oktober 2022

The month of september started and ended with shooting our feministic film the Patriarchy. Atotal of four very packed and intense shooting days. Our scroptwriter, producer and directing assistant Dzenita Camo sheds a light on the project.

The idea for The Patriarchy was born in early 2020, before our lives and our filmmaking got dereanged by the Covid pandemic. After some months getting used to our weird new virus-related existance, we picked up the project realising that the extra time we were given, gave us inspiration to improve the script, making it an even better project.

When we were ready to pick-up production again in 2021 – by then Covid-protocols for filmmaking where in place and shooting was an option again – a mixed string of forward leaps and setbacks started unfolding. By then I had also founded Foundation Agie with Patriarchy’s director Elles van Velzen and co-producer Michel Volwater, as operating as a legally joint collective gives as a better base and producing power for future projects.

Receiving our first bit of funding from Rotterdams Vrouwenfonds for The Patriarchy was a big step forward that strengthend our belief in the project. Hearing that our initial authentic ’70 location was being renovated and modernised was a big step back. Finding a new location that was that authentic and fit our needs proved a hard task.

When all was in place and we were mere weeks from the first day of shooting, small but significant strokes of bad luck started troubling us, from minor locations falling through to actor pulling out last minute due to personal reasons.The most unbelievable setback happend four days before the shooting was plannend to start. I had just boarded the plane in sarajevo, coming back from Sarajevo Film Festival and subsequenet vacation in my other home, ans as I picked up my phone to put it in flight mode, a message from Elles, our director arrived: our main actress had broken her wrist and had a thick bandage she wasn’t allowed to take off. how were we gonna deal with this on such short notice? It took one evening of brainstrorming and we figured out a way to actually write an accident into the story. So that very same night I spent rewriting the script.

In the end, we managed to overcome all issues that were thrown at us, which I am very proud of. It was challenging but I think that everything we shot in de past month will result in a compelling and stylistically interesting short film. All this goes to show that every production is different and it’s always a bit unpredictable how things will develop. But unpredictability is often a part of every (creative) production process. Finding creative and smart ways to deal with it, is at the heart of the game.

The coming months we will be laying the final puzzle in the edit. I leave you with some nice behind the scenes photographs made by our setphotographer Johan de Moel / Lichtjager.