An interview with Sophia Romma | USED AND BORROWED TIME | VMA20 BEST INDIE FEATURE | November Edition

It is a gloomy day at the Birmingham Autumn Fair in present-day Alabama and Eva Gold, an eccentric blind Jewish actress from New York is roaming about, craving apple pies that are spiked with transcendental magical properties. After accidentally stumbling upon a mystical Romani Sorceress’s tent, the Gypsy tempts her by attempting to predict her future but Eva refuses out of superstition. She then enters the tent of Kitty O’Neill who is a Southern bigot stuck in the past and who peddles pies that transport her patrons/victims to a psychic state of phantasma where they experience certain life-altering moments from their pasts lives. Hence, after eating a laced pie, Eva Gold is supernaturally transported to her past during the violent 1960s. Albeit now, she is able to see and to her surprise, she is confronted once more with her young self as she mournfully relives her ill-fated love affair with a poetic African American civil rights advocate. Back then, during the turbulent segregation period in Alabama and in the South, the two lovers were obliged to hide their love yet one day they carelessly end up lost on private property belonging to a White Supremacist family. Secretly hiding in a shed where they make love for the first time, the couple is discovered by the backwoods family and all hell breaks loose. 

After the Younger Eva Gold reveals to her temperamental beau that she is a Jew, the youthful lovers get into an argument and as they discuss discrimination and religion, they are caught off-guard by the owners of the shed—the sadistic Woods family who capture the lovers and take them as hostages on Christmas Eve. Uncle Wade Woods along with his sister, the Matriarch of the family, Blanche Woods, and her hen-pecked, backward son, Jed Woods, decide to punish the couple for being on their premises, but their rage towards them is clearly related to the fact that Steadroy Johnson is an African American and Eva Gold is Jewish, a fact which the family simply cannot tolerate due to their racial and ethnic hatred. 

The central scene of Used and Borrowed Time is based on an unfortunate racist incident from American history. The feature is directed and written by Sophia Romma, a playwright, screenwriter, theatre, and film director. As well as serving as the Producing Artistic Director of Garden of the Avant-Garde Film and Theatrical Foundation, Romma is a member of the New York City Bar Association where she spearheads the Police Brutality, Racial/and Social Justice Programs and the Right to Health Project, working on prevalent human rights issues. 

Outside of making a film, Sophia Romma has penned sixteen stage-plays which have been produced Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway. Some of her more notable play titles include The Past Is Still Ahead, The Mire, and Cabaret Emigre.

• Sophia, congratulations on your award at the Vegas Movie Awards. 

You emigrated to New York with your parents from Russia in the ‘80s, and your family is Jewish. How much of your personal story have you put into your movie? 

Firstly, I am grateful to Vegas Movie Awards for bestowing upon my film, Used and Borrowed Time, the award for Best Fantasy Feature. Receiving this coveted award is indeed a great honor and the Garden of the Avant-Garde Film Productions Team is reveling in the accolade. I arrived on American shores as a six-year-old child and had witnessed my mother face the gruesome challenging fate brought on by immigration, the dislocation of the émigré soul, and the eventual rather heart-wrenching assimilation which is the fate of the émigré who stands obliged to blend into a society that is not often welcoming and in fact quite frankly unapologetically judgmental of differing cultures and customs. I am a child of the Cold War and having defected from Soviet Russia due to religious, ethnic, and for political reasons, as most fledging immigrants; I found immense and infinite escapism in fantasy with the unfolding of slow seductively intricate, and sublime images on the screen at the very moment that I had set foot at the Film Forum in Bohemian Greenwich Village, New York. My mother was born in Ukraine and my father was born in Bucharest, Romania. I am of Romani and Jewish ancestry, which is quite a combination.My mother and I fled the Soviet Union as refugees seeking asylum in the United States and my father joined us two years later as he was not granted permission to leave the Soviet Union since he was a diplomat.I have always incorporated the personal and tender tales of immigration from different countries in my stage-plays and in my films. My play, “Coyote, Take Me There!” which premiered at La MaMa Experimental Theater explored the immigration of the impoverished, struggling Latino/Hispanic population in conjunction with the persecuted, hounded Eastern European Jewry and drew comparative parallels. 

I have most definitely derived from my personal narrative, the motifs and the themes which loom heavy in Used and Borrowed Time, namely the theme of bigotry, prejudice, blind-spot biases, racism, interracial relationships, the atrocity in the face of complicity and intolerance. In 2010, I had the good fortune of working with the late great Charles Weldon, the Artistic Director of the legendary Negro Ensemble Company at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. Mr. Weldon directed my two one-act plays, “With Aaron’s Arms Around Me and The Mire.” These vignettes were lauded by the New York Times for breaking down the harsh barriers of racism and intolerance with love, inclusiveness, and compassion.

nytimes.com

I often write about love, the clashing of cultures, and explore the subject of ethnic tension.

• With numerous racism and antisemitism episodes happening across the world, this story is as relevant as ever. What is the message you want to convey with your feature?

Systemic overt and covert racism is ignoble and is one of the most egregious issues in the United States which has a tainted history, to say the least. Since the founding of the nation, slavery was America’s shameful sin for which expatriation did not occur. It was not solved by our forefathers bearing a torch burning wild in upholding the principles of democracy but alas racism had never truly dissipated with the dreadful Civil War and with its promise of freedom for the blacks. The Civil Rights Movement was a vehement devotion to striking a profound chord of change and lashing out against bigotry in America—it was not only a movement to attain civil rights and fundamental human rights—it was a movement deployed in jazz, poetry, literature, and was echoed through the halls brimming with emphatic speech preaching change, begging for tolerance. Martin Luther King, Jr. cast his dream over America’s downtrodden and ostracized—and a change was in the works. Nonetheless, we are now amid such discord as Americans, that we tread on thin ice. Racist rhetoric runs rapid and hate crimes are riding high. From the unbearable murder of George Floyd and Ahmaid Arbery, to the unaddressed heinous racist acts which occur across the United States—America stands isolated, drowning in its self-proclaimed exceptionalism while partisan wars are waged and equality, parity, and tolerance have taken a seat at the back burner. Our national spirit is deeply wounded and broken. I have written a recent report for the New York City Bar Association which I had presented at the International Human Rights Committee (where I am a member) and at the European Affairs Committee regarding the rampant rise of antisemitic acts of violence against the Jews and the rise in anti-Roma hatred in Europe. I had noted that in Ukraine, for example, this heightened antisemitic vitriol is primarily carried forth through the actions of thugs from low socio-economic strata, who find relief from their frustrations with the demolition of Jewish tombstones and synagogues, resorting to graffiti while spewing racial insults as well as burning of Roma campsites—phenomena that are well known, rooted but still marginal. Recent events are rooted in the rise of the extreme right in countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, and Greece. 

These hate crimes express deeply ingrained antisemitism and anti-Roma hatred, either stemming from an ignorant belief in the negative role of the Jews and Roma or in an attempt to gain political capital from those sectors of the population that have given up on politicians and seek to improve their dire situation on their own. The prevailing of intolerance stems from its inane absurdist drive and its pathetic reasoning of superior white power—hatred based on the baseless and naturally, such blatant atrocities towards humanity such as the Holocaust and the genocide of human beings no matter where they come from or where they are headed cannot be tolerated in the 21st Century lest we pave a dangerous path to our past inequities. Hence, in making Used and Borrowed Time, I have tried to convey the message that Americans and people living on this earth cannot remain silent about injustice. Inaction is simply unacceptable. We have a civic duty to stand tall and defend humanity no matter what the consequences may be. It is our obligation to harness and fortify the voices of those who have been underserved and marginalized in society. Furthermore, I have tried to depict the horrors that plague people from all walks of life. Suffering is universal as is the insufferable strain of prejudice which so many of us harbor and pass on like a venomous baton, from generation to generation without questioning its horrific consequences. I hope that my film leads the audience to self-reflect and to seek change in the eyes of peace and in the heart of steadfast tolerance for the diversity which makes each one of us—unique. 

Life is about heartfelt raw emotions that do not subside and bleed out into the sewers of soggy alleyways—they hover in time and so I let them dance suspended in this ethereal time. 

• You have written and produced many stage plays. How is your approach to filming different compared to your theater work? 

I believe that breaking boundaries and non-conforming to the rules of writing for the stage and screen is of the utmost importance in collapsing the old wive’s tale of showing more in cinema by relaying less, which is a classic concept but not my mantra and not the way in which I craft my literary work. Although it goes without saying that plays are dialogue-driven and films are image powered—I have never ascribed to this philosophy as I feel it is formulaic and debilitating for the storyteller. The film is a decidedly visual medium in which one cannot simply rely on the cascading of endless dialogue but there are filmmakers such as Luis Bunuel and Ingmar Bergman who have bent the cinematic experience and have paved the path for me as a director—a filmmaker who aspires to express visuals burgeoning viscerally through a character’s dialogue accompanied by lush expressive visions of scenery. In order to combine the two mediums of theatre and film, I utilize both mediums interchangeably by tipping my hat to the Gods of vernacular and by embracing cinematic imagery which accentuates context and characterization. 

Having worked on Off-Broadway stage productions which leave less room for intense scenic backdrops, dialogue may indeed have the luxury of being longer but I have never felt that a screenplay needs to skirt dialogue and be sparse. That type of filming could be left to music videos. In theatre, any mention of what the audience will see on the stage can be very sparse indeed, as in the United States, since the arts are not subsidized by the government, so the artist is obliged to be frugal. Nonetheless, I feel that a director can effectively translate meaning through theatrical verbose dialogue while adhering to the principles of strong visuals which strengthen the mise en scenes with intricacy and poignancy. In fact, Used and Borrowed Time, was originally a fifteen-minute play, written and performed during a gala cabaret dinner at The Players at Gramercy Park in New York.I had adapted this fifteen-minute play into a one-hundred eighty-page screenplay. I am not F. Scott Fitzgerald nor am I Vladimir Nabokov shaking up Hollywood, but I need for my characters to express their inner-most feelings and I will take my time like the French, lingering on each emotion, milking each emotive scene. I will allow for my Dinner with Andre scenes because life is not about curt seconds of screentime where each shot wasted signifies money down the drain. Life is about heartfelt raw emotions that do not subside and bleed out into the sewers of soggy alleyways—they hover in time and so I let them dance suspended in this ethereal time. As a director, because those moments are the inevitable truth of our lives as captured as snapshots on the screen perhaps not in a synchronized harmony but in an orchestrated meaningful symphony—hopefully! 

• What gave you the inspiration to write and direct this story? 

Used and Borrowed Time originated as a short ten-minute play that was performed at The Players at Gramercy Park in New York. It was originally entitled “Used and Borrowed Pies for Eyes,” and was performed during an evening of cabaret dinner accompanied by a medley of play selections. When my play was over—silence fell upon the hundred-year-old oak room and not a fork was moved. The play resounded with impact and thrashed the soul with bitter truth about society’s tremendously dark foibles. There was a backer in the audience who approached me pertaining to writing a screenplay based on the premise of my original play. So that is exactly what I had accomplished—the challenge was set to the tune of a dare. I love dares. Just dare me! In September of 2019, I had embarked on the journey to write the screenplay—it had taken two months to complete—I was riding high on an inspirational trajectory. The bug of creativity had bitten me badly. In an effort to shed light on an all too horrid and common practice of shameful racism and segregation in the 1960s, and amid the unjust enactment of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, during the apogee of the Civil Rights Movement—I set forth in documenting an incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama at the peak of protests against segregation laws and inequity. This horrific historical incident that sparked sincere interest and spurred me to research this momentous moment in time was recounted by the dignified educated son of slaves who worked as a chef on the Amtrak train which had transported my grandmother and me, once upon my past, to Alabama from New York, during Halloween. 

This humble chef extraordinaire had cooked up the most delectable rosemary baked aromatic lamb chops and collard green, and while the train tooted onwards with full steam ahead, he poured his heart out about this true tear-jerking tale of tender ill-fated love. This lashing psychological docu-drama welled tears in my eyes as the tale captured the narrative of the chef’s young cousin, a civil rights leader and poetic soul who had expired way before his time at the hands of a clan of heartless white supremacists. The unspeakable crimes committed against an innocent Jewish blind girl and her African American soul mate is a tragedy that unfolds in my experimental psychological drama phantasma. I pray that this film shall serve as a reminder of the evil that can descend upon innocent spirits seeking to change our wounded world for the better and as a beacon of hope in the plight for human rights, gender parity, and equality as we stand united on one sunny day—one nation under the unified multi-colored and multi-national blanket of universal hope: guided by a forgiving understanding Lord who made Us walk upon this earth as One—sharing in grief as in ecstasy. 

•Your film touches on a lot of other issues such as identity, religion, sexual orientation, rape, and murder. Explain your creative process behind all of these delicate issues? 

One may regard the awareness of identity as positive or as destructive. In Used and Borrowed Time, I attempted to dissect identity in the fashion of a high school science experiment.The characters in the film are burdened by their own beasts and salvaged by their very own conjured up saints—shackled with insecurity in a world of introverted perverted violence. Each one of the characters grapples with self-identity and they are either lured or betrayed by religion just as they are bull-whipped or caressed in the arms of those who either seemingly show them love or shake them with vindication. When overwhelming stressors occur acutely or chronically, the natural psychologically and physiologically induced response, in my experience with people from various walks of life, is numbing, avoidance, neglect, wrath, and fear.

This motion-picture assigns memory to the past which is skewed in the context of apprehension and is imbued with the earnestness of labial bliss and psychotic desire. Jed Woods, for instance, is traumatized by his matriarch mother, Blanche, to the extent that he reexperiences this dramatic trauma on an everyday basis and is thus conscripted to live in a prison of bogus pity, incest, rape, and the prospect of committing a murder in Klu Klux fashion in the name of machismo and virility.During the numbing phase which each character experiences throughout the film, caused by their own questioning of love, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and humanity; the audience senses an avoidance, detachment, emotional constriction, and depression which is clearly present in Jed, Wade, Blanche, Lorna, Kitty O’Neill, Fred Busch, as well as in our protagonists, Steadroy Johnson and Eva Gold. Because of the high level of fear and avoidance, there appears a time-limited gradual revisiting of the past events in Eva Gold’s life which caused calamity in her soul, directly or indirectly. Therefore, until this trepidation to face the past is mastered and until the cycle of the past reconciles with Eva’s present—we are consumed in the follies of these characters as they await each other’s cathartic experience. The Inability to be resurrected and to come to terms with these overwhelmingly fanatical experiences successfully (as might occur in the case of traumatized young children without supportive nurturing parents) results in intrusive chaos that controls the Woods family and enslaves the Younger Eva Gold and her poetic lover. These intrusions take such forms as visualizations of the horrors of past events with intense effects that plague the characters throughout this drama phantasma, such as sadness, depravity or fear on a chronic basis and/or a tendency to recapitulate aspects of the trauma developmentally - "dedicating" one's life to reliving that incident which hounds the spirit of Eva Gold for an eternity. I have known these people. I have heard their tales, their punctured dreams –their horrid penetrating nightmares. Individual experience as recounted in oral histories are terrifying or excruciatingly exciting but whence retold in cinematic form, the creative process in bringing to life these tormented souls seldom provides relief from the depressed, numbing, and constricted states which are the beasts of human burden. 

I have indeed dabbled in depicting hypo and hypersexuality which alternate concomitantly with outside forces brought upon these characters. When trauma has included sexual abuse or rape as it obviously had in the Woods family, the numbing and intrusion symptoms seem to implicate body sensations and lead to a distorted view of good and evil, as well as sexual desire which runs like a manic river but remains unsatiated and is thus detrimental due to its desire for constant arousal or orgasm which cannot come under sincere circumstances due to the fear of religious backlash and hence is subdued until rapture consumes the perpetrator. Used and Borrowed Time is not a love story—it is a violation upon a love affair because of a racist state of mind. The film also reveals what may transpire due to societal developmental influences to the unfolding sexual and affectional systems which come naturally to individuals born with varying sexual orientations. Traumatized individuals may develop a sexual desire, a disorder with hypo- or hyper- or asexuality. For example, hypersexuality in the Woods family is clearly presented in blatant sadistic undertones of depravity in their desire for rape and for murder as they exercise their white power over an innocent unsuspecting interracial couple. On the other hand, as a director, I had the obligation to show that the Woods family is subjugated to live in a negative affective state from which there is no escape and so they are coerced to contend with crippling loneliness, fear and sadness. Jed Woods exhibits asexuality, typically a result of extreme fear of bonding with others due to falling prey to the influence of his narcissistic conflicted Uncle Wade and his overbearing nutcase mother, Blanche, who rules by chastisement and false biblical prophesy. None of the Woods family members exhibit any viable ability to genuinely care for or empathize with others. Although this film does not outwardly show severe repudiation of one's genitals, or unconscionable sexual arousal—it does deal with an identity crisis in a world that admonishes reality and dictates the absurdism of the so-called non-existent “norm.”

• Considering your experience in human rights, what have you personally learned about intolerance and bigotry? 

I have been spearheading the Criminal Justice and Human Rights Project with a concentration on Police Brutality and the Right to Health during Covid-19 for the International Human Rights Committee which I am a member of, at the New York City Bar Association. The initiation of this project had taken place nearly three years ago when I commenced working on the Human Rights framework to propell foward a vision for racial justice in the United States after Ferguson. The violations of human rights fueled by systemic intolerance and bigotry are unfortunately ever-present. The United States has long applauded its great selfless nation on the domestic front as well as in the eyes of the international community as having a most commendable human rights record which given the nation’s soiled history of racism, is far from the truth. Yet history is riddled with racist incidents indicating an immeasurable dilemma with intolerance and bigotry, one of the most atrocious of such examples was depicted in the police killing of Mike Brown, Jr. in Ferguson in Missouri in 2014. The human rights framework, which holds human dignity as the yolk of governance, seeks the road towards adhering to the vision of equality, parity, and the rule of law. It is in this spirit that the family of Mike Brown, Jr. and young African American leaders have ensued upon the road of holding uprisings and demonstrations in Ferguson and hence these grievances have been brought forth before the United Nations Committee Against Torture in 2014. These efforts appropriately bear the title of “Ferguson to Geneva.”I have worked with the U.N. Human Rights Network, which aided in the organization of the U.S. Shadow Reports and of the U.S. Civil Society Delegation in 2014.I have also written and published articles on the violations of 4th Amendment principles regarding prejudicial search and seizure fueled by racism—the unlawful stop and frisk which affects our African American communities in the most detrimental ways. Used and Borrowed Time deals with these offenses against the black community as is lamented by the story of police brutality against the poetic Roy Johnson in my film—young civil rights advocate devoid of any history of violence and yet persistently harassed by the Alabama police without due cause. 

Another relevant issue that I have recently tapped into is a topic that is so pressing and terribly important to address during the ravaging of the Covid-19 virus on our minority communities is the right to health for minorities. It was just today that I had read a devastating NAACP article regarding a new Poll revealing the horrifying effect that the Corona Virus has unleashed upon the suffering and struggling African American Community. The Criminal Justice Project which I spearhead at the New York City Bar Association depicts a scrupulous purview on blatant present racism during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has pulled the curtain back on many of the nation’s racial problems. I have conducted numerous surveys for the New York City Bar Association which uncover the indisputable fact that African Americans are very concerned, not only about the racially-disparate impact of COVID-19 but also about the federal government’s laissez-faire approach to slowing down the spread of the virus.I believe it would behoove us to address the havoc Covid-19 has reeked upon minority communities on the domestic front by unveiling this disparate impact. Working closely with Human Rights Organizations such as Human Rights First has opened my eyes wide to the discrepancies and injustices that plague our society. People must participate in politics and should understand what political liberty means. Freedom is not simply the absence of coercion. It is vitally important that the state respect diverse freedom and individuality. A liberal system means that people of color, people of diverse sexual orientation, folks from differing religions and cultures should be placed on equal footing so that when we search for equality, we shall surely find that it signifies quality in the equity which we seek.

• What was the biggest challenge you had to face on set? 

I would have to say that the most challenging film I had worked on was my most recent labor of love, Used and Borrowed Time. We were shooting on a very tight budget. We were obliged to shoot in the dead of winter with snowfalls and raging whiplashing winds. Our post-production Estonian team was riddled with the dilemma of working during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic where the entire world was paralyzed by impending death, an economic crisis, and a medical calamity that taxed healthcare systems to the maximum and altered the lives of each member of society on a multi-faceted level. This film was indeed a labor of love during the time of cholera called Covid. Often, we would be on the set/location for ten to fourteen hours. The shooting schedule was intense and emotionally draining as well as physically straining. Also, in the open wintry terrain, the bitter wind created a howling wailing effect which later had to be hushed in post-production by our relentless sound designer, Alex Voronin.The shooting of the entire film entailed twenty-two days. 

We began shooting the film on November 2nd and then waited for the cast to assemble as they were dispersed and engaged in film/theatre projects in different states. We had culminated in shooting the film on January 22, 2020.I would strongly advise young aspiring filmmakers to work from storyboards so that directors know exactly which shots they wish to take on certain days—storyboarding also aids in effective post-production editing and helps layout the storyline clearly.I would heed the advice of many directors who leave ample time to rehearse with their actors since that eliminates any misunderstandings on the set and the director wastes less time—taking the desired shot right away. Most importantly, do scout out your locations with your director of photography. Scoping out the area before the shoot gives the director and the cinematographer a sense of comfort and security in knowing the surroundings well. I was caught shooting in an open area where planes flew across the skies every three minutes, rendering it nearly impossible to take long scenes, heavy-laden with dialogue and make them work without retaking the shots about one hundred times and trying the patience of the crew and of the talent.It is also imperative to remember to take the time to speak with each cast member about their characters' idiosyncrasies—their hopes, their aspirations, their yearnings, and their hauntings. Character development is essential as characters drive the plot and the theme forward. The characters in Used and Borrowed Time are the essence of the story. So, the director must take time to sit with each actor and table talk the script. Allow your actors to first grasp and then grip the story comprehensively and holistically so that they can imbue the tale with their own flair and flavor. This is how a story comes to life on the screen. Always make certain that your cast and crew are well fed and amply rested—otherwise performance will lag as will creativity. 

• Why did you decide to use VFX? 

My Estonian Post-Production Team, Revel Film Studios, and our editor in chief, Sergio Voronin, understood precisely in which fashion film could use special effects to efficaciously underscore the horrors of Halloween at an Autumn Fair as well as the effects that speckling yellow/emerald fire-flies would produce to phantasmagorically transport Eva Gold to her horrendous past. The color grading process naturally took eons but we all worked in tandem and walked the fine line of occasionally introducing larger than life symbolism with the personification of wild animals, rodents and reptiles in order to create a fantastical sense of an Alice in Wonderland universe such as the author Mikhail Bulgakov had achieved in his surreal social commentary masterpiece, “Master and Margarita.” Visual special effects are hard to contend with. Optical effects such as using multiple exposures, mattes or the Schüfftan process or in post-production using an optical printer have been overcome by CGI which has come to the forefront of special effects technologies. Now, filmmakers have greater control and we can achieve a myriad of special effects safely and convincingly, and as technology improves, filmmakers are able to use special effects at lower costs. Many mechanical effects and optical techniques have been superseded by CGI—this is an axiom. 

However, I still remain a fan of films such as Sunrise by the great F.W. Murnau, where special effects were used with a sense of lyricism driving with force the theme of “love conquers all,” without much concentration on the visual effects themselves and more on highlighting the memorable tender moments between the lost husband who expatriates for his desire to murder his wife and his wife’s insatiable longing to fully forgive her husband for his human folly of falling for manipulative sex drove city girl and committing a felonious act. Above all else, I felt that a fantasy film begged for special effects and so it was a rather organic choice in propelling the storyline visuals forward without making a mockery of this sacrosanct medium. 

• You are currently the Producing Artistic Director of Garden of the Avant-Garde Film and Theatrical Foundation, dedicated to aiding women playwrights and screenwriters from around the world in getting their work produced on the stage and screen. Have you seen this industry making any improvements in the last decades on this matter? 

I believe that women are still very much underrepresented in Hollywood in particular. I have read a recent report from San Diego State University which finds that more than ten percent of the directors working on last year’s top films were women, which was more than twice as many as in 2018 and the highest number in over a decade, and yes, we have certainly come a long way baby, at least according to said metrics, but we still have miles to go to achieve gender parity in the entertainment field. Progress has been made off-screen in terms of gender equality. Women comprised twenty percent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top one-hundred (domestic) grossing films of 2019, up from sixteen percent in 2018. Women accounted for twenty-one percent of individuals in these roles on the top two-hundred-fifty films, up slightly from twenty percent in 2018. Women made up twelve percent of directors working on the top one hundred grossing films in 2019, up from four percent in 2018 (and eight percent in 2017), and thirteen percent on the top two-hundred-fifty films, up from eight percent in 2018 (and eleven percent in 2017). These figures represent recent historic highs, which are indisputable. However, the percentage of women working as directors on the top five hundred films declined slightly from fifteen percent in 2018 to fourteen percent in 2019. I reiterate that freedom in the arts must entail equality in working in those fields which were traditionally saturated by white men. 

While it is true that for the first time in over a decade, both the number and percentage of women working as directors on some of Hollywood’s most memorable feature films have increased. Nonetheless, we remain hard-pressed to quickly recount the names of female screenwriters and directors who working in film today. Society needs to embrace the female perspective as they exceedingly welcome the males. The rule of law would dictate this equality and conversely shun and existent disparity. Garden of the Avant-Garde Film and Theatrical Foundation is characterized by its dedication to promoting women’s creativity in film and in theatre. Women are creating some of the most salient and challenging art in the United States and globally. Yet, despite significant strides in other fields and a few high-visibility success stories, women continue to face enormous employment discrimination in the arts and media. My organization remains loyal to educating the public about the salient issues of gender bias in the arts. Not only do women suffer by being shut out, but the culture as a whole remains impoverished when it deprives women of the vision and creativity of excelling in the performing arts. Women, especially women of color and minority women have a distinct voice, whether it is the voice of the diaspora or the voice of the century—we need to listen and to hear. Female voices need to be heard over the boisterous clouds of the horizon where men once boisterously treaded their paths—so shall courageous, talented and unique women in the arts prevail with their distinct immutable voices of honor and talent. In fact, the Executive Producer of Used and Borrowed Time, Dr. Renee Lekach, is a one-of-a-kind risk-taking woman. She is indelible and relentless in her efforts to support talented female filmmakers and does not shy away from taking risks. Without the perseverance of Dr. Lekach, this film would have never been made as she took a great leap of faith in believing in the truth of my words. Many women in the arts say that they support other women because it is now deemed politically correct, but they lie. Jealousy reigns in the art field. Women who support other women in getting ahead are a rare gem and should be heralded in our society—a macrocosm of individuals driven by conspiracy and envy. Seldom do we find women like Renee Lekach, who is able to pierce through that veil and emerge a hero.
A liberal system means that people of color, people of diverse sexual orientation, folks from differing religions and cultures should be placed on equal footing so that when we search for equality, we shall surely find that it signifies quality in the equity which we seek.• What are your new projects at the moment?At New York University, I had a professor who had taught a class on Vladimir Nabokov, and the students were assigned to read practically each of his novels.I was a young lady who was particularly touched by the story of Mashenka which in my opinion served as a prelude to Nabokov’s infamous banned novel Lolita. In Mashenka, a young man recuperates from typhoid fever, clenched in the clutches of boredom, and thus conjures up his ideal love—a girl whom he actually meets a month later. Mashenka is the love of his life. Nabokov describes the lass: “a girl with a chestnut scythe in a black bow, burning eyes, a swath face, and a rolling carted voice.” Once the protagonist, Ganin, catches a glimpse of this girl, he is instantly smitten with her much like the lewd character of Humbert Humbert was possessed and consumed by Lolita’s underage visage and sensual aura. Mashenka and Lolita are primary examples of young girls who are victims of solipsism. The two girls exist only in the sole minds of Ganin and Humbert Humbert as they appear as clip-on identities and not as real youthful ladies imbued with distinct individual characteristics. In a sense, these unfortunate girls are victims of a contrived imagination. 

I am currently engaged in writing a screenplay revolving around Lolita’s perspective regarding Humbert Humbert in which I depict her every reaction to his haughty sexual advances towards such a youthful girl.I believe that as a woman I am equipped to ascertain and portray Lolita’s version of Humbert Humbert’s infatuation with a twelve-year-old Dolores Haze and to express Lolita’s vision of this rather perverse seduction of a pubescent girl. While the term “Lolita” has been sadly assimilated into our popular culture as a description of a young girl who is “precociously seduced….sans the wicked connotations of victimization,” I aim to prove on the contrary (drawing from a similarly situated experience) that Dolores Haze is indeed a victim and not a seductress, at least not a conscience one due to her obvious inexperience, fickle pre-teen posture, youth and fleeting innocence which is prone to serve as sensual prey of worldly educated men like Humbert Humbert. I feel that a film based on Lolita’s response to Humbert Humbert’s cringy physical and emotional advances may be timely in the era of meaningful social change movements seeking female empowerment while holding guilty men accountable for their despicable acts against women, such as the #metoo movement demonstrates. 

I would also very much like to shoot an adaptation of my play, which premiered at the 13th Street Repertory Company, entitled, “The Blacklist,” which is a fun political satire about an afterlife party hosted by the Grim Reaper with a comedic streak. 

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Would you tell us about how it started for you? When did you become interested in cinema? Tell us about your first experiences, what did you work on before making Used and Borrowed Time?

Cinema is a lurid way of expression. Nonetheless film can also immerse one in the cherry oaky colors of wine and the aroma of roses imprinted upon celluloid.  When I was a child and had arrived on the purple shores of American soil as a refugee; I became infatuated with American Movie Classics which I had skipped school to watch with my grandmother. Turner Movie Classics and American Movie Classics ignited my passion for the films of legendary directors such as Hawks, Hitchcock, Lang, Ray and Welles.  There is indisputable evidence on the screen of the methodic unraveling of a character’s life, exposed and infused, drenched in drama, and accentuated by a cinematic religion which guides motion-pictures. I realized that there is this egocentric conception of the director’s craft which I yearned to exhibit desperately, to tame insanely and to possess—intimately. I began to revere the French New Wave auteurs of the Cahiers du Cinéma. I ceased paying attention to rules and conventions, aiming to write and to direct cinematic works that were more disputable, disagreeable, and uncomfortable for exposing an inconvenient muffled and often stifled truth about the horrors of those beasts in society who bring forth collective harm to the innocents. In my films, there is a gravitational pull to unmask those who prey upon the tolerant underserved and who cause them irreparable grief.   I am aware of generic conventions and commercial expectations of the film industry, but I have maintained a strict adherence to fostering a personal vision by conforming to, yet oddly transcending, genre and commerce.  I was reared in vaudeville, off-off Broadway theatre and am a child of La MaMa Experimental Theatre, but upon graduating New York University’s Tisch School of The Arts in the late 1990’s, I began teaching screenwriting and the narrative history of film at the New York Film Academy and so commenced my obsession with the transformation of draconian in sync Hollywood as I embarked upon the 1990’s Movement of the art-house independent films which portrayed corsets, clerks and criminals without apologies—devoid of shackled conformity and overbearing censorship film industry codes. I made films which called for social change, integration and acceptance.  The reconfiguration of the film industry when I was young, granted me the carte-blanche to shoot short award-winning documentaries on the struggles of sexual minorities in third world countries, on the hounding and prosecution of liberated women in Arab Countries who fought for human rights and were incarcerated as punishment and on highly charged subjects such as the human organ trade in Eastern European countries as well as the inhumane barbaric captivity  of forced prostitution as well as unveiling the scars of the wounded sex slave toilers. The poets and the downtrodden weave dreamers seeking societal change wet my appetite. In 1998, I was privileged to write and produce the cult film, Poor Liza, which starred the legendary iconic screen actor, Ben Gazzara and the Academy and Emmy Award-Winning actress, Lee Grant.  With Poor Liza, I paid homage to the sentimentalism school set forth by Russian 18th Century literature and tipped my director’s bowler hat to true love which sadly could not transcend the mire of the impenetrable class system which had swallowed that love—whole, and ultimately culminated in a beautiful peasant girl’s demise as she lost her life to suicide—done in by a grieving and bleeding heart. It was a universal ill-fated love story which earned my film the noble honor of the prestigious and coveted Grand Prix Garnet Bracelet at the Gatchina Literature in Film Festival (in Saint Petersburg, Russia).  The award was the equivalent of having won the Oscar which I proudly shared with my mother and with my grandmother, my patron saints. However, I had never allowed for the honor and prestige of winning that award go to my head and swell it. I remained humble and active in seeking human rights tales which called for tolerance, acceptance and presented themes in my films which presumed a loyal marriage to the rule of law.

The film begins with a series of shots of stone sculptures. Does this opening scene work as a metaphor that reflects the central theme of the film?  Can you talk about the main theme of the film and how it can be relevant today?

Used and Borrowed Time features a series of haunting and daunting shots of stone sculptures at an Autumn Fair in Birmingham, Alabama. The children and their dogs, with vacant cold eyes are petrified and iron-clad.  Superimposed are whispers and cries of children’s voices which softy reminisce in various languages and echo a foreshadowing of the motif of my film, namely that the past is still ahead. Indeed, these grey stone-cold children remain lifeless for eternity and yet come to life with the enticing expectation of a glimpse into the past which mirrors a certain future. Through their soft, eerie whispers, the spectators are meant to embark upon the torrid journey into the past of Older Eva Gold as she is transported magically to face her days of youth—reliving the horrors of the vengeance of the white supremacists clan who had captured her and her young lover, Steadroy Johnson, a poet and Civil Rights Activist during the 1960’s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.  Roy’s plight for equality and justice is my homage paid to the great African American soulful writer, James Baldwin, who skillfully epitomized the burns and stings of Harlem wisdom with a confluence of the misery in being crickets deeded to a white man’s cage—trapped by the gestapo autonomy and supremacy of the white man who enslaved the blacks. This very motif leads me to discuss the main theme of Used and Borrowed Time which revolves around the vindictive hypocrisy unleashed like venom upon those who are marginalized in society, such as ethnic and religious minorities and folks of a different color, heritage and cultural background. Racism is a ghastly disease which is confounding yet apparently unbudging. My film reveals a microscopic glance at the misogynistic, sadistic sex games of a white supremacist family who happen to take a young couple as hostages on Christmas Eve and destroy their pure love for each other by ravaging their young impressionable hearts with the sickle of pious feigned and blind backwoods religion. Segregation in the South was key to the leitmotif and premise of Used and Borrowed Time. Sadly, the theme of my film remains relevant today as Americans are divided and racial tensions run as high as ever. Racial profiling and police brutality are on the rise. There is civil unrest and an unabating political divide. There appears to be no real justice for the impoverished, the marginalized, and the underserved communities of color—this is most evident now amid the discrepancies of our healthcare programs in light of Covid-19 and the havoc it has reeked upon struggling poor communities, unveiling stark inequality and incongruity among the American mass population which is indeed tragic in the 21st Century.  

In the film, there is a local market that has an unconventional, crazy atmosphere. The audience feels it through people’s interaction with one another.  How influenced were you by the surrealists? How much of the character of the old woman in the film is influenced by the films of surrealists, like David Lynch?

In my opinion, surrealism is about departures and not arrivals.  Surrealism itself draws upon irrational imagery and sheds light on the ailing subconscious mind burdened by an influx of sensual stimulus, political angst, economic hardships, prophetic nightmares cascading into potent artsy dreams about succeeding in our often, nonsensical Alice in Wonderland inverted universe. It is not a fixed aesthetic but a whimsical revolutionist manifesto—a calling to unlock the mysteries of the possessed human spirit with a demonic unspooling of hidden heinous truths.  Surrealism is a weapon to fuel my refusal to be captured in any particular moment in sedentary time. The absurdist atmosphere of the Alabama Autumn Fair on All Saint’s Day reflects a floating brittle psyche amid the bellowing clouds of an unknown and an identified stratosphere which churns into a backdrop of a private holocaust of frantic racial, ethnic slurs and a condemnation of foreigners with vitriol cast upon the so-called “Asian invasion of America,” the “thieving caravan Gypsy population” and the asylum seekers who are outwardly shunned as well as the presumed “exalted conniving rich Jews from New York.” The fair is uncanny and maniacal with vendors who rummage through the remnants of the integrity of the human soul and soil it. This is our relevant reality. We shun immigrants, question their cuisine, stifle their culture, demand assimilation and then lash out at foreigners coming to American and stealing American jobs. We are fearful of other nations gaining control while American exceptionalism wages war against countries by sanctioning governments which only leads to the sanctioning of torn and tattered village people who cannot make ends meet. We do not punish the oligarchs—miraculously they escape American wrath.  Like the surrealists, I too employ shocking, irrational, absurdist imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of linear narrative and story-weaving by recounting an inverted, perverted reality reminiscent of bedlam on earth yet exhuming certain harsh truths about the human race and its propensity to commit evil deeds to appease the prophets of uncontested tradition. I have always related deeply to Dada Cinema and have rejected a cinematic rigid battleax mentality by cautiously using these grotesque shocking images and dialogue to directly accost the conscience and spirit of an unsuspecting audience member but yet move the spectators of my film to experience an emotional catharsis leading to soulful change. I am a disciple of André Robert Breton, Jean Renoir, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Epstein, Salvador Dali, Ingmar Bergman and the rare genius of Luis Buñuel.  After Viewing Buñuel’s, The Exterminating Angel, in my Cinema Studies class at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts during my freshman year, I developed a mordant view of human nature that suggests that we harbor savage instincts and are impregnated by such dark secrets which signal sheer insidiousness.  People wallow in their own hypocrisy—sanctimonious, and never actually question their pathetic unjust motives.  The entrapment of mediocre minds in their own confined cul-de-sacs is the most appalling scenario of human nature and perhaps the saddest of all, especially when those chains cannot be broken.  Older Eva Gold with her ferocious sarcasm and keen wit was indeed influenced by the surreal ambiance and characters drawn to the limelight by David Lynch. I had the good fortune of working with his son on a television commercial for the Hispanic College Fund and I realized that Mr. Lynch has graced his offspring with his sense of the macabre. I cannot say just how many times I have watched the Surrealist films by Lynch, such as Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet—not to mention that I was raised on the cinematic repertoire of Twin Peaks. The old woman is exactly this juxtaposition of the offbeat and the everyday clashes in her character. She is an opposing force of light and dark. She bears a grave sensitivity to organic phenomena but is condemned by her own quirkiness, her handicap and her hatred for the atrocities of human complicity in the face of egregious, monstrous adversity. Exposing the grittier sides of human existence, as Lynch has, I grapple with vandalized souls brutalized by the sickness of corruption, religious and racial hatred. Neo-Noire is a hard target to achieve in film and Eva Gold is a neo-noire broad. She teeters on the brink of insanity due to forces outside of her control. She is someone else’s target practice and hence society’s victim. When I was a kid I used to listen to Roy Orbison.  One of my favorite songs was the ethereal celestial song, “Candy Colored Clown.” A magic night with silent prayers was depicted in Lynch’s iconic film, Blue Velvet. That classic scene is what Eva Gold represents—the mystery of the open road bleeding the mysticism of a past still lingering large in the future.

Used and Burrowed Time is mostly dialogue-bound, meaning that dialogues reveal information and move the story forward. How long did the screenplay take to find its current form? Where did the original idea come from?

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Used and Borrowed Time originated as a short ten-minute play which was performed at The Players at Gramercy Park in New York. It was originally entitled “Used and Borrowed Pies for Eyes,” and was performed during an evening of cabaret dinner accompanied by a medley of play selections.  When my play was over—silence fell upon the hundred-year-old oak room and not a fork was moved.  The play resounded with impact and thrashed the soul with bitter truth about society’s tremendously dark foibles.  There was a backer in the audience who approached me pertaining to writing a screenplay based on the premise of my original play. So that is exactly what I had accomplished—the challenge was set to the tune of a dare. I love dares. Just dare me! In September of 2019 I had embarked on the journey to write the screenplay—it had taken two months to complete—I was riding high on an inspirational trajectory. The bug of creativity had bitten me badly. In an effort to shed light on an all too horrid and common practice of shameful racism and segregation in the 1960’s, and amid the unjust enactment of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, during the apogee of the Civil Rights Movement—I embarked upon the journey of documenting an incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama at the peak of protests against segregation laws and inequity. This horrific historical incident that sparked deep-rooted interest and spurred me to research this momentous moment in time was recounted by the dignified educated son of slaves who worked as a chef on the Amtrak train which had transported my grandmother and I, once upon my past, to Alabama from New York, during Halloween. This humble chef extraordinaire had cooked up the most delectable rosemary baked aromatic lamb chops and collard green, and while the train tooted onwards with full steam ahead, he poured his heart out about this true tear-jerking tale of a tender ill-fated love. This lashing psychological docu-drama welled tears in my eyes as the tale captured the narrative of the chef’s young cousin, a civil rights leader and poetic soul who had expired way before his time at the hands of a clan of heartless white supremacists. The unspeakable crimes committed against an innocent Jewish blind girl and her African American soul mate is a tragedy which unfolds in my experimental psychological drama phantasma. I pray that this film shall serve as a reminder of the evil that can descend upon innocent spirits seeking to change our wounded world for the better and as a beacon of hope in the plight for human rights, gender parity, and equality as we stand united—one nation under the unified multi-colored and multi-national blanket of universal hope: guided by a forgiving understanding Lord who made Us walk upon this earth as One—sharing in moments of grief as in moments of ecstasy.

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The Film is 3.5 hours long and has a large cast. Our audience, both film enthusiasts and young filmmakers, would want to know how you managed the casting process. How did you select these actors and how long did the rehearsal take?

I am a wizard at casting. I don’t mean to boast. I have been reared on casting for theatre and I have always been at the side of all directors during the casting of all of my sixteen Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway plays. I am also loyal to the actors whom I have worked with over the decades.  I have worked with Grant Morenz who plays Wade Woods since I had cast him in my play, “Defenses of Prague” at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in 1999 and we have maintained a close friendship as well as an over-two decade working relationship. I have worked with Gavin Rohrer since 2013, when he came to audition for me for my short play, entitled, “Carte Blanche” which had run at the Midtown International March Madness Festival in New York and have continued to cast him in nearly all of my plays since then. I have worked with Alice Bahlke since 2012, when I had cast her in my award-winning international play, “The Past Is Still Ahead,” which had also been produced at the Midtown International Film Festival.  These actors are immeasurably versatile and a joy to work with on set.  Over my twenty-five-year career as a playwright and director of national and international theatre; I have developed this keen knack for the casting process. Since I am professionally trained as a playwright and screenwriter, I close my eyes and envision how this particular actor could perform my lines in verse—and I just feel it in my gut. I instantaneously have an inkling whether the actor/actress auditioning for the part is a good bona fide fit for the role or simply not.  In casting the ensemble cast of Used and Borrowed Time, I must say that I was blessed with the god-send of a magnificent expert casting director who was in tune with my desires for casting from the get-go.  She aided me in the time-consuming, tedious casting process and brought her expertise to the grueling demands of auditioning for hours on end. My ensemble cast brought to light some of the most uncomfortable cringy moments in cinema to life—that is the scope of their unflinching talent.  Regrettably, I did not have much time to rehearse with my actors and my one hundred eighty-page script screamed for numerous rehearsals but alas there was a time constraint and the producers’ budget plan to contend with.  I am not John Cassavetes albeit he went through his own struggles in fighting against the Hollywood system and for a female director—well we are always hurried and harried. Frankly and shamefully, we only had a week of rehearsals and the script is complex, written in a staccato verse.  I can only say that had it not been for my intrepid cast and my brilliant executive producer who believe in all of my creative work, Dr. Renee Lekach—this film would not have been shot at all. I am a lucky indie director indeed.

Experimental films almost always struggle in finding audience. Do you think film festivals are the solutions to help independent films to be seen more?

The general public, bombarded with marketing messages boasting the success of mainstream movies, seldom gets a chance to glimpse distinct films on the screen with a range of differing voices. A potent, innovative film festival screens film selections by resisting commercial pressures of the standard mainstream line-up, pleased to present features which have clearly deviated from the “acceptable norm of films,” and instead lauds these rarities as industry gems. The independent voices of unique filmmakers are often stigmatized while film festivals bring to the limelight an opportunity for those diverse voices to be heard and for unconventional content to be seen. A filmmaker is able to gauge audience reaction at a film festival screening and this aids the indie filmmaker in perhaps re-editing the film before a prospective theatrical release. Film festivals promote meaningful content presented by ground-breaking films with social messages which call for social change—hence diversity is promoted while exposure is gained. A director and producer of independent cinema must raise awareness. Film festivals grant the opportunity for networking and for awareness. Winning an award is humbling and very rewarding not just to place laurels on your film poster but as a means to collectively praise the efforts of your film’s cast and crew as they had struggled so hard to present a film product the audience is at the very least interested in. When reviews and interviews are published regarding a winning or selected film, the festival can help spread the buzz.  Film festivals grant the opportunity to present film content which unveils general interest topics which are very relevant in today’s charged climate of animosity, such as climate change, racial, sexual prejudice and social injustices which enriches art and culture. Although, face to face networking has been abolished this year due to the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, a film festival these days serves as a viable vital virtual platform to feature cinematic content and to receive instant engagement as well as constructive feedback which can lead to an industry theatrical distribution deal. Film festivals are also a significant platform for discovering new young talent which is so important for the future of cinema. These days, we are all confined to the auspices of home—film festivals play an even greater role in screening experimental films, films on the periphery, and art-house films by not shunning cutting-edge filmmakers who have a great deal to present via images. Discovering talented filmmakers of the future aids in alleviating the saturated virtual film market and widens the nonconformist perspective by giving access to unconventional filmmakers searching for a venue for strong mind -altering content.

What were the challenges you faced during production? How long did the shooting stage take? Can you give some advice to young filmmakers as to what things to do and what things to avoid when making a film?

I would have to say that the most challenging film I had worked on was Used and Borrowed Time. We were shooting on a very tight budget. We were obliged to shoot in the dead of winter with snowfalls and raging whiplashing winds. Our post-production Estonian team was riddled with the dilemma of working during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic where the entire world was paralyzed by looming death, an economic crisis and a medical calamity which taxed healthcare systems to the maximum and altered the lives of each member of society on a multi-faceted level. This film was a labor of love during the time of cholera called Covid. Often, we would be on the set/location for ten to fourteen hours. The shooting schedule was intense and emotionally as well as physically straining. Also, in the open wintry terrain, the bitter wind created a howling wailing effect which later had to be hushed in post-production by our relentless sound designer, Alex Voronin.  The shooting of the entire film entailed twenty-two days.  We began shooting the film on November 2nd and then waited for the cast to assemble as they were dispersed and engaged in film/theatre projects in different states.  We had culminated shooting the film on January 22, 2020.  I would strongly advise young aspiring filmmakers to work from storyboards so that directors know exactly which shots they wish to take on certain days—storyboarding also aids in effective post-production editing and helps layout the storyline clearly.  I would heed the advice of many directors who leave ample time to rehearse with their actors since that eliminates any misunderstandings on the set and the director wastes less time—taking the desired shot right away.  Most importantly, do scout out your locations with your director of photography. Scoping out the area before the shoot gives the director and the cinematographer a sense of comfort and security in knowing the surroundings well. I was caught shooting in an open area where planes flew across the skies every three minutes, rendering it nearly impossible to take long scenes, heavy-laden with dialogue and make them work without retaking the shots about one hundred times and trying the patience of the crew and of the talent.  It is also imperative to remember to take the time to speak to each cast member about their characters idiosyncrasies—their hopes, their aspirations, their yearnings and their hauntings.  Character development is essential as characters drive the plot and the theme forward. The characters in Used and Borrowed Time are the essence of the story.  So, the director must take time to sit with each actor and table talk the script.  Allow your actors to first grasp and then grip the story comprehensively and holistically so that they can imbue the tale with their own flair and flavor.  This is how a story comes to life on the screen.  Always make certain that your cast and crew are well fed and amply rested—otherwise performance will lag as will creativity.

Tell us about the risks of making a feature film.  What financial or technical obstacles can stand in the way of making a feature film? 

Committing to the uncertain fickle task of filmmaking is similar to opening up a restaurant in an unpopular area with an unconventional flamboyant chef who likes to take chances with cuisine. Fundamentally, I am an experimental filmmaker and for artists working on the periphery making a film is a huge risk. Cost/benefit analysis hardly enters the room without busting the door down whence making an independent film.  The filmmaker takes a risk of never actually making a return of profit—never being successful—never seeing the film roll on the silver screen.  I take these risks because it is a calling. I still count on my fingers and I cannot understand the simple principles of science—yet my vernacular and view of the world lends itself to the medium of film and if I can impart a meaningful snowflake upon the landscape of motion-pictures; the dream that I had to be a filmmaker as a young émigré, has indeed come to fruition.  There is a specialty sector of the independent representation business which was once dominated by Robert Altman, Gus Van Sant, Richard Linklater, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Alan Rudolph, and Wayne Wang.  Films such as Used and Borrowed Time, connect first and foremost with avant-garde and with various international art-house traditions, which is why such films are a tough sell.  Given the changes in the realms of financing, production and distribution in our contemporary film market, it is no surprise that exhibitors and backers are not staunch supporters of the indie business where there are more misses than there are real hits or sparkling cinematic jewels. Notice that the list of filmmakers working in that specific independent realm did not include a single female director and that is not to say, by any measure, that there was a bare absence of female talent in the movie industry.  The real problem is that the film industry has never fully accepted female directors as strong vocal/visual leaders in that arena—not wholeheartedly and with open arms. Long surpassed have those days when Pulp Fiction represented some cathartic statement. The immense financial, critical, and popular success of this edgy film signaled the assertion of independent cinema not a cry for reality television which seems to permeate the cinematic landscape these days, bastardizing this profession. Independent cinema was once most closely linked to the grind house movement rather than the art house—with a pinch of fairytale quality.  A film like Pulp Fiction finessed its prime appeal on the cinematic tastes of generation X, which defines my generation.  Today, there are few specialty film companies left to promote independent work or to subsidize larger scale visually demanding productions such as Used and Borrowed Time, which was literally carried as a production on the backs of a few dedicated domestic and international backers who still believe in uncompromising statements fashioned in the whimsical world of art. Technical obstacles stand in the way of making a feature film for the simple reason that a solitary filmmaker never has enough funding to attain the exact film equipment which the director wishes to utilize to convey the message to the audience and so one settles for the mediocre yet feasible choices to abide by the guidelines and confines of the funding party unless the filmmaker is that one of a kind lucky bastard who has money to invest in one’s own project and hence can be his or her own master of ceremonies, which is seldom ever the case in the realm of indie film.  That presents an obstacle in itself since sacrifices must be made, trimmings must be achieved and the craft of making a film may very well suffer significantly as an orphan child does in the arms of negligent foster care.

Your film uses special effects quite cleverly. Was it challenging to use special effects? Do you recommend it to young filmmakers?

My Estonian Post-Production Team, Revel Film Studios, and our editor in chief, Sergio Voronin, understood precisely in which fashion film could use special effects to efficaciously underscore the horrors of Halloween at an Autumn Fair as well as the effects that speckling yellow/emerald fire-flies would produce to phantasmagorically transport Eva Gold to her horrendous past.  The color grading process naturally took eons but we all worked in tandem and walked the fine line of occasionally introducing larger than life symbolism with the personification of wild animals, rodents and reptiles in order to create a fantastical sense of an alternate universe such as the author Mikhail Bulgakov had achieved in his surreal social commentary masterpiece, “Master and Margarita.” Visual special effects are hard to contend with.  Optical effects such as using multiple exposure, mattes or the Schüfftan process or in post-production using an optical printer have been overcome by CGI which has come to the forefront of special effects technologies.  Now, filmmakers have greater control and we can achieve a myriad of special effects safely and convincingly, and as technology improves, filmmakers are able to use special effects at lower costs.  Many mechanical effects and optical techniques have been superseded by CGI. But I still remain a fan of films such as Sunrise by the great F.W. Murnau, where special effects were used with a sense of lyricism driving with force the theme of “love conquers all,” without much concentration on the visual effects themselves and more on highlighting the memorable tender moments between the lost husband who expatiates for his desire to murder his wife and his wife’s insatiable longing to fully forgive her husband for his human folly of falling for a manipulative sex driven city girl and commit a felonious act.   

What are you currently working on? What is your next project?

At New York University, I had a professor who had taught a class on Vladimir Nabokov and the students were assigned to read practically each of his novels.  I was a young lady who was touched by the story of Mashenka which in my opinion served as a prelude to Nabokov’s infamous banned novel Lolita.  In Mashenka, a young man, recuperates from typhoid fever, clenched in the clutches of boredom and thus conjures up his ideal love—a girl whom he actually meets a month later. Mashenka is the love of his life. Nabokov describes the lass: “a girl with chestnut scythe in a black bow, burning eyes, a swath face and a rolling carted voice.” Once the protagonist, Ganin, catches a glimpse of this girl, he is instantly smitten with her much like the lewd character of Humbert Humbert was possessed and consumed by Lolita’s underage visage and aura.  Mashenka and Lolita are primary examples of young girls who are victims of solipsism. The two young girls exist only in the sole minds of Ganin and Humbert Humbert as they appear as clip-on identities and not as real youthful ladies imbued with distinct individual characteristics. In a sense, these unfortunate girls are victims of a contrived imagination. I am currently engaged in writing a screenplay revolving around Lolita’s perspective regarding Humbert Humbert in which I depict her every reaction to his haughty sexual advances towards such a young girl.  I believe that as a woman I am equipped to ascertain and portray Lolita’s version of Humbert Humbert’s infatuation with a twelve-year old Dolores Haze and to express Lolita’s vision of this rather perverse seduction of a pubescent girl. While the term “Lolita” has been sadly assimilated into our popular culture as a description of a young girl who is “precociously seduced….sans the wicked connotations of victimization,” I aim to prove on the contrary (drawing from a similarly situated experience) that Dolores Haze is indeed a victim and not a seductress, at least not a conscience one due to her obvious inexperience, fickle pre-teen posture, youth and fleeting innocence which is prone to serve as sensual prey of worldly educated men like Humbert Humbert. I feel that a film based on Lolita’s response to Humbert Humbert’s uncomfortable physical and emotional advances may be timely in the era of meaningful social change movements seeking female empowerment while holding guilty men accountable for their despicable acts against women, such as the #metoo movement demonstrates. I would also very much like to shoot an adaptation of my play, which premiered at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre, entitled, “The Blacklist,” which is a fun political satire about an afterlife party hosted by the Grim Reaper with a comedic streak.

https://www.fullshotcinemag.com/used-and-borrowed-time

Screenwriter/Playwright/Theatre and Film Director, Dr. Sophia Romma is the screenwriter and producer of the Garnet Grand Prix Award-Winning international art-house motion-picture, Poor Liza, starring Emmy Award-Winning and three-time Golden Globe winning actor, Ben Gazzara and Obie, two-time Emmy and Academy Award-Winning actress, Lee Grant. Poor Liza, directed by the émigré cult director of Liquid Sky, won honorable mention for best original drama phantasma at the Cairo Film Festival, took second prize for revival of surrealism and mysticism in film, won first prize at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival for the Bunuel Film Series Tribute and was awarded the Garnet Grand Prix Bracelet from the St. Petersburg Literature in Film Festival, which is equivalent to receiving the coveted Oscar.

Tell us about your background and when did you decided to become a filmmaker?

I arrived on American shores as a six-year-old child and had witnessed my mother face the gruesome challenging fate brought on by immigration, the dislocation of the émigré soul and the eventual rather heart-wrenching assimilation which is the fate of the émigré who stands obliged to blend into a society that is not often welcoming and in fact quite frankly unapologetically judgmental of differing cultures and customs. I am a child of the Cold War and having fled Soviet Russia due to religious and ethnic persecution, as most fledging immigrants; I found immense and infinite escapism in fantasy with the unfolding of slow seductively intricate and sublime images on the screen at the very moment that I had set foot in the Film Form in Bohemian Greenwich Village, New York.  I was captivated and enthralled by the sheer elegance of these mystical alluring 24 frames per second captured for an eternity on celluloid and mesmerized by that sin in soft focus unraveled by the motion-pictures. Film, in my humble opinion, is a creative medium in which much like crooning the blues or playing jazz notes, the soul of humanity is exposed frame by frame before the lens of the human eye. Hence, one is immersed in that cinematic thrilling whirlpool as the human condition in unveiled, hopefully resonating with a global multitude. I cannot righteously admit to instantaneously deciding to become a filmmaker like Poof! Rather, I decided to write for film, to be a screenwriter which is a special beast, and to paint in stark images, employing descriptive words to sing the songs of life, light, death, pain, pathos, drama, love, lust and the eternal suffering of the human condition by depicting lives spun in tales via the craft of film. The first film I had seen at the Film Forum was a Knife in the Water by Roman Polanski.  It was anything but a film shot taking into account an impressionable youth’s sensibility. However, this uncanny psychological thriller was a wet and wild drama and being so young it had ignited my spirit to explore that delicate volatile dynamic between intense intimate uncomfortable spaces occupied by gripping spirits entangled in the septic verse of the vespers encroaching upon solipsistic minds. Since the epistemological position reveals that solipsism entails that knowledge of any aspect of life outside of one’s own mind is a grave uncertainty—I have felt the longing desire to explore the internal and external world of the mind which cannot be truly known and which does not really exist outside of the mind of the beholder.  I wanted to make films so that I could probe into the epistemic theories of truth. In portraying verisimilitude—I attempt to treat film as a lyrical composition which is an excursion into the principles of truth-like-ness. After all, cinema often mirrors our lives to the point of precise excruciation thrust upon us by the very act of living which is an artform in itself. 

Films that inspired you to become a filmmaker/actor/screenwriter?

The cinema of the former Czechoslovakia, as well as the current Czech Republic and Slovakia, is indisputably some of the most richly visual cinema ever made in the history of the motion-picture industry. I was definitely inspired by masterpieces such as The Shop on Main Street, Pacho, the Brigand of Hybe, The Feather Fairy, Let the Princess Stay with Us, Closely Watched Trains, Ragtime, Man on the Moon, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I have also been greatly inspired by Au Hasard De Balthazar, The Nun (1966), The Diary of a Chambermaid, Summer of Sam, Mean Streets, The Piano, Agnes of God, Fanny and Alexander, Virgin Spring, Cries and Whispers, When Harry Met Sally, Cleo from 5 to 7, The Bicycle Thieves, Pierrot Le Fou, and Pickpocket, merely to name a few masterpieces of cinematic integrity wrapped in coils of fantasy.  I would be remiss if I failed to mention the films of Martin Scorsese in particular, as he taught film at my Alma Mater, Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. I am fan of his films, Casino and Goodfellas. I also greatly admire Spike Lee’s films, especially Jungle Fever, Crooklyn and Malcolm X.  I have been immeasurably impressed by the films of Ingmar Bergman such as the ingenious Persona, Wild Strawberries, and The Seventh Seal.   This is most definitely not an exhaustive list of films that have egged me on to become a filmmaker and a screenwriter. I fawn over Andrei Tarkovsky’ metaphysically dark films such as Mirror and Stalker.  I cannot fail to mention Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant films such as Throne of Blood, Drunken Angel and Stray Dog.  Mr. Kurosawa innovatively utilized the Axial Cut and the Cut on Motion shots, which I admire. In terms of acting, I like to appear in cameo roles, preferably in black and white as I am not terribly photogenic and the camera simply does not love me. However, acting in my own films, is challenging and somewhat cryptic.  I appear as the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock did, in some phantom scene as a backdrop so that the audience may acknowledge and hence emphatically exclaim at some point in time: “Look, there’s the director, Sophia Romma!” 

Who is your biggest influence? 

Robert Bresson. Robert Bresson is the epitome of ecclesiastical cinema bordering on a manic adherence to the concept of God’s existence and the toll that human suffering takes on those who expatiate for their earthly sins. As one of my other film icons stated about the cinematic craft of Mr. Bresson; I too feel as does the artful ground-breaking Jean-Luc Goddard: “Bresson is the French Cinema, as Fyodor Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.” Bresson’s films are imbued with the presence of Deity underscoring a baffling mysticism and a celestial lyricism. Hence for me, Bresson is the essence of film as he skillfully mines the touchstones of humanity and reaches the epicenter of the heart and soul of a singular cinematic frame elevating the medium to a cathartic opera before a weeping in sync audience. I also deeply admire Otto Preminger who directed more than thirty-five feature films in a five-decade career after leaving the theatre, simply because I hail from Off-Broadway and Off-off Broadway where I had commenced by writing and directing career.  I am a fan of Mr. Preminger’s film noire mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel.  I found his film, Anatomy of A Murder simply brilliant, especially for those who had graduated from Law School, as I have. I found his movie, Advice and Consent, an American political drama, to be most moving. 

What were some of the challenges you had to face in making your films?

I would have to say that the most challenging film I had worked on was my most recent labor of love, Used and Borrowed Time. We were shooting on a very tight budget. We were obliged to shoot in the dead of winter with snowfalls and raging whiplashing winds. Our post-production Estonian team was riddled with the dilemma of working during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic where the entire world was paralyzed by looming death, an economic crisis and a medical calamity which taxed healthcare systems to the maximum and altered the lives of each member of society on a multi-faceted level. This film was indeed a labor of love during the time of cholera called Covid. I found my film, Poor Liza, to be quite torturous in shooting as well, since it was the first film to be shot on location with breathtaking scenes in the center of the Red Square in Moscow (back in 1998), in the former Soviet Union, and our producers had to obtain special permission from the Kremlin to shoot those scenes by Saint Basil’s Cathedral, which was no small feat, obviously. Furthermore, my esteemed actor, the Academy Award Nominee, Ben Gazzara, an icon in Hollywood, had indulged in a bit too much vodka since it was frigid and in shooting one of our main scenes in which Mr. Gazzara was lifted sky high against a blue screen with some markers, engaged in the act of a flying narrator named Karamzin, Ben kept hollering at the crew as he was hoisted: “Be careful of my balls, they are precious!” The rest of the cast, including the fabulously talented Lee Grant, burst out in boisterous laughter and had some great fun, however the filming was riddled with chaos from military incursions to curfew impositions. We were all so thrilled to return to the United States when the shooting of the film had culminated that we cried tears of pure joy. 

Do you have a favorite genre to work in? Why is it your favorite?

I like to work in the genre of sentimentalism, allegorical symbolism, mystic fantasy, surrealism, absurdism, and expressionism. I am a steadfast disciple of the La Nouvelle Vague, German Expressionism and Italian Neo-Realism.  The Golden Age of Italian Cinema has insidiously inspired me in that oldies but goodies mannerism with stories set amongst the poor and the working class, filmed on location, often employing the talents of non-professional actors to bring forth that authentic quality shamelessly portraying the concept of our tormented human nature while by the same token our propensity of unspeakable atrocities as people against others who are less fortunate. Themes of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice, and desperation are all too familiar to me as an émigré and as the daughter of refugees. However, in order for the audience to swallow the harsh pills of reality; I attempt to add the water of baptisms so that universally speaking—unbearable reality is laced with the hope of surrealism, escapism and a false sense of spiritual heroism—a recipe for a tolerable yet engaging cinematic experience without having to wallow in the pain of others to the extent of desiring the death of one’s own persona in the face of human misery without the prospects of certain redemption and resurrection. German Expressionism entices my abstract sense as a filmmaker. Film ought to express itself in shadowy, enigmatic landscapes of mystery to convey nightmares of the heart, longings of the passionate and the obsessions of the haunted screen where actors play out the lives of their living counterparts—those who actually watch films reveal their own social circumstances behind veiled scrims as the camera roams wild through decrepit purple stocking slums, evoking images of pimps smoking cigars, femme fatales swinging off monkey bars and brute deceptive cads playing poker in the dingy cobblestoned alleyways. I admire the French New Wave genre and those respective directors for their unconventional cinematic language which broke the barriers of French Cinema. Revered directors such as Claude Chabral, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut were my greatest influences in film. I also work with repetitive dialogue, jump cuts and time lapse to hammer in the auteur’s distinctive and discriminate point of view and to deliver the plot in a staccato manner. Low budget, location shot films, free style editing, loosely constructed narratives, spontaneity and non-politicized cinema has fascinated me from the onset of my film career.  I accept the dilemma of taking unpopular stances but shun away from appearing as a stooge dictating on the edge of a soapbox, perched at the pinnacle of pretentious pompousness. Cinema is art and art should not preach—it should move and shake, capture and overtake, consume and exhume. I do not mean to sound crass but as corpses may be exhumed from the ground so may stale emotional states that have long been put to rest.  Film allows for the blooming of intense sentiments so that a holocaust of lost souls can be reclaimed in the form of embers from flickering motion-pictures.  

What’s your all-time favorite movie and why?

Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is perhaps the greatest film of all time.  I take a keen and a sort of depraved pleasure in watching this film’s unique cynicism burgeon on film and overtake the most unsuspecting and naïve spectators with its prophetic commentary on war, the burden which nations carry in a race towards unattainable exceptionalism while nursing the psychosis of competitive warfare among ambitious actor states willing to subdue and crush the temperament of their own citizens solely to rule the world stage. This dark comedy satirizes the Cold War panic of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. This film is a comedic tragic triumph over the perversity and dementia of power-tripping. Kubrick’s sardonic heavy-handed direction is no subtle attempt to socially and astutely comment on the absurdity of space wars and on the detrimental pain that war creates, scarring and disfiguring future generations both mentally and physically. 

If you could work with anyone in the world, who would that person be?

I have admired Spike Lee for decades. He was also my professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The screenplay for Mr. Lee’s iconic film, Do the Right Thing, was my screenwriting bible. It was a perfectly tailored film in which Brooklyn, New York’s simmering racist culture was brutally exposed on a hot summer day. I admire filmmakers who set the tone—the ambiance of a socially significant motion-picture while steadfastly keeping to a plastered season and are exquisitely able to spin a lamentable tale within the confines of the stifling beaming sun, ferreting out those rat racists of Brooklyn equipped with undertones of such sadness brought to the forefront in bitter sweet notes of comedy. Mr. Lee is a master of this fading genre. 

Tell us something most people don't know about you.

Most people who do not know me well, or those who attain merely a faint glimpse of my character do not have an inkling that I suffer from debilitating anxiety.  I have battled this fear of apprehension regarding the future, excessive nervousness and worry about not being accepted by my colleagues or my friends and family ever since I began to express this hounding angst as a child of ten, whence I commenced upon my poetical escapades and decided to become a poet or a lady of verse. I presume that those who come across this interview now know that I am an anxious being, so it is no longer my secret. 

The one person who has truly believed in you throughout your career? 

My mother is the one person who truly believed in my work throughout my career by supporting me through the harshest of financial times and the trying meanderings of an artist’s youthful follies to succeed in this most challenging industry riddled with hurdles at each turn.  My Mama and might I add, my grandmother, have held this burning torch of faith in my artistry and in my cinematic craft which I so deeply appreciate.  I am a mother myself and have come to the realization of how pivotal it is to support your children’s dreams whatever they may be. While my aunt always called me touched in the head and mad, my mother and her mother in turn, recognized that I had a spark of talent. I admire my Mama so much for believing in me and supporting me in my sincere and unfaltering desire to make movies. I would never have had the courage to make Used and Borrowed Time, had it not been for the support of my beloved Mama. 

What was the most important lesson you had to learn as a filmmaker? 

Films are the most sacred form of artistic expression, but a director must not make a film out of revenge or hatred. I learned that filmmaking is an art of love and not an art of the battle-axe.  While I do not necessary believe that a director ought to shoot a film as a therapeutic experience—making a film, recounting a sad true story or conceptualizing a fairytale means that you must be married to your craft and that translates to never having to settle for mediocrity or insincerity but to shoot the film that you wish to make while keeping your artistic integrity in tact through the passion and admiration that you possess for this unique craft. In other words, directors warrant a committed relationship to their film projects, to their cast, crew and to their producers—there can be no mistresses involved, that’s sacrilegious to the art form and desecrates a film project from its conception with a dishonest approach. For an actor, I believe it is most important to believe in your character’s existence and to fancy yourself as that character. If the actor strays from the poignancy of the specific character trait that he or she must portray—the truth in that specific portrayal is lost and that is a grievance to the nature of the actor.  For screenwriters, I feel that the profession calls for a preponderance of stamina in creative but structured writing—it’s a craft and one that beckons a blue print outline with a definitive theme, plot points and solid drama.  The screenwriter needs discipline—if a writer procrastinates it may consume the project and send the artist into a drinking stupor—at least that is my personal experience with that particular inadequacy. 

Is it harder to get started or to keep going? What was the particular thing that you had to conquer to do either?

I firmly believe that it is much harder to begin.  There you are, staring at a series of blank pages, mortified to commence the creative journey. You are not certain where the ebbing paths shall take you and where your artistic choices will lead.  The debris—thick with heaviness way upon your soul and the obstacles mount against your hide with each blank hill of a page.  In order to conquer that debilitating fear in the pursuit of screenwriting, I have to clear my mind, find the inspiration and let my fingers do the talking.  Then my heart will pour itself onto those taunting pages and I find that I can sustain this fighting feeling for as long as I need to finish the screenplay. With filmmaking, I feel that once on set, the sustenance of continuing to shoot for lengthy periods of time in different turbulent locations is fatiguing and so one must call upon the muses to harness stamina in order to keep inspired and motivated. A director is the master of his own ship but there are pirates on deck to watch out for lest they hijack your entire film production and you are left with a grip devoid of an artist’s dream. 

What keeps you motivated? 

Writing and shooting a compelling story keeps me motivated. Memories from the heart are like souvenirs to share with the audience. Film graces you with the favor to hold an audience captive while unleashing a story of a human struggle, a tender desire, or a wanton ill which shackles and stifles society.  If I can move a soul to ponder over humanity’s plight; that serves as my sincere motivation.  Naturally, I aim to entertain, above all, but I do not wish to reel an audience hook line and sinker with frivolity. There exists a plethora of mundane works of art that circulate in the sphere of cinema and that’s a pity because it diminishes the beauty of capturing that sacred art form on celluloid or during these progressive days, on digital. I wish to tantalize a spectator’s mind or to touch the soul of a viewer through submerging the audience in Dante’s Inferno and seeing if the audience can forgive me for the gratification of presenting life as I see that life, entangled in the webs of its virtue or entrapped by the horrors of its vice. 

How has your style evolved? 

My passion for film shall never dissipate and while I have been writing plays for the theatre for nearly twenty-five years, when I commenced my writing career, I dabbled with themes of sentimentalism, deep romanticism and drama phantasma for the screen.  After attending Fordham University Law School and majoring in International Human Rights Law, I have seen my writing gain a socially conscious purview. I seek to make movies which call for social change, an adherence to the rule of law, and a plea for equality and tolerance. I am distinctly aware of the injustices, racism, bigotry and biases which dog our contemporary society and it is my goal to shed light on these inequities while refraining from preaching like a charlatan, pastor upon a soap box. I am not a politician nor a talk show host. I want to show and recount the truth which we face as marginalized folk, as those working on the periphery of time and slaving against the grain of what is expected, even if it is ruthless in cinematic presentation. Even if a spectator cannot fathom swallowing their meatloaf after what I have shown on the silver screen—and if that’s the effect of my work, I’ve moved a spirit to quit eating and start thinking with a cause for change settled in the crevices of the mind. My favorite author, James Baldwin, did not shy away from dragging the will and shrieking sound of defiance to the forefront to take swords up against discrimination and intolerance. My style has evolved to face the music but not to simply listen to the sound but to hear the words echoing in the halls of the heart, screaming for societal change and equitable justice. 

On set, the most important thing is:

On set, the most important aspect is to be cool, calm and collected. As a director, I seek to unleash effective convincing performances from my cast. I must be endearing and leisurely while at the same time I must be ready to crack a certain whip so that momentum is not lost. A director should be versatile, sensitive yet bold, a commander in chief but not a fool and eager to listen to suggestions—open to ideas. I believe a director should learn from the cast and crew by using soft words when needed, gentle persuasion where expected and brash domineering force when required, especially when seeking a momentous performance or when imprinting for cinematic posterity that once in a life time Gone with the Wind Love Scene shot atop of the emerald hill overlooking a field of chaos whist still awaiting paradise to march in and salvage that day for night shot on the set, before the director shouts: “Cut!” 

The project(s) you’re most proud of…

I am most profoundly proud of my film, Poor Liza, which starred Academy Award Nominee Ben Gazzara and Academy Award Winner, Lee Grant.  Although the sentimental tale revolves around a young peasant girl who is romanced and then deplorably abandoned by a callous nobleman in the 18th Century—it is a lamentable tale of how class struggles within the constraints of society conscript a true act of love to utter and insufferable futility. I was very proud that this film had won the Grand Prix Garnet Bracelet for Best Motion-Picture at the Gatchina Literature and Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia and that I was able to gift my beloved mother with this coveted film award at such an early stage in my film career. I am also significantly proud of my three stage-plays which were produced while I was under contract at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York.  “Love in the Eyes of Hope, Dies Last,” was an auto-biographical play which dealt with the hardships of immigration and assimilation.  “Coyote, Take Me There!” was a folkloric biblical musical which also revolved around the dislocation of refugees from Eastern Europe and the impoverished wise asylum seekers from Mexico and Latin American countries. “Defenses of Prague” was an Obie Nominated mystical play in verse which was about the legendary Golem of Prague coming face to face with the Roma of Prague set against the backdrop of the brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviets in 1968. 

What are your short term and long-term career goals? 

To be perfectly candid, I do not hold long-term career goals. My late sister who passed at the tender age of eighteen and to whom I have dedicated practically all of my work in the theatre, had written in her diary that she was going to eat the most delicious Granny Smith apple on Saturday afternoon but she had passed on Friday.  I’ve learned not to make plans lest God holds other plans for me and for those around me. Perhaps God even snickers at my plans so I am resolved to adhere to short term career goals. I would like to make another socially conscious change seeking film within the next two years, should I live so long. It would also be lovely to work with some actors whom I thoroughly admire, such as Adrian Brody and Marisa Tomei. 

 What are your upcoming projects?

At New York University, I had a professor who had taught a class on Vladimir Nabokov and the students were assigned to read practically each of his novels.  I was a young lady who was touched by the story of Mashenka which in my opinion served as a prelude to Nabokov’s infamous banned novel Lolita.  In Mashenka, a young man, recuperates from typhoid fever, clenched in the clutches of boredom and thus conjures up his ideal love—a girl whom he actually meets a month later. Mashenka is the love of his life. Nabokov describes the lass: “a girl with chestnut scythe in a black bow, burning eyes, a swath face and a rolling carted voice.” Once the protagonist, Ganin, catches a glimpse of this girl, he is instantly smitten with her much like the lewd character of Humbert Humbert was possessed and consumed by Lolita’s underage visage and licentious aura.  Mashenka and Lolita are primary examples of young girls who are victims of solipsism. The two young girls exist only in the sole minds of Ganin and Humbert Humbert as they appear as clip-on identities and not as real youthful ladies imbued with distinct individual characteristics. In a sense, these unfortunate girls are victims of a contrived perverse imagination. I am currently engaged in writing a screenplay revolving around Lolita’s perspective regarding Humbert Humbert in which I depict her every reaction to his haughty elicit sexual advances towards such a young girl.  I believe that as a woman I am equipped to ascertain and portray Lolita’s version of Humbert Humbert’s infatuation with a twelve-year old Dolores Haze and to express Lolita’s vision of this rather sick seduction of a pubescent girl. While the term “Lolita” has been sadly assimilated into our popular culture as a description of a young girl who is “precociously seduced….sans the wicked connotations of victimization,” I aim to prove on the contrary (drawing from a similarly situated experience) that Dolores Haze is indeed a victim and not a seductress, at least not a conscience one due to her obvious inexperience, fickle pre-teen posture, youth and fleeting innocence which is prone to serve as sensual prey of worldly educated men like Humbert Humbert. I feel that a film based on Lolita’s response to Humbert Humbert’s despicable physical and emotional advances may be timely in the era of meaningful social change movements seeking female empowerment while holding guilty men accountable for their horrendous acts against women, such as the #metoo movement demonstrates. I would also very much like to shoot an adaptation of my play, which premiered at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre, entitled, “The Blacklist,” which is a quirky yet prophetically poignant political satire about an afterlife party hosted by the Grim Reaper during our flamboyantly tumultuous, politically divisive times.  

https://florencefilmawards.com/interviews2#9fd33bb9-f4a6-44e3-a25c-e5836ac967ff

1. Your film Used and Borrowed Time won 2nd Best Feature Film/Best Experimental Film and Honorable Mention for Director of a Feature Film. How was the film inspired?

In an effort to shed light on an all too horrid and common practice of shameful racism and segregation in the 1960’s, and amid the unjust enactment of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement—I embarked upon the journey of documenting an incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama at the peak of protests against segregation laws and inequity. This horrific historical incident that sparked deep-rooted interest and spurred me to research this momentous moment in time was recounted by the dignified educated son of slaves who worked as a chef on the Amtrak train which had transported my grandmother and I, once upon my past, to Alabama from New York, during Halloween. This humble chef extraordinaire had cooked up the most delectable rosemary baked aromatic lamb chops and collard green, and while the train tooted onwards with full steam ahead, he poured his heart out about this true bitter tale of a tender ill-fated love. This lashing psychological docu-drama welled tears in my eyes as the tale captured the narrative of the chef’s young cousin, a civil rights leader and poetic soul who had expired way before his time at the hands of a clan of heartless white supremacists. The unspeakable crimes committed against an innocent Jewish blind girl and her African American soul mate is a tragedy which unfolds in my experimental psychological drama phantasma. I pray that this film shall serve as a reminder of the evil that can descend upon innocent spirits seeking to change our wounded world for the better and as a beacon of hope in the plight for human rights, gender parity, and equality as we stand united—one nation under the unified multi-colored and multi-national blanket of universal hope: guided by a forgiving understanding Lord who made Us walk upon this earth as One.

2. Tell us about your background and when did you decide to become a filmmaker?

I arrived on American shores as a six-year old child and had witnessed my mother face the gruesome challenging fate brought on by immigration, the dislocation of the émigré soul and the eventual rather heart-wrenching assimilation which is the fate of the émigré who stands obliged to blend into a society that is not often welcoming and in fact quite frankly unapologetically judgmental of differing cultures and customs. I am a child of the Cold War and having fled Soviet Russia due to religious and ethnic persecution, as most fledging immigrants, I found immense and infinite escapism in fantasy with the unfolding of slow seductively intricate and sublime images on the screen at the very moment that I had set foot in the Film Form in Bohemian Greenwich Village, New York. I was captivated and enthralled by the sheer elegance of these mystical alluring images on celluloid and mesmerized by that sin in soft focus unraveled by the motion-pictures. Film, in my humble opinion, is a creative medium in which much like crooning the blues or playing jazz notes, the soul of humanity is exposed frame by frame before the lens of the human eye. Hence, one is immersed in that cinematic thrilling whirlpool as the human condition in unveiled, hopefully resonating with a global multitude. I cannot righteously admit to instantaneously deciding to become a filmmaker like Poof! Rather, I decided to write for film and paint in images and in descriptive words the songs of life, light, death, pain, pathos, drama, love, lust and the eternal suffering of the human condition by depicting lives and tales via the craft of film. The first film I had seen at the Film Forum was a Knife in the Water by Roman Polanski. It was anything but a film shot taking into account an impressionable youth’s sensibility. However, this uncanny psychological thriller was a wet and wild drama and being so young it had ignited my spirit to explore the that delicate volatile dynamic between intense intimate uncomfortable spaces occupied by gripping spirits entangled in the septic drama of the vespers encroaching upon solipsistic minds. Since the epistemological position reveals that solipsism entails that knowledge of any aspect of life outside of one’s own mind is a grave uncertainty—I have felt the longing desire to explore the internal and external world of the mind which cannot be truly known and which does not really exist outside of the mind of the beholder. I wanted to make films so that I could probe into the epistemic theories of truth. In portraying verisimilitude—I attempt to treat film as a lyrical composition which is an excursion into the principles of truth-like-ness. After all, cinema often mirrors our lives to the point of precise excruciation thrust upon us by the very act of living which is an artform in itself.

3. Films that inspired you to become a filmmaker?

The cinema of the former Czechoslovakia, as well as the current Czech Republic and Slovakia, is indisputably some of the most richly visual cinema ever made in the history of the motion-picture industry. I was definitely inspired by masterpieces such as The Shop on Main Street, Pacho, the Brigand of Hybe, The Feather Fairy, Let the Princess Stay with Us, Closely Watched Trains, Ragtime, Man on the Moon, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I have also been greatly inspired by Au Hasard De Balthazar, The Nun (1966), The Diary of a Chambermaid, Summer of Sam, Mean Streets, The Piano, Agnes of God, Fanny and Alexander, Virgin Spring and Cries and Whispers, When Harry Met Sally, Cleo from 5 to 7, The Bicycle Thieves, Pierrot Le Fou, and Pickpocket, merely to name a few masterpieces of cinematic integrity. This is most definitely not an exhaustive list of films that have egged me on to become a filmmaker. 

4. Who is your biggest influence?

Robert Bresson. Robert Bresson is the epitome of ecclesiastical cinema bordering on a manic adherence to the concept of God’s existence and the toll that human suffering takes on those who expatiate for their earthly sins. As one of my other film icons stated about the cinematic craft of Mr. Bresson, I too feel as does the masterful Jean-Luc Goddard: “Bresson is the French Cinema, as Fyodor Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.” Bresson’s films are imbued with the presence of Deity underscoring a baffling mysticism and a celestial lyricism. Hence for me, Bresson is the essence of film as he skillfully mines the touchstones of humanity and reaches the epicenter of the heart and soul of a singular cinematic frame elevating the medium to a cathartic opera before a weeping in sync audience. 

5. Do you have a favorite genre to work in? Why is it your favorite?

I like to work in the genre of sentimentalism, allegorical symbolism, mystic fantasy, surrealism, absurdism, and expressionism. I am a steadfast disciple of the La Nouvelle Vague, German Expressionism and Italian Neo-Realism. The Golden Age of Italian Cinema has insidiously inspired me in a Golden Age mannerism with stories set amongst the poor and the working class, filmed on location, often employing the talents of non-professional actors to bring forth that authentic quality qualifying the concept of our suffering human nature and our propensity of unspeakable atrocities as people. Themes of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice, and desperation are all too familiar to me as an émigré and the daughter of refugees. However, in order for the audience to swallow the harsh pills of reality; I attempt to add the water of baptisms so that universally speaking—unbearable reality is laced with the hope of surrealism, escapism and a false sense of spiritual heroism—a recipe for a tolerable yet engaging cinematic experience without having to wallow in the pain of others to the extent of desiring the death of one’s own persona in the face of human misery without the prospects of certain redemption and resurrection. German Expressionism entices my abstract sense as a filmmaker. Film ought to express itself in shadowy, enigmatic landscapes of mystery to convey nightmares of the heart, longings of the passionate and the obsessions of the haunted screen where actors play out the lives of their living counterparts—those who actually watch films reveal their own social circumstances behind veiled scrims as the camera roams wild through decrepit purple stocking slums, evoking images of pimps smoking cigars, femme fatales swinging off monkey bars and brute deceptive cads playing poker in the dingy cobblestoned alleyways. I admire the French New Wave genre and those respective directors for their groundbreaking cinematic language which broke the barriers of French Cinema. Revered directors such as Claude Chabral, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut were my greatest influences in film. I also work with repetitive dialogue, jump cuts and time lapse to hammer in the auteur’s distinctive and discriminate point of view and to deliver the plot in a staccato manner. Low budget, location shot films, free style editing, loosely constructed narratives, spontaneity and non-politicized cinema has fascinated me from the onset of my film career. I like the challenge of taking stances but not appearing as a stooge dictating on the edge of a soapbox, perched at the pinnacle of pretentious pompousness. Cinema is art and art should not preach—it should move and shake, capture and overtake, consume and exhume. I do not mean to sound crass but as corpses may be exhumed from the ground so may stale emotional states that have long been put to rest. Film allows for the blooming of intense sentiments so that a holocaust of lost souls can be reclaimed in the form of flickering motion-pictures.

6. What’s your all-time favorite movie and why?

Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove is perhaps the greatest film of all time. I take a keen and a sort of depraved pleasure in watching this film’s unique cynicism burgeon on film and overtake the most unsuspecting and naïve spectators with its prophetic commentary on war, the burden which nations carry in a race towards unattainable exceptionalism while nursing the psychosis of competitive warfare among ambitious actor states willing to subdue and crush the temperament of their own citizens solely to rule the world stage. This dark comedy satirizes the Cold War panic of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. This film is a comedic tragic triumph over the perversity and dementia of power-tripping. Kubrick’s sardonic heavy-handed direction is no subtle attempt to socially and astutely comment on the absurdity of space wars and on the detrimental pain that war creates, scarring future generations both mentally and physically. 

7. If you could work with anyone in the world, who would that person be?

I have admired Spike Lee for a very long time. He was also my professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The screenplay for Mr. Lee’s iconic film, Do the Right Thing, was my screenwriting bible. It was a perfectly tailored film in which Brooklyn, New York’s simmering racist culture was brutally exposed on a hot summer day. I admire filmmakers who set the tone of a socially significant motion-picture to a plastered season and spin a lamentable tale within the confines of the stifling beaming sun beaming and ferreting out those rat racists of Brooklyn. 

8. The one person who has truly believed in you throughout your career? 

My mother is the one person who truly believed in my work throughout my career by supporting me through the harshest of financial times and the trying meanderings of an artist’s youthful follies to succeed in this most challenging industry riddled with hurdles at each turn. My Mama has held this burning torch of faith in my artistry and in my cinematic craft which I so deeply appreciate. I am a mother myself and have come to the realization of how pivotal it is to support your children’s dreams whatever they may be. While my aunt always called me touched in the head and mad, my mother recognized that I had a spark of talent. I admire my Mama so much for believing in me and supporting me in my sincere and unfaltering desire to make movies.

9. What was the most important lesson you had to learn as a filmmaker?

Films are the most sacred form of artistic expression, but a director must not make a film out of revenge or hatred. I learned that filmmaking is an art of love and not an art of the battle-axe. While I do not necessary believe that a director ought to shoot a film as a therapeutic experience, making a film, recounting a sad true story or conceptualizing a fairytale means that you must be true to your craft and that translates to never having to settle for mediocrity or insincerity but to shoot the film that you wish to make while keeping your artistic integrity in tact through the love that you possess for the craft. 

10. What keeps you motivated?

Writing and shooting a compelling story keeps me motivated. Memories from the heart are like souvenirs to share with the audience. Film graces you with the favor to hold an audience captive while unleashing a story of a human struggle, a tender desire, or a wanton ill which plagues society. If I can move a soul to ponder over humanity’s plight; that serves in turn as my sincere motivation. Naturally, I aim to entertain, above all, but I do not wish to reel an audience hook line and sinker with frivolity. There exists a plethora of mundane works of art that circulate in the sphere of film and that’s a pity because it diminishes the beauty of capturing that sacred art form on celluloid or these days, on digital. I wish to tantalize a spectator’s mind or to touch the soul of a viewer through submerging the audience in Dante’s Inferno and seeing if the audience can forgive me for the gratification of presenting life as I see that life in its virtue or entrapped by its vice. 

11. How has your style evolved?

My passion for film shall never dissipate and while I have been writing plays for the theatre for nearly twenty-five years, when I commenced my writing career, I dabbled with themes of sentimentalism, deep romanticism and drama phantasma for the screen. After attending Fordham University Law School and majoring in International Human Rights Law, I have seen my writing gain a socially conscious purview. I seek to make movies which call for social change, an adherence to the rule of law, and a plea for equality and tolerance. I am distinctly aware of the injustices, racism, bigotry and biases which plague our contemporary society and it is my goal to shed light on these inequities while refraining from preaching upon a soap box. I am not a politician nor a talk show host. I want to show the truth which we face as marginalized folk, as those working on the periphery of time and slaving against the grain of what is expected, even if it is ruthless in presentation. My favorite author, James Baldwin, did not shy away from dragging the will and sound of defiance to the forefront to take swords up against discrimination and intolerance. My style has evolved to face the music but not to simply listen to the sound but to hear the words beckoning for societal change and equitable justice

12. What is the most important thing on set?

On set, the most important thing is to be cool, calm and collected. As a director, I seek to unleash effective convincing performances from my cast. I must be endearing and leisurely while at the same time I must be ready to crack a certain whip so that momentum is not lost. A director should be versatile, sensitive yet bold, a commander of the ship but not a fool. I believe a director should learn from the cast and crew by using soft words when needed, gentle persuasion where expected and brash domineering force when required, especially when seeking a momentous performance or when capturing that once in a life time Gone With the Wind Love Scene shot atop of the hill overlooking a field of chaos whist still awaiting paradise to march in and salvage that day for night shot on the set, before the director shouts “Cut!”

13. The project(s) you’re most proud of…

I am most profoundly proud of my film, Poor Liza, which starred Academy Award Nominee Ben Gazzara and Academy Award Winner, Lee Grant. Although the sentimental tale revolves around a young peasant girl who is romanced and then abandoned by a callous nobleman in the 18th Century—it is a sad tale of how class struggles withing the constraints of society conscript a true act of love to utter and insufferable futility. I was very proud that this film had won the Grand Prix Garnet Bracelet for Best Motion-Picture at the Gatchina Literature and Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia and that I was able to gift my beloved mother with this coveted film award at such an early stage in my film career. I am also significantly proud of my three stage-plays which were produced while I was under contract at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York. “Love in the Eyes of Hope, Dies Last,” was an auto-biographical play which dealt with the hardships of immigration and assimilation. “Coyote, Take Me There!” was a folkloric biblical musical which also revolved around the dislocation of refugees from Eastern Europe and the tortured asylum seekers from Mexico and Latin American countries. “Defenses of Prague” was an Obie Nominated mystical play in verse which was about the legendary Golem of Prague coming face to face with the Roma of Prague set against the backdrop of the deplorable invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviets in 1968. 

14. What were the most challenging project you worked on and why?

I would have to say that the most challenging film I had worked on was Used and Borrowed Time. We were shooting on a very tight budget. We were obliged to shoot in the dead of winter with snowfalls and raging whiplashing winds. Our post-production Estonian team was riddled with the dilemma of working during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic where the entire world was paralyzed by looming death, an economic crisis and a medical calamity which taxed healthcare systems to the maximum and altered the lives of each member of society on a multi-faceted level. This film was a labor of love during the time of cholera called Covid.

15. What are your short term and long-term career goals?

To be perfectly candid, I do not hold long-term career goals. My late sister who passed at the tender age of eighteen and to whom I have dedicated practically all of my work in the theatre, had written in her diary that she was going to eat the most delicious Granny Smith apple on Saturday afternoon but she had passed on Friday. I’ve learned not to make plans lest God holds other plans for me and for those around me. Perhaps God even snickers at my plans so I am resolved to adhere to short term career goals. I would like to make another socially conscious change seeking film within the next two years, should I live so long.

16. What are your upcoming projects?

At New York University, I had a professor who had taught a class on Vladimir Nabokov and the students were assigned to read practically each of his novels. I was a young lady who was touched by the story of Mashenka which in my opinion served as a prelude to Nabokov’s infamous banned novel Lolita. In Mashenka, a young man, recuperates from typhoid fever, clenched in the clutches of boredom and thus conjures up his ideal love—a girl whom he actually meets a month later. Mashenka is the love of his life. Nabokov describes the lass: “a girl with chestnut scythe in a black bow, burning eyes, a swath face and a rolling carted voice.” Once the protagonist, Ganin, catches a glimpse of this girl, he is instantly smitten with her much like the lewd character of Humbert Humbert was possessed and consumed by Lolita’s underage visage and aura. Mashenka and Lolita are primary examples of young girls who are victims of solipsism. The two young girls exist only in the sole minds of Ganin and Humbert Humbert as they appear as clip-on identities and not as real youthful ladies imbued with distinct individual characteristics. In a sense, these unfortunate girls are victims of a contrived imagination. I am currently engaged in writing a screenplay revolving around Lolita’s perspective regarding Humbert Humbert in which I depict her every reaction to his haughty sexual advances towards such a young girl. I believe that as a woman I am equipped to ascertain and portray Lolita’s version of Humbert Humbert’s infatuation with a twelve-year old Dolores Haze and to express Lolita’s vision of this rather perverse seduction of a pubescent girl. While the term “Lolita” has been sadly assimilated into our popular culture as a description of a young girl who is “precociously seduced….sans the wicked connotations of victimization,” I aim to prove on the contrary (drawing from a similarly situated experience) that Dolores Haze is indeed a victim and not a seductress, at least not a conscience one due to her obvious inexperience, fickle pre-teen posture, youth and fleeting innocence which is prone to serve as sensual prey of worldly educated men like Humbert Humbert. I feel that a film based on Lolita’s response to Humbert Humbert’s uncomfortable physical and emotional advances may be timely in the era of meaningful social change movements seeking female empowerment while holding guilty men accountable for their despicable acts against women, such as the #metoo movement demonstrates. I would also very much like to shoot an adaptation of my play, which premiered at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre, entitled, “The Blacklist,” which is a fun political satire about an afterlife party hosted by the Grim Reaper. 

 SOPHIA ROMMA, PH.D., ESQ.  (DIRECTOR'S BIOGRAPHY)

 CINEMA

Screenwriter/Playwright/Theatre and Film Director, Dr. Sophia Romma is the screenwriter and producer of the Garnet Grand Prix Award-Winning international art-house motion-picture, Poor Liza, starring Emmy Award-Winning and three-time Golden Globe winning actor, Ben Gazzara and Obie, two-time Emmy and Academy Award-Winning actress, Lee Grant. Poor Liza, directed by the émigré cult director of Liquid Sky, won honorable mention for best original drama phantasma at the Cairo Film Festival, took second prize for revival of surrealism and mysticism in film, won first prize at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival for the Bunuel Film Series Tribute and was awarded the Garnet Grand Prix Bracelet from the St. Petersburg Literature in Film Festival, which is equivalent to receiving the coveted Oscar. Sophia Romma penned the screenplays and directed three films for New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing Program: So Happy Together, Pornography! Pornography! Pornography! and Commercial America in the 90's. She wrote the screenplay for the documentary: Call Girls for Hire: The Sex Slave Trade Epidemic in Eastern Europe for which she was honored with Moscow's Social Awareness Documentary Film Award at the Moscow Women Make Documentaries Film Festival. Romma also wrote and directed a series of cutting-edge short films for the New York Film Academy: Underneath Her Make-Up (unveiling the stigmatized and hounded LGBTQ community in India) and The Frozen Zone (shedding light on the supernatural healing powers of ancient shamanism and its infinite wisdom).

 THEATRE AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

Dr. Romma is the author of fourteen stage-plays, produced Off-Off Broadway/Off-Broadway, three of which were produced at La MaMa E.T.C. Her play, "The Past Is Still Ahead" which she wrote and directed, ran at the Cherry Lane Theatre, at the Midtown International Film Festival and toured Montauk, London, Moscow, Montreal and Seoul. The Negro Ensemble Company presented "The Mire" at the Cherry Lane Theatre, heralded by the New York Times for "grinding down stubborn cultural borders with love's symphony." Romma's "Cabaret Émigré" was lauded by The Villager for: "Delving deep into the dislocated émigré's soul in erotic quantum verse." Romma graduated from Tisch School of the Arts, earning her B.F.A. from the Dramatic Writing Program and her M.F.A. from the Dramatic Writing and Cinema Studies), holds a Ph.D. in Philology from Maxim Gorky Literature Institute and a Masters of Law from Fordham University School of Law. She directed plays by Leslie Lee, August Wilson and Austin Phillips at the Schomburg Center, taught Playwriting and Screenwriting at the Frederick Douglas Creative Art Center, and The Art of Absurdist Theatre Directing at the Mayakovsky Academic Art Theatre. She also taught The Art of Narrative Screenwriting and Film History at the New York Film Academy and Cinematography at VGIK (the legendary Russian State University of Cinematography). Romma served as Literary Manager of the Negro Ensemble Company for over five years. She is the Producing Artistic Director of Garden of the Avant-Garde Film and Theatrical Foundation, dedicated to achieving gender parity in theatre and fostering peace through performance art. Currently she is the Human Rights Foreign Policy/Extremism Fellow at Human Rights First.

www.gardenoftheavantgarde.com  

Social Media Profile Links

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IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13222420/ 

Film has its own language and Dr. Sophia Romma can speak that language in spades. This film is a true experiment with phantasma coupled with neo-realism. USED AND BORROWED TIME appears to depict magic realism with the wave of a wand that leaves its mark upon the history of cinema. The narrative of the film is based upon a true historical event of a white supremacist family and its unleashing of perverse racism upon an innocent African American youth and his blind Jewish girlfriend, set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement. The film tells a universal truth. With an excellent script woven with fantasy, the film clearly portrays the fairy tale American life of the times in harsh juxtaposition with the menace of bigotry and prejudice which looms back in the day, and returns with gusto only now bearing a chameleon face in the 21st Century. Simply wonderful representation of the story through superb acting further establishes the film as uniquely experimental yet heart-wrenching. The editing of the film strictly follows the script without any meandering, keeping with pace of the director's vision. Frame by frame presentation of the thoughts and actions of the miserable Woods Clan keeps our eyes attuned in horror to the racist tradition of the mad redneck family and proves Sophia Romma's extensive research in writing the screenplay. The substantive film content which moves the audience to tears pays homage to the French New Wave and to Italian Neo-realism in its adherence to remarking upon the lives of those scraping by, hanging on to the thin threads of society's periphery. It is a must see movie for those who admire the language of film and appropriately appreciate experimental film.

This film stretches the word "experimental" in the pantheon of experimental film. This means that some experimental techniques have been used by the film-maker to allow her film to steer far away from tradition Hollywood films. It can proudly be said that Sophia has been able to complete this mission successfully. The storyline revolves around the racist American attitude which burgeoned among whites and their far right clans in the Sixties when the Civil Rights Movement was at its apogee. An African American civil rights advocate and poet is the counterpoint in Romma's film. The film intelligently unmasks how a love-a tender relationship between a Jewish girl and a black American young boy is jeopardized and how the supremacist clan annihilated the youth from this corporeal world. This blatant ruthless injustice serves as the theme of the film. For added flavor and further prophetic commentary, Sophia shows that similar racism and prejudicial events are mysteriously blanketing contemporary earth and this is shown in her drama phantasma, which is a novel feature of her film. The shifting shadowy frames of the camera shots create a claustrophobia as Roman Polanski had achieved in his film, Repulsion. This is an incredibly bold style of filming as it causes the spectators to concentrate on the actions and words of the characters entrapped by a sense of debilitating shacked sadism. In essence, the director makes it clear that time has been used and time has been borrowed and that this is the backbone of the thought process adopted by Sophia Romma and it works on the silvers screen.

USED AND BORROWED TIME is a film that fashions its own language in rude jarring verse which is seldom found today. Steering clear from the traditional, technological advances of contemporary film, Romma stimulates verbally, visually and shuns the essence of modern impoverished cinema. The director shows that the strongest language is indeed the language of the cinema. The costumes are brilliant as is the set design and true to the epoch. The intricate dialogue always presents a cinematic language in full bloom so that nothing more needs to be explained linguistically as we are shocked but not apprehended. The concept of this particular film language used by Sophia Romma was first seen in the New Wave Movement in cinema in the European continent but Romma ups the ante to a million degrees. The characters are fully fleshed out and represent the potent message of social change in a compact way. Naturally, the film has not merely morphed into a bland narrative of the history of the civil rights movement, nor is it a mimicry in the documentation of the segregation in the South during that tragic time in American history. On the contrary, the distinct film language, its call for justice and social change serves as a serious commentary on the ills that still plague American society to this day. This film should be taught in film schools as a lesson for creative filmmakers who are not afraid to take risks. Dr. Sophia Romma's in depth historical research has been successful and so has her film.

Of course, a film is largely dependent on the editing process. In viewing Used and Borrowed Time, the editing has never failed to align with the director's ideas and motifs which is a compliment to Sergio Voronin and Reval Film Studio (Estonia). Well-paced editing had led to maintaining the thought process of the director and has made the film more attractive and illustrative to watch. The cinematography is precise and fair to the storyline which artistically captures the reality of the oppressive environment. The usage of the camera has been measured, well metered devoid of the the pompous extravaganza of contemporary films. The actors in their respective roles such as Cam Kornman (Older Eva Gold), Emily Seibert (Younger Eva Gold), Alice Bahlke (Kitty O'Neill/Lorna Woods) and Grant Morenz (Wade Woods) are delicate neurotic characters and manifest the motto of the theme in subtle yet moving performances. The usage of low-key light is measured and apropos to create the disunity and chaos in the film. USED AND BORROWED TIME is a film that prevails with such a a harmonious collective crew and cast who worked competently and artistically under the control of the director. Such audacious film work can only be compared with the legendary films which had also followed in the footsteps paved by the New Wave. The sound design is also complimentary and Alex Voronin does a superb job. Apart from the technological side, the art inherent in this unprecedented film provides a surreal yet truly unique experience in cinema. The script has translated into the world of film by finding a new niche to present an artistic point of view with a clear prescient message.

In today’s world, film has concentrated its target on making money. However, USED AND BORROWED TIME obviously stays away from the gloss and the glamour. The basic pertinent thought expressed in verse in this film, the particular amalgamation of drama, the blending of fantasy with history, the infusing of this drama phantasma with neo-realism has no forefathers. What Sophia Romma has contributed to the world of cinema with her film is the commencement of another chapter in the history of cinema. Sophia and her film will create a revolution in the world of cinematic thinking.

USED AND BORROWED TIME

Used and Borrowed Time is a 2020 film about an aging actress who is magically returned to the year 1965 in segregated Alabama. Once there she is forced to relive the horrible events created by a violent and merciless white supremacist family due to her love affair with a well spoken African American civil rights advocate, which ends badly.

Used and Borrowed Time is directed and written by Dr. Sophia Romma. Romma is a playwright, screenwriter, and theater & film director, as well as a producing artistic director of Garden of the Avant-Garde Productions and a member of the New York City Bar Association, working in human rights.

Romma was also the screenwriter and producer for the international arthouse film Poor Liza, which won a Garnet Grand Prix award. The film starred Emmy and Golden Globe winner Ben Gazzara and Emmy & Academy award winning actress Lee Grant. Poor Liza also won numerous other awards including Best Original Drama at the Cairo Film Festival and first place at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival.

On top of these honors Romma has written and directed three films for New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing Program. These films include So Happy Together, Pornography! Pornogrpahy! Pornography!, and Commercial America in the 90s. She has also written the screenplay for Call Girls for Hire: The Sex Slave Trade Epidemic in Eastern Europe, another award winning film.

Outside of film Sophia Romma has penned fourteen different stage plays which have been produced either off-Broadway or “off, off Broadway”. Some of her more notable play titles include The Past is Still Ahead and The Mire.

Used and Borrowed Time director’s statement

“In an effort to shed light on an all too horrid and common practice of shameful racism and segregation in the 1960s, during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement – I embarked upon the journey of documenting an incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama during the conflagration of segregation.

“This horrific historical incident that sparked deep-rooted interest and spurred me to research this momentous moment in time was recounted by the dignified educated son of slaves who worked as a chef on the Amtrak train which had transported my grandmother and I to Alabama from New York during Halloween, once upon decades ago. The chef extraordinaire had cooked up the most delectable rosemary baked aromatic lamb chops and collard greens, as he poured his heart out about this true sad tale.

“This deeply psychological documentary drama captures the narrative of the chef’s young cousin, a civil rights leader and poetic soul who had expired way before his time at the hands of a clan of heartless white supremacists. The unspeakable crimes committed against an innocent blind girl and her African American soul mate is a tragedy which unfolds in my drama phantasma.

“I hope that this film shall serve as a reminder of the evil that can descend upon innocent spirits seeking to change our wounded world for the better and as a beacon in the plight for human rights, parity and equality as one nation and one people harbored under the unified multi-colored and multi-national blanket of universal hope, guided by a forgiving, understanding Lord who made Us as One.”

‘Used and Borrowed Time’: A time travel movie directed by Sophia Romma

Experienced author and director Sophia Romma told us a very contemporary and touching story in her experimental feature film USED AND BORROWED TIME.

The story is about Eva Gold’s life  (present and past) and about her journey in a racist reality that persecuted her whole life, especially her love story with an African American guy when she was a teenager, in the segregation laws period.

We meet Eva in a market in Birmingham, Alabama the day after Halloween night. She moves around the vendors’ stands, she meets Gypsy and Romani fortune tellers (Sophia Romma portrays the Gypsy one), an amazing orchestra, candies, masked people, animals. Everything reminds of a fairy tale world. But then, as soon as she approaches one of the vendors, reality comes back, showing a still racist world. Some against Chinese economic growth, some still against Jews (Eva Gold is a blind, Jew actress).

During her conversion with a bakery vendor at the market,  Eva gets projected to her past, where she suddenly finds herself between a kissing couple: on the left, Eva herself, younger, and on the right her boyfriend, a poetic African American civil rights advocate. So we meet here the young Eva Gold, that will be uncharged to show us her past.

The antagonist character is assigned to an unprincipled white suprematist family Woods, awfully racist. Romma doesn’t fear shocking the audience and without polishing any word of the dialogues she delivers a strongly harsh reality full of racism and hate.

The movie is very long (3 hours and 36 minutes) and it’s divided into two parts. The second one looks faster, maybe because of the plot that gets more and more interesting until it reaches a climax that really gets the audience shocked. Especially if you stop and think that what Romma is showing is nothing but something that not only really happened (the movie is inspired by true events indeed) but it’s something that it’s still happening in our current world, under our noses.

Great soundtrack and original music by the orchestra led by Queen Ilise and Gabriel Lawson (the last song I Found You is really impressive). Great costume and set designers. Good acting, especially Emily Seibert and Cam Kornman (young and old Eva Gold), Clas Dunkan (Steadroy), and Grant Morentz (Wade Woods). Congratulations!

https://newyorkmovieawards.com/reviews#4c18462d-ed40-4154-8837-07670cc3d69b