Céline Sciamma at UvA
By Amy Rushton | Culture | March 16, 2023
Cover Illustration: Céline Sciamma being interviewed by Parker Burrows and Patricia Pisters in a lecture hall at Oudemanhuispoort, 2023. Andrea Michel / The Amsterdammer
Culture Reporter Amy Rushton shares insights from a Q&A with the visionary, cinematic genius of French director Céline Sciamma held at Oudemanhuispoort.
Oudemanhuispoort rarely sees the kind of crowds who push to get into lecture halls. Certainly not those formed of hundreds of students decked in scarves and woolly hats who willingly fought through cold and wind to be there, as they did on ‘Pakjesavond’, the Dutch celebration. This is the crowd, however, that arrived on Dec. 5 for a talk by Céline Sciamma.
Sciamma, a French director and writer known for works such as Girlhood (2014), Petite Maman (2021), and of course, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), is a rare voice in contemporary cinema. Juggling discussions of female spaces, queer voices and youth with distinct and revolutionary approaches to filmmaking, she is a director like no other. Emerging onto the scene with Water Lillies (2007), a feature of a synchronized swimmer’s feelings for her captain, she swiftly followed its success with two more films — Tomboy (2011) and Girlhood (2014) — which explored growing up whilst navigating marginalized identities. It was Portrait of a Lady on Fire, however, that catapulted her to fame amongst international audiences. A period romance following an eighteenth-century artist and her relationship with the woman she was hired to paint, Portrait of a Lady on Fire resonated deeply amongst queer and female audiences as a life-changing film which threatens the principles of art, muses and the male gaze that so much cinema revolves around. Then, there were the 2020 César Awards. Sciamma lost out on Best Director to Roman Polanski, who had previously been arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year-old. When Sciamma and lead actress Adèle Haenel found themselves on their feet walking out in protest, Haenel with the shout of “Bravo paedophilia,” it seemed to cement Portrait’s role as the front of a quiet revolution in cinema, a revolution which finally allowed women to be seen through their own eyes.
Six months ago, UvA Film Club’s Parker Burrows attended a talk by Sciamma at the Rialto in De Pijp. She had already seen the film they were showing, Sciamma’s debut Water Lillies, and so when Sciamma left the room, she took a chance and followed her. Burrows describes how Sciamma told her she was taking a break from film-making to teach, sharing her directing experience with film schools around Europe, and, without prompting, offered to talk to the UvA Film Club. This was the start of a process that led to Sciamma gracing the halls of Oudmanhuisport in a Q&A hosted by Burrows and Patricia Pisters.
It was a terrifying experience, Burrows recounted, from that moment six months before to the second she woke up on what she describes as “one of the biggest days of [her] life.” By the time of the talk, however, she felt calm. Sciamma, Burrows said, has a way of talking where she’s “very warm and talkative but also very present when she’s listening. She made it easy.” This impression came off well during the talk, as Sciamma shifted effortlessly from fascinating statements about the art of cinema to jokes about Dua Lipa.
The Q&A delved into numerous themes, positioning Sciamma’s work alongside key scenes from film history. Sciamma dissected the popular film trope of a director’s muse and instead provided her own spin on the concept of influence,, discussing film-making as a collaborative process with the audience as the central character. The dialogue offered fresh perspectives on topics Sciamma has spoken about before — the female gaze, equality, a rejection of Hollywood and other mainstream filmmaking approaches, to name a few — but what came across most prominently was an overarching love of film: making it, watching it and passing down its secrets to new generations.
The audience reciprocated this enthusiasm. Many of those in attendance spoke of a deep connection to Sciamma’s work. Burrows shared how she came across Sciamma: like many others, she started with Portrait: “I watched it at the beginning of my last year in high school, just on my laptop, and I loved it. I watched again and showed it to friends, then I saw Petite Maman which I adored; I feel a really personal connection to all her work.” She added: “I encountered it at a time when I was coming to terms with being trans. There’s a lot of looking at girlhood through its margins and feeling slightly outside of it, which really resonated. I feel like I’ve always stumbled across her work exactly when I needed it.” The feeling resonated with others at the talk; it seems unlikely that just any foreign language director would sell out the original sign-up form and draw adoring crowds of film and non-film students alike. Isabelle, a psychology student, said that she was overwhelmingly excited when she found out about the event, stating that Sciamma’s work resonates deeply with her, from the major themes to the tiny yet masterful details. Burrows, too, commented on the draw young people feel towards her work, expressing how “there’s a depiction of youth that’s really fresh. She looks at teenagers and kids as people and it’s really rare to see that kind of empathy in films.”
The Q&A rounded off with a special screening of Sciamma’s new short film, This is How a Child Becomes a Poet. Shot entirely solo and with only a phone camera, the film follows Sciamma as she walks through the house of her friend, the Italian poet Patrizia Cavalli, who died in 2022. The film, moving and deeply personal, is about the connection shared by the two women and the visual language of film as a whole. Sciamma reflected on doing films differently, outside of the confines of the mainstream industry. She spoke instead of building queer archives and distancing herself from Hollywood and the French film industry to create a revolution in cinema. Although not stated explicitly, I’m sure many in the audience were reminded of her walkout at the 2020 Césars and how it spoke to women and queer people carving out their own space in cinema.
Engaging with Sciamma and her work leaves me with the question of what exactly the draw of Sciamma is and why young people flock to her. I haven’t quite managed to uncover it–not in any way I can put words to. The Q&A interaction with Sciamma reminded me of the first time I watched Portrait. It was in terrible resolution, hazy pixels and on an old laptop, but cinema had never felt so beautiful. Immediately the film felt like a safe space, away from the male gaze: a film that wasn’t only about, but was made for queer women. Some viewers describe how they felt they were peeping into a private utopia that they shouldn’t be allowed into. But I never felt like that. The film subverts the very idea of watching and turns it into a collaboration. Sciamma talked of something similar when she spoke of the audience being a part of the film. Revolution doesn’t have to be a big statement; it can be a handful of films that resonate with an audience so deeply that they watch them again and again.
During the talk, Sciamma spoke about generational films; those films which appear at the exact time in life you need them. She reflected on her experience of watching Mulholland Drive, at the perfect age to change her and how she thought about cinema as a whole. Watching the crowd gathering around Sciamma after the talk, there was a sense that for much of the audience, their generational film was one of Sciamma’s.
Amy Rushton is a university student in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
