Filmmaker Files - Episode 11 : Featuring Gabriella A. Moses
GABRIELLA A. MOSES
Gabriella A. Moses is an award-winning director, writer, and production designer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Her production design work has been featured across top film festivals across the globe including Sundance, Toronto, Tribeca and SXSW.
Gabriella was selected in 2015 by the Hispanic Coalition of NY as one of their Rising Latino Stars. She has also served as a Shadow Director for the ABC Diversity Showcase. Gabriella is currently developing her directorial debut feature, Leche, which has received support from 2016 Sundance Institute’s Creative Producing Lab, the 2017 NYWIFT "From Script to Pre-Production" Workshop, 2018 Sundance Screenwriter's Intensive, 2018 Tribeca Film Institute All Access Lab and 2018 Los Cabos Film Festival Gabriel Figueroa Film Fund Rainin and Westridge Grant. She was a 2018 Tribeca Film Institute and Chanel Through Her Lens Filmmaking Fellow and was selected as a 2019 IFP No Borders Film Market Participant. Her latest feature screenplay El Timbre de Tu Voz was selected for the Cine Qua Non Screenwriting Lab in Mexico.
Principal photography on Leche is scheduled for summer 2020. She believes in sharing stories with underrepresented protagonists that test viewer’s perceptions of identity and their imaginations.
Describe a moment in your career you felt most brave.
During principal photography on my third short, there was a rift between a first-time collaborator and the rest of my crew. I had to find a happy medium a way to make sure this person's concerns were heard, but to make sure to defend the time and talents of the rest of my team, who I had worked with for a long time. The new collaborator could've shut down our whole production, but I guess in a way I felt brave that I was willing to fight for my crew, the story I wanted to tell and to make sure that everyone who had put in so much time and trust in me felt safe and respected. I think bravery is sometimes knowing which battles to fight for.
In one’s artistic life, there are some very long seconds or moments, that make us stop. There may be an epiphany or a shift. Can you tell us about a recent one?
I think travel for me has always been a gateway to why I am a storyteller. I was recently able to visit Japan for the first time and traveling to different cities in a country I had never explored before really struck me and fortified a hunger in me to tell and share global stories. No matter where they are from, people can still get lost in a film on a laptop in a small shop in a small village somewhere because film has the power to create other worlds that help us escape our own or face our own realities. I was very conscious of this when I was in Japan, in a culture different from my own, but realizing that we could connect through a shared love of story, and humanity.
Now, continuing to reflect. What was THE film that made you want to be a filmmaker?
Amélie was a pivotal marker in me wanting to be the kind of visually-driven filmmaker I aim to be. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of the medium and captured my imagination in a way a film hadn’t before. The film has a unique lens on Paris, while creating an alternate reality, playing with score, sound design, cinematography and color palettes in an unabashedly creative way. Knowing that one could tap into the harsh realities of the human condition while crafting this type of vibrant world was game-changing to me.
How would you say being a production designer has impacted your film work?
Being a Production Designer has informed what I value most about the filmmaking medium over other art forms, from the visual worlds you can create and ways you can play with environments - whether realistic or constructed realities, while balancing the other aspects of a film in a synergistic and profound way.
Color informs me heavily in filmmaking as it evokes mood so I’ve been able to think about such design can manipulate or influence our emotions as viewers. Negative space on a wall can make one feel small, trash on the street can distract or feel organic. As a Production Designer one must know when to embrace or extract the natural elements of the environment we’ve been given to tell a story, and this parallels what it’s like to be a writer/director because one must know when to give into the universe and when to fight for one’s vision. I can say through designing I’ve learned how setting this space and tone helps your talent embrace the world in which their characters exist.
What was a recent film, video or series that you had a visceral response to?
Honey Boy directed by Alma Har’el struck a pretty deep emotional chord that I didn’t expect. I really appreciate when a story creeps up on you like that, when art surprises you. Aspects of its characters reminded me of people I know, people I love, conversations I’ve had and it created such a loving, safe space to portray these characters trying to just be the best for those they love and for themselves. I’m always captured by stories that explore the moment in childhood when we become who we were gonna be, and the person we spend our whole lives trying to simultaneously escape and evolve into.
On the future. What is next for you?
I’m invested in telling more stories about underrepresented protagonists in unexplored realities across cultures. I’m very focused on my directorial debut, Leche, which is a magical realism, coming of age story about Nina a ten-year old Dominican American girl who believes she can perform miracles after resurrecting an albino deer. We are gearing up to shoot early Summer 2020. It has received support from the Sundance Creative Producing and Screenwriter's Intensive Labs, Tribeca All Access, Los Cabos, MOME Finance Market and has been an SFFILM Rainin and Westridge finalist. We have cast Joan Smalls in the role of Mami, Nina’s mother and I’m excited to continue working with Ava Clarke, as my lead.
I am also developing El Timbre de Tu Voz which tells the story of Yaneris, a Dominican teenager, who plots a way to escape her hometown of Sosúa, where becoming an escort seems to be her only fate. After unexpectedly falling in love with her boss's son, she decides he may be the ticket to a new life — for both her and her disabled sister.
What keeps you going?
Stubbornness. The fact that I’ve been developing and chasing financing for the same film for three years can only be accredited to a real hard head, but also a whole lot of support. I have an excellent team that hasn’t given up on this story in the form of my Producers, Marttise Hill, Julius Pryor and Shruti Ganguly. I’ve had an industry that keeps supporting the project and making introductions which gives me faith that they see something of value in the story I want to tell and in our ability to tell it. Ultimately I am stubborn because I’ve made connections with people who haven’t seen or heard themselves in enough stories. As an artist, I often think of myself as a child - what lessons and limitations was I given because of the reality I was born in now how do I help break down those boundaries for others to be able to define themselves however they want to and see themselves. It’s all constructed any ways. I can’t tell everyone’s stories, but I provide a mirror to see oneself in, a window to look out of and open a door to then go out and tell your tale whatever it might be.
What does the world need now?
Conversation - we aren’t all the same so why pretend that we can agree on a perspective when we have lived such different lives. We need to be ready to listen even if it irks us or hurts us. When I haven’t understood someone I just need to hear them out. Conversations don’t always provide a how, but they allow for a why. This insight is key to harmony. Of course, at times, such disparate ideas or perspectives can cause more confusion, but why not try to hear someone out before shutting them down completely. Educating yourself through their lens can only help further articulate your own.
Tell us 8 filmmaker quotes or scenes that have greatly influenced you
I’ll start out with one of my favorite filmmaking quotes by David Lynch, who said, “I like to make films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost in another world. And film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream... allows you to dream in the dark. It's just a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of film.”
Vi är bäst! (We Are the Best) Dir. Lukas Moodysson - There’s a scene when these three misfit young female friends, who have decided to start a punk band together, give the most conservative member of the band a buzzcut. That scene is filled with so much energy and rebellion related to being a young woman, taking risks and finding your people.
Mon Roi (My King) Dir. Maiwenn- I think this is one of the best depictions in film in the past 5 years of how destructive love can be and how we can lose ourselves in another person. There’s a scene where the protagonist, played by the enigmatic Emmanuelle Bercot, gives a drunken toast to her partner played by Vincent Casse. While she comes across as the unstable one, now facing her narcissist partner and his unhinged friends, it struck me as an honest moment where a protagonist finally faces herself and her relationship.
The Japenese film ハウス Hausu by Nobuhiko Obayashi is revolutionary and really just captures what makes film an incredible medley of a medium. Oneby one, a group of school girls goes missing in a haunted house owned by their friend’s aunt. One disappearance is in a scene where a girl is consumed by a piano. The juxtaposition of sound design, collage, animation and the grotesque achieved in a surreal and playful way is a feat that captures the imagination. It is truly punk.
In La Grande Bellezza, Dir. Paolo Sorrentino, there’s a scene at a great party with lots of Italian socialites, which is like a throwback to Fellini. During the party you gather knowledge of a great artist that will be presenting their work to everyone is there to celebrate. The reveal is that it is a young girl and that despite the adults reverence and graveling at her genius, she is very much a child. The cinematography in this scene captures how the art world of the adults has simultaneously made her an idol and made her feel small, a pawn, a prisoner to the bourgeoisie.
In Capernaum, Dir. Nadine Labaki, we follow a street child Zain abandon his family in protest of his young sister’s marriage. Throughout the film Labaki balances Zain’s playfulness with his struggle A beautiful scene that captures his youth is when he encounters an amusement park after running away, He follows a man who calls himself Cockroach man in a decrepit Spiderman suit to the park and rides the rides. Here, he finds an escape from his desperation and ultimately his savior, a single mother and refugee. In this montage, the sweetest, comedic moment is when Zain climbs up to a large statue of a voluptuous woman and unbuttons a shirt the statues is wearing and exposes her breasts. The refugee mother sees him doing this and it makes her laugh. This is a beautiful shared moment between strangers who do not yet know how their lives will intersect and who so desperately need light in the darkness of their circumstances.
In El Espíritu de la Colmen, Dir. Víctor Erice (who also made The Spirit of the Beehive) there’s a scene that has an exchange between the seven year old protagonist and her young friend, where she watches the film Frankenstein and the film haunts her. Her friend whispers to her, “Everything in the movies is fake” before they go to bed. I love films through a child’s lens. Children are often wise beyond their years and film has a way of capturing this in such a unique way through CU’s and sound design. I also love this declaration from a child that pokes fun at what we do. I love when film can be playful and self-aware like theatre.
In Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express when Faye, a waitress, breaks into the object of her affection’s apartment and cleans it for him. It’s such a dreamy montage that captures the power of a film’s soundtrack and how we often get lost in our illusions of people. Music is such a driving inspiration for me when I write I often have a playlist of tracks that inspired the film’s mood and tone as it was being written and I try to pursue those songs in post or use them as inspiration for the score.