INTERVIEWER
Do you remember the first moment you wanted to make art?

LAURA
I think the moment really goes back to childhood. I was reflecting on this… because it’s my quest to explore all the causes that support a child’s actions, perceptions, or emotions. So, when I was a child, there was a fascination with insects, shapes, contrasts, movement. I was really like all children: we learn through observation. Then, when I saw family photos: my father taking them, or my grandfather talking about cinema and my mother with her books, her poetry, etc., there was in me, as I think in all children, a direct connection with the symbol. We don’t separate the word from the object, the word from the experience, we don’t need to draw it, we live it. But then, later, without anyone saying it, it comes out in the graphic gesture. I discovered much later, while studying it, that this form of expression, which is the expression of something else, like the inconscient collectif, is innate.

INTERVIEWER
From the beginning, did you know that you wanted to make films?

LAURA
Aged five, I saw a camera belonging to my grandfather and my father. And that fascination with the image... And then, my parents used to go to cinema repertoire on Tuesdays, and it was forbidden for children. So, I would stay up and ask: what was the film? And they told me about Bergman’s films. So, I imagined these films. With the way a child imagines war and other things. This curiosity...

INTERVIEWER
It’s interesting that your love for cinema doesn’t necessarily come from watching films, but rather, from storytelling. Not really the form as much…

LAURA
It came at different moments. Later in my life, when I saw Raging Bull (El Toro Salvaje) with Robert De Niro, my mind exploded. I said: Ah, this is it, this is cinema, the transformation of someone in space/time of social crisis. Because it was a demonstration that an experience is circumscribed and that if it transcends time, transforms… It was like a bomb. Why? It affects you in all aspects, and that’s when I understood what it means to make cinema. Kubrick also blew my mind.

INTERVIEWER
When you went to the cinema for the first time, it was to see a Kubrick film?

LAURA
No! I went to cinemas aged 5, to watch animation and family films. But Kubric, I watched in a brand new cinema. I was 7, and I freak out about that idea of “men against machines” and how computers were telling us what to do! When we were kids, there were only two films available at a time, in Mendoza. And we didn’t eat popcorn or anything. Now, when I have a child who says they won’t go to the cinema without popcorn, I think... Es increíble! With the question of images, movement, and sound, these are for me the three basic elements of cinema. I can’t separate them. And that’s what I wanted to do. Did I answer the question?

INTERVIEWER
There’s no right answer, it’s an exploration... You’re telling me about cinema, but you’re not just a filmmaker. You’re also a poet...

LAURA
Poetry was part of my life because of my mother, as a child. Maybe it helped me converge different ways of seeing the world. It becomes spinal: you hear about it this way, think this way, and when you write it and try to metaphorise instead, it’s a language deeply rooted in my existence.

INTERVIEWER
Poetry, cinema, anything else?

LAURA
Dancing. Movement. Ink as well. I paint. I also do experimental cinema, with poetic essays with images. A convergence of these things.

INTERVIEWER
How do you choose the form of your projects?

LAURA
One must be aware of creative constraints in the general methodology. In my case, one of the constraints is often finding originality. Things that have no previous connection, but they will have from the characters perspective. That’s a super important creative constraint for me, which will determine what I choose. To be less conformist. In my method, I then sew the intimate, the private and the public, from the systems that we posses: the emotional , the neurological and the body and it ways to transform. Three ways that I cinematographically construct my films, that are solidly part of the process: cinema experimental, cinema essay and cinema direct. These help for example to build the past, the present and the future, using different source as drawings, photos, voice, and hypothetical situations that we play on stage to discover truth, the games, or movements what the words does not want or cannot tell. Metaphor is always the way.

INTERVIEWER
When you decide something’s going to be a film, how do you start thinking about it?

LAURA
Generally, it always starts from an experience where my ignorance becomes evident. My ignorance, with emotions and the desire to do something. How does this person live in such a context? That explodes when I start thinking about it. And that there is a complicity. It’s not a film “about,” but “with.” Or a film “that.” There is immediately an inclusive aspect. A project that is outside of us. In which everyone has their role. If you hadn’t lived that, there is no project. If there is no connection, there is no project. So, in this spiral, we go here and there. It involves writing down these ideas. To be able to explain it in one minute, three minutes. 100 words, 500 words. Very important exercises to shape the thought in this vastness.

INTERVIEWER
With this idea of desire pushing you to make a film ‘with,’ and ‘that,’ with your film Primas: where does this desire come from? At what point did you say, “That’s it, I’m making a film”?

LAURA
I was finishing another film. And I had a free day, talking with a cousin-friend, I said, “But did this story really happen? This story of a child who was run over by a car, savagely attacked, burned, and left for dead? It’s not possible,” I said. I had a free day in Buenos Aires, so I called them. They live in the southeast of the province. I was told, “It’s Rocio’s 15th birthday party, we’re waiting for you.” And this child lived through that. For me, there was a shock. I rented a car, I took the camera. “Who are you? An aunt from Canada coming to make a video for your 15th birthday.” From there, we clicked completely. It started with Rocio. I finished the film and during the three following years, here the constraint was that I lived in Montreal. I had to find funds. I know I needed to describe the film in a few words, in many words, in sound, in movement. Explain in two-three minutes, that’s about it. You need to imagine the backbone and some aspects of this body you’re going to make. So it helps your project.
Then, I leave microphones and we do role-playing, we pretend: “Okay, if you’re a crocodile going to Paris, what would you do?” Traveling, imagination—that’s how we make the sound. The idea of attachment to this narrative, without knowing what will be used or not.

INTERVIEWER
You’ve already talked a bit about that. In regards to your creative process…

LAURA
The microphones are a whole basic methodology. At first, I spend time alone with the characters. Then, for the camera and microphone, I have a wonderful team of four people with whom I always work, and they come later. To express the intimate, I have hypothetical situations, in vast places: deserts, mountains and valleys of Mendoza, or rivers. Experiences that will open the possibility of creating connections between the micro and the macrocosmos.

INTERVIEWER
Do you believe in the power of art to save lives, help rebuild, or regain control over one’s body? What role does art play for the protagonists of your film and their story?

LAURA
It helps to reorganise questions, thoughts. I’m interested in moments of transition, between childhood and adulthood, between magical and rational thought, between health and sickness, between the ego and literature—it’s an exploration. For sure, everyone comes out winning because we go through this process without the pretence of growing or healing. In any case, if we help each other, it feels good. Any action that transforms helps identity, society, and the individual. Arts, yes, because they are representations that complement what we have.

INTERVIEWER
Have you questioned the ethics of this film? About this proximity? Your proximity and your role with the girls? This voyeuristic aspect for the audience and as a filmmaker, about your gaze as well?

LAURA
I fully embrace subjectivity, with as much delicacy as possible. Beyond everything, there is something that pushes. Sometimes, it's too resistant. But Rocio said at the last screening that when it was time to stop, we stopped. It's normal that over 1.5 hours, this proximity seems overwhelming. But for me, it's 4 years and 17 years with the protagonists. These are advantages for documenting. I believe I managed to balance, thanks to the camera, the back-and-forth and the things outside of us. It will be done with your part and mine, this possibility of deconstruction. Pushing does not mean pushing into the void, but giving wings, giving space, allowing nuance, provoking doubt, wanting to learn. It’s part of the process we live through. A part of this method is direct cinema and experimental cinema. We push and see where it takes us. Sometimes I’m told: "Four years, you know, you have more than you need." But we can't miss the transformation. Also, it's four years because I could go four times or twice a year to Argentina. Ultimately, the film merges realism with the dream world, confirming the power of imagination and expression to enhance the process of the emotional and physical reconstruction of an individual.

INTERVIEWER
Did Aldana and Rocio ever hold you back?

LAURA
In front of the camera, no inhibition. She would often joke around. There were off-camera moments where she said, "I’m tired, I’m tired of life, and since you’re here, I’m taking the chance to tell you." This happened to me with Antoine, in another film I made, where the parents said “basta.” I had to talk and explain the methodology and how I worked on collective unconscious and different ways of structuring in human beings. Then I looked for that in my characters through voice, movement, and sound, which all contribute to this unconscious.

INTERVIEWER
And moments of, “I’ll turn off the camera…”?

LAURA
Yes, when I sense it’s an important moment, I prefer for us to be alone. We spend a moment, like a beating heart. Like volcanoes. You have to be ready and anticipate that there will be a moment of explosion and contraction, like a muscle. It relaxes. And I think that determines the rhythm of the film you need to have. It’s like the structure of a poem: knowing when to move to the next verse, when the poem is finished, and you move on to another poem, another scene, or another picture.

INTERVIEWER
Your poetry, in your collection, The Body is a House Without Grandparents, touches on the same or similar themes as in your cinema works: family, the idea of home, belonging, breaking away from it all. It seems to preoccupy you a lot... Does art become a way to understand emotions, develop thoughts, reinvent oneself?

LAURA
Art as a way to address a need: I can’t stop writing. On paper, notebooks, notes. Writing, for me, is going through a process, an ellipse. There’s a complexity that responds to a need. The house was summers and winters with cousins, totally hidden. Experiences of loss and rediscovery. In a village in Argentina, how it languishes. Entering this devastated house is like entering the body of childhood filled with a dense past. Going into the past. Poetry responds to a bodily experience of going room by room. Living the past. I organised the book with these aspects. How to go into this body that is the past? I discovered that I could only write in French, not in Spanish. This before and after of my childhood with the dictatorship. How these experiences inhabit that house, and inhabit childhood, by expressing them in another language. It’s a non-me. That’s why it’s called "The Body is a House Without Grandparents." This transformation, the house that dies.

INTERVIEWER
I know you live between Argentina and Canada... Given the current situation in the country, with the funding cuts in Argentina, how do you see the future of Argentine film? And of your projects?

LAURA
The situation in Canada, for example, is a bit different from that in Quebec. We have access to funds, although they are difficult to obtain and are insufficient. The situation in Argentina is absolutely urgent. The political measures on culture are devastating. We cannot put the identity of a city, a country, on standby. It’s a way of killing. But I come back from the Salta festival, and there’s no way we can stay silent. I plan to work with a production in Argentina on the situation, with people who live this reality soon as possible. I’ve already started the project to do this work. As soon as possible. It’s incredible that the Ley de Bases passed with hundreds of amendments like that. It’s brutal. But I have blind faith in Argentine creativity.
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