When you make a film, it is nothing more or less than a straight projection from your own psyche. Whether the film is poetic or straightforward in form, it is a formulated expression/excretion designed to seduce the viewer into acknowledging the value of your creative psyche.
This process or dynamic became almost an obsession for me after I had finished my first “real,” feature-length movie: “Silent Lips” (2016). Seeing my own vision in such an abstracted (yet highly concrete) form was in many ways life-altering.
The process of making the film was fairly uncomplicated (if we completely disregard practical, logistical and financial issues): I wrote a story, which turned into a script, which turned into filmed sequences, which were then edited together. My urgency in telling the story somehow created the necessary agency in the execution. I seduced, swayed and paid, so that my own emotional (tunnel) vision somehow became a collaborative effort.
After some time, I revisited the form. I basically butchered what I felt was still my own essential vision, but which was in fact other people’s formal vision. I edited the film down by 42 minutes (!), added new music and (re)released the film as “My Silent Lips” (2019).
When I now could watch this bizarre psychosexual drama in a form I could no longer escape from (as I was “pleased” with it), it left me utterly curious about what would happen next in the storyline… I wanted very much to make a sequel. Open endings are rarely happy endings.
I believe psychoanalysis is an efficient method for getting to know yourself, and for untying certain hampering knots. But I also know that creativity could be seen as a compensation for (perceived) neuroses, and that resolving said neuroses may hinder the flow of these quite magical visions and ideas. Superstitiously, I believe it’s better for some people to make art as a therapeutic or analytical method – as long as you not only “excrete” in your particular formulation (which can be highly manipulative or deceptive) but also take the time to evaluate/analyze what you’ve actually created.
This I have done with “My Silent Lips.” I’ve re-watched it several times, and yes, I do wonder about the origins of the story and its inherent (a)morals. A young Swedish woman is lost in the Balkans. When provoked (by rape, violence, verbal abuse, transgression) she somehow merges with a “monster man” who very violently solves her problems – and thereby of course creates more problems.
I feel an empathy with the woman but not with the monster man. Or…? Is this really the case? I certainly see the necessity for the inevitable violent catharsis. For strange reasons that I believe go beyond mere “cinematic” solutions, I made this brute force a more or less integrated part of the protagonist herself.
Each film is a strange spell that keeps on weaving new webs of either fascination or disdain – all impossible to escape. I more or less immediately set to work on a sequel, right after “My Silent Lips” was finished. But at that point, quite some time had passed, and I failed in generating the needed enthusiasm from the key players/actors.
What to do? Well, there’s another kind of sequel, and it’s called a “prequel.” I set to work on what had happened before the first part had even begun. But even this would be somewhat complicated without the necessary cast (unless I’d completely re-cast the film). So, what to do as an intellectual filmmaker? Well, you go into meta-mode of course. You make a film about the making of a film. You make a self-conscious prequel to an actual process that includes the film proper, and also the sequel that will very likely never see the light of the screen; thereby covering all grounds and dimensions.
In this film, I’m present and talking to some of the actors and other participants. “How do we make this film?” A very intriguing process. Literally intriguing. Because I noticed quickly how the responsibility for the scenes of pain and violent transgression in “(My) Silent Lips” I had now moved over to others! As if justifying the presence of the terrible and violent scenes by attaching them to someone else. And weaving it all into further layers of (justifying) fiction by making me encounter (and solve) new challenges of filmmaking that weren’t really there in the first place. For instance, in this film I have to have sex with wealthy older ladies in order to finance the film, and they frequently comment on how well-endowed I am. This is of course some kind of fantasy hogwash compensation (again) but it does belong in the film simply because it belongs in the film.
Making these kinds of neurotic “auteur” films I feel needs a large dose of anti-inhibition. Every little morsel of bizarre impulse needs to be integrated in the “real thing.” I’m not saying certain things can’t be edited out (after all, in the end, the film itself decides – not the filmmaker). But one must dearly value the “neurotic impulse” (that is, “creativity”) even on the most minute level.
In some mysterious way, this new film is already finished. It’s yet another psychosexual, black-and-white, meta, palimpsestic oeuvre excretion of utter make-believe; a pleasurably painful suspension of both belief and disbelief. I love this film very much, as it is in so many ways exactly the pre/sequel to “My Silent Lips” that I desired and needed to make.
If the film gods permit, I might one day even make this film, and show it to you.
This text is an excerpt from my new book Inbetween the Lines – Essays on Occulture, Magic, and Seductive Zombie Strippers. You can get your own copy of the book
The film My Silent Lips can be viewed on Substack, in the
Vade Ultra!
Carl
