There are four people credited as director. I'm sure there were some difficulties having several directors and the authority not belonging to one person. How did the team work together?
 
On the contrary, it was a real team effort, we all had confidence in each other, it was very rich to be able to work like that. Everyone had a lot of freedom in their field, Thomas in sound and editing, Ishrann in image and color grading, Jean in all the technical aspect, Laida and myself in movement and improvisation. We started to work on Ishrann, Laida and me, on image and movement with a lot of improvisations. Then looking at all the images captured by Ishrann's eye-camera we made a selection of interesting elements. On the basis of these elements resulting from improvisations, then, we all wrote together, for 3 days, the story of the film, the storyboard.
 
 
What does the title mean? Why did you name the film this way?
 
The title in English is "Behind her". The title was born after the film was finished. When I proposed this title, all the members of the group agreed. We really like everything that this title evokes with us, with the spectator. I can't explain the reason for choosing the title! ... Maybe the title has a link with the other side of things, what is behind appearances, the inaccessible and the tiny. An invisible person whom the camera can testify or suggest…
 
 
It was as if the furniture and the house itself were moving and dancing as well as the dancers. How did you come up with the choreography for this piece?
  
With Laida we worked at the time on dance and improvisation outside the theater stages, we wanted to go into people's living spaces and work from the atmosphere of each home, its objects, its smells, its sounds, etc. So we were training in my apartment, Thomas arrived with Ishrann and Jean and after some discussions we decided to try to make a film together. After "Derrière Elle", we continued to work on the real-time composition of a piece in people's homes with our "Delivery Performance" project.
Regarding the choreographic work of the film, we decided that objects and our bodies had the same status of importance. We worked on the body as an object, the body moving from the state of an object to the state of a non-object body, the failure and success of this attempt. We also analyzed the possibilities that the space offered to us in terms of space, the interconnecting rooms which allowed to create "a chapter" for each room and the fact that it was interconnecting gave a lot of depth of field. With the sound we composed the score at the time we composed the choreography.
 
 
I assume this kind of house and interior is quite common in France. Why did you come to make this film in this house? What kind of physicality do you think exists in this specific house?
 
This is a typically Belgian apartment (and not French.)
These three-room apartments in a row are typical of the architecture of the Maison de Maitre from the very beginning of the 19th century in Brussels. These whole family houses were generally subsequently divided into several apartments.The central room is therefore deprived of any relation to the exterior and to the light of day.With Thomas we lived on the ground floor of one of these houses.
Related to your question "Why did you come to make this film in this house?" I think the answer is in my previous answer. It was our place of life.

Natalia Sardi is a Belgium choreographer, filmmaker, dancer and singer. She was born in Brazil and she grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
She studied at the "Professional Contemporary Dance School at the Theatre Gral San Martin", "The National School of Dance N° 2 Jorge Donn" in Argentina as a scholarship student with Haichi Akamine, choreographer Carlos Casella.
After her studies she has performed, collaborated with several choreographers, theater directors, visual artists in Argentina and Europe.
Currently, she works and lives in Brussels and she creates and develops her own projects in dance, film and music, alone or in collaboration with other artists based in Brussels and Switzerland.
Her films have traveled all over the world and have won several awards at film festivals.
 
"Working in my own familiar living surroundings I look for gaps in our reality. I am searching for a more obscure take on the world hoping to discover subtle differences or something bigger and more fantastic."
 
More information: www.nataliasardi.com
 
 

Please tell us about you, and what kind of pieces you have made in the past.
 
Jacqueline Kooter：I am Jacqueline Kooter, an visual artist from Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
My visual work is about both the strength and the vulnerability of the human body and about the complexity of human relations.
I am specialized in site-specific large installations and in the production of short animation-like movies. In these movies I create an imaginary world, where (human) figures are moving around; sometimes real people and sometimes cut-out paper figures. I used to be a painter and I still use painted elements in my movies. Some of my short movies can be considered to be dance movies.
 
 
On the credit it says ‘Dancers /performer paper jackets’. Who or what are they?
 
Jacqueline Kooter：The two paper jackets (without the hands) are original Qingming objects from Hong Kong.
They are being manufactured for the Qingming Festival in China. This is the day for mourning and honoring the dead. People burn all sorts of artificial goods (entirely made out of paper) on the grave, so that the dead are well taken care of in the afterlife.
I use them as two characters having a relationship.
 
 
How are they choreographed?
 
Jacqueline Kooter：I added paper hands to the jackets to give them more expression when they move. They move by wind. By editing my filmtakes I made the choreography.
 
 
Seeing this film, to meet dance without human body astonished me. Now I wonder, what is the thing that makes a dance to be one? What is your opinion?
 
Jacqueline Kooter：I think that we experience dance by the quality of movement en by rhythm. The wind gives the paper jackets a wonderful quality of movement, strengthened by the hands. By rigorous selection of my filmtakes and by editing them on the chosen music it becomes dance.
 
 
Is there a story to this film? Does the two characters have a dramatic story going on between themselves, or are they simply dancing?
 
Jacqueline Kooter：The synopsis is: “Two paper figures in the afterlife, seeking each other out to continue the dance; sometimes loving sometimes not.”
The music is by Johann Sebastian Bach (a German composer of the Baroque period/18th century).
I used excepts from the Double Concerto BWV 1055. The first movement, the Larghetto, is rather slow and moody, the characters are apart, they seek their lost one. The second movement, the Allegro, is light and joyful. They have found each other again in the afterlife to continue their dance (sometimes loving and sometimes not: they seem having a conflict now and then). Living together isn’t easy, not even in the afterlife.
 
 
As you kindly answered in our previous interview, this film's theme is about being together with someone. You use paper in many of your works to represent humans. What does paper as a material mean to you?
 
My work is about the vulnerability of the human body and paper is a fragile material. Therefore, in my opinion, the material and my intentions fit well together. Also, I find it a challenge to give volume to a delicate material, in this case through wind and movement.

Jacqueline Kooter
 
The visual work of Amsterdam based artist Jacqueline Kooter is about both the strength and the vulnerability of the human body and about the complexity of human relations. Loss as a theme plays a role in her work. Loss in the broadest sense of the word (loved ones, -mental- health, the world by climate change). 
She is specialized in making site-specific installations and in the production of meticulously made, short (animation) films. In these films she creates an imaginary world in paper and paint, where (human) figures are moving around; sometimes real people and sometimes (cut out) paper figures. They move in real time and/or by stop motion.
Jacqueline Kooter exhibited her work in Europe, the USA and Hong Kong.
Her films have been screened at multiple international (dance- and short-) film festivals in Europe (Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey), USA, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Japan.
 

Please tell us about you, and what kind of films you have made in the past.
 
My Name is Kai Welf Hoyme. I am a 38 years old artist, living and working in Cologne and Moenchengladbach, Germany. Since 2000 I am working artisticly with moving images, sound / audio, photography, performance and installation. My videos and shortfilms deal with the relation between the body movement and gesture, the physical space and different personal,cultural and social ideas and imaginations. For instance my dance video Balance ( Collapsing Body Research) from 2003, is about body movements and a physical space. My recent experimental video Skeleton from 2016, deals with the interrelation and the gap among the utopian architecture of the Ruhr-University of Bochum, choreographed hand gestures, and a sound and voice fragment from the utopian text The City Of The Sun. My film work has developed from a kind of classic dance film to films, which contain choreographed gestures and choreographed camera movement.
 
 
There is live action and animation mixed in this film. Why did you combine these?
 
The idea to combine live action and hand drawn animation is close to the main idea of the film, to give an insight into a inner landscape of a woman. Due the animation can show incidents and emotions, that you cannot express by using live action. Its difficult to express moments of emotional and physical metamorphosis with live action. You can find the hand movement of the animation artist in the animation sequences, too. By this way you can combine choreographed hand gestures and the movement of the pen on the paper. This method creates also a special atmosphere.
 
 
From the title “Nocturn” and the restless atmosphere, the film strongly brings up the image of nighttime. Then again, the film starts from a daytime scene. What is the meaning of this?
 
My film Nocturn starts from a daytime scene to show a passage from the day to the night. From the outside to the hidden inside, the mental and poetic space of the woman.
 
 
Specific body parts such as hand, hair, etc. seemed to be closed up in the film. Why is this?
 
I use the close-up to focus on this body parts. Hand and hair have a strong personal meaning and symbolical and metaphorical power in the european culture history. For instance you can watch scenes, were the hair grows and the hand turns.
 
 
What is filmed here is hardly loud or active, but very still and silent. Why did you prefer to handle stillness and silence in a dance film?
 
The film circles the topics of metamorphosis and aphasia, the loss of the ability to talk. This topics have certain physical and mental meanings. So its not a classic dance film, but creates a silent mood with choreographical elements. The form of the film fits to the content.
 
 
Aphasia is a state of linguistic and physical inconvenience. Expression is often understood as something free and open, but what are the possibilities for the expression of inconvenience, as in "Nocturne"?
 
The audio-visual language of film and the visual language of body movements and gestures have the power to express and show non-verbal and hidden phenomena of the human mind and behavior. Aphasia is a disorder of the language. My short film Nocturn tries to articulate and reflect this state of mind with artistic and poetic means, while other ways of researching e.g. like science will only describe and clarify this phenomenon. The poetic forms of film and choreography have the power to create an open perspective on this phenomenon.

Kai Welf Hoyme
 
Kai Welf Hoyme was born 1979 in Moenchengladbach, Germany.
He lives and works as an intermedia-artist and filmmaker in Cologne and Moenchengladbach, Germany. In his films, performances, photoworks, installations he connects (moving-) image, body gestures and movement, sound / audio, space and text.
He holds a MA from RUB and a MFA from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Since 2003 he exhibits his films and artworks, including Images Festival Toronto, European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck, Cabin Fever, Anchorage Museum; Shortfilm Festival Oberhausen, Durban Intl. Film Festival; File Festival Sao Paulo; Frame Research, Museum National Soares dos Reis Porto; Invideo Milano;Time is Love video art program, ZKM Karlsruhe; Koexistenz, Museum Schloss Rheydt; Beijing International Short Film Festival and Love and Other Perspectives, 59. Venice Biennale, Picnic Pavilion.
 
 
 

I came across information that this piece was made in a relationship with some projects. Why was this film made?
 
We wanted to develop longer narrative-driven screen dance beyond the usual short form: repositioning the documentary form as a choreo-mentary: and create a dance language that invited the audience to actively and critically question whether what they see is fact or fiction. We wanted to create a screen dance where the choreography was constructed in the edit suite. In 2008 Liz Aggiss created a series of live Guerrilla Dances that she performed as interventions at dance festivals. Invading, or ‘guerrilla-ing’ empty performance spaces before, after and during intervals, Guerrilla Dances interrupted audiences complacency. All these ideas inspired the making of Beach Party Animal. 
 
 
How much of the scenes were made intentionally with dancers, and how much of them were shot by chance? At what point did you come up with the composition?
 
Beach Party Animal is an artful, deftly edited and cunning mix of staged set-pieces and real-life action, shot on location at Brighton beach. Unless you are ‘in the know’, it is hard to distinguish the guerrilla ‘plants’ from the real-live action.
Using a fixed frame to highlight the naturalistic and embedded choreography in every scene. we captured and gathered material over a 24 hour cycle. This gives compositional structure to the final edit. We created with our performers, pre-determined improvisations and rehearsed set pieces. For the guerrilla dance interventions we used the long lens and ‘paparazzi style filming techniques. We were a crew of two, lightweight kit, no additional lighting, so we could capture material undercover and unseen. Beach Party Animal was created to be looped, if required, as an installation.
 
 
The film has a happy atmosphere as a whole. The people spending their time freely by the sea looks like people dancing at parties. Why do you think people go to beaches and parties?
 
Brighton beach, is a place where people come to have fun and be seen. The beach is a place to indulge in private moments within a public space: to sleep: to people watch: to swim: to party: to drink: to exercise: to think: to love: to have fun. Beach Party Animal is an homage to Brighton, the seaside city that never sleeps.
 
 
Music and the sound effects contribute deeply to the comical touch this film has. What aim did you have when using the music and sound effects?
 
Beach Party Animal is an anthropological investigation of human behaviour that considers the zoomorphic qualities innate in human movement. These ‘animal’ qualities were part of the comedic ideas embedded into the music and SFX.
The soundtrack by Alan Boorman / Wevie, is a cleverly manipulated mix that adds to the hyper-real feel. The strategy proposed that each choreographic ‘plant’ / guerrilla choreography, was created with inherent rhythmic musicality, and the composer Alan Boorman would ‘write to picture’ with his eclectic, informal risky, absurdist, expressive approach. The film was initially cut and composed without any guide sound/music. Finally Aggiss/Murray developed and overlaid the SFX as crucially important to cross the fourth wall and engage the audience kinaesthetically and with the humour.
 

LIZ AGGISS & JOE MURRAY
 
Liz Aggiss is an award winning screen dance choreographer/director. Her work has been commissioned by, and presented on; BBC, Channel 4 ABC Australia and Arte TV. Joe Murray is a freelance film-maker and was nominated for a BAFTA Grierson Award 2002 for his documentary ‘Scandal in the Bins’. He was the Series Director for the screen dance package ‘Forward Motion’ published by The British Council and South East Dance 2010. Liz and Joe collaborated on the dance film short DIVA winning the Hong Kong Jumping Frames Screen Dance Award 2008. BEACH PARTY ANIMAL is their second collaboration.