A Woman Named Yssabeau« / »Ein Mädchen namens

»A Woman Named Yssabeau« /
»Ein Mädchen namens Yssabeau«
A Short Film by Rosana Cuellar
PRESS KIT
Press Agent:
Sabine Boshamer,
T. 040 - 428 989 205 / 0160 - 901 209 98,
[email protected]
Hamburg University of Fine Arts
Lerchenfeld 2, 22081 Hamburg
www.hfbk-hamburg.de/yssabeau
»A Woman Named Yssabeau«
DE/MX 2011, 18 min, 16:9, HDCAM, Color, Surround sound,
Fantasy language with English/German/Spanish subtitles
CAST & CREW
Direction, Script, Editing Rosana Cuellar
Cinematographer Thomas Oswald
Lights Marc Willenberg
Costume Designer Rosana Cuellar
Set Designer Daniel Wollenzin
Hair & Make Up Karl Gadzali
Sound Mix Stephan Konken / Konken Studios
Color Correction Isabell Brockmann / Chroma Film & TV
GmbH & Co. KG
Drawings Carly Borgstorm
Starring Sophia Augusta Kennedy Deer Woman, Fiona Bader
Ana, Lou Castel Physician
Production Supervisors Prof. Robert Bramkamp, Prof. Udo
Engel / Hamburg University of Fine Arts
Produced by Rosana Cuellar, Rafael Cuellar and Thomas Oswald in collaboration with Hamburg University of Fine Arts.
Premiere at 62. Berlin International Film Festival 2012, section
»Berlinale Shorts«.
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SYNoPSIS
Set in a distant and unknown land, the film follows the journey
of a young deer woman named Yssabeau, who out of curiosity,
adventures into this unknown culture and attempts to adapt to
it. In doing so, her values and impulses will be confronted and
a question will rise: How much of her self can be removed from
her before she can call herself herself no longer?
»A Woman Named Yssabeau« is a contemporary fairytale based
on an old ballade by François Villon as well as inspired by the
»Danza del Venado« / »Deer Dance«, a hunting ritual still practiced today by the Mayo and Yaqui people in northern Mexico.
Well-known places in Hamburg like the Oberhafenkantine or
the Prinzenbar appear in a brand-new light as the result of a
unique visual language using allusions to rococo and expressionism. Thus viewers find themselves dislocated to a surreal
world.
INTERvIEW
Sabine Boshamer: You are from Mexico and moved to
Germany in 2008 to study film in Hamburg: When people
are transplanted to another culture, they often feel divided,
split in two. Did this play an important role for your film?
Rosana Cuellar: Absolutely. The idea for this Film was born
from the feeling of inadequacy I experienced when I first moved
to Germany. I believe desire is very differently understood in
German and Mexican cultures, and I was afraid that in order to
fit in I would have to give up on my instincts and change my behavior. It was, to say the least, a very intense feeling. Although
I shot «A Woman Named Yssabeau” after I had dealt with the
culture shock and although I now felt very much at home in
Hamburg, I wanted to portray the feeling I had had when I first
arrived, a feeling that was not necessarily mature, but nevertheless a very true and intense experience.
When you were developing the idea for your film, two sources of inspiration were significant: On the one hand, the
»Danza del Venado« (Deer Dance), a ritual still practiced
today by the Mayo and Yaqui people in northern Mexico; on
the other hand, the famous «Ballade für ein Mädchen namens Yssabeau” by Paul Zech, inspired by François Villon.
How did these two strands come together?
The «Danza del Venado” is a ritual of the Mayo tribe which
lives in Navojoa, Sonora, the region my mother comes from and
where I was born. The deer is a highly venerated animal for this
tribe, and the ritual represents the hunting of this animal. It is
also a ritual through which the tribe signifies its appreciation
for the animal’s sacrifice in order to provide them with food and
goods necessary for living.
One day I was walking with a German friend of mine, and he
told me of a poem by Paul Zech, inspired by the 15th century
French poet François Villon. He recited the last two verses of
«Eine verliebte Ballade für ein Mädchen namens Yssabeau” for
me and it was the first poem I ever heard in German. We talked
about the writer’s love for the woman in the poem, the way
he adores her, almost like an object or a body without a head.
True and simple lust. I think that this poem reconciled me with
Germany, because through it I understood the beauty of the
German language, where both sheer lust and desire can walk
hand in hand with highly reflected thought.
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And the «Danza del Venado”? What is it that interests you
about the ritual of the Deer Dance?
Ballet, and dancing in general, has always played a big role in
my life, and in my way of relating to the world. I studied dance
for a very long time, from when I was 4 until I turned 14. The
«Danza del Venado” was a dance I always found very appealing;
it was like watching a horror story and a fairy tale. It is impressive to see the dancers embody an animal and then modify
the way they walk, jump, move their heads. It can be incredibly
graceful, and a very strong display of the harmony, and the link
between a man and his animalistic qualities.
Normally, this dance is performed by men. In your film, the
animal is embodied by a woman, carrying the typical insignia: A deer’s head, attached to the dancer’s head by ribbons, two gourds in her hands producing a heartbeat, shell
rattles around her ankles representing the deer’s breath.
I always considered this dance to be more the interpretation
of an animal, perhaps also of something in human nature, but
I never really thought of it as a strictly masculine thing. Also I
didn’t aim to put into scene the ritual as it is performed in Mexico, but to take the spirit of it and use it to explain something
that has more to do with my personal journey and to create
an aesthetic of my own, which is not indigenous nor European
but a mixture of both, as I think my own culture is. I wanted to
use the symbols of the «Danza del Venado” and to refer to it in
order to provide the movie with an element that can lead to a
different interpretation. And, well, for me the story was about
the adventures of a woman, of course in a way, my adventures,
so I guess the deer had to be a girl in this story.
The »Danza del Venado« is meant to reconcile the past
with the present, to preserve identity and strengthen social
bonds. But your story describes a loss of identity. Do you
agree?
Oh, absolutely! The »Danza del Venado« is definitely a ritual
that demonstrates the strength of the identity of a culture, but
also an awareness that for life to continue, a sacrifice, even of
the most cherished things, must be made. The deer must be
sacrificed to nourish its people. It takes death as a beginning
of creation. The movie tells the story of a woman who loses her
old identity, one that is no longer sufficient, in order to find her
new identity. And although it’s clear that something has to die
to make room for something new to appear, to give into such
a change is as scary a thing as trying to imagine what comes
after death. And I think the panic the deer feels in this hunting
dance is the same kind of panic Yssabeau experiences in the
film.
The flow of time and movement in the film seems at times
somewhat unreal, leaving the viewer slightly irritated. Why
is this?
When I decided to shoot the film, I wanted to create a very
particular world that followed its own rules, and had its own
rhythm. I also wanted the body language to be different so
that it would reinforce this feeling. With this in mind, I shot
almost everything with the actors performing their actions
backwards, and then reversed it in the editing. I hoped that in
this way something very particular would remain even in small
movements. Most of the time this was done very carefully, so it
wouldn’t be immediately noticeable, but I also sometimes used
it as a trick to create magical illusions in the film, like a paper
boat being folded up with two fingers, and a yolk popping out of
the dough.
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You add another element to these visual irritations: Your
protagonists speak a fantasy language. Why?
One of the most obvious problems I faced when moving to
Germany was that I couldn’t speak or understand German. The
language sounded beautiful, but incomprehensible. By creating this fantasy language, I wanted to put the spectator into
the same situation. No matter what language he or she spoke,
this language would appear to them as sounds detached from
meaning, only sometimes partially explained through subtitles.
I also really liked this solution because it made the movie more
universal, the subtitles could be written in any language, as was
done in the early days of the movies, before sound appeared.
What was your approach while realizing the idea for your
film? Did the story change as you were shooting?
The film ended up being very different from how it was originally conceived in the script. The production faced many many
challenges, and when we encountered an insurmountable problem, instead of getting frustrated, we took it in a very Dadaistic
way and embraced the accident — as a challenge to come up
with something better within the restrictions we were under.
I’m really glad for some of those accidents, I think if it all had
gone the way it was planned, the movie wouldn’t have been as
strong as it is. For example, the scene in the Oberhafenkantine
was supposed to take place in a sex shop, but after shooting
the baking scene in Cloppenburg — which was the first scene
that was shot — we had to return the equipment to the school
because someone else had reserved it. This way I had some
time to look at the material we had shot so far, and I changed
my mind and decided to modify the scene and shoot in the
Oberhafenkantine, which I’m really happy we did.
The Oberhafenkantine is a prominent locale in Hamburg.
How did you end up choosing the locations for your film?
It was always the plan to shoot as much as possible in Hamburg. I wanted to portray Hamburg as the fairytale city it can
be, and to show it as as exotic as it appeared to me. I didn’t
aim to take places that are so representative of the city, I guess
that just happened. For example, the Oberhafenkantine I came
across one day when walking the dog. This weird crooked little
house at the end of a bridge reminded me of a game in an
amusement park, the »Casa del Tío Chueco« (House of Uncle
Crooked), and I knew that I had to shoot something there sometime. On the other hand, the Prinzenbar I found when I was
explicitly searching for a location that could look like some sort
of a cave that had traces of old wall paper, a dark place that
would then become the office of the Doctor.
Your visual language makes references to the baroque and
rococo, but also to the expressionism of the classic silent
movie. Does your film combine the traditions of Europe and
Mexico?
Mexico is a culture that in itself embodies the mixture of two
cultures, the native indigenous culture and the Spanish culture.
In this sense, I think the Mexican aesthetic tradition has something very interesting and very particular to give. I was raised
in Mexico, in Cuernavaca, surrounded by colonial architecture,
but exposed to many North American and European movies,
pictures and stories, and I’m sure that all this had a very strong
influence on the formation of my aesthetic understanding (the
Disney movies and the Brothers Grimm specially). However,
nowadays, I couldn’t feel any further away from certain occidental tendencies, which have become incredibly sober and
minimalist. I know it’s out of taste, but I love the Baroque, it’s
something I really enjoy and embrace, and I think this might
have to do with the fact that I come from Mexico.
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If you had to choose a category for your film, how would
you label it? Experimental film, short fiction, autofiction,
novella? It is obviously quite distinct from conventional
forms of fiction found in cinema.
Perhaps surrealistic experimental Fiction? Well, I’m not really
sure what I would call it. Initially, I thought of it as a narrative
fictional movie, but when seeing it alongside other »fictional
short films« I realized something was different. And this was
sort of reinforced when, after viewing it, some people told me
they were surprised because they hadn’t expected to see an
experimental movie. This totally threw me off, because I wasn’t
aware that this was what I was showing. So I suppose in a way
it’s experimental. What confuses me — and the reason why I
really avoided that term to start with — is that I think nowadays »Experimental« is too often used to excuse movies which
have not managed to communicate anything. What I very much
want is to achieve a feeling of being transported and to have a
narration, then to experiment with this narration to be able to
provide an open story that allows for different possibilities of
reading the film — but the most important thing being that it be
felt.
EINE vERLIEBTE BALLADE
FÜR EIN MÄDCHEN NAMENS YSSABEAU
by Paul Zech, inspired by François Villon*
Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund,
ich schrie mir schon die Lungen wund
nach deinem weißen Leib, du Weib.
Im Klee, da hat der Mai ein Bett gemacht,
da blüht ein schöner Zeitvertreib
mit deinem Leib die lange Nacht.
Da will ich sein im tiefen Tal
dein Nachtgebet und auch dein Sterngemahl.
Im tiefen Erdbeertal, im schwarzen Haar,
da schlief ich manches Sommerjahr
bei dir und schlief doch nie zuviel.
Ich habe jetzt ein rotes Tier im Blut,
das macht mir wieder frohen Mut.
Komm her, ich weiß ein schönes Spiel
im dunklen Tal, im Muschelgrund ...
Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund.
Die graue Welt macht keine Freude mehr,
ich gab den schönsten Sommer her,
und dir hats auch kein Glück gebracht;
hast nur den roten Mund noch aufgespart,
für mich so tief im Haar verwahrt...
Ich such ihn schon die lange Nacht
im Wintertal, im Aschengrund ...
Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund.
Im Wintertal, im schwarzen Erdbeerkraut,
da hat der Schnee sein Nest gebaut
und fragt nicht, wo die Liebe sei.
Und habe doch das rote Tier so tief
erfahren, als ich bei dir schlief.
Wär nur der Winter erst vorbei
und wieder grün der Wiesengrund!
... ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund
*Paul Zech, Die lasterhaften Lieder und Balladen des François Villon, Weimar 1931.
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BIogRAPHIES
Rosana Cuellar (Direction, Script, Editing)
Thomas Oswald (Cinematographer)
Born in Mexico City, in 1984. After brief studies in other fields
such as Political Sciences, Philosophy and Hispanic Literature,
she came across Film and fell in love with it. At first she studied
at the CENTRO de Diseño, Cine y Televisión in Mexico City. In
2008 she moved to Germany and continued to study Film at
Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK). Her 35-mm-movie
»Cronología«, which was produced in collaboration with HFBK
Hamburg, was included in the »Next Generation Role« by German Films and was shown at international film festivals like
Cannes, in 2010.
Born in Seesen, Harz, in 1980. Oswald studied Visual Communication with focus on cinematography at Hamburg University
of Fine Arts (HFBK), 2002 – 2008 – including a one year stay
abroad in Marseille, in 2005 – 2006. In the meantime engagements as Grip and Dolly Grip for film productions in Germany
and abroad. His short film »Les Temps qui changent« was
shown on »Next Generation Role« by German Films in 2008; he
was invited to Berlinale Talent Campus in 2011. Thomas Oswald
loves to film landscapes and animals besides normal actors and
is working with 2-D as well as with 3-D technique.
Filmography (selection)
The Big Bang (2006)
Tortugas (2007)
Haiku I, II, III (2008)
Rose is a Rose (2009)
Cronología (2010)
Ein Mädchen namens Yssabeau (2011)
Filmography (selection)
Blvd. de la Libération (2005)
Les Temps qui changent (2007)
Dazwischen (2007)
Contact Rosana Cuellar, Tel. +49-176-810 148 27
www.rosanacuellar.com
Contact Thomas Oswald, Tel. +49-175-168 52 90
www.thomas-oswald.com
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Cinematographer
102 PS (2009) D.: Katharina Duve
Nacht um Olympia (2009) D.: Timo Schierhorn
Reconstructing Damon Albarn in Kinshasa (2010) D.: Jeanne
Faust
Nicht mein Ding (2010) D.: Hans Helle
Ein Mädchen namens Yssabeau (2011) D.: Rosana Cuellar
Azoren 3D – Auf den Spuren von … (2012) D.: Norbert Vander
Patagonien 3D (2012) D.: Norbert Vander
Contact
Rosana Cuellar
Lange Reihe 87, Haus 2, D-20099 Hamburg
Tel.: +49-176-810 148 27
[email protected]
www.rosanacuellar.com
Film distribution
Festivalbüro
Hamburg University of Fine Arts
Lerchenfeld 2, D-22081 Hamburg
Tel.: +49-40-428 989 446
[email protected]
Press Agent
Sabine Boshamer
Hamburg University of Fine Arts
Lerchenfeld 2, D-22081 Hamburg
Tel.: +49-40-428 989 205
+49-160-901 209 98
[email protected]
www.hfbk-hamburg.de
www.hfbk-hamburg.de/yssabeau
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