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AE: You've done a lot of documentaries for IFC. The first one you made for them was Indie Sex Taboos about sexuality in cinema.
LK: It was actually when we made that film that we realized that we could do a whole other film and wanted to do a whole other film about gay and lesbian cinema. It's sort of a file I've had in my file of development things for years--all documentary people have these files that keep of the ideas that they want to one day do (laughs) and being a gay filmmaker I always had my lesbian file and I had my gay and lesbian cinema file. It's actually making that film we had first talked to IFC about doing something about queer cinema.
AE: Then you made In the Company of Women about female filmmakers. In that film you profiled a few lesbian filmmakers--Lisa Cholodenko and Kim Peirce.
LK: We deal with lesbian films in that film, Incredibly True Adventures, things like that. That's a funny film because that film came out of me being on the documentary jury at Sundance about four years ago and they were screening a film at that time called A Decade Under the Influence, which was a documentary made about the whole 1970's American film movement…
And I sat through this whole movie and I thought it was actually quite lovely and enjoyed it very much but at the end I raised my hand and said, “Where are all the female filmmakers?”--not really asking why did you leave them out of the movie but what do you attribute the lack of female filmmakers during that time period because it really was an all boys club. And it's not just that they didn't show anyone in their film which they probably could have shown more in their film, but there really wasn't very much and I was trying to get at the heart of why was that.
This literally led to us deciding within a day to do a documentary on women in film. (Director Richard LaGravenese) his answer was, “I don't know” and “We're not sure,” and I turned to the vice president of IFC who was sitting next to me and I said, “Well that's the movie I want to make.” And basically a day later we had a development deal, two months later we were making, and by the following Sundance we were showing it there. That was one of those moments where it just really organically came out of that moment of “What was happening with these women filmmakers and by the way what about women filmmakers.”
So that's the genesis of that project and naturally in making a film about women filmmakers, there are going to be lesbian filmmakers. And the nice thing about that project we got a lot of play in gay and lesbian film festivals with that particular film…It was nice because we got to interview a lot of filmmakers that don't always get a chance to talk about these things. Tilda Swinton is in it and Marisa Tomei and Jodie Foster and Rosie Perez and Lisa Cholodenko and Kim Peirce and Alison Anders and Mary Harron.
AE: I remember my own experience in film school was that women filmmakers and queer filmmakers were pretty much invisible.
LK: I think what we found in that film that was fascinating, when you sit down with these women and they're so smart and so interesting, we didn't do anything that was more clever than just ask them questions that in so many cases they had never been asked before. Or just talk to them at length and more seriously about their work. In that film there was a point when questioned do we ask, “How being a mother has affected their work?” We thought to ourselves, “Would we ask Steven Spielberg if being a father affected his work?” We actually said to ourselves, “Is this a legitimate question or is it inappropriate?”
Then we realized of course we have to ask them…When you ask Jodie Foster that question and you get her to talk about it it's pretty amazing. In that film one of the nicest things was just hearing some of these people talk about these ideas and issues that you just never hear women talk about and people sometimes don't want to talk about or they don't want to say out loud like, “Why don't these women make more movies?” Well you know that's always a question that these women are asked. Or why don't more women filmmakers make more films? In other words, why don't each of these women make more movies.
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