“April“Is one film based on realism. In the story of Nina (IA Sukhitashvili), a Georgian OB gyn that provides abortions to the women in the nearby village, the protagonist’s patients are played by the first time who deduct their own lives in the countryside where the film was handled. Author/director Dea Bulumbegashvili is so detailed oriented to She spent the better part of a year at the hospitalWhere “April” also filmed, the doctors studied, even convincing them to let her catch the birth that opens the film.
“April” is also a formally bold cinema, which breaks from what is expected of social realist film – especially in the scenes with the unexplained appearance of Nina as “creature” (Sukhitashvili that carries something as a less grotesque version of the unexplained appearance Demi Moores “The Substance” prothetics), which is embedded with expressionist lighting and sounds sometimes resembles Jonathan Glazers “under the skin.” Bulumbegashvili, however, drove back on the idea that the creature scenes were a break from the film’s realism when she was a guest on this week’s episode of IndieWire’s filmmaker Toolit podcast.
“(The) creature is also real to me,” said Bulumbegashvili. “I think the creature makes reality even more real in some way.”
In some ways, the creature was balumbegashvili’s cinematic answer to a question she could not answer. Her protagonist is a woman with incredible empathy, so much that she refuses to stop providing abortions and contraceptives to the village women despite the risk of her career when she comes during the examination of a formal investigation. Nina will not turn their backs on the young women caught in a bicycle of abuse and lack of education, but the cumulative toll of the experience was a culle begash villi that wrestled when they wrote.
“If Nina is here for so many years, and she comes to the villages every week, several times, what does it do for her?” said Bulumbegashvili. “All the misery and all the pain she witnessed – and she was perhaps part of it too while these things happened – how does it affect her? And I began to think that there may be a moment when empathy becomes almost unbearable.”
When Kulumbegashvili played with this in her mind, she struggled with a basic question that led to the creation of the creature: What means to get out of this unbearable experience or even look on the camera?
“I really started to see Nina being in this world between worlds. I can’t explain it, honestly. I have been asked this question by the producers, obviously, many times in the process, but I really could never rationalize it. But also I love the ball ball.” For me, the cinema is the question of perception: What is the realization and what is the perception? And the perception of who sees, it is also very important. “
This question of perception is explored in “April” when the film breaks into an extended point of view. A very discussed scene-where Nina picks up a lift that she tries to get an anonymous sexual meeting with-film in a continuous grip from Nina’s perspective behind the steering wheel.
“I wanted the audience at that moment to be placed in this man’s position, even though we experienced the stage through (Nina) point of view,” said Bulumbegashvili. “It was something interesting because we somehow had two views, and one is ours.”
Bulumbegashvili continued to wrestle with the idea of perception when he photographed the film. She described chronic production through an “experience journal”, which she writes throughout the filming and later is used to unlock the film’s bold and expressionist use of sound.
“When I’m on a set and I’m usually next to the camera I’m really linked to what’s going on in front of the camera,” said Bulumbegashvili. “Instinctively, I began to hear what is really related to the picture or to the stage’s experience. And I want to preserve this memory (in the journal).”
What the director extends from the journal posts is a striking use of sounds, especially in the pov and creature images, filled with the prominent sounds of breathing, rain and a point-like-like design created by instruments made by horse legs (composer Matthew Herbert).
“(Sound) can be a very physical and very concrete experience of the film,” said Kulumbegashvili. “I really wanted the audience to go through the movie and for reality to come really close, almost like touching our face.”
“April” now plays in theaters from Metrograph Pictures.
To hear Dea Kulumbegashvili’s full interview, subscribe to Filmmaker tolkit podcast on AppleThe SpotifyOr your favorite podcast platform. You can also look at the entire interview at the top of the page or on Indieview Youtube page.
