Exberliner Issue 167, January 2018

WHAT’S ON — Film
“ Women are always
attacked when they
step out of their lane”
Eliza Hittman on appropriating the male
gaze in Beach Rats. By Zhuo-Ning Su
DON’T MISS
Daughters of Darkness
Programming
collective Prachtige
Films presents a rare
screening of the cult
1970s lesbian vampire
caper, with director
Harry Kümel in
attendance. Jan 12,
Moviemento
Hellas Filmbox
This year, Berlin’s
Greek film fest aims to
build bridges between
the Greek and German
creative communities
through panel events
and discussions, with
participants including
filmmaker Zafeiris Haitidis
and singer-songwriter
Konstantin
Wecker. Jan 24-28,
Urban Spree
The Long Summer of
Theory
This month at EX-
Blicks, director Irene
von Alberti introduces
her Mitte-set
study of creative
chaos, contemporary
feminism and the
dread of gentrification.
Jan 29, 20:30,
Lichtblick
The New York filmmaker won
a directing award at Sundance
last year for her intimate tale of
teen Frankie (Harris Dickinson), who
chases girls alongside his red-blooded
bros by day and hooks up with older
men by night. Shot on 16mm, it’s a visually
evocative portrait of conflicted
adolescence. It hits German screens
on January 25 (see review, page 28).
Both Beach Rats and your first
feature It Felt Like Love revolve
around teenage protagonists.
For me, there’s something very
exciting about watching young
people act, something open and
honest. As actors gets older, they
often learn to act too well. Thematically,
I’m interested in adolescence
as a process, and in the pain that
comes with realising something
about yourself that may haunt you
through your adulthood.
How did the character of Frankie
come to you? As part of the casting
process for It Felt Like Love, I met
kids from a neighbourhood in Brooklyn
called Gerritsen Beach. Kids
there are known as “beach rats”,
which stuck with me as a potential title.
It’s a very working-class borough,
with meth and opiate problems. But
the kids also have access to
the water, and a lot of them
have jet skis. There’s this
lazy beach vibe, which you never really
associate with New York City.
And then you had the idea to
make it about an identity crisis?
That also comes from the reality of
the neighbourhood. The beaches at
night are cruising spots. So there’s
this natural tension that exists
between two worlds, embodied in
transactional experiences with older
guys who I picture driving from the
city to the suburbs and stopping
at this halfway point. This got me
thinking about a character who gets
caught between these two worlds.
Last summer Kathryn Bigelow
was criticised for telling an
African-American story as a
white woman in Detroit. Were
you worried about making a
film about masculinity? I was
nervous because women are always
attacked when they step out of their
lane. There’s a tragic expectation
that women’s work should always
be a reflection of being a woman. As
soon as a woman tries to tackle history,
politics, or issues around men,
there’s always a personal attack. Obviously
there are issues within the
system about letting marginalised
voices have opportunities. But I
don’t think that every time a woman
makes a piece of art that’s slightly
outside her own experiences, she
should be torn apart in a witch hunt.
Has your Sundance win brought
new opportunities? Well, the
TV world opened up to me, which
has given me an opportunity to
make money directing for the first
time! Culturally I think Sundance
is very much about finding the next
‘it boy’. Even with a film like ours
that plays well, you’re always in the
shadow of some movie that sells
to Fox Searchlight for $10 million
because they think they’ve found a
new ‘it boy’ director.
What inspired the film’s hazy
visuals? I worked with Hélène
Louvart, a very experienced French
cinematographer. I showed her photographs
by Barbara Crane, who did
a lot of Polaroid work in the 1980s.
She did these close-up shots of
people’s bodies touching each other
in the summer heat. They capture
sexual, private moments. Hélène
really liked this style and we talked
about bringing that to the beach,
as if we were turning on a flashlight
and catching animals creeping
around in the darkness.
Did you feel you were taking a
risk casting British actor Harris
Dickinson as Frankie? He
was the best person we auditioned,
but I was terrified that he wasn’t
going to blend into this world. He’d
never even been to Brooklyn! But
he hung out with the other guys
before the shoot, and played handball
with them. We talked about his
posture, but ultimately he found
the character by himself. n
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EXBERLINER 167