Filming with family, friends

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Humans are social animals. Most of us do not do well on our own. Family, friends and community may not make us happy, but, cases of abuse notwithstanding, they help ground us, help make us whole. This one of the main themes in both Exit Elena and Soft in the Head, two Nathan Silver-directed and -produced features appearing in this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

“With no place to call home, 19-year-old Elena takes a job as a live-in aide,” begins the synopsis of Exit Elena. “Thrown out of her New York City apartment, Natalia, a 25-year-old hot mess, relies on the kindness of friends and strangers,” begins that of Soft in the Head. Both protagonists, played by Kia Davis and Sheila Etxeberría, respectively, exude sadness, vulnerability and confusion about how to fit in – the actresses portray with uncomfortable realness two very different lost souls.

Elena is shy and would like to maintain a professional relationship with her clients, yet finds herself, in her first job as an aide, living with a dysfunctional family, each member of which – grandmother, father, son and, especially, mother – sees Elena as the solution for their own loneliness and malaise. Natalia, on the other hand, after being violently thrown out by her boyfriend and with a bottle never far from her lips, barges, first, into her friend Hannah’s religious parents’ household more than once and messes with Hannah’s socially awkward brother, and, second, although invited into a homeless shelter by the well-meaning Maury (played with a nice mix of kindness and creepiness by Ed Ryan), she disrupts the relationships between the other guests, with tragic results.

Family and friends figure prominently for Silver, both in front of and behind the camera. To start, he credits his mother – who plays the needy, prying, but caring, mother in Exit Elena and has a cameo as a complaining restaurant patron in Soft in the Head – with fueling his interest in writing and filmmaking.

“The industry aspect bores me stiff. My education is even more boring. I think that we should focus on why I make movies, because that involves my mother, a wonderfully human human being,” Silver told the Jewish Independent in an e-mail interview, explaining that he wanted to answer the commonly asked question about his background in a new way. “She tells the most hilarious and bizarrely tragic stories, but the problem (and it’s a wonderful problem) is that she goes off on so many tangents that you lose any sense of who the people are or what’s going on and you’re caught up in the confusion and the confusion itself becomes the story! I started making movies to capture this confusion; only movies do this type of storytelling justice.”

Silver’s father, Harvey, also plays a part in the films that will be at VIFF, as the restaurant manager in Soft in the Head and as the executive producer of both films. His bio in the press materials reads, “Harvey produces events for major companies as well as his son’s movies. Both pay off ... in different ways. Harvey is also a photographer represented by Corbis.”

In addition to his parents, there are other overlapping contributors to both of these films, notably Davis, as the lead character in Exit Elena, co-writer of both scripts, co-editor of Exit Elena and production designer for Soft in the Head, and Cody Stokes, co-editor of Exit Elena and director of photography, co-writer and editor on Soft in the Head. Stokes and Silver comprise Konec Films, which, according to its website, “makes films and anything else you might ask them to try.”

About the overlap, Silver said, “I’ve already answered regarding my mother. As for Kia, well, she and I lived together and fell into working together rather naturally. I mean, we’d argue about ideas and laugh and needle each other, the best kind of collaboration. I met Cody in Paris of all places. He’s the opposite of me – an extremely stalwart Midwesterner with truly razor sharp vision. He storyboards every frame of the movies he directs, whereas I work off of outlines and shoot with multiple cameras. He clears up the messes I make; I muddle his absolute clarity.

“We started Konec,” he continued, “because we found ourselves working together constantly. Our goal with Konec is to push out movies that you wouldn’t lump together at first, but that somehow complement each other in the end. Cody is currently preparing his first feature, and there’s no question that it’s going to be beautiful.”

Silver, who graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2005, has written and directed four short films and, including the two VIFF entries, has made three features. His first premièred in 2009 at the Torino Film Festival, and the press material describes The Blind as “the portrait of a relationship gone bad that keeps on going ... twisting what should be a romance film into a horror movie of everyday life.” According to a blog at filmmakermagazine.com written by Silver, Stokes and producer and co-writer Chloe Domont, his fourth feature, Simian, for which shooting has recently finished, is a “tragic comedy” that “follows Robbie, a Norman Mailer wannabe who takes refuge at a makeshift home for pregnant teens.”

“My philosophy is basically this: life’s a joke and we’re the punch line, but it’s a joke that we have to take seriously in order to remain sane,” Silver told the Independent when asked whether the bleakness in his films reflects his outlook in life in general. “Bleak or not, let’s laugh at ourselves. Hopefully, there’s something of this philosophy in my movies.”

The laughter is easier to find in Exit Elena – when Elena unwillingly attends a Zumba class with her employer is one of the first scenes that comes to mind – than in Soft in the Head, just as Judaism is more overtly depicted in the latter, with Hannah’s family being observant Jews, than in Exit Elena, where the Akerman family certainly seems Jewish, at least the mother and son do. (Silver plays the son.)

“I’m not a practising Jew; I’ve been to temple two or three times in my life,” said Silver about how his being Jewish influences his work. “I’m neurotic, anxious, self-deprecating – all things commonly associated with Judaism, and also, humor. Do these traits come from the fact that I was born Jewish? No, they’re just human traits. The world’s a mess of anxiety and mishaps, and that’s where all the humor comes from. I think Jews realize the potential for humor in the misery, but we’re all miserable, right? Capitalizing on misery might come from my Jewish background. Now, as to why I have Jewish characters in my movies, well, I know a lot of Jews, including myself and my mother.”

Silver will be coming to Vancouver to attend all of the screenings of his films. VIFF runs Sept. 26-Oct. 11, at various venues. Exit Elena, which the Jewish Independent is sponsoring, will be at Pacific Cinémathèque Oct. 1, 6:15 p.m., and Oct. 10, 8:45 p.m.; and at SFU Woodwards Oct. 2, 1 p.m. Soft in the Head will screen at Cinémathèque on Oct. 3, 9 p.m., and at SFU Woodwards on Oct. 4, 1:15 p.m. For more information on these and the many other feature and short films screening at the festival, visit viff.org.

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