ve watched it. I love that this film explores so many different styles while never losing its own tone, its own soul. It feels like it doesn’t have limits, and everything forms a wonderful symbiosis.
I’m also a big fan of Céline Sciamma’s cinema, for how bold, queer, and poetic her films are, exploring human’s periods of life that are rarely talked about with an amazing subtlety.
And although these two may sound funny to put together, I also love Marjane Satrapi and Taika Waititi’s universes, ever-evolving, always meaningful, beautiful, incredibly creative, mixing together personal stories and history with a great dose of humor and no fear for experimentations.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
I hope that people that have struggled or still struggle with self harming can feel less lonely, and see that it’s possible to heal; and I hope that people who didn’t understand what self-harming was can have a better idea of what it can feel like, and how important it is to reach out and open the dialogue.
Do you have any future projects that you can share with us?
I can’t reveal too much, but I am currently working on two projects. One of them is about women's sexual health, and the other explores gender identity.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!