«What if you could not touch others anymore? What if you became touch-phobic? What if we became an organized, impersonal, faceless, untouchable society set up to avoid all physical contact as a rule of proper behavior to the point of making it illegal?»
«In a society where humans have gone further than avoiding touch, stepping into forbid it, the sexual act has become an intolerable act of rebellion.»
Skinheart is an edgy rebellion, a mirror on the future who impacts consciousness. Sally Fenaux´s first short fiction film was premiered at Shortcutz Amsterdam last April. Sally is a passionate, self-taught film maker. Her knowledge comes from books, films, and experience, having worked on movies and in advertising in the past 5 years.
And now, here is Sally:
Which emotion gave birth to this project?
I had been living in Amsterdam for a bit more than 2 years when i finally put my emotions into thoughts towards writing Skinhearts. I am very sensitive to my environment, the energies around us and the most basic human communication which is body language. I had a feeling that was getting heavier and heavier, but took me quite a while to realise it was a lack of quality touch. At all levels of my relationships there was a lack of good hugs, proper hand in hand time, hands of support on me and a healthy sexuality with caring touch. And that was cracking me.
Future suggest you…?
is a strange concept cos the future doesn’t exist. When I look towards myself, inside, there is no future, just present and it feels good that way. When I look outside, to the world, I have hope but I am not blind. There is a lot to do from where we are to where we should be already, and the work there is to be done is what inspires me. With Skinhearts I don’t mean to show people the future i think we are going to get to but rather the one we are heading towards and that we can change.
Where do you find inspiration?
My inspiration comes from within, my own experience of life, and it’s fuelled by imagery coming from dreams and from life, from what I see in my daily life, in movies, images that come to my mind when I read quotes and books. I’ve had two sort of inspiration processes until now: the first one, which happened for Skinhearts, is that I see various elements in different moments ( a face, a building, hear a sound, feel something, a conversation) that are not related and I sort of store them in my memory. Then one day i find one element that suddenly connects all of the other that beforehand had nothing to do with each other. In the case of Skinhearts it was a conversation about sex that triggered the connection between one of the locations, Zoe’s face (Main actress Zoe van Weert) and the lack of touch I was suffering from at that time.
With my next short film it was different: I saw the whole film playing in my head while I was daydreaming. So all the work to be bale to write the script has been more about finding the meaning of the dream, the identity of those characters and the subtext i want to give them. All of that respecting my initial first vision.
Next challenge?
My next challenge has started! I want to shoot my next short film Erekusu in the beginning of Autumn. The script is finished from a writer’s point of view, and I am now looking for producers and starting to do the director’s preparation work. I want to shoot in Mallorca with a local crew and do the postproduction in Amsterdam with a top company. I am at the very beginning of the process, I am looking for a producer here in Mallorca and another one in The Netherlands, then we will start looking for money and sponsorships to be able to make it.
Erekusu is a visual poem about human life on earth. Is completely different to Skinhearts but has one thing in common, is also a metaphoric way to speak about a big social issue present nowadays, which is the relationship between Africa and Europe. I am AfroEuropean, so there is no coincidence that this story “came to me” right when I was digging deeper into my african roots and my racial identity.
For this one I will share the entire creative process on a blog, including inspirations, quotes, lessons, thoughts and weekly making of videos. Here is the link: www.erekusu.tumblr.com
I would just like to add that I am a passionate collaborator, is one of the things I like the most about filmmaking, and Skinhearts wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for some of the team members that helped me achieve it as well as supporting friends.
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Skinhearts was supported by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts
Behind the Scenes
pictures by Eva Dounmar
La Biennale di Venezia 2015 