Alok “What lives outside of the frames of this camera and your own eyes?” is the query the poet/comic/actor/public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the viewer to ponder on the very begin of Alex Hedison’s Sundance-premiering quick Alok. Currently on the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, and premiering at IFC Center on June 14th (with each the nonbinary star and Hedison, who additionally occurs to be married to her EP Jodie Foster, in attendance), the doc is predicated on footage Hedison shot throughout the performer’s latest worldwide tour and is supplemented with extremely stylized interviews with the spiritually enlightened artist and their equally deep-thinking associates (together with Dylan Mulvaney, who poignantly self displays that “replacing fear with fascination” is what has made her life price dwelling).
Indeed, for Alok, eliminating the binary between “us” and “them” is extra essential than the blurring of he and she or he. (Alok likewise stresses that essentially the most controversial pronoun they’ve is “we,” which requires acknowledging our interconnectedness.) Transphobia is simply one other type of ache, they firmly consider. And by the tip, as at first, we’re confronted with one other probably revolutionary query: “What would it look like if our weapon was love?”
To be taught extra about Alok and Alok, Filmmaker reached out to Hedison, likewise an internationally-acclaimed artist and actor (and superb artwork photographer whose work has graced galleries all through Europe); together with producers Natalie Shirinian and her spouse Elizabeth Baudouin (additionally credited as music supervisor), who collectively based indie manufacturing firm Not All Films.
Filmmaker: You principally went from following Alok on-line, to assembly them by way of a buddy, to globetrotting around the globe filming their performances pretty rapidly. So was Alok instantly onboard with taking part on this undertaking, or did it take some convincing?
Hedison: I wouldn’t say it took convincing, however it did take time and belief. From the second I met Alok we had been engaged in deep dialog. They understood my intention and my funding within the undertaking fairly rapidly.
What I used to be invested in was curiosity, not nearly them, however about myself as effectively. Their work invited me to take a look at the methods through which I had exiled elements of who I’m over the course of my very own life. I feel my private expertise, mixed with not having a preconceived thought of what the movie can be, helped achieve Alok’s belief. I wasn’t occupied with projecting my imaginative and prescient onto Alok. My goal was to make a bit that mirrored them and their work. I needed to create a portrait of Alok as a method of attractive the viewers to look inward, utilizing all the probabilities movie offers.
Filmmaker: How collaborative was Alok within the movie’s creation? Did they recommend sure folks to incorporate? Comment on tough cuts?
Hedison: In phrases of filmmaking, the collaborative course of I had was with Natalie and Elizabeth, and (producer) Meggan Lennon. Though there was collaboration with Alok within the sense that, as a result of I adopted them each alternative I might, who they’re and the work they’re doing on the planet is what guided my storytelling.
Every step of the best way Alok launched me to their family and friends, from the East Coast to South Africa, and from Namibia to Los Angeles. My choice to do interviews was one thing that occurred naturally. It grew to become clear early on within the course of that the conversations I used to be having with Alok’s associates had been an expression of this unifying “we” that’s on the coronary heart of the movie.
Filmmaker: Since you’re primarily a photographer (and artist and actor), I’m curious to know why you selected this particular format, versus a photograph essay or perhaps a function?
Hedison: For the final 20-plus years I’ve predominantly been a photographer, and the work I do with a digicam has been primarily summary pictures. (I ended appearing fairly awhile in the past.) However, I’ve all the time been drawn to folks, whether or not it’s taking portraits or delving into their tales a method or one other.
While Alok is compelling to shoot pictures of, it could have been an extremely wasted alternative to not document what they’re saying on the similar time! Film gives so many alternatives for inventive expression and storytelling. In this case it was the right medium.
As an artist I comply with my intestine and what evokes me. The first dialog I had with Alok was so impactful that I knew immediately that I needed to movie them. I needed to make one thing that mirrored who they’re, what and the way they ship their good message — one thing that others might expertise.
Shirinian: I’d add that collectively we needed to get the message on the market sooner slightly than later. The present political local weather requires it, the hate algorithm requires it, Alok’s present trajectory referred to as for it. A function would take years to craft and it was crucial to get the message out now. A brief was the easiest way to attain this, and we had sufficient footage to chop a narrative collectively.
Also, Alok has many messages, and Alex’s footage might have taken the viewer on many various roads, so we felt the quick format would assist hold the viewers centered on what Alex needed to say by way of her expertise documenting Alok’s world; and what she needed to supply the world with this movie. So all of us communed and sifted by way of the footage, and picked out the elements that finest supported Alex’s imaginative and prescient. Together we went by way of many rounds of edits, and streamlined the journey of the movie to get the message of “we” to be the staple message that was put ahead.
Filmmaker: Alex, your preliminary journey footage is supplemented with in-depth interviews with Alok (and others). Which makes me marvel what led to that call. Was this ever going to be only a vérité, efficiency tour-style doc?
Hedison: There are myriad instructions to go along with Alok. They had been within the midst of a comedy tour, so in fact we adopted them all through that, and that footage is predominantly vérité. But there are such a lot of sides to Alok that I felt that solely specializing in their comedy and seeing them from the skin can be lacking the purpose: They (and we) are by no means only one factor. Why not attempt to expertise as a lot as doable? This is why I used photographs from their tour, sit down interviews, rapidly reduce collectively montages which went backwards and forwards in time. I needed the movie to replicate Alok, and the way they’re many issues .
Baudouin: When we got here onto the undertaking in August of 2023, Alex had about 30 hours of area footage. Natalie, Meggan and I watched virtually all of it, with Alex cueing up and showcasing for us the elements she felt had been strongest; and in search of the interviews and photographs that may finest assist the message she needed to place out along with her directorial debut, that may finest carry her preliminary concepts to life in a full movie journey.
After discovering the important thing segments and moments collectively we had been all in settlement that Alex wanted extra interviews with Alok to assist the journey of the movie. (Luckily, at that time they’d be visiting Los Angeles in just a few days, which gave us the chance we would have liked.) Natalie and I introduced in Dylan Bell, a filmmaker we steadily collaborate with on tasks, as a DP and editor. We thought Dylan can be nice to pair with Alex as a result of he has this potential to carry the world a filmmaker is making an attempt to create to life in a poetic method. There is an intimacy to the best way he frames a shot, to the best way he strikes the digicam.
To juxtapose Alex’s area footage with a extra superb artwork — virtually portraiture — look they determined to movie new interviews with Alok and their LA associates on a RED Komodo (with Kath Raisch executing the colour grading). These deeply felt vignettes with every topic permits for his or her private messages to chop by way of and join with the viewers and, most significantly, helps the touchdown of the movie’s general message.
Filmmaker: So is there an affect marketing campaign connected to the quick? Is Alok going to tour with the movie?
Hedison: Natalie, Elizabeth, Meggan and I’ve been taking our quick by way of the movie competition circuit, and now on the Sundance tour. Sometimes Alok has been capable of be a part of us, however since they’re on tour themselves proper now that’s not all the time doable.
My hope is that the movie itself is an affect marketing campaign. People who don’t establish as queer or gender nonconforming, who’ve preconceived concepts of what it means to be trans, have shared their expertise of watching Alok with me. And what I’ve discovered up to now is that these folks understood one thing for the primary time after seeing this movie – and that one thing is about themselves. That’s the marketing campaign. This isn’t about “them.” It’s about all of us.
I actually suppose that interviewing Alok supplied this chance for the viewers to know their course of. And interviewing Alok’s associates contextualized Alok’s work, and the way mandatory it’s on the planet proper now.
