Eduardo Williams: “My hope is that you can forget about the camera, and just be there with the people”

12 December, 2023

On the morning that I meet Eduardo Williams, one of the brightest stars of contemporary experimental cinema, the clocks have just gone forward to autumn time – after a partial lunar eclipse had clothed the sky in a somewhat surreal, magical atmosphere the night before. The movement of the stars and humanity’s adjustment to them seems a good sign under which to begin our little interview taking place during the Viennale, for there is something about it that mirrors the wonder that is El auge del humano III (The Human Surge III), his second feature, released seven years after his first, which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in the Cineasti del Presente competition – El auge del humano. (In case you’re wondering – yes, there is no Human Suge II… yet?)

And Williams is, indeed, a filmmaker of the present: from the very outset of his career, with Could See a Puma (Pude ver un puma), the Argentine director has engaged in a polemic, yet simultaneously free and shapeshifting fashion with both the potentialities of cinema and the image in the contemporary world, fearlessly innovating their mutual usages and points of contact, as well as the deluge of macro-political and economically precarious circumstances that face modern youth, particularly in countries that are outside of the so-called “first world”. If this sounds like old-fashioned political experimental cinema, rest assured, William’s work is anything but (although it would be foolish to deny its imprint): there is no trace of miserabilism here, and everything of transcendentalism (especially in his approach to nature and geography) – perhaps, the only valid point of comparison would be to the cinema of one Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

We talked to Teddy (as he is nicknamed in cinephile circles) about the tension between realism and surrealism, about how he relates to the idea of “non-cinematographic” images, about breaking stereotypes in representing characters that are not from first-world countries, and how some of his actors were not given visas to attend the world premiere of the film, as well as the process of shooting and editing a film in 360°, amongst other things. El Auge del Humano III was screened in competition at this year’s edition of BIEFF.

Poster of The Human Surge 3.

One of the first things that came to my mind, after seeing the film, was Bazin’s idea regarding “the myth of total cinema”. That is, the expectation of realism that predates the very invention of cinema, which existed deeply within the minds of spectators. And that’s because what I found fascinating throughout your entire film is that you construct a tension between what one could call an absolute form of realism, which is very close to how one experiences life empirically, and what is clearly a very, very surrealist approach to reality. How do you relate these two aspects? Did you consciously work with these tensions?

Eduardo WILLIAMS: Yeah, I’m very conscious, well, very… I mean, ever since I started making films, even with my first short films, I think this is one of the main things I think about, and I try to approach it in different ways. I mean, this is a feeling that I also have in my daily life, you know, regarding realism. But, at the same time, I have this feeling of being doubtful of reality and all that. So I think that a good way to show this, to share this, is through cinema.

In one of my first short films, Pude Ver un Puma (2011), there was this destroyed neighborhood. I thought that the characters would pass through this neighborhood, but without mentioning anything related to that – so this would create this doubtful sense of “Are they seeing this or not? Is it normal for them? Is that why they don’t mention it?” And after that, I always had this idea in mind, in different ways.

In this film, some things are similar to Pude ver un Puma. For example, the reason why I wanted it to start in this neighborhood in Sri Lanka, and the very reason why I went to Sri Lanka: that this neighborhood of rounded houses created this feeling of strangeness. It’s clearly a very strange place if you’re not from there, and it’s also clearly very common if you are from there.  Then I discovered that this shape relates to the tsunami that happened there. And so there were a lot of layers to that, but even if you don’t know anything about it, just the image of that place gives you a feeling of fantasy. And then the way you go through it is very common, and you see people just being there and living, you know.

Then there are many elements in the film. And I really like when the elements that came to the film in a documentary fashion, let’s say, the improvisations or other things like that, are sometimes seen by the spectators as the element of fantasy, or as the surrealistic part. You know what I mean? I think that’s very fun and nice. Of course, one thing is how I work with them, and another thing is how they are seen. Many things came to the film in a documentary way, like the improvisations or people that were just there in the streets, who were not a conscious part of it.

But then… I don’t know, yesterday someone asked me about the fact that people keep on falling, something that happens in many of my other films. And I was thinking, sometimes some scenes seem to be very documentary, and all of a sudden, there is this event that is very dramatic, performative, that is clearly not documentary – because you can realize this is, like, not real fainting, you know? [laughs] Sometimes it’s how the camera moves in the film: it’s weird, or very robotic… You can feel there’s something that takes you out of the sensation of just being there with the people, which sometimes I try to create, even if the image is quite strange.

My hope, or rather, my idea of the film is that sometimes you can just forget about the camera, forget the type of image that you are seeing, and just be there with the people, doing what they are doing or listening to them.

I’m not very sure about the Bazin reference since I’m not very good at references [smiles], but I think there’s a lot of people that, sometimes, think that when things get more strange, they’re more realistic, you know? Or all these things that deform the image, or that simply may be seen as unrealistic, but then, for me, that is more realistic than a normal look, let’s say.

When people talk about the technological part of my films or the relation with technology, I think that this is more present in the way the characters speak, in the way we see them, in the way we hang out together, more than when they speak about Wi-Fi or technology more directly. I always related a lot with online chatting, and how we speak in chat rooms more than how we speak in real life. Or the scenes in which their faces are deformed by the camera, all this, like, being inside the digital world. I think it reflects a lot of my state of mind and that’s a shared thing for many people.

Still from The Human Surge 3.

Since you mentioned the camera, I would like to ask – what piqued your interest towards the 360-degree camera? How did you end up using it? It’s a type of camera that is very easy to manipulate. And so it also allows you a lot of freedom, I believe. At the same time, in your previous films, and particularly in this installation you had earlier this year in the Forum Expanded, which used images from an endoscopy (amongst others), you’re visibly attracted to a way of creating images that are within the bounds of what Hito Steyerl calls the “Poor Image”. 

I don’t know if “poor image” is the way that I would put it – because the word poor is always seen as a very negative thing. But it’s true. And I also feel a lot of rejection for the “rich image” [laughs], you know what I mean? I’m like, “Ugh, please, stop!”. It’s also about all the other things that an image can be. I know that what it means is that, in a sense, these images are seen as poor images, but sometimes it’s very expensive!

In this case, the camera that I used is not a small one. It’s big, shaped like a ball, weighs almost 15 kilos, and has eight lenses. So it’s not the typical, small, 360 camera that I used before, in a short film [a.n.: in Parsi, 2019] that I made on a GoPro with two lenses. This one, we transported it on a backpack that we created, that had a rod that let you place the camera over your head. Probably, it’s still cheaper than, I don’t know, a very good cinema camera, like an Arri Alexa or a Red. It’s also very rare because, usually, 360 cameras are used for sports or things like that, not for cinema.

But well, my main reason for choosing it was – as I said, I made a short film before [a.n.: El Auge III] and while I was working on it, I discovered this process that I really liked. That is, during post-production, I framed the film using a virtual reality headset. So, to edit it, I put the images into the headset to see them, and what I do is record my movement while I look at the footage. So the framing of the film comes from the movement of my head. For me, the interesting part of that was that I could change the moment when the framing was decided. And so, with it, the state of mind that you were, or are in while you’re creating the image. Your mind is more available, or available in a different way, let’s say.

So, I was interested in doing this process again, but for a feature film, a more narrative film than the short, which was like a long poem. But then, I know that with any camera I use, even if it’s a “normal” one, an old one, or a new one, it’s always like this: I use them, and while I use them, I discover what can I do with them, what I can’t do with them, and what they generate in the people around us. This one had a double thing: it was like a strange object for all of us, especially the actors, but at the same time, you didn’t have to frame the shots, it was just a person walking [a.n.: with the camera on their back], also it has moments when it was disappearing a little bit. Because it’s different from a regular camera, it was more like part of the body of the person in some way, you know? It was less of a separate object, and I think that created a different thing. But then, the idea was what was going to happen with this camera, right?

Am I making it very long? Tell me if the answer is too long.

No, no, no, at all. I love long answers. They’re more honest.

Okay, haha. So…  The first thing was: are we going to hide from the camera or not? Because even if I knew I was going to choose only a part of the image, and that I was not going to do a 360 film, I wanted to be able to choose any part of the image, that didn’t have me or the crew in it. Then, little by little, we were better at preparing to hide ourselves, which is also interesting. Because sometimes I could see what was happening in the shot, sometimes I didn’t – sometimes I had to rely on what the actors told me that happened. That’s an interesting difference in communication, because sometimes I had to decide if I was going to repeat a take or if I was going to suggest any changes – not based on what I saw, but on what they told me that happened. It’s a different way of experiencing the shooting.

I edited the two hours of the film, and then I saw the two hours in the headset. What was interesting was that the movement of the camera (that is, in this case, of my head) was not a film that went by, scene by scene, but rather, it was one possible take of those two hours of footage. And then I realized that I wanted to start looking at very different things. Maybe I started looking more at the plants. When you can move so easily within the image, it just creates a different way of looking at what’s happening. And sometimes I just wanted to detach from what I thought the scene was, and just look around. So this movement of “looking around” started happening within the film, which in the end goes all the way up to this crazy spinning. All of these things happened because of this system, which I really liked.

What interests me, in particular, about the editing process that uses a VR headset and how it influences the narrative/anti-narrative, is this aspect of “looking at other things”. Of course, when you’re seeing things again, when you’re re-experiencing something that you already saw, by using a recording, there is a natural impulse to seek other things, to access a sort of “expanded conscience”. It’s something that, for me, feels very seductive, even gigantic – and so, very easy to get lost in. How do you not get fully absorbed, or lost in this process? How do you bring rigor to it?

In the possibilities, you mean? It always happens when you’re making a film, I think, and in different ways. Because even if it’s another type of film, you can always edit forever. There’s something about those kinds of decisions, and about accepting what happens, in some way. And then, there are other moments, when I insist more on looking for options, let’s say.

For example, even in the short film, there were some parts that I used based on my first way of looking at them. But there were also some scenes in which there were so many elements – in Parsi, we went roller skating through a market in Guinea Bissau. And there were so many people and things happening around us that it was just as you said: you got the feeling that you could want to see everywhere, and there were always interesting things happening in the image. So whenever it’s too much, I’m like OK, I will just follow my first instinct towards what there is to see in the shot. In other scenes, I wanted to see other connections, so it was more like practicing a movement, a dance, a rhythm. In general, I enjoy both ways of working – whether I try to see everything, or when I just trust my instinct. In the case of this film, since I had done this before, I didn’t have as many questions, because I already knew the process.

Still from The Human Surge 3.

It’s an interesting idea, of montage as movement. As something very kinetic, which comes in contrast to, let’s say, traditional film, where you have rushes, several versions of the very same shot, and you just decide between them – it’s very intuitive, let’s say, but in a very functional manner. What you do here is a completely different business. 

And yeah, it’s true, what you said about the multiplicity of possibilities. I think in some cases I felt more doubt, while in others, I didn’t doubt so much. But in general, even if there are possibilities, you have this vision of what a scene can be, and that somehow establishes the limits. And I need to put some limits because if not you can go around it forever. For finishing my films, I always like to have a deadline, even if it’s a deadline that is a bit invented, you know? Like sending it to a festival. Because, when I’m doing a film, I would never say “Okay, now it’s perfect, I’m finished”.

A deadline is a positive thing. Even if at the moment it’s stressful, since you have to work sometimes nonstop for many, many months. If I didn’t have a deadline, I would never decide when a film is finished. While I’m advancing I try my best to be as open as I can to the possibilities of the material that I have, especially in the editing.

Even if you are aware that there are many possibilities, you can think only of a certain amount. And sometimes there are surprising things. For example, I wanted to have flying insects in the film but I wouldn’t create it [a.n.: in post-production]. And when we were in the jungle, there were a lot of them and there was a moment where one came very close to the camera. I saw that while I was re-watching the material, so then I followed it. So these are things that were not planned and surprised me. But well, I’m not obsessed with finding them all the time. I think it’s good to have balance and sometimes just follow the classical idea of what the scene is, or just follow what people are doing in it.

I wanted to ask – maybe “narrative” isn’t the right word – but, let’s say, about the structure of the film. You start in these three countries, and then slowly destroy this initial understanding of the film’s space and time, and, in general, their conventional understanding, or the thereof in cinema. I see this choice in relation to the pivoting moments in the first Auge del Humano. And politically speaking, this is also very interesting, since the very act of breaking these rules is extremely political. And this is also due to how these countries are usually represented. How do you work breaking down all of these boundaries, of time and space, of national identity, all of these paradigms that you just simply do away with?

What I like the most in the film is that all of these ideas I can have regarding countries and various things related to them – what aspects are shown or not, the languages, the landscapes – are given not by words, but by how the images come together, about how people are in one place or another, all of these things that are not said out loud.

For me, that’s the best thing about cinema: all the ideas that I can share, but that are not said, you know? Of course, they relate to words, and words also add something to these ideas of countries and movements and all this. But what I really enjoy is that most of these ideas are given by the images, sounds, and non-verbal information, which is more powerful than saying it. As a spectator and as a person, I believe these ideas leave a stronger impression inside of myself when they come like this, rather than when they are said.

Structure-wise, in both films, the basic idea was to put in relation to these countries that I don’t see related so often. Of course, this could be said about many places, but yes, it’s countries that you’re not necessarily passing through often. In Argentina, like in many other countries, we always tend to look at the same number of countries, culturally. We compare ourselves to them – even if it’s just to convince ourselves of how bad we are, or to lessen ourselves: we always look at the rich countries in Europe or North America. So, as a very basic first thing, I refused to do that, and I wanted to directly relate to other countries.

I knew I wanted to start in this neighborhood in Sri Lanka, with this entire part that is darker, just because there’s less light, but also because the characters were more confused in some way – and then ending on this mountain, with the people flying around, getting to somewhere that is more fantastic, more detached from reality, a little bit, as a way of trying to look for something different. Sometimes when you don’t know how to change reality, you will go to your fantasy, even if what you really want is to change reality – but maybe you need to go through fantasy to come back and see if there’s a new way of relating to reality.

But also, for this film, it was very important for me to travel with the actors, which is something that I didn’t do before. And I knew it was going to be difficult production-wise because it’s expensive and requires more organization than before. It’s also a big responsibility to travel with more people. Before, sometimes I was the only one traveling or maybe there was only one more person who came with me, and they were people who were used to traveling and to working in the cinema. Now, it was people for whom it was their first time working in cinema, the first time they were leaving their country. This proved to be very difficult while we were doing the film, but for me, it was super important, and I really wanted to maintain that idea.

Politically it was very important to me, also because we are more and more used to films made by traveling directors, who are European. And while I’m not European, but still – we are still not that used to seeing the people of these countries also traveling along. What also was interesting for me was the question of what will happen. I don’t know, maybe nothing would happen, but with Sri Lankan actors coming to Peru, or Peruvian and Sri Lankan actors coming to Taiwan… I wondered how their experience would be, and that was a part of the film.

But also, it was mainly for the spectators to see them coming and going. I think it breaks a little bit with this idea of a film going to some place, just showing you the people in the place that they already are, blah, blah, blah. So that was very important and very difficult. Some people say, “Oh, there’s no borders”, and there is, indeed this fantasy of just being in one place or another, but I think that even if we don’t explain it very much in the film, it also relates to this thing that we all know, which is that traveling is not easy for everyone.

Still from The Human Surge 3.

And the movement of people from these specific countries around the world is also very political since it is usually thought about as migration, not traveling. We ascribe political meaning to their movement in the world, whereas for people from the first world, their movement is seen as more “natural”. And we don’t ask many questions about it.

And it’s freer: they can travel to work, or to visit, or other possibilities. And for other people, we think, “Oh if they travel, it’s only because they need to have a better job”, or whatever. I enjoy that they touch a little bit on this in the film, on how we travel. But also they are just there, you know. And for me, it was important not to totally ignore this, but also not do, like, a total fantasy, something that is completely detached from reality.

But also, as you said, yes, we can make a film about fantasies. When they saw my first films, people were like, “Oh, I thought that if you’re going to this African country, then these guys in the film would be, like, shooting someone”. I was like, why? Or something criminal. Because they are not rich or whatever. Very stupid things! But very common, in many ways.

At the same time, I wanted to have more LGBT actors in the film, but also, it’s not a theme in the film. For me, that’s important. Of course, it’s not that it’s bad if this is a theme, and for some films that’s great, but we can also do films that are not about that, where we just show that we are LGBT, without turning that into a theme, you know? We can just speak about life and jobs and fantasies and whatever.

But yeah, it’s a very important part of the film for me, the political factor of how we move, who travels, who doesn’t travel, how we travel, how we expect to see those people. How in some places, the rich immigrants are called expats and others are called immigrants, all these stupid things. Like, why? We are either all expats or all immigrants. One of the actors from Sri Lanka wasn’t given a visa to go to Locarno, the Swiss [a.n.: embassy] refused to give him one.

That’s horrifying.

For the competition, and all that blah, blah. Three days before the screening, and we already had the tickets, everything was covered. And they didn’t give him the visa. It’s crazy! I mean, it’s not surprising, but it’s, like… not even for a big event, where it’s supposed to be important and the state is one of its sponsors, where you’re showing a film with him on the screen… And you don’t want him to be there! I think that this shows something that we already know, but… It’s very clear that we love to show these films, thinking “Oh, look at these people, but oh, don’t don’t bring them here!”, you know. “Imagine if they stay here! That would be terrible!”

Speaking about the LGBT aspects of the film, my final question regards the film’s queer aesthetics – because I do think a lot about this film is truly, deeply queer, especially in the way that it breaks with notions of normativity when it comes to the image, to structure, to politics. And at the same time, I also see it as a stoner film. It’s almost like a new genre – the queer stoner film. Do you ever think about genre while you work? 

I don’t think a lot about genre. I always try to change so, in my mind, I’m never trying to look for what is even a new genre, or a new set of ways of doing something. Which is what a genre is: a set of rules that I would repeat. Of course, I repeat many things: maybe it’s style or whatever, so…

I’m always trying to keep on doing things that I feel are interesting, or certain ways of working, but then, I’m always trying to change. Sometimes, it’s a camera that brings a new way of working. Or sometimes, I don’t know, it’s this idea that the structure wouldn’t be set by the countries that are in the film or to want to travel with the actors, all of these things that would bring something different in the way I already know how to do films.

I just think about what I want, what I think would be interesting to make in a film, and what type of ideas I think are worth sharing and then try to show them in an original way. I don’t know if “original” is too pretentious, but, in a way, that is special for a film, you know?

But do you think about genre, as related to my films in some way?

I used to not think about genre at all, for the longest time. But then I started considering it – not necessarily as a set of rules, but rather, as these ghosts that haunt cinema, to come back to the idea of the myth of total cinema. Ghosts that you sort of live within cinema, which float up sometimes in your mind, as a spectator. Not necessarily because you’re trying to have a normative approach to understanding what you’re seeing, but they sort of exist in a continuum.

Yeah, it’s true. And it’s also true that whenever you see a film, you also have all the other films you saw, or some of them, floating there, even if you’re not really thinking about them. There’s always some sort of comparison, something related to what you expect to see or not. Even if for some people it’s more open, for others it’s more closed, but, indeed, that is always present.

Maybe I don’t think about it consciously, but it’s true that if you think of genres, and also about all the other films you saw, or all the possible rules the other films were proposing, then I probably have that.

But I tried to – or, I don’t know if I tried –, but what happens is that I’m very “un-conscious” about cinema, in general, while I’m doing a film. I never have references to other films in my mind. I never, or very rarely see a film and that makes me think of what film I would want to do. And whenever I see a film I enjoy I’m mostly just there watching it. And maybe when I’m reading a book, yes, I think about something that more clearly makes me want to do something in a film. With films, it’s very, very rare that I have a direct idea. I think I probably get the films, and then many of those things turn into something else in my films, probably. But for me, at least, the connections between other films and mine are not conscious for me.

Main photo courtesy of the Viennale.



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Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.