Short interview: Miranda Pennell

What do you attach the greatest importance to when it comes to your work?

I was trained as a dancer and choreographer, but soon turned my attention to objects of the „real“, non-theatrical and non-fictional world, things I felt I could explore through film. The desire to disclose basic human processes in every day performances and choreographies and to shed light on the secretive mechanism of human expression is at the core of these films. When I direct my focus on formalised and codified social rituals, I am interested in finding out what relationships individuals have with groups. In these films you will frequently find a strong contrast between the formal aspects of choreographical codes and the disclosure of experience within the depiction.

How do you go about using music and sound?

Sound and music take on a central role in my films. I plan the form that I want to give the sound in my films, while simultaneously thinking about the pictures. Due to the absence of dialogues there are ample opportunities for creating interesting and surprising relations between the sound and images. Drum Room (2007) for example mirrors my experience of walking around a music school, where sounds often transmute due to sound insulation or because of instruments that are only to be heard with the help of earphones; where individual experiences of music are often private and don’t correspond to the perspectives of a third-party observer. The subject of the films is not only the playing of music, but the act of hearing music. The sound in this film continually shifts the audience’s perspective and dramatically changes the notion of reality.

Interview: VIS, 2010.