#MondayMovies: Yaya
Yaya
Keep it Quiet needs very little introduction from me…not much to say except, “GO. WATCH. THIS. FILM.”
NOW.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Where to Watch
You back? Feeling pretty shook? Well now let’s meet the incredible artist behind it.
Yaya is a Russian-American filmmaker, currently based in Minneapolis and Moscow. Before directing they had some experience working as a director’s assistant, cinematographer, editor, gaffer, boom operator and prop master; in addition to writing and producing, both in the USA and in Russia.
Keep It Quiet, however, is their debut film as a screenwriter and director. It premiered online on Short of the Week and Directors' Library. Following the online release, the film was chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick. The European festival premiere was at the Oscar-qualifying 35th Warsaw Film Festival, where it won Best Live Action Short. It was also nominated for Best US Short at the Palm Springs ShortFest and won the Performance Award from USA Film Festival.
Yaya was inspired from a variety of sources (not just movies) and they thought it important to highlight those works.
I couldn’t agree more!
Waking up, alive
Yaya had several intentions with the film: to reflect on the experience of suicidality and loneliness and to make a film that featured an older woman in the lead role, exploring her professional, as well as personal life. It turns out veterinarians commit suicide at a rate 2-3 times higher than the average American, so this choice of occupation also allowed Yaya to explore a position women often find themselves in: providing care for everyone besides themselves.
“The best source material I found for the film was Waking Up, Alive, a book by Richard Heckler, a professor of counseling psychology. This is a truly remarkable book on the subject, in a class of its own, far more interesting than the bestsellers on the subject. It's built entirely on first person accounts of people who survived their suicide attempts. Heckler interviewed over 50 people for the book.”
“Before starting to work on the film I already felt that most suicidal people did not actually want to kill themselves. They just wanted an end to their suffering, and the tunnel vision of suicidality led them to think it was their only option.”
“I also had a strong sense that there was rarely one specific reason for someone's suicide, and suspected that what people often craved and needed was a formal experience of death, almost like a ritualized suicide to shed the weight of trauma and hidden pain. The beauty of this book is that it confirmed to me how common these experiences are and also gave me an appreciation for the variety of human experiences and the importance of detail in stories.”
Where to read
ON THE NIGHT BUS
Yaya assembled an astonishing team for the movie; it stars a revelatory Rusty Schwimmer (The Informant!, Amistad, Twister, North Country, A Little Princess), was shot by Minka Farthing-Kohl (Concrete Cowboy, The Nowhere Inn) and art directed by Cheri Anderson (Dear White People, Blood Stripe).
The film’s aesthetic choices, including the bright rainbow color palette and at times humorous tone, were intended to lighten the experience of watching a film on this heavy subject and to give the sense of life suicidal people have despite their pain. Ultimately, they wanted to make a film that would help start conversations and help people feel seen and less alone.
“Minka, Cheri and I looked at Nick Turpin's On The Night Bus, a series of photos when preparing Keep It Quiet. We wanted a similar diffuse feeling to the light, which we achieved through using uncoated Cooke S4 lenses, and a bright color palette, which we complimented by our use of shadows. We further muted the look with the colorist Kath Raisch at Company 3.”
Where to view
Jon huston
“Years ago I read an interview with John Huston where he said that a film could capture human thoughts. My training up to that point mostly focused on action, conflict, style and so on. I didn't quite understand what he meant, so I started focusing on this every time I watched a film. Eventually I started noticing patterns. In most feature films there is at least a sequence or two, purely audio-visual with little dialogue, where we get a glimpse of the thoughts of a character. Many sequences of Keep It Quiet are a direct result of me studying such sequences and trying to find the right images and sounds to create an immersive emotional experience of suicidality for the audience, where we might not know exactly what the character is thinking, but we feel the flow of their thoughts and emotions.”
“I think the master of this to me is Krzysztof Kieślowski. I especially love The Double Life of Veronique.”
Where to Watch
It should be noted that Yaya is not the first guest on #MondayMovies to recommend Veronique. So if you haven’t given this one a watch yet, it is a MUST!
