SYNOPSIS. Savage Witches is a playful, poetic and experimental film about two teenage girls who want nothing but to play
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SYNOPSIS Savage Witches is a playful, poetic and experimental film about two teenage girls who want nothing but to play games, dress up and have adventures, but when they find themselves in conflict with the world around them they set out to transform it and break free! The film attempts to satisfy all their wishes for freedom. They are aided by a magic key, which unlocks the film allowing process to mix with its creation, artifice and reality to intermingle. But when Gretchen and Margarita are confronted with reality, it becomes clear that there is a vast gap between what they say they want and what they really want. Once the game has been set in motion they are swept along by the film’s momentum and must see it through to the end. Savage Witches is a colourful collage of sounds and images that has been created using all manner of processes and formats from VHS and Super 8 to drawn animation and hand-coloured frames, resulting in a bold and expressionistic exploration of the art of cinema. Like the characters in the film, its creators, Daniel and Clara, operate almost like two parts of one person. Their collaboration is unique in that they take equal creative control over camera, direction, writing and editing. The film’s form could be seen as that of a conversation, a chain of thoughts or a series of interruptions. They call it a motion picture exploration, the results of this exploration are presented to the audience to indulge in and enjoy. Savage Witches is the perfect antidote to the current film industry obsession with pitches, scripts, tick box criteria and 5 star reviews. This unclassifiable film should not be missed! CONTENTS 03. SYNOPSIS 03. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS 04. BIOGRAPHIES 06. DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT 08. ABSORB YOUR OBSTACLES by Jack Sargeant 10. MOVIE REVIEW: SAVAGE WITCHES by Mike Everleth 13. 366 UNDERGROUND: SAVAGE WITCHES (2012) by L. Rob Hubbard 15. INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL FAWCETT AND CLARA PAIS by Bradley Tuck 26. A MASTERPIECE OF EXPLORATION by Tess Connellan 31. CAST & CREW LIST 31. FESTIVALS, SCREENINGS & AWARDS
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Runtime: 70 mins | Country: UK | Ratio: 16:9* | Shooting Formats: HD/Super8/ VHS/DV Colour/B+W | Year: 2012 | Language: English | Subtitles: Available in English and Portuguese | Screening format: Pro Res QT file, DCP, HDCAM, Blu-Ray Disc *PLEASE NOTE: Part of the film has a 4:3 image within a 16:9 frame but the film must be played as 16:9 aspect ratio.
For any queries regarding interviews, screenings and our other projects, please contact Daniel and Clara at
[email protected]
4 WRITERS/DIRECTORS/EDITORS - DANIEL FAWCETT AND CLARA PAIS Daniel and Clara met in 2010 when Clara contributed an article to One+One Filmmakers Journal of which Daniel was the founder and editor from issue 1 to issue 10. A matter of months later they got started on their first film collaboration Savage Witches, which had its world première as a part of the Cambridge Film Festival 2012. Savage Witches is Clara’s first feature film. Originally from Portugal, Clara moved to the UK where she attended the Film and Television BA at London College of Communication. Recently, Clara worked for One+One Filmmakers Journal as submissions editor. Savage Witches is Daniel’s third feature film. His previous first two features, Come On Thunder and DIRT, were both shot in the two places where he spent his childhood, Colchester and Maldon in Essex. His films have screened at the Cambridge Film Festival, Brighton Cine-City, Firstsite Gallery, Portobello Film Festival and the London Underground Film Festival. As well as making films, Daniel and Clara co-direct CINE-REBIS, The London & Porto Underground Film Festival, which took place in November/December 2013. They also publish FILM PANIC Magazine, which features interviews and articles about the art of cinema focusing on the creative process of artist filmmakers. Visit The Underground Film Studio’s website (http://theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk) to find out about their current projects. CAST - CHRISTINA WOOD & VICTORIA SMITH Savage Witches starred Christina Wood and Victoria Smith both in their first feature film role, they have both had several years of experience in amateur plays and short films but Savage Witches is their biggest and most challenging project to date. Christina was first to be cast as Daniel had worked with her previously on a short film, Victoria was selected after attending an audition workshop. The two actresses hit it off instantly and became close friends, this friendship is present on screen. COMPOSER - FIONA BEVAN Fiona has been steadily rising up the London gig circuit, as well as playing Big Chill festival, Secret Garden Party, LoveBox, Latitude, Late at Tate and World Book Night at the Southbank Centre. Last year Fiona worked with Adam Ant and supported Ed Sheeran, Jesca Hoop and John Smith on their UK tours. She was also commissioned by Tate to create and perform a new piece as part of the Tate Modern Visual Dialogues project. Recently, Fiona Bevan was chosen as ‘First Woman Of Indie’ by Indie Music Reviewer 2012, and has co-written the #1 single ‘Little Things’ for One Direction. Savage Witches is her first score for a feature film.
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theatricality and magical quality of the medium – all that speaks to our imagination and takes us on a richer and more truthful journey. Savage Witches was created and directed in every aspect by two people, we both wrote, directed, operated the camera and edited, sharing creative responsibilities between us. The film’s form could be seen as that of a conversation, a chain of thoughts or a series of interruptions. Cinema for us is a tool to investigate, to question, explore and experience life so we call it a motion picture exploration, the results of this exploration are presented to the audience to indulge in and enjoy, and to feed into their own journey through life. We started with a script but we quickly realised that the script was simply a map of the territory we wished to explore and it expressed nothing of the feeling of being lost in the wilderness. We wanted the film to follow the narrative of ideas rather than that of story, not to be driven by conventions of plot, realism, or character motivation, but to let ourselves explore and experiment in the process of constructing a narrative, which became the unearthing of the film. We have been greatly inspired by the films of the Czech New Wave, specifically Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, in which we found the key to our own film – the experimentation both in form and content and the visual freedom – we wanted to make a film that was as creatively free as Daisies. We have also been heavily influenced by Derek Jarman, whose films we believe to be the greatest of British Cinema and the bar by which we measure our aspirations DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT Savage Witches was born out of a desire to break free from the conventions of traditional cinema and filmmaking, it is a film exploration far removed from the structures of industrial film production. Cinema has been around now for 120 years and, due to the great expense of making films in the past, the majority of films made within this time have been created within the system of industrial filmmaking. This has meant that those who control what is created are those who control the money. Times have changed, it is cheaper to make films than ever before but we have found that even though the conditions for a non-industrial filmmaking exist very few people have embraced this great opportunity. Even though many people are making films independently of the system they do not make them with independent minds, they still aspire to the trappings of a commercially driven cinema. We wanted Savage Witches to be a film which would be truthful to itself, that would question the conventions of storytelling and filmmaking not just in the construction of the film but in its process as well, and be free to respond to the situations and personalities involved. We wanted to make a film that aspires to a deeper understanding of the purpose of cinema and the role it plays in our life. In addition, with Savage Witches we celebrate all that we love about cinema - the artifice, the playfulness, the
Savage Witches is a film that wants to burst out of the screen and cross over into life, to have our own vision and experience of the world enriched and transformed by the artifice of cinema. Because of this, it was important for us that the process of making the film was tactile and hands on, that we also explore and celebrate the craft of making films. We created many of the props and sets, and we found ways to affect the texture of the image by using different cameras and re-filming footage projected on the wall. We also created animations from still photos, drawings, puppets and hand-painting exported frames from filmed material. A similar thinking was applied to the creation of the music and the sound design, which were created by Fiona Bevan and Simon Keep, respectively.
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play around with projecting and re-filming things from the wall to deteriorate the image and create more painterly effects. We also did a lot of work with single frames, exporting and printing each frame of a scene, then painting it and scanning it back in. It is incredible how our understanding of what cinema is has developed by doing this.”
ABSORB YOUR OBSTACLES! AMATEUR CINEMA AND VISUAL FREEDOM by Jack Sargeant, originally published in FilmInk British based filmmakers Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais have just completed their second feature film – the wonderfully titled Savage Witches - for less than £5000 (about $7000A). “Money is a funny thing” they state “if you really claw after it then there never seems to be enough but if you just let go of it and put your mind to the important stuff then you find that you really don’t need all that much. We have no interest in making industrial or commercial films, we are amateur filmmakers and these are our very elaborate home movies made with friends mostly and with things that we have around us. When we encounter an obstacle we have found that it is far more interesting to find a way to use it rather than to throw money at it and make it vanish! Absorb your obstacles!” The filmmaking pair make it absolutely clear that while cash may come and go, money has “nothing to do with creativity.” While Hollywood directors so often fetishize the latest technology (the tiresome vogue for 3D comes to mind), for Clara and Daniel there is just a celebration of potential, whatever the medium, “Savage Witches was edited on our laptop and was shot on HD, DV, Super8 and our favourite format VHS! We like mixing formats, different cameras have a different feel. The HD is very harsh and has a very sharp, almost sculptural quality. DV is kind of flat and fuzzy and VHS is beautiful, the colours just explode, the edges blur and everything becomes like an impressionist painting. We
Their working relationship and lifestyle overlap, the pair live in a single room, work seven days-a-week on their numerous projects, and dedicate their time to “making films and doing the things that we love and inspire our work. We both write, shoot, direct and edit. Savage Witches started with a conversation that lasted over two days in which we pretty much mapped out the entire film in one go. We then organised these ideas into a script, passing it back and forth until it felt complete. It would be impossible to know who had which ideas, often we’d find that we’d have the same idea simultaneously. We always made decisions together but we trusted each other to make the right decision without discussion when needed. During Savage Witches’ pre-production and shooting, we would do producing stuff together but Daniel would deal more with the actors and lead the workshops whereas Clara would deal with technical stuff. We often had two cameras, and the times when there was only one Clara would operate. Then while we were editing it became more like the writing process again, we’d sit together for some of it or work in shifts. It was a long edit, every single day for seven months, when one of us was tired the other could keep things going, we certainly wouldn’t have got through it on our own.” Most importantly, they remain utterly enthusiastic “Making a movie is an amazing thing, it’s magic! We never suffer from writer’s block or a lack of ideas, we are interested in so many things and there never seems to be enough time to do them all. One question we ask ourselves before we start working on a film is, ‘is this something we want to spend a year or two with?’ and if we are excited by this then we throw ourselves into it fully, it becomes the centre of our lives for whatever the amount of time we need to finish it, everything else is filtered through and feeds into the project. Also we have a really good diet, we make sure we get fresh air and exercise and take care of ourselves so our bodies and minds are functioning as well as they can, it really helps us focus and keep our minds clear of clutter, it’s important to be as receptive as possible to what life presents to us.” The inspiration and dedication are paying off; Savage Witches is premièring at the Cambridge Film Festival in the UK, with other festival screenings looming. A true example of dedication and creative affirmation, and a genuine example of outsider filmmaking, Clara and Daniel are an inspiration for all. Jack Sargeant is a writer specialising in cult film, underground film, and independent film, as well as subcultures, true crime, and other aspects of the unusual. His books include Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression and The Naked Lens: Beat Cinema. In addition he is programme director of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival.
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- are manipulated in some fashion to create a shocking and intense hyper-reality. There is barely a single scene that is representative of normal reality. The film begins with a cascading blur of colors to let us know that the viewer is being dropped into an other-worldly plane that will exist for the length of time the film runs. We are then introduced to the sisters as they appear blurry and washed out through blown-out video distortion. Slowly, the girls come into focus and they are off, breaking into a theatrical storeroom and adorning themselves with garish makeup and costumes. Though Gretchen and Margarita have altered their physical appearance, Pais and Fawcett let us understand that the sisters, as they leap and play about, are still confined by an ordered set of social rules by primarily having this initial sequence in black and white. Color briefly returns as the girls are reprimanded by the school headmaster and they are, again, banished into a black and white world.
MOVIE REVIEW: SAVAGE WITCHES by Mike Everleth, originally published on Bad Lit, Underground Film Journal on June 24, 2013 Savage Witches is an utterly charming paean to the cinema, mixing and matching a stream-of-consciousness of filmmaking styles and formats that flash by as if in a dream. It is a spellbinding melange of a movie that, instead of having any actual witches in it, offers up a joyous magical potion of visual playfulness. British co-directors and co-writers Clara Pais and Daniel Fawcett string along the airiest of plots on which to hang their constantly shifting film experiments that switch both between scenes and sometimes within the same scene. Gretchen (Christina Wood) and Margarita (Victoria Smith) are two sisters yearning to bust loose from their stuffy boarding school to have “adventures,” each of which being merely an excuse for the filmmakers to try out a different visual trick. Yet, the film holds together as a cohesive work as one “adventure” proceeds, for the most part, logically and, at least, thematically into the next. But also, whether Pais and Fawcett are combining animation with live action, or just focusing on one technique over the other, the colors of every scene - except for a few black & white ones
Eventually, they stumble upon a garden, imagined to be imbued with magic and, thusly, bright colors. This is the point when the film really takes off and Pais and Fawcett begin throwing everything they have in their filmmaking bag of tricks into the girls’ world. Also, while the film, on the one hand, is a universal celebration of the cinema; on the other, there is a very British vibe to the production, following into certain literary conventions of characters being transported into a supernatural world. Gretchen and Margarita jumping into the garden is not unlike Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Harry Potter and classmates taking the train to Hogwarts, or the Pevensie children entering the wardrobe. Given the effusion of stylistic experimentation and focus on just two characters, Savage Witches has an intimate and personal feel, especially through extensive use of hand-crafted animation; from hand-painted frames, to cut-out stop motion, “live drawing” animation and more. For example, for an extended dance sequence, video of the girls dancing alternates with cut-out animations of them doing the same while the background transforms into photocopies of their faces gliding across the frame as well as static magic marker live animated Warhol-esque portraits. It is a splashy, exuberant sequence that also pushes the loose plot forward as the dance is a form of ritual that follows a scene of the girls composing their own artistic, spell-casting book. Actresses Wood and Smith, as Gretchen and Margarita, have few other actors to play against and the two are never in conflict with each other, so their main concern is to bring an overarching sense of playfulness to their roles. The two have a gentle ease together as if they have been true lifelong soul mates and are terrific riding the emotional highs and lows that their adventures bring them. As the witches, they make Gretchen and Margarita as fully committed to making their fantasized world feel like
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a true reality to them, so that it feels real to us. As the sisters become more ensconced in their world of make-believe, the film does become darker as it moves forward. A brief bathtub interlude that, although the girls have no dialogue, recalls the similarly-set scene in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures when Pauline and Juliet conspire to kill Pauline’s mother. The more real the “magic” becomes for Gretchen and Margarita, the more the girls imagine they must be punished for their crimes against society, much like mythological witches must be. (Outside of the Potter books anyway.) Thus, the girls begin to move towards their preordained fate that they have laid out for themselves. Or, of course, it is the fate laid out for them by the filmmakers. What’s most interesting about the film is the way the directorial and art design choices blend in with the fantasy world imagined by Gretchen and Margarita. The characters are of the filmmaking process as much as the filmmaking is of them. Pais and Fawcett do not give off the aura that they are projecting their vision onto the sisters, as much as the visual style appears to be originating out of the sisters, even though, of course, the opposite is true. Even in one scene in which what sounds like an off-camera Fawcett feeding the girls their lines feels not as if a fourth wall is being broken, but perhaps the filmmaker has sprouted from the fictional characters’ imagination. Savage Witches is a whirling dervish of a movie wherein Pais and Fawcett keep all their fantastical winds blowing into a cohesive whole, kind of like blowing a diverse field of leaves into one large, magical pile. It is not often we see movies like this these days, a film that is such the product of an infectious spirit of fun and adventure. Savage Witches is not cynical nor — in any way, shape or form — mean-spirited. It is a celebration, and thus needs to be celebrated.
366 UNDERGROUND: SAVAGE WITCHES (2012) by L. Rob Hubbard, originally published on 366 Weird Movies on May 14, 2013 PLOT: Two teenage girls, Gretchen and Margarita (Wood & Smith), want nothing more than to play games, dress themselves up and have all kinds of adventures, but they constantly find themselves in conflict with the world around them. So they set out to transform it and break free… COMMENTS: With a title like that and two teenage girls in the main roles, you might be expecting another grindhouse gem to assert itself onto the film scene. Not in this universe, however - in fact, Savage Witches is best served by throwing out all expectations and just going with the flow of images and sounds in this “motion picture exploration,” as it bills itself. Savage Witches hearkens back to earlier days of experimental film - the makers cite the works of the Kuchar brothers and Derek Jarman as influences, and the film itself is a direct homage to the Czech film classic Daisies by Vera Chytilová, which also is about the adventures of two young women who decide to break out of their roles and have adventures by ‘being bad.’ Where Daisies was seen as an overt attack on society by the ‘bad’ behavior of its lead characters, Savage Witches is far less political, but it is still an aesthetic attack on the audience’s expectations of film as entertainment. There are no character arcs and not much in terms of action driving the plot forward. In fact, there’s only the barest hint of any sort of plot… instead, the action is mainly abstract, with the film changing from live action, to photo collage, to storyboards, to Super-8 as Gretchen & Margarita explore their freedom; although the real liberty is the freedom of cinema from the structures that we commonly bring to it.
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The film begins with a myriad of colors across the screen, and a voice inviting the audience to join in on an exploration - a dream - through which the voice informs the audience, “we can go anywhere, see anything”. The colors coalesce into two faces, Gretchen and Margarita, and from here on they function as guides/proxies for the audience, as they move forward into adventure: an adventure of form and format, rather than any sort of plot or story that has to be followed in the service of ‘business’ or whatever. That is the only ‘savagery’ exhibited by these pair of “savage witches”: the refusal to conform to the typical structure of what we expect when we sit down to watch a film. It is perhaps for this reason that the “savage witches” are burned at the end (besides the fact it provides an exciting ending), and our last glimpse of them is of them resting in state, but even then, they continue to flout our expectations… in contrast to the heroines of Daisies, who are definitely punished at the end for their bad behavior. Of course the attack that the protagonists of the Czech film lead against their society is far more pointed and nastier than Savage Witches. Also, the girls of Witches are not as sexualized as the women in Daisies, who use their erotic appeal as a battle tactic. For a 70 minute experimental feature film, Savage Witches is highly entertaining, which may come as a surprise to audiences in the U.S., whose exposure to experimental film is usually in short form and viewed as something to be endured, like a visit to the dentist. It doesn’t really qualify as weird, except perhaps to someone who has never viewed any sort of film that didn’t have a linear narrative, but that probably qualifies it as a good gateway for people to get into experimental films – its ‘weird’ factor isn’t quite high enough to alienate the General Viewer, but it’s just strange enough to be engaging to fans of weird film. It’s also helped by the music of Fiona Bevan and sound design of Simon Keep, and the engaging performances of Christina Wood and Victoria Smith as the lead characters. Savage Witches should continue to screen in film festivals in 2013, and DVDs should be available directly from the filmmakers from their website within a month or so.
AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL FAWCETT AND CLARA PAIS by Bradley Tuck, originally published in Issue 9 of One+One Filmmakers Journal Savage Witches is a recent film written, directed and edited by Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais that premièred on the 21st September at the Cambridge Film Festival. It is a kaleidoscopic foray into the imagination, which follows the magical adventures of two teenage girls in their search for freedom from the disciplinarian and all too “grown up” world around them. They speak in unison looking straight to the camera saying Let’s not spend our lives trapped like all these slaves, They cannot see how fake they are, going around in circles to reinforce the lies. They dance like in a bad ballet and over-act like in a primitive play, Jailers and inmates all of them. Let’s break free, like wild creatures! Like Savage Witches wild and free! They are transported on a journey of magic keys, secret gardens and witchcraft conducted through a plethora of visual imagery and experimental effects.
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Clara Pais and Daniel Fawcett are both members of the One+One editorial team, so I already had a sense of what I was going to see. I had seen clips, impressive clips I might add, and heard much talk about it from both of them. I had seen hand-painted photographs in their office, part of what seemed like a painstaking process of making a small segment of the film. I would come in regularly to find them editing some fantastically colourful and creative sequences on the laptop. I was expecting to be impressed. There is nothing quite as unnerving as sitting in the cinema, watching a friend’s film and waiting to be impressed. Suddenly, while sitting in the cinema, I couldn’t help but feel that the film was somehow going to disappoint. I imagined all their hard work falling to pieces. “Oh my God! I know it...” I thought “they are going to mess up somehow. It will be all fantastic imagery, but with no real substance” I continued to fret and as the film started I was obsessively looking out for the inappropriate effect, the lag in pace. But as the film progressed I felt increasingly seduced by the abundance of the visual delights. Each sequence was like a tasty morsel cocooned between more tasty morsels. I constantly wished I could rewind the film and watch a whole segment all over again. Collage! Animation! Montage and more. Each scene was so well crafted and so innovative. The whole thing was crammed with texture and colour. I got that feeling you get when you go to the art gallery and you just want to glide your hand over that rippled canvas; touch and plaster your fingers over everything. I soon realised that this film was not lacking content, the form was part of the content. The young girls’ search for freedom overspilled and had coloured the whole visual process. There was obviously a lot of work that went into this. Could you tell us a bit about the different effects, styles and methods you used? That’s a great response, a few people have also commented on having physical reactions to the film, not just wanting to touch it but that the film affected them physically somehow, this is fascinating. We wanted Savage Witches to be a film that almost bursts out of the screen and crosses over into life, we never felt that it was a passive thing to watch a film, physical reactions are good, the best films make us want to leap out of our seat and take action. Making the film we wanted a process that was tactile and hands on, we didn’t want to be at a distance, just telling other people what we wanted and letting them do it, we wanted to be involved with every part of the process from making props and sets to operating the cameras ourselves. We also found ways to affect the texture of the footage as we wanted to explore the material side of the image as well. This started by simply questioning what kind of camera we wanted to use and what could we do to the footage to make it work for us, we ended up filming with a bunch of different cameras – VHS, DV, HD, Super 8 and stills cameras. A lot of the footage went through
a few layers of processing, for example, the VHS footage was transformed by projecting it and cranking up the colour settings in the projector, then re-filming it off the wall with an HD camera, the result is that incredibly rich quality of colour and blurry edges like an impressionist painting. We also made animations for the film which sometimes would originate from still photos, other times from drawings or photocopies and even footage from which we would export each frame of a sequence, print it on paper, hand colour it then scan it back in. The burning sequence was made like this. We got right in there, inspected every frame. Working with single frames really alters your understanding of how films are made, we got right under the skin of the process of making a film. Sound and music are intimately tied up in this project, they really add to the feel of this film. There are so many strange and unusual sounds there. Could you tell us a bit about this collaboration process? The sound design was created by Simon Keep and the music by Fiona Bevan. For the soundtrack the music came first, as soon as we had a locked edit we sent the film to Fiona. We discussed with her the structure and the ideas behind each scene and then we left her to herself and she started creating the music, we wanted her to be as free as possible and put music where she felt the film needed music. Fiona was very
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For us cinema is not about trying to make the audience believe that what they are seeing is real, that these girls are really witches etc, it is about what we can discover and understand through the play of making films. We are all actors, we play the directors, the girls are playing at being stars, you are playing the critic – it’s all a game, but that doesn’t devalue it, games are how we learn, discover and explore life. There didn’t seem to be much difference between constructing scenes and documenting the process, the material was all there at the end and we presented it in the way that seemed to be most truthful. You could say Savage Witches is a documentary with fantasy elements rather than a theatrical film with documentary elements. How do you think the actors coped with the process? Do you think this is the sort of film they expected?
interested in finding ways of recording and processing the music that mirrored what we had done with the image. She then sent us this and we discussed with her what worked for us and what we weren’t so sure about and she went away and built upon that. It went on like this, a back and forth process, until it was finished. Some things were finished very early on like the music for the end sequence, there wasn’t a rough version of that, it was first take, we loved it so much that we kept it as it was. I think Fiona wanted to polish it up a bit, she even recorded an alternative version which was much slicker, and even though it was stunning it lacked the raw strangeness of the original which better suited the scene. The sound design was the very last creative part of making the film, everything else had been done and committed to. Savage Witches was shot completely silent, we recorded the voice-overs in a studio while we were editing but the rest of the sound was created by Simon. We went through the film building the sound scene by scene, layer by layer, using a lot of recordings from his sound archive which he has been building for years, but we also recorded a lot, all the footsteps you hear in the film where recorded in the studio, Daniel did Gretchen’s and Clara did Margarita’s, we even did the footstep sounds for the chickens! The film never adopts the pretence of realism. There is something fascinatingly artificial and theatrical about it. During the film we hear the actors describing their characters, at another point we hear them describing their frustration with the process and in another scene we see a storyboard rather than live action. In these moments the process intrudes into the “illusion” of the film and yet it still remains theatrical from start to finish. Why was it important that the process appear in the final product?
Something that happened early on in the workshops with the actors was that we realised that the script was starting to become a hindrance, we found that the more the girls knew about the film and what they were doing the less interesting their performances became, so in order to capture the feeling we wanted we took away the script and we kept them in the dark from day to day about what they were doing. This was incredibly frustrating for them and drove them mad. But what this did was it made them hungry to know, they couldn’t hide this feeling of frustration and lack of control, the feeling of searching for meaning and purpose, this is exactly what we wanted these characters to be about. So reality and illusion blended to create the truth of the situation. There were moments when they were very angry at us throughout because even though they had been told that the film would not be fixed to the script but would evolve and change as we went along I don’t think they believed how far we would take it. For this type of film scripts can be a real hindrance, once people have seen them they cling on to them with dear life no matter how much you explain that it was just the starting point. I am sure the same thing would happen with producers or funders if we had to deal with them. We have no preciousness over the script, for us it is just a starting point, the first expression and the first steps of the exploration, it is a map of the territory we wish to explore but it can express very little of what it is to be out in the wilderness! There are a lot of implicit references to mythology, the history of witchcraft and, I think, children’s adventure stories. How did these things shape the film? This is something which really evolved during the making of the film because the film developed in a way that was both following intuition and going through careful intellectual reflection. A lot of the symbols that we use in the film came unconsciously and their purpose and place either evolved or became clear to us only later. Things seem to always be dictated in part by the material in our unconscious, while making the film we tried to be as receptive as possible, to let those things flow and come out a bit more freely.
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We are very interested in myths because their language is symbolic and what we find appealing is that symbols are used not as dead-ended or closed meanings but as doorways to ideas and experiences, something that can be both the instigator and the guide in our journey. The initial script had much more conventional elements of witchcraft and magic, in the beginning these were brought in as a device that we could use to break open the filmmaking conventions we were exploring, magic as an instigator of transformation both within the narrative and in the process. There were also a lot of more personal symbols, things that we associated with our own experiences and memories. But we felt it was important to go deep into what purpose these symbols were serving, where they were taking us, and remain receptive to the changes that presented themselves to us which eventually revealed the bigger themes and the more universal currents in the things we were already exploring. Myths and magical stories are usually seen as superstitions, simplified ways to see the world or escapisms more appropriate for children, but they go much deeper than that if we are willing to open ourselves to them, they use symbols and structures that are as old as humankind and therefore are intricately connected with human psychology, that is why artists and creative people in any area strive to foster and protect a childlike mind, both receptive and imaginative. A receptive mind is a potential for transformation, a change, an expansion of understanding, for real magic to take place! In many ways the story appeared to play a secondary role to the visual experimentation. How important was the story to the overall film? Savage Witches started with a script which had a fairly conventional narrative, it had a lot of the scenes which you will see in the finished film but there was a lot more explanation and going from A to B. As soon as we got a clear understanding of what was at the core of this exploration, what its purpose was, then it became clear that some of the elements of the script had served their purpose and were no longer needed. Even when we had the script we intended to let this film follow the narrative of ideas rather than that of story, we wanted to celebrate the things we love about cinema, the play, the illusion and the artifice, the language of symbols and even though we love story-based films for this project it wasn’t about telling stories as much as it was about constructing narrative, looking at those pieces that make up a story and taking them a part. The film was also very poetic. In the literal sense, you had written a lot of poetry for this. There wasn’t really dialogue in the conventional Hollywood sense. But also in the visual sense. It was like a montage of visual poetry. What drew you to this poetic approach? Cinema has been around now for about 120 years and in that time it has been fo-
cused primarily on storytelling. Of course there have been those filmmakers who explore its other qualities and potentials but they are certainly in the minority and are always classed as outside or somehow alternative to ‘real cinema’. One of the reasons cinema has maintained a fairly narrow focus is because it has until recently been very expensive to make films, this therefore has meant that those who control what is created are those who control the money. Early on it became clear that audiences responded well to story-based cinema and the money men of course responded to this by funding more story-based films until the industry was well and truly established and people’s idea of what cinema is was well and truly tied up with storytelling. Times now are changing and the tools for making films are available for very little money and are easier to use than ever before. This should be the start of a rethinking of what cinema is about, various new languages of cinema could emerge, but before they do we have some serious work to do. The industrial approach to cinema is very much ingrained in our minds, even filmmakers making films outside of the system without money and without anyone telling them what to do still obey the rules of the system and the form of the industrial film. It is time to dig into this, explore and de-construct these conventions and see what else cinema could be. We don’t have to discard things simply because they have come to us via industrial filmmaking but it is a time to question what they could be within a new form of cinema. And when we talk of form we are not only speaking of the film itself but of the process and world that surrounds it, the structure of cast and crew, the relationship to technology, distribution and the exhibition of the film. We arrived at the poetic approach out of questioning and experimenting with a form that felt right for our exploration at every level, if a story film was the best means then we would have done that.
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We tried not to consider too much how we thought the audience would respond and focused on creating our perfect movie, the movie that we wanted to watch and the experience we wanted to live through. Through it we have explored many ideas and at this point we have a certain reading of the film from our own point of view, but certainly this will evolve as it has done during the making of the film, the film allows our understanding of it to evolve and our ideas to change and this is exactly what we wanted. The hope is that if we make a movie that we are really happy with and truly believe in then there will probably be other people out there who will like it too. Audience reactions are something to be very careful about, really it doesn’t matter if someone likes or dislikes the film, it matters more if we haven’t made a film we believe in. We are not seeking outside confirmation that we have done OK, we love Savage Witches, after 18 months of living with the making of this film it is such a joy to watch it on the big screen, it has surprises for us and even now it reveals things to us that we had not known previously. We have been on a wonderful journey and the film is our way of presenting the results of this journey to an audience, and we hope that for the audience there is something in the sounds and images that is of use in their own journey.
One of the things I really liked was that the film was subtitled “A Motion Picture Exploration”. The idea of “Motion Pictures” brings to mind the golden age of Hollywood, with allusions to its archaic charm, its aim to entertain and its commercially driven agenda. But the word “Exploration” brings to mind the opposite: the experimental avant-garde. Do you feel like you are living somewhere between both these worlds? I don’t know where we fit in and I don’t think it matters much, whenever we talk to critics they want to know which boxes we fit into, we love all kinds of cinema and art and draw upon anything that excites us. We love 50’s and 60’s Hollywood, Douglas Sirk, Westerns, Technicolour movies like Duel in the Sun, Johnny Guitar and the films of Powell and Pressburger but we draw just as much on underground filmmakers such as The Kuchar Brother and Jeff Keen and people like Fassbinder and Jarman. Possibly the biggest influence on Savage Witches has come from the Czech New Wave film Daisies by Věra Chytilová, when we first saw Daisies it was a revelation, we found a form that was what we had been searching for! What do you think you are trying to say (in the strong or weak sense) with this film? What is your “message” to the world. We do not have a fixed message, Savage Witches is an exploration of cinema, of personal ideas relating to creative freedom and our relationship to the world around us.
Daniel, in the first issue of One+One you wrote a manifesto where you declared “My independence is better than your independence”. I have heard a lot of talk recently about The King’s Speech as an independent film and that seems far away from my image of independent cinema. Clara, you have also written on the work of George Kuchar and Stan Brakhage, both of which seem to be advocating a different kind of filmmaking. One+One and The Underground Film Studio have
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grown simultaneously with the aim of encouraging a different kind of independence. What do you believe this independence is and where do you see it taking you? Maybe what we are talking about here is freedom. We believe freedom is to be at peace with oneself and to be at ease with the world. We have found that through making art, specifically movies, we can experience a peace within ourselves, it is not about making products on the search for money or fame, it is about our personal exploration of the world. The independence element comes into play as a result of this, we cannot be on a truthful exploration if we have to pitch our film to bureaucrat funders who want us to explain who the audience is or summarise our movie in bite-size marketable statements, this stuff is crushing, it damages the mind, it distracts you from what is really important and stops you making the right decisions. If you spend enough time dealing with these people you’ll start thinking like them, you’ll find your inspiration suddenly becomes simplified and marketable, you can tick all the boxes and bamn you are in their club, sucking up after money and craving for fame, asking permission, that’s the worst, we live in a world where you have to ask permission for everything, it’s disgusting. It is important to remain independent simply to protect your own mind and energy, there is always a myriad of ways to do things and it’s much more interesting to explore all of these than having to ask permission to do things. We make films on our terms, life is too beautiful and rich to waste time with all that nonsense. Funding at the moment is very difficult. With all the cuts it is hard to know what is going to happen to the film culture in this country. What was your budget? How did you get funding? And how do you plan to continue to find funding in these uncertain times? Cuts or no cuts the funding situation in the UK is terrible, the BFI just like the Film Council will have you jump through hoops and sell your soul for very little in return. You cannot be funded by these people and have creative control over your project, you have to choose. Making a film takes a lot of energy and quite a bit of time, Savage Witches took 18 months. Life is too short to spend 18 months on something and then feel unhappy about it at the end, for the kind of cinema we are interested in making there is no way we could do it with those kind of funders and come out happy at the end. We crowdfunded our film, people would make small donations towards the project if they liked the sound of it and had some cash to spare. These donations are not financial investments, they are simply giving it as a gift to support the project, we don’t want to take any money from anyone who doesn’t believe in us or the film. In return for the donations we give small gifts, tokens of appreciation such as posters, screening invites etc. This is the future of funding, the films’ creators must be free. Savage Witches cost between four and five grand to make, start to finish, half the
money came from sponsors and the other half we scraped together and put in ourselves. No one was paid and the film was made as a non-profit film, any money that turns up as a result of the film will be put into the next project. We try to have a minimal relationship to money, it’s not that interesting, it comes and goes quite easily but rather than claw after it we prefer to focus on creating the film, we use what we have available and make that work. The filmmakers who desperately chase money and spend years waiting to make a film because they need more are wasting their lives, it’s not worth it, making art is all about transformation, cinema is magic, anything is possible, with or without a pocket of jingling coins, let the coins and cameras roll! How can people see this film? We have lots of screenings coming up, the film will be available on DVD sometime in the next year, the best thing to do is keep an eye on the facebook page, we post all the info about screenings on there. What do you plan to do next? Our next film is called The Gun That Killed Cassidy! Or: How I lost my mind and came to my senses. It will be a strange and beautiful journey out of the cinema to the end of the world, we haven’t made it yet so anything could happen, it’s very exciting.
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mad Czech New Wave masterpiece Sedmikrasky), Savage Witches is a fresh player on the cinema stage. Fawcett and Pais’ screenplay isn’t a body as much as a skeleton, it holds together the experimentation with a story of beauty. “Shaking the dust from old books… so our world has a past… a history before us… but we’ll re-write it.” This prose rivals Andersen and the Brothers Grimm; it just happens to be voiceover. The girls’ imaginations are constantly wirling, their mouths filled with words that communicate exactly what they want in this world – they want to see a warlock, so damn it, they’ll see one!
A MASTERPIECE OF EXPLORATION by Tess Connellan, originally published in Celluloid Oxygen, June 2013 “Ladies and gentlemen, if you would allow yourselves to join me on an exploration… let us lose ourselves in these moments.” So opens Savage Witches, a motion picture exploration. These are words you must live by in the world of the film, but by the time this story has finished with you, you shall know they are words you should always live by. Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais have constructed a masterpiece of experimentation, using the magic of visuals and sounds to create magic of the mind. Your sense of reality, joy and freedom is treated as much as your eyes and ears; this is a film to engage with on every level. Teenage witches Gretchen (Christina Wood) and Margarita (Victoria Smith) are tired of being bossed around. They want to let their imaginations run wild, play as much as they like, metaphorically kick the rules in the face. “I will not pretend,” they say. They retreat into a world of mischief and spell-casting, living their dream, but as we well know… every dream must end eventually. Taking cues from experimental films of all kinds (most especially Vera Chytilova’s
Possibly the greatest inventiveness is displayed in the film’s visual aspects; it’s a hyperactive melange of just about every trick in the book. Filming mediums range from wonder-soaked Super 8 to grainy VHS to DV; colours from monochrome to rainbowsoaked to hand-painted; and animation incorporates stop motion and collage. All of it is gorgeous in different ways, and is the perfect visual embodiment of the world our witches want to create. The revolution in their minds is a revolution for our eyes. If you’re the type to end a film raving to your friends about the bit you thought was the coolest, Savage Witches will have you arguing for hours. How about that opening, like LSD underwater! Or the garden sequences with flower flashes and chasing the bees and the koi fish? Nah, the dance sequence with all the paints, that was insane! Come on, it’s the cold creepy bit in the meadow with the chaos earthquake! No, it’s the abandoned house with all the spells! Tearing up the books in the apocalypse animation! The Victorian schoolgirl bit where they’re trapped inside a painting! The theatre animation with the puppets! The hand-coloured burning sequences where the screen melts and it’s the most horribly beautiful thing you’ve ever seen! The bier covered in flowers! If you have enough opinionated cinephile friends, the whole thing could end in a fistfight. And all of this is just cinematography and post – other types of visuals just keep on giving. Joonatan Allandi’s costumes cloak our witches with acid-bright liberation uniforms or icky neat schoolgirl frocks alike. The insane cat costumes are a particular highlight, interacting perfectly with the sequinned eyebrows and blue lips of Helen Patience’s makeup. Lauren Stevens’ props and sets meld perfectly with the world of the witches, my own favourite being the secret spellcasting, with magic trinkets of all kinds. Sorcery, anarchy and an abandoned house, way to combine three of my favourite things! With all these treats dancing for the eye, there is more than enough sonic delight to match it. The film is light on dialogue, with atmospheric sound doing the talking for Gretchen and Margarita. Fiona Bevan’s score melds perfectly with the visuals, being as creepy or as playful or as sad as it needs to be. Simon Keep’s sound design had to have been the most fun foley ever to record, with everything from the screaming of girls being chased by bees to the explosions of the apocalypse to soundtrack a collage animation of the witches ripping and tearing through books to symbolise their desire to destroy the world.
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characters, shots of location filming or a storyboard spliced in instead of a sequence. Once the initial shock subsides, you realise what a beautiful decision that is - the playfulness and freedom doesn’t just exist within the film, it’s legitimised by the filmmakers via the inclusion of their process. Playfulness and freedom should be real and they are making it so. And of course, breaking down the artifice of film by showing the making of the film you’re watching while you’re watching it just messes with peoples’ heads in the best possible way. The witches are the filmmakers, seeing their own film take a life of its own; the witches are us, scared of what we’ve seen; the witches are you, the witches are me… they are everyone. The most singular experience in this film is that every thought in your head is preceded by “I have no idea what’s going on but I love it.”
Carrying the picture on twitchy shoulders are Christina Wood and Victoria Smith, who are exactly what witches should be. Their huge eyes and physical fearlessness almost outdo all the experimentation being hurled our way; and their glee is visible in every frame. They are willing to act like children, and surprisingly few performers are willing to let themselves do that. When the making of the film starts to pervade the film itself in a stroke of meta-fiction, the actresses discuss their characters and their love for these crazy girls is evident: Margarita wants to get outside the world of the mundane, Gretchen is like nobody else on Earth. This film delivers on its message of freedom in every way: it’s full of images and sounds, all things to interpret how you want. So many films tell you what to think, but this one lets you tell it what to think, you could find beauty or horror or anything in any part of it you like. Every viewer’s experience is different, and that’s a rare thing. Ideas of artifice, anarchy, joy, dreams, wishes are thrown around in seventy mad minutes – will your wishes ever turn out how you want them? Is everything you can imagine real? Can freedom be damaging? You might find the answers, you might not. Fawcett and Pais make the unusual decision of having the process of filmmaking seep into the film itself, whether with the actresses’ voiceovers regarding their
You know those things you think about if you’re tired or drunk or high on sugar or just in a really weird mood? (Or weird all the time, like me.) When you stare at the ocean crashing for a long time and feel like you understand the universe? If you open your mind enough and linger on such sights, then these thoughts form. Art like Savage Witches puts you in that mood effortlessly, and asking these questions seems both necessary and natural. Strangeness is something in all of us, and a film that celebrates it is both daring and beautiful. That’s the trick of experimental filmmaking: it doesn’t have to make sense. People who say that’s lazy or stupid are exactly the brainwashed masses that Gretchen and Margarita scorn. Yes, it means you can whatever you like, but there’s nothing actually wrong with doing whatever you like. If following your heart and soul with no inhibitions means finding your voice or the gift you want to give the world, then that’s the point, now isn’t it? In the words of Bjork, “If you want to make something happen that hasn’t happened before, you’ve got to allow yourself to make a lot of mistakes. Then the real magic will happen. If you just play it really safe, you won’t get any treats.” There’s another Savage Witch at heart. We should listen to them, kids, I think they’re on to something.
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PRESSBOOK CAST & CREW A motion picture exploration by Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais Starring Christina Wood and Victoria Smith Music by Fiona Bevan Costumes by Joonatan Allandi Sound Design by Simon Keep Sound Recording by Janos Horvath and Lauren Stevens Props and Sets by Lauren Stevens Make-up by Helen Patience Spark - Otto Banovits Casting Assistant - Sarah Saeed Pre-production assistant - Helen Gladders Tarot Reader - Josh Gould Supporting Cast - David Broadus, Fiona and Don Wood, Philip Fawcett and Andrew Fawcett. Released by The Underground Film Studio in 2012 FESTIVALS & SCREENINGS Cambridge Film Festival, UK Brighton Cine-city, UK London Underground Film Festival, UK Cinema Culture, Chicago, USA International Festival of Cinema Libre, Hamburg, Germany Portugal Underground Film Festival, New York, USA Portobello Film Festival, London, UK South Texas Underground Film Festival, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA PollyGrind Underground Film Festival, Las Vegas, USA Film Mutations, Festival of Invisible Cinema, Zagreb, Croatia STUFF Second Monday Screenings, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA Silvestre Concertos & Film Screening, Porto, Portugal Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland, UK Circuito Nomadica, Bologna, Italy Vagrant Film Festival, Belarus Portugal Underground Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal Wrong Directions Cinetent at Nozstock Festival, Herefordshire, UK Scalarama 2014, SeventySeven, Bristol, UK Circuito Nomadica, Benevento, Italy Cultivate Film Club, Manchester, UK Cine-Rituals, Palácio das Artes, Porto, Portugal AWARDS Eye Candy Award at South Texas Underground Film Festival, 2013 Best Fantasy Film at PollyGrind Underground Film Festival, 2013
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‘Simply wonderful... a bold and liberated piece of work.’
Jim Ross - Take One
‘It is not often we see movies like this these days, a film that is such the product of an infectious spirit of fun and adventure. ... It is a celebration, and thus needs to be celebrated.’ Mike Everleth - Bad Lit: Underground Film Journal ‘It’s one of the most remarkable and celebratory films I have seen in a long time, a genre-defying explosion of creativity, personal expression and experimentation. There is a lot to say about this film, and it also raises many fascinating questions - it breaks all the boundaries between DIY and ‘art’ filmmaking, between narrative and experimental, between actor and filmmaker.’ Richard Ashrowan - Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival ‘A true example of dedication and creative affirmation, and a genuine example of outsider filmmaking, Clara and Daniel are an inspiration for all.’ Jack Sargeant - FilmInk ‘Savage Witches takes chances with its style, and I’m highly impressed’ The Vern’s Video Vortex ‘An aesthetic attack on the audience’s expectations of film as entertainment.’ L. Rob Hubbard - 366 Weird Movies ‘Each sequence was like a tasty morsel cocooned between more tasty morsels. I constantly wished I could rewind the film and watch a whole segment all over again. ... I got that feeling you get when you go to the art gallery and you just want to glide your hand over that rippled canvas; touch and plaster your fingers over everything.’ Bradley Tuck - One+One Filmmakers Journal ‘Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais have constructed a masterpiece of experimentation, using the magic of visuals and sounds to create magic of the mind. Your sense of reality, joy and freedom is treated as much as your eyes and ears; this is a film to engage with on every level.’ Tess Connellan - Film Blogger ‘As if Andrei Tarkovsky collaborated with Terry Gilliam on a remake of ‘The Blair Witch Project’. Awesome colours, cutting, special effects, and the pace never lets up.’ Strat Mastoris - Film Blogger email:
[email protected] website: theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk
