FESTIVAL ECRÃ 2024: Interview with Matilde Miranda Mellado, director of Salaman Extensor.

 

One thing that really touched me about your film was this theme of trying to search for  a way to express an emotion that is very internal. And I wanted to ask about this process of trying to translate through images and sound the journey of the main protagonist, HAAYA, in this virtual landscape. How was the process of creating this landscape, and what inspired you to make this project?

Matilde Miranda Mellado: I think the main thing that inspired me was that, during the pandemic, I kind of fell in love. During that period I had online classes with a Korean university where I met this guy I´ve fell in love to, so the story that appears at the end of the film is true. And that has never happened to me before, so it was very eye-opening to feel these kind of things through a virtual platform. It was where the spectrum of love opened for me, where I could feel it. So, that was the main reason why I wanted to explore this new thing, this virtual affection. Afterwards, I wasn´t very sure how to represent this place or this story, because ''virtual'' and ''affection'' were the main keywords for the project, but they don´t have that much prior visual representation to work with. I couldn´t think of anything... it was like black. So, we started this project from nothing, just these two words, and they were so elusive, two words of representation. 

And I´ve worked with my director of photography to record our material surroundings, it was very... I don´t know, it´s not an experimental process, but it is very hands-on. We were working during the pandemic, so we weren´t together, but we were having these recorded letters. We were sending each other videos. And recording out surroundings, like glasses between the lights, and recording the water. Together we watched the videos that appear in the film, and we talked about what they made us feel. And then we started getting into some emotions that we felt the materials were giving us, and then we wanted to keep exploring. So, that's how we decided to work with some materials, with fire, for example, with a lot of water, and then that's how we started to build this material corpus of recordings. 

And then we eventually started going into post-production, and then we started making these new images that were completely different from the first ones, and then it's when the story started to unfold, because then I had these new images that brought these other ideas, and then it was just trying to see the material for what it was, and what it was making us feel in the moment, and then trying to put it down with words and sounds, and just working with it.

The images in your film, they are stunning. I particularly was very moved by the images of this sort of like aquatic group of ring-like creature that are able to breed a new being, whose own difference in relation to them makes it separete itself. How were you able to arrive at such sensual, and also such vivid imagery?

Matilde Miranda Mellado: Those in particular were made with this kind of candle-like material, and it we recorded it making a movement while it was hanging. And we did it like five times, and because it was hanging it moved very organically, it felt like something that was alive, something kind of marine. And that brought me to this feeling that I remember when I was a child, when I dreamt of my brother falling from a ship, and that was like my first dream ever. That marked me, so I kind of wanted to put it there in the film. And with the first story it was this very common feeling of feeling like you are separating yourself from your surroundings, and sinking into that separateness. Like, you´re not evolving from it, you are just like surrendering yourself to it. I wanted the first story to be like that.

That's a really beautiful feeling that you captured, because I feel like the film is about these two different, this feeling you just described, but there is also at the end a commentary on the virtual sphere, with images from the real world, and I wanted to ask how was the main, I won't say ''narrative,'' but how was this main dialogue, and the creation of the names evolving during the making of your film?

Matilde Miranda Mellado: The first narrative I think it came last. Like, I was thinking a whole year about this story in a way that was very sequential, but it was not like how it is right now. And when I had all the images that interested me, without a clear like order, I realised then that I wanted to do this story in a more like three part way. Like three stories that were kind of talking about the same feeling, but the reaction of the online users presented in the film were different to it. So in the first story the main protagonist surrenders herself, the second one she is looking at it, and feeling sad. And the third one you have HAAYA, that´s kind of going beyond the feeling, because she is sad, but it´s also opening something else in her. So it was like this three-step way of processing an emotion, that´s how I realized how I wanted to construct this narrative, but it was just at the end after I had everything. 

And I always had the names for the main users to be HAAYA and SULLL8, I always wanted to be this conversation. I like it because I think it´s like a two-way thing, you kind of have something that reminded me a bit of the dialogue of Plato and Socrates. They always have these kind of conversations, so it was something similar to that. 

And how did the sound design was made during the process? Because there is this mixture of very sonic movement, and also the movement of water, sea, and very marine-like movements. How was that created and how was the idea of Salamander, also the name of the film, created in the process?

Matilde Miranda Mellado: The sound design came with the music, because I was working with my friend and he makes eletronic music. But I don´t know, for me it´s always like, I watch the image without the sound, and I kind of start like, to try to see what things could go there, and what would those things make me feel. For example, in the film there´s an red image, and it´s kind of bloody but I wanted to intensify that feeling with a squishy sound, and also with that make the image more lighter. Like it feels it´s going a bit up, like it´s going brighter in a way. I don´t know, I just try to feel what the images are saying, and then like see if that works, and if it doesn´t, then maybe it should be the complete opposite. So it´s like playing around with everything, until you get to what you want to express, but it´s never what you want to express, it´s just, it expresses itself afterwards. You just have to know how to read, the things that are like coming out of the film itself, I think. And the name, Salaman Extensor, was the first thing that we did, before we had everything. We just put the name out there, it felt like something that was at the same time old and also futuristic. So that´s the only reason why it´s called that way, ans also gave us the first stone we put, and then everything came afterwards.

I haven´t yet seen your previous work, so I´m curious if you feel like Salaman Extensor is a culmination of what you wanted to express as an artist, do you feel like that or does the film represent a new and different chapter for you?

Matilde Miranda Mellado: I think it´s like a culmination, yeah, or like a start point to something. And I think it had to do with the pandemic, because in that period I realized I had more grip on the material world, because I was forced to be in the computer 24/7 and do all my work in there. And it was like, ''Oh, this is kind of fun!" and it was easy to control everything, so it had that feeling of me being able to do whatever I wanted. So that was the start of this, and also I was in this Korean course during the pandemic, and I had to do a final work in the course that was more like a science fiction film thing, and during that I realized I could do something more autobiographic with this genre. And science-fiction helped me in trying to express these things, be changing a bit the perspective, like putting yourself a bit out from your viewpoint, and from reality itself. So with this program like Salamander you can like give yourself this frame of work that it´s separated from reality, so you can fantasise in this place, and that can help you process emotions just by changing a bit the framework. 

You premiered the film for the first time at the Ecrã Film Festival in Brazil, how do you feel, as a young filmmaker, to premiere this film in this kind of festival and also how do you see the importance of experimental film festivals for the development of more radical, unique works in the field of cinema? 

Matilde Miranda Mellado: I feel very blessed, to be able to show my work. Because Brazil is for me this place which I feel it´s very separated from what I feel it´s my culture, but it´s also part of my like South-American culture. So it was great to be in this kind of grey area, of what it is to be like from South America. And so it´s like this otherhood, but at the same time it made me feel very welcomed. I don´t know, it was very, very beautiful, but I also wasn´t very... I don´t know. I wasn´t sure completely where I would be premiering this film, because I don´t know a festival in Chile which would be similar to ECRÃ in a way. So I was thinking of maybe doing more like a social media thing for it, for releasing it online. But I don´t know, ECRÃ gave me this kind of new landscape, and it allowed me to see this kind of experimental works in a big screen. And it was like, "Oh my God! I want to keep doing this!" But I also want to explore things in social media, and do both in a bigger way. So I am living with a very hopeful feeling for the future after the ECRÃ film festival.