Artist Chat with Petter Ringbom

So they reached out to a number of filmmakers because they were interested in supporting a film about Nellie. In 2018 or 2017, I went down to Atlanta together with my production partner, Marquis Stillwell. To meet with them and get to know them and for them to hear our thoughts on what the product could look like.  

We basically convinced them that we should do this film together, and that we should make it a film that has the scope and the execution to play at the best film festivals in the country, and screen in theaters. They agreed with that idea, so they gave us the first part of funding to make the film, which is always hard to spark with a project like this. Because, we’re making a film about an artist who isn’t particularly famous… We had to rely primarily on foundations, individuals, and government grants. 

You wrote the script for your voice actors using/compiling different quotes. How did you go about deciding which quote to put in and where? 

We used most of the known quotes from Nellie that’re out there. There isn’t a whole lot because she only did a couple of interviews on camera… Then there’s this written interview that she had done with Judith, her gallerist, before she died. The problem with that interview is that it didn’t read like Nellie. They had changed it to make it more legible, not the way that she spoke. That was in some ways the biggest source of dialogue. We took that material to Nellie’s family and translated it back to what it would have sounded like if she actually spoke those words, directly, rather than going through some sort of filter. 

Because she didn’t become a known artist until very late in life, we have to rely on people’s memories to tell the story. We had to interview people who knew Nellie personally and those who know about Nellie to get that information so that we could set up making the film. Then, like a puzzle, we could see how the dialogue could fit into various scenes throughout the film because they would relate to certain time periods of certain ideas or themes that we are dealing with in specific parts of the film. 

We essentially wrote a 60 page script for the whole film by combining all this material with her dialogue. Then, we went to the actors, Uzo Aduba and Amy Warren and shot the film with them, collecting motion capture material and also the sound recordings that are used throughout the film. Then, we took all that material and I made the animation. In some ways it’s almost more like shooting fiction rather than a documentary. In a traditional documentary, you go out film material, edit, and you sort of find the film. I did that for my first and second film, my approach now is much more iterative. Film, go back, think about what the story can be, write, then go back, and film some more.

Speaking of Animation, how did you decide to use motion capture?

It came out of the creative challenge we were faced with. We’re making a film, but there isn’t a lot of interview material, and it’s a film about someone who’s been gone for 40 plus years. How do you get an audience to connect to this person? Our first idea was to recreate, or rather reimagine her environment or Playhouse, that was the name of her house. That was the first step, and as we were developing that idea we realized what if we reimagine her, herself.

 Approaching the animation as if we were filming her, as if we were documenting her life in her space. So that’s why you have these moments where she’s talking or bumping into the camera as if we were actually in her space.

That’s why we felt that motion capture felt more natural because you’re working with an actor and an actor can kind of freely move around and be in a space. Then, you animate that afterwards. So, that was the whole process of how the idea was born. I guess I should fill in what motion capture is because some people don’t really know what it is. But what you see is environments that are real. They’re created in cardboard and found objects that exist as models that are half size to human scale. People think it’s stop motion but those characters are completely digital.

Moving on to the relationship between Nellie Mae Rowe and Judith Alexander? It seemed like there were a lot of different elements in there from business partners to friends. How did you navigate implementing all of those elements?

Well they were friends, and I think that close friends have various aspects to a friendship. Sometimes you’re very close, sometimes you argue, and I think that the better friends you are, the more freely you feel to argue and butt heads. I think that Nellie was definitely comfortable calling out Judith. Originally, I wasn’t necessarily super interested in exploring their friendship. But it actually came out of Nellie’s family, they felt like without Judith and what she provided to Nellie’s environment we wouldn’t necessarily know of Nellie today. Nellie would always do art, regardless of Judith. I don’t think that Judith had any impact on Nellie’s work apart from the fact that she gave her more material to work with.

Judith’s obsession, which basically became her life’s work from the second part of her life, was to just promote Nellie. Because of that work, the legacy of Nellie is more renowned today. That’s why Nellie’s family felt like it was very important to explore their relationship in the film. It isn’t a White savior kind of situation because we are very clear with Judith’s personality and her motives. She was kind of crazy. But sometimes you need that kind of craziness to push through the institutional walls, and that’s what she did. That’s just sort of the reality of the art world. For an artist to have a legacy, the institutions must recognize the artist’s work, the museums, galleries, collectors, etc. Nellie, up to meeting Judith, existed outside of the institutional art world. You know, she just made art and some people would come and appreciate it. Judith is the one who kind of pushed her work into the institutional arena. 

Apart from Nellie Mae Rowe’s story and her artwork, is there anything specific you want the audience to take away from this film?

The themes in the film are kind of in the title This World is Not My Own. Though there are multiple ways of interpreting that title, it’s a quote from Nellie. She was kind of riffing on that hymn, “This world is not my home,” and then she changed “home” to “own.” One way of looking at it is that Nellie recognized that the world she’s living in is not perfect. So, she decides to create an environment that is more livable for her. 

The other way to look at it is, we are in fact, not traveling through this world by ourselves. Even Nellie, who barely left Vinings, Georgia had a tremendous impact on a lot of people as she was going about her life. I think that is interesting, that we are constantly impacting each other, whether we know it or not. Those are to me the two important themes of the film.

Photos courtesy of the filmmakers.