“Ava’s Possessions” is written and directed by Jordan Galland. It stars Louisa Krause, Carol Kane, William Sadler, Alysia Reiner, Dan Fogler, Lou Taylor Pucci, Whitney Able, Joel de la Fuente, John Ventimiglia, Deborah Rush, Zachary Booth, and Wass Stevens.
These gods know how to fight
On Feb. 23, Sunshine Landmark Cinema hosted the premiere of the new indie movie, Ava’s Possessions. It’s a genre bending film about a girl who was possessed for a month (losing all memories of her life during that period of time), and somehow has to figure out how to piece her life back together afterwards. The movie first premiered at SXSW last year. Check out our exclusive interview with the writer-director, Jordan Galland, and Louisa Krause, who plays Ava, below.
The Knockturnal: So tell us about your movie! What compelled you to write it and direct it?
Jordan Galland: I’ve always been a fan of exorcist films, so it took me a little while to find an original way into this, but I knew if I wanted to work in the genre, I had to do something a little bit different. So that’s why it’s about a girl recovering from demonic possession rather than the build up to being possessed. So the movie opens with the exorcism where most of those movies sort of end. And I’m just a fan of those type of movies, like Rosemary’s Baby and sort of older 70s’ possession movies.
TK: Normally, possession movies aren’t comedic.
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JG: Yeah, my last two movies are actually more comedic. This is more of a mix, creepier, scarier, but there’s an inherent awkward dark humor to the scenes of you know, a girl who doesn’t remember what happened to her—and then the priest tells her that she was possessed. And then she has to confront her family and friends and they’re all very—they keep her at a distance. You know, her mom has an eyepatch, her dad has scratches on his neck. There’s certainly a creepy sadness to it, but it’s funny as well. And then, the idea of just having a recovery group that’s kinda like AA for people who have been possessed, that just kind of followed naturally once I had the concept, the original concept. And that, there’s a lot of humor to that idea. But we approached it very straight, without trying to chase the joke, it just sort of happened.
TK: Did your cast bring anything to the table that you didn’t expect? What changed once you really got it on its feet?
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JG: The actors are great, and I definitely in the cast process tried to find people that I could really rely on when it’s like crunch time when we’re filming, so there was a lot open to their ideas and lines that they come up with and that type of thing. It was a low budget film, we shot it in 18 days, so there was very, very little time to make sure that something would fit the script if it didn’t. A location that we got could often determine what was gonna happen in the scene.
TK: Was the script very loose?
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JG: Yeah, I mean to some degree. It was my third film, so I kind of knew how…I knew what to expect. My other movies were very similar shoot schedules, so this time around I knew a little bit more of what I could work with and what I can’t. It wasn’t loose in the sense…it was a very solid script. But I think having it be that solid allowed it to let us just use it as a blueprint when we were in battle.
The Knockturnal: So what attracted you to this project?
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Louisa Krause: The story. It picks up from a young woman’s life right after the exorcism. I thought that would be fun, that would be fun to do! That has never been done before! Let me bite into that.
TK: Have you been in other horror-exorcist type of movies?
LK: Not any exorcist films, but I did just recently do…it just came out called the Abandoned, which was a horror film. This is more of a genre…actually mystery driven, and I loved that I was playing this Nancy Drew character who’s trying to piece her life back together. And also just the style of the film was so cool.
TK: It sounds like the hangover but for exorcisms.
LK: Yeah, yeah! And it just looks so neat, you know. I was telling Jordan, it looks kind of like those Lisa Frank trapper keepers! I would have been a fan girl of this movie in my youth, I would have thought Ava was so cool and I would have wanted to be her. It was fun to play a sort of strong female character trying to piece her life back together. I could really grab onto that.
TK: What do you like about this movie that’s different?
LK: I think demons are sexy. There’s a sexy side to them.
TK: This movie exploits the sexy side.
LK: Yeah it was fun. It was totally fun to be a demon. To go in that direction. I should have done my homework and given you a good logline, but I promise you will have a good time. You will be entertained.
Following the screening, guests headed over to The Mockingbird Bar for tacos and SVEDKA cocktails. The film hits theaters March 4.
Sarah Gavron showed up at the 2016 Athena Film Festival this past Saturday to showcase her new film about the women’s suffrage movement in Britain in 1912. Director of Suffragette, a film starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, and Meryl Streep, Gavron was in attendance at the festival which promotes women filmmakers, and what better film than one showing how women received the right to vote in England.
We asked Gavron a few questions about the film, about her choices in casting as well as just getting the film made. You can read her answers below and watch the rest of the interview in the video:
You’ve said countless times that you’ve wanted to make this film for a long time.
Yes I’ve wanted to make it for about ten years, it took six years to actually get it off the ground. There had never been a film about the British suffrage movement—it felt like it was overdue in terms in resurrecting the women who changed our course of history, and it also felt timely because the issues women were dealing with then are ongoing issues women are grappling with equal rights still, equal pay, lack of representation in government, with sexual violence, with education, so it felt that it had resonance with the 21st century.
Your choice not to cast a woman of color was also met with some controversy.
Well what we chose to do was tell the story of one group of women of one part of east London in 1912 and in Britain the working class women were white. In America of course you had a similar movement happening differently and that had a very different ethnic makeup because of the different immigration here. Subsequently in the UK we had an immigration that changed the makeup of the movement, but we didn’t at that time.
Get ready for an influx of your favorite shows, indie movies, and some good ol’ American classics.
Terrance Malick’s new film KNIGHT OF CUPS opens to the public March 4. We were able to catch the sneak showing screened on Monday, February 22 in the brand new Metrograph in the Lower East Side. Many insiders as well as those working on the film attended the screening.
Eddie the Eagle tells the true story of Eddie Edwards, who, against all odds, completed the 90m ski jump in the ’88 Winter Olympics.
This year proved to have a new addition to the Athena Film Festival, in which the first ever Leading Man Award was given to Paul Feig for his dedication in promoting female protagonists and showing women on screen when others in Hollywood avoided it. Ghostbusters star Kate McKinnon came out to support Feig and presented the award to him as the two reminisced on the struggles they had in making Ghostbusters as well as just showing funny women on camera. Here are some of the key points Feig made in his interviews:
You received a lot of backlash on Twitter and the internet ever since rumors of Ghostbusters came out. How was it like fighting with trolls who were against the film?
Well fighting on the internet is very interesting because it’s such a weird fight because you’re fighting with faceless people who are hiding behind their computers. Look, there are plenty of fans of Ghostbusters who have an issue that it’s a reboot, and that I completely get, I find that valid. But when it’s just pure misogyny, I don’t want to give voice to it. When I’m on the internet, I try not to block people, I want to hear all voices but sometimes you just hammered on for a year and you finally crack and I just decided that I just wanted to start blocking people because I don’t want to give those people a voice in a forum and it’s just such a non-starter when it’s just misogyny then what’s the point?
You can listen to their speeches the rest of the interviews with Feig below:
The 2016 Athena Film Festival occurred this past weekend where male and female filmmakers alike came together to showcase their work, all featuring female protagonists. In a world where women tend not to have the same kind of rights that men do, the film festival hopes to awaken women filmmakers to pursue their dreams in Hollywood and in the film industry, which is one of the most male dominated industries that anyone can go into.
Founded six years ago by Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein, the festival has come to feature the films of countless women leaders, and has even started the Leading Man Award, which was given to Paul Feig for his accomplishments in promoting female characters in his films. Not only did the festival screen films, but it also held certain events, like a workshop in collaboration with the Blacklist, in which women screenwriters worked on getting their scripts made.
The festival was a woman-made, women-packed celebration, and to further celebrate that, here are some interviews we’ve had with the founders, as well as honorees Geralyn Dreyfous and Mira Nair.
Kathryn Kolbert:
What was the thinking behind getting the festival started six years ago?
So the Athena Film Festival has one simple goal, which is to change what leadership looks like. So that when you close your eyes and when you think leadership, you’ll conjure up an image of strong, influential, powerful women.
You also are the director of Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership, so how was that experience useful in creating this vision?
Clearly our goal at the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard is to ensure that more women rise to leadership across all sectors of society and one of the ways that we can cultivate change is to change how culture sees leadership, and that’s the point of the film festival.
And do you believe that the festival has helped women leaders through filmmaking and showing films?
Absolutely, this is our sixth year and we’re showing fabulous films; each one of whom has a woman in a leadership role, is a protagonist in a story. You spend a weekend here with us and you will see leadership in a different way.
This year marks the first ever Athena’s Leading Man award, given to Paul Feig. How did you choose to award him and come up with the award in the first place?
Well Paul Feig is the recipient of our first Leading Man award. We have always believed that men and women need to work together to cultivate change, and so part of the festival we show films that are made by both men and women as long as women are the central aspect of the story. Creating the Leading Man award is part of the continuation of that same theory and we’re thrilled to honor Paul: he is a trailblazer, he has created a whole genre of films in which women are very, very, very funny and we are thrilled to honor him. He will be here at the festival tomorrow with Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live and it’ll be a fabulous event and we encourage people to come.
Melissa Silverstein:
What was the thinking behind founding the festival six years ago?
We just want to show women leaders on screen and work as hard as we can to show as many women as we can behind the scenes. The whole objective is to create inspiration as well as aspiration for young women and men to see the world as it should be: 50/50.
Have you seen women filmmakers rise to the challenge and showcase their work?
I don’t think women have to prove anything. They are competent, they are trained, they are ready to go. I think the world needs to wake up and pay attention to the fact that they are there and to treat them with respect that they deserve. When a man and a woman are trained equally and the man is looked at as more competent than she is, is just unacceptable, it’s just sexism.
How do you see this festival combating that?
Well the festival is like an intervention in a variety of different levels. We have a lab that was started this year in partnership with the Blacklist for screenwriters that are working on a screenplay that has a female protagonist in it and they just completed two days of workshops. And we also have the Athena List, which is two days of scripts that get to be filmed with female protagonists. And everything you see on screen, the whole weekend—it is basically the antithesis to Hollywood, it’s all about women.
Paul Feig is the first recipient of the Athena Leading Man award, so how was it like choosing him?
Well when you look at Paul Feig’s body of work, he highlights and celebrates women. And he has been doing it before it was sexy and cool. And so what he exemplifies is exactly what we want in the world. He recognizes women on screen are funny, are sexy, are awesome.
Geralyn Dreyfous:
As a well accomplished producer, how does it feel like attending the festival and offering insight to aspiring female producers and filmmakers?
Well you know it’s thrilling. It’s a great time to be in documentary filmmaking. I also do some feature filmmaking but the non-fiction is the place that I really love the most. And there’s some extraordinary women directors and producers and talent in that field and sort of just to watch that community keep growing and how we really support one another and support each other’s stories; it’s just a great story.
And how do you feel the Athena Film Festival is helping women filmmakers achieve their dreams?
Well I think it’s really cool that a school like Barnard College that was founded with such a deep tradition of supporting women hosts a festival like this and give women a platform that they can be taken seriously and engage with students and next generation leaders but also be in the culture capital of the world and the media capital of the world in New York City so it’s great a combination. I just think that stories really matter and telling them is the way we crack the world open and reinvent it and just to have people to support these films as audience members and philanthropy. Just supporting it by connecting to the stories and having conversations about it.
Mira Nair:
How is it like to be honored by the festival?
They’re killing me softly baby. No I’m really happy to be here and honored to be part of a festival that promotes leadership in women because that’s what we are. And what I do is speak softly and carry a big stick, so I’m very happy to be part of a festival that honors that.
And what are your thoughts on the festival promoting women leaders and filmmakers?
There is nothing greater inspired than someone before you who has sweated the struggle and seen the life of the other side and that’s what festivals like this do. They bring us people who have done this and we celebrate their work and we can hopefully see ourselves in them to do that kind of thing—or more. So that’s why
Your career spans combining South East Asian culture with American filmmaking, so have you found any overlap with the cultures?
Well I have always made my own films whether they are independently made or studio, but they are always with my voice. And my voice is distinctly Indian/African: a world view that is not primarily within America but outside America as well. So it’s a unique to be, to be at home here and to be able to tell American stories but also what really inspires me are stories of people like us who are rarely on screen but have universal stories to tell. So Monsoon Wedding is a story about the madness around my own dining table at home in New Delhi but it became a massive worldwide hit because everybody saw their own selves and their families in it. So that kind of idea of making work that is specifically local and truthful but because of its specificity and its treatment, becomes universal, is what I love to do.
You also have a bridge program for Ugandan students, Maisha, to learn about filmmaking.
Yes, Maisha: it’s a film school now for 11 years that works in the four countries of Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and we have now trained more than 650 filmmakers. And that is the point because the slogan of Maisha is one of my great philosophies which is “If we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will.” So this is a way for Africans to tell their stories and in the process of it, I have made my own stories there, the Queen of Katwe, which is a new film.
Oh! Tell us more.
It’s a Disney film, there will be a clip of it tonight, and it’s with Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo and it’s releasing all over the world in September.
The San Diego Comic Con beats previous records and sells out under an hour of opening sales.