The lady behind The Ladies
I not only had the cool opportunity to attend the Babelgum Online Film Festival Awards where Brooklyn’s own Christina Voros won the Spike Lee Award for her documentary short The Ladies, I also got an awesome chance to have a Q and A session with her. She discusses her start in film, how hard it is to become an established female filmmaker, and the film’s two stars and sisters, Vali and Mimi (pictured below).
Q: I understand you’re from Brooklyn; did you always live there?
A: No, though I’m not leaving anytime soon! I’m a New York transplant, via Boston, Budapest and Nantucket. I live in Bed-Stuy now and it’s absolutely home.
Q: Where did your desire for filmmaking start?
A: My background was in theatre (and bartending). I was applying to theatre grad programs and a friend mentioned that I should look at film school. Which I thought was crazy at the time; always figured you had to actually know how to do something already before you could get into grad school for it. But I’ve always been a storyteller at heart, and had been a painter and writer my entire life, so I applied to film school with a writing sample and my artist’s portfolio. I never imagined I’d ever get in.
When I did it came as a total shock and changed the direction of my life completely. I feel so lucky to be working in film, specifically in documentaries where you get to travel into worlds you’ve never known and get to know people so intimately, so quickly. It’s a perpetual education and every day is different from the next. It’s a pretty amazing way to spend your life.
Q: How did it start? Where did you go to film school?
A: I was given a fellowship to go to NYU and it was the greatest gift. The program does a remarkable job of assembling a wildly diverse group of voices in each year, so you end up learning as much about style and craft from each other as you do from the faculty. Oddly it was cinematography, a skill I knew nothing about when I started, that really captured my heart. It was an organic progression that evolved out of personal collaborations; so much of filmmaking is based on personal relationships and shared ideas. I never set out to become a filmmaker, I was just lucky enough to be surrounded by really talented people whose company I enjoyed and we’ve sort of carried each other along.
Q: I attended the Babelgum Online Film Festival Awards a couple of months ago where you were awarded the Spike Lee Award in the Documentary Category for The Ladies. How did that feel?
A: Crazy really. It was my first documentary. It’s such a small, intimate film. It still amazes me that it resonates so strongly with people. The characters are family, and its hard to know sometimes if things are interesting to you as a filmmaker because of what you already know about your characters, or if that truth actually comes through the screen to strangers watching it with no preconceptions or background information. Vali and Mimi are exceptionally brave and creative women; they are remarkable role models and its really a beautiful coincidence that I chose them as the subject of my first film as their support was integral to my choosing to pursue an artists life, first as an actor and painter, and now as a director and cinematographer. But winning Babelgum was pretty amazing; Vali and Mimi were hysterical about it actually; they were like ‘Spike Lee knows who we are! He’s seen our kitchen!’