WomenCinemakers vol V WomenCinemakers vol V | Page 66

…SALLY F. BARLEYCORN……………………………
And also overcome the gender
stereotypes: I had never thought about
directing as a career for me, no one
had ever told me I could do it nor that I
couldn’t neither… But it is something
very unconscious, it is deeply accepted
in our society and we don’t talk about it
enough. I have no regrets, but I wish no
other girls and women would feel that
they haven’t started their careers
earlier because of that. So after
working on my level of self-esteem, I
realised I had plenty of things I wanted
to say, to talk about, to transmit and
that film was the medium, no matter
how scared I was of taking full
responsibility of the outcome of a film
production.
We want to take a closer look at the
genesis of your film: how did you
come up with the idea for Skinhearts?
I’ve always thought that being very
sensitive was a curse! And now I can
see how it is the birthplace of my
unique experience of this world. And
that is where Skinhearts comes from,
my experience living in Amsterdam and
the average touch behaviour of the
Dutch. I had been living almost 2 years
in Amsterdam at that time and feeling
as if I was getting colder and colder in
my inside or something was getting
heavier to live with, but could not point
to what that feeling was exactly. One
day I met someone who talked to me
about a script with a lot of sex in it and
about why he wanted to do that project
and his own ideas of sexual freedom
and stuff like that. When I left this
meeting I had a horrible feeling. I was
almost shocked not by the sex itself or
the lack of any love involved in it, but
more by the objectification of it.
Because of the lack of care and how it
felt as a tool, just like a hammer to
place a nail on a wall. Right after this
meeting I was cycling home and I saw
the end scene of Skinhearts playing in
my head, I saw Zoe looking for
something, using sex as a tool to find
something else and not finding it. That
end scene was the center of the film
and then I wrote the rest of the short
and created the characters to reach
that scene. When I started analysing
that scene to know what it was that I
wanted to say, to speak about, is when
I started my research on touch
deprivation in the western society. And
that was it. That was what my heavy
feeling was about, why I felt so
shocked about that conver sation and
the reason why I wanted to do this film.
Then I also realised that I knew on my
own skin what Zoe would feel and what
it was she was looking for.
Most people have no idea how incredi
bly important quality, caring touch is in
their lives as human beings. Through
my research I learned that it is our mos