UD99 Interview
Eva Breski
This Unfamiliar Place

The Film
This Unfamiliar Place began as a meditation on disaster and memory. After a major earthquake, I returned to a place from my past to find that the heart of the town had been destroyed. It was hard to remember what had been there before. Slowly I began to question my own memories of the life I had lived in that place. Intrigued by this relationship between physical environment and memory, I started investigating the loss, on film and in writing.

Gradually a subtext began to emerge, of my father's experience during World War II, a story I knew very little about. At first it was like a footnote to my story, and I was always on the verge of taking it out, but it refused to go away, and in fact kept growing until it became what the film was about. Strangely the film I made was exactly the film I had imagined, except that the subject was totally different.

Breski's Father
There are still things my father and I do not discuss. I have come to accept this. Maybe that was the greatest revelation. Through the filmmaking process I gained an appreciation of my father's strength. I have come to respect the choices he has made in his life, even those I do not understand. Also I discovered that my father is a major ham. I had envisioned the film with him as the reluctant subject, this being the central conflict of the story. Imagine my surprise in production, when my father, despite his ambivalence about the project, kept insisting, "I want to star!" and offering to stand on his head.

When I finally brought myself to ask my father directly about certain things, like how he had become separated from his family, or where they were living at the time, he answered in such a way that I still never understood clearly what had happened. After days of interviews I found myself no further along than before. Only a few images stood out in relief, like the moment when he saw the Warsaw opera house in flames. He said it was like the end of the world.

Creative Process
For me the most profound lesson of this project has to do with faith in the creative process. This film was a leap into darkness. I didn't know where I was going, I only knew I had never been there before, and I found, to my dismay, that no one else could guide me. I suppose this is true of every project, but I didn't realize that at the time. The first time around every intuitive leap, every extraordinary coincidence seemed miraculous to me. That I blundered through darkness to somehow find my destination seemed so unlikely that I couldn't believe it would ever happen again.

Since that time I have come to realize that these small miracles are part of the process. Random as it may seem, this appears to be my working method, although I could never recommend it to others. It is equal parts thrilling and dreadful, depending on the day.

Upcoming Work
My new film is Last Seen, my first narrative feature. It's a collaboration with Holiday Reinhorn, based on her short story by the same name. A mystical coming-of-age story, the film deals with the mysterious vanishing of a high school volleyball star under bizarre circumstances. It's darkly funny, poignant and very, very strange. We shot in Minnesota, on DV, with no crew and no financing.

I can only describe the production as deranged. Suffice it to say that two of my cameras died on a haunted farm at twilight, and that's only the beginning of the story! Amazingly we got all these great actors, some who later went on to work with David Lynch, others who had previously worked with the Coen Brothers and Peter Weir. The film is in postproduction now and we hope it will soon be playing at a theater near you!

Contact
I hope you enjoy the work. Please feel free to email me with any comments or questions. Or look for me in Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces (July/August issue). For New York viewers, my film 24 Girls will be shown at Anthology Film Archives on August 18th, as part of their New Filmmakers series. 24 Girls is also available through Women Make Movies and This Unfamiliar Place is available through New Day Films. For home video or 16mm prices, or any other information, please contact me.

Thank you for watching!

Eva