By Ryan Akler-Bishop

Sofia Bohdanowicz’ features centre around Audrey Benac (Deragh Campbell): a fictitious alter-ego and vessel to explore Bohdanowicz’ own family legacies and matrilineages. Her latest and most expensive film Measures for a Funeral opens with a request from Audrey’s dying mother. She asks her daughter to cremate her ashes alongside a three-hundred-year-old familial violin. This grief drama is enveloped in an academic narrative, following Audrey’s research into the Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow—Audrey/Bohdanowicz’ grandfather’s tutor—, and her subsequent staging of the long lost “Opus 28:” a concerto composed for Parlow. The film’s an exploration of the relationship between history and aesthetics, a critical fabulation born from the limitations of the archive, and a deeply personal metatext. As the finale in her Audrey cycle, the movie’s both a grand culmination of Bohdanowicz’ past decade of filmmaking and a bold leap forward.

In our conversation, we discuss the cruelty of Toronto architecture, how archival research informs Bohdanowicz’s filmmaking practice, her cinema as a personal art journal, tensions between structured and improvisational shoots, the influence of samurai movies, and her forthcoming projects.

A lot of your movies center around characters’ responses to works of art. There’s the Casa Loma medieval show in Never Eat Alone, “Veslemøy’s Song” in the movie of the same name, or the “Opus 28″ concerto in Measures for a Funeral. I’m wondering if you’ve interrogated this habit of making films that function as art journals.

I like the way you’re framing that. I don’t think anyone’s pointed out to me that a lot of these movies are about musings on various forms of art: music, painting, bad 1950s television. It’s something I was doing very naturally in Never Eat Alone and MS Slavic 7. I collaborated with a filmmaker named Brenda Longfellow, who was also my thesis supervisor at York University. She taught me field notes: when you go into a space, you start to take notes of what’s happening around you, like the sounds in the room. In a [Georges] Perec-ian way, it makes great fodder for a film. That practice was already part of my filmmaking, but she illuminated and underlined it. As a child, I wrote down all the works I saw in a museum and tried to reflect on them. Even as a young kid, my priority when I traveled with my parents was to go to art galleries. We went to Miami, and I remember making my father drive me out to the contemporary gallery while my mother took my brother to Disneyland.

A lot of your films are similarly structured around the process of research. What appeals to you about research as a narrative structure?

Research really excites me. I love working with film as a medium to animate its different facets. I did an interview with Mark Asch in Filmmaker Magazine. He really identified with the film as an academic and intellectual: waking up in someone’s bed in a foreign country and not being able to use their shower, figuring out how to make coffee. Through the field note process, I was naturally making a portrait of the life of an academic. Deragh and I have always been interested in the thoughts, movements, and gestures that go on to formulate the final product. In MS Slavic 7, Audrey says a line about, “the effort of everything to become language.” It’s a line Deragh came up with. A symphony performance is the end result of many small little gestures.

The research process felt important to incorporate into the movie. Mischa (the violin teacher played by Maxim Gaudette)’s dialogue came from a violin teacher I met in Saint Petersburg. When I was researching the film, I spent time with him asking him about his teaching process. He learned from [the Hungarian-American violinist] Leopold Auer, who was Kathleen Parlow’s teacher. So much of what Mischa says and how he describes teaching comes from Leopold. We were really trying to be true to Parlow’s life. And, when you put that on paper, maybe it comes out as a living, moving thesis.

I read that Filmmaker Magazine interview you mentioned. It’s funny: at one point in the conversation, they misprint your name as “Parlow” instead of “Bohdanowicz.” I assumed it was a typo, but it’s an apt one since the movie’s all about these foils and parallels that rattle in the brain and erode identities.

That was funny! I didn’t think they thought it was very funny, but I did! I’m all for those coincidental errors.

In Measures, Audrey functions as a vehicle to explore your own experiences with Parlow’s archive. She’s changed a lot as a character from when we first met her in Never Eat Alone; she’s much more closed-off by grief and much less cordial. How did you and Deragh discuss the character’s evolution?

She took about a month in Rome to prepare for the character. It’s a difficult role. Much like Juliette Binoche’s character in Three Colors: Blue (1993), she’s someone who processes grief by isolating herself, by burning bridges, and by trying to find herself in music. Blue was a huge influence for us. [The Greek filmmaker] Athina Tsangari pointed out to us that the violin on Audrey’s back was like a sword, and she suggested we look at samurai films. Deragh watched some Lone Wolf and Cub (1972-1974) films and Lady Snowblood (1973). She studied the mannerisms of Meiko Kaji. If you compare their stares and how they move, it’s strikingly similar. Another difference in this film is how Audrey’s dealing with this revenge quest. Her mother’s cursed her, demanded she burn the violin’s ashes with her own. Audrey becomes an instrument of retribution, rewriting her mother’s wrongs. In a samurai movie, that vengeful figure is an Asura: a demon. That’s a difficult character to play: someone who’s grieving, someone who’s detaching themself, someone like Aurore Clément in Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978)—wandering around, full of anger. Measures is an odyssey where Audrey’s always meeting new people. Deragh struggled with how cast members were constantly cycling in and out of the movie. She needed to be consistent, she couldn’t play off other actors’ energy. Deragh’s improvisatory style, which you see in her collaborations with Kazik Radwanski, was not a factor at play here; we had a screenplay. But she had an openness to working with a variety of people and letting energies sift in and out.

I’ve read about how you had Deragh spy on other actors’ conversations. Why did the act of spying seem important to your grasp of the character?

The end of the film asks questions: Was Audrey really there? Is she a ghost? Is she watching her own mother play the concerto? If Audrey didn’t exist, could she have had the career she wanted? Is the whole film the output of her research? I wanted to present Audrey as someone who’s sneaking around to collect information, so I planted a memory in Deragh’s brain of spying to incorporate into the character. We were shooting in so many locations every day; it was so crazy to keep up with all the energy that production required of us. Implanting a little exercise beforehand gave Deragh something to hold onto when we shot.

There’s a scene where Audrey arrives at an old church in the middle of the night. She has a visceral encounter where she screams and nearly smashes the violin against the stone walls. It’s the most intense moment I’ve seen in one of your movies – both for its macabre atmosphere and the extremity of Deragh’s performance. What are your memories of shooting that scene?

It was a lot. It was cold, there was a rainstorm, there were flood warnings. We were at the end of production with an even smaller crew than in the UK. Our cinematographer Nikolay [Michaylov] only had one crew member to light that church. That church, the Gol Stave Church, is over a thousand years old. It has these really important pillars with art that’s a combination of Christian and Pagan traditions, designed to ward off evil spirits. The poles’ symbolism felt right because it’s a scene where the mother’s evil spirit is being exercised. I also wanted to film there because it’s constructed from very old wood. In another scene, Mischa and Audrey have an exchange about the different violins of Stradivari and Guarneri, and how Guarneri was a rough-and-tumble luthier who burned up in flames, whereas Stradivari was more tidy and died on a workbench. I thought the church was the perfect place to continue this idea of wooden objects and history. In many ways, Audrey’s like one of the violins or a church pillar: the history plays onto her persona. The shoot was coming to an end and the combination of everything Deragh had inside of her, since it was such a controlled performance, manifested in this raw emotional outpouring. Interesting fact: the violin tapped the pole by accident. Our museum supervisor wasn’t the most thrilled about it. We were almost kicked out!

That’s the take that’s actually in the movie, right?

Yes, it’s in the movie! We exaggerated the impact with foley. Stefana Fratila did our incredible sound effect editing. There’s this amazing cacophony of sounds while Audrey’s slamming the violin; it’s like a voice saying, “I’m sick of you! And I’m sick of that! Fuck this! Fuck that!” That crescendo was a tour-de-force from all departments.

You mentioned how Deragh’s performance with you differs from the improvisational work she does with Kazik Radwanski. Was that moment in the church very choreographed?

Deragh had an idea of how to perform it. Pasolini’s Medea (1969) was a big influence for her when she was crafting these moments of grieving. She’s an actor who really wants to react; she doesn’t like fake work. I didn’t didn’t want to belabor her in the space too much; it needed to feel like a new space with a sense of discovery. I was a stand-in for her as Nikolay was lighting spaces so she wouldn’t feel overly comfortable in the scene.

It’s funny being a stand-in for an actor who’s playing an avatar of you. That’s many layers of metatextuality there.

I haven’t told anyone this yet but some of the cutaways to hands in the archive in the beginning of the film are my hands. It was funny being in the archive six months after we’d shot that scene, wearing the same red sweater.

I know traditionally you’ve edited your movies alone, though Deragh helped you in the cutting room for MS Slavic 7. What was your collaboration with [Measures co-editor] Pablo Alvarez-Mesa like?

Oh, he’s amazing. We worked together for six months. He’s not just a colleague but also a dear friend. Since this was a more scripted narrative film, I wanted to work with someone who has an open, experimental approach. He helped preserve the initial vision of the movie; he understood what it was right away. Have you seen his film The Soldier’s Lagoon?

I want to, I’ve heard it’s great. It’s playing here in Montreal at RIDM next month.

It’s such an incredible film. He uses the tactility of the Bolex to explore this specific Colombian time and space. We were working a lot with space and time in Measures for a Funeral. In so many ways, he was a perfect match. But something I learned working collaboratively is that there’s the editing process, but there’s also the psychological lifting: presenting the film, going through rough cut screenings, sharing it with different collaborators. You need someone who can sift through all the noise. He was an incredible, objective set of eyes on the film. He was always motivated and saw the film with wonder. When I’d come back from a shoot, I was so tired and unsure how to use the footage. As a filmmaker, you’re always distracted by the things outside the frame. Because Pablo has such a naturally enthusiastic gaze, he helped me reframe the movie.

Did your collaboration reorient the movie you initially had in your head?

It’s interesting; I didn’t have a movie in my head. It’s not that I don’t have goals and ideas, but I try not to have an iron-clad vision. If I come to set and what I want isn’t feasible, I can’t move forward with the actual gifts in front of me. Measures also needed to be reanimated by many minds. For example, Jess Hart was filling Audrey’s notebooks with actual words: thoughts on Kathleen and Leopold Auer. She was trying to make those spaces so alive and personal. I wanted to build a world, but I needed to give the talented people around me latitude to create. There’s nothing wrong with having a succinct vision; it’s important to be aware of what you want. But if you trust your collaborators, you can trust them to put their artistic voice on the project.

What specific details are already plotted out when you shoot a scene and which are looser?

With this film little was left to chance. There wasn’t much that could be left up to the world or elements that be. In other films I shot with Deragh, we’d show up, see what was there, and work with it in a playful and curious way. But this film was very planned; it was very tight, we hardly made it. If there was one day we missed, there’d be a scene missing. There was no margin for error because the budget and schedule were extremely tight.

Did you enjoy shooting on a larger budget with a stricter shooting structure? Or do you prefer the smaller, looser movies you’ve made in the past?

I like both! I could go small or big. I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy working with a bigger crew, but I really loved it. Right now, I’m working on a smaller documentary, and I’m going back to my Bolex roots which will feel really good after this project. But it’s nice to expand and contract.

I wanted to talk about locations. The movie’s divided into four cities. Each has a distinct aura. What were the logistical and aesthetic differences you found shooting in each city?

London is very dark and very expensive. Even shooting on the London tube was hard. But for authenticity’s sake, to make us feel like we’re traveling with Audrey, it was really important to incorporate scenes like that. But logistically, London’s a busy city. Shooting in that apartment was tough since it was so small. We had to lug the equipment into every corner whenever we moved the camera so it wouldn’t be in the frame. In Oslo, it’s also very expensive to shoot. But the difference is it’s easy to shoot on the street. In London, you need an expensive permit. But some parts of those European scenes were actually shot in Toronto. We had to make sure the eyelines matched between the footages shot in different cities. It was a game of Tetris. Nikolay and I used Artemis — the lensing app — to plan how the different shots connected. That very intricate form of planning is what allowed us to survive the film.

There are a lot of location shots in the movie. I’d use the term establishing shots, but they do much more than just establish the space of an action. How did you choose the specific architectures or landscapes for the film?

It was all about icons. At the beginning of the film in Toronto, I chose iconic spaces that were sentimental to me. But I was also thinking about landmarks we do or don’t value. I asked: what does it take to be a landmark within a certain country or domain? So we have Ontario Place, which is about to be torn down to become a spa. It’s really sad. Ontario Place is also the subject of Ali Weinstein’s wonderful new film Your Tomorrow. We have the statue of Glenn Gould who comes back in the film later on. We have Michael Snow’s sculpture [“The Audience”] at the Skydome. That sculpture seems integral to Toronto and was a statue I grew up seeing. It was a landmark that made me feel placed in the city. But with the ROM architecture, I wanted to talk about how this older version of Toronto is disappearing. Architecturally, Toronto has a habit of ripping down older buildings. That happened in the Guild Park in the Scarborough Bluffs. They tore a bank on Yonge St. and plopped pieces and roman columns from it at this park in Scarborough. It’s kind of funny, but seeing the steel and glass monstrosity [of the ROM] is beautiful and horrifying at the same time. I love Toronto; I think it’s an interesting, layered city. But I wanted to capture its conflicting energies.

In the first minutes of the movie, with its rotating camerawork and intense score, Toronto’s introduced with an evil aura. It definitely spoke to my years in the city.

Oh, you think Toronto’s evil? [Laughs.]

I’m not without fondness, but yes.

It’s transforming into a very interesting space. It’s so expensive. Post-pandemic, the city’s become a place I don’t really recognize. I feel a bit alienated by it, which I think comes through in the film. But also, we wanted to make it a space that Audrey really wanted to leave. Those tilting shots make it feel like her world is being inverted. When someone imposes a death wish like her mother’s, it really skews how you see the world.

I’ve read that this might be your last Audrey film. Did you feel that way going into the movie or is that something you determined afterwards?

I think I always knew. She accomplishes this incredible feat. All of the research culminates into something fantastic and opulent. Audrey’s explored so many facets of so many sides of my family: both the Benac and Bohdanowicz sides. It’s a nice place to put an end to that character’s journey. It’s a privilege to have had an entire decade to develop that character with Deragh. Maybe she’ll be reprised some day, but I feel like that last shot in the movie is the last moment of this character’s life. After this symphony performance and epic odyssey, I don’t know what else she could accomplish?

Do you see yourself making more movies that spawn from your family history? Or is that also being put to rest alongside Audrey?

No, there are definitely more films coming from my family history. I have a film I’m curious to develop soon in Poland that also stems from my family history. That’s a very different movie than an Audrey movie. It’s going to take some time though.

In a lot of ways, the movie feels like a cumulative film for you. It coalesces around multiple characters who’ve been in your movies and a lot of very different filmmaking styles you’ve explored. It feels like everything you’ve made over the last decade converged into one, but also it moves into different territory.

Making this film was a great experiment. It was a seance in many ways. Yes, it’s a film. But also, there’s such a huge life outside of its frame. We have an object that captures Kathleen Parlow’s essence and aura. It’ll be interesting to see how the next film takes its shape and the process we embark on. I guess any filmmaker will tell you this but: I wish I had more time! Every moment was extremely precious. What I learned on this film was to be as present as possible. That practice will definitely translate into the next one.

Measures for a Funeral
Director: Sofia Bohdanowicz
Cinematography: Nikolay Michaylov
Editing: Pablo Alvarez-Mesa, Mathieu Marano (colourist)
Music: Olivier Alary
Casting: Shakyra Dowling, Anni Spadafora … (casting)
Production Design: Jessica Hart
Costume Design: Mara Zigler
Cast: Kieran Adams, Julia Beyer, Deragh Campbell, Eileen Davies
Canada, 2024, 90 min