SLIFF Interview: Sarah Paulsen – Director of ELEGY FOR CONNIE

ELEGY TO CONNIE screens Saturday, Nov 15 at 6:30pm at St. Louis University as part of The ST. Louis International Film Festival. It is a FREE event.

ELEGY TO CONNIE is a touching and unique documentary by local artist and filmmaker Sarah Paulsen that employs stop-motion animation to address the events leading up to and following the 2008 Kirkwood City Council shooting. The troubling incident is retold in interviews with a group of unintentional women activists who are bound together by their friendship with slain Councilwoman Connie Karr, and the animation amplifies their voices through striking visuals that sometimes illustrate their comments directly but frequently offer metaphoric counterpoint. Made in collaboration with these women, the film addresses the complicated issues surrounding the shooting – citizen representation, disenfranchisement, white privilege and black alienation, post-tragedy healing – and celebrates Connie’s legacy as a leader.

Sarah Paulsen took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about her film.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman

We Are Movie Geeks: Tell me about your friendship with Connie Karr

Sarah Paulsen: Connie Karr was my mother’s best friend and so she was around our house working on projects with my mom.  She was a big fan of my artwork and came out to my first SLFF animated documentary screening.  She really believed in me and would constantly encourage me, keep up with my art and animation practice, and provide me with advice on other places to share my work.  There was a contagious enthusiasm about her, that I loved, and she just made me feel instantly comfortable and appreciated. I think she had the same effect on my mother and the other women I interviewed.

WAMG: Are you still friends with this group of women who talk about Connie in ELEGY TO CONNIE?

SP: Yes absolutely.  Many of the women have been out to several of the screenings and we’ve also had private screenings were we’ve been together as a group.  We are all very busy, balancing work, family, and civic life so scheduling things can be difficult, but certainly making this film and becoming closer with these women, who were initially Connie’s friends, has been a benefit of the process.

WAMG: Did you have any concerns about using such a playful approach, in terms of technique, to such a tragic story?

SP: Well certainly I wanted to be sure to be respectful with the content, but I’m a huge fan of artists that use animation to talk about difficult stories like: William Kentridge talking about Apartheid South Africa, Martha Colburn addressing war and terrorism, and John and Faith Hubley tackling several world issues.  Recent animated docs like Waltzing with Bashir and  Ryan, also left me inspired about the possibility of translating audio stories with visual components that are both illustrative, as well as convey psychological states.  I think the bigger issues for me was reviewing the film with the women I interviewed as we made it, they really wanted to be sure to celebrate the life of Connie and not make a film just about Cookie.  So there was a balance between their wishes to talk about Connie and my desire to depict some of the underlying issues leading up to the shooting.  I think we all learned something making this film.

WAMG: How long did it take you to make your film?

SP: I thought about the film for two years, 2008-2009.  I started writing about the film for one year.  I got a mini grant through Critical Mass to start the project during the summer of 2010.  I worked consistently on the project from about mid 2011 to mid 2014, once I received funding through CALOP, MAAA, and then RAC.  So I guess it took me about three years once I had the support to spend more time on the film and less time working my assortment of jobs.

WAMG: Was ELEGY TO CONNIE carefully story-boarded, or did you make things up as you went along?

SP: Both.  I had the fortune of having a residency in Paris in 2012, during that residency I completed a 41 page storyboard that illustrated the major scenes of much of the film.  I am so thankful for the focus I was able to have during that residency.  When I went to animate a scene for the film, I would initially revisit the storyboard and then decide if it was conceptually saying what I wanted it to, then I’d either further storyboard the details of that section and/or create a full list of what I needed to make and/or come up with an entirely different idea.  Also when I am animating there is always a joyful element of discovery through the materials, by accident, or just in the flow of animating so I try to keep these parts in the film.  For instance in one scene, a claymation woman is at a counselor, and as she is speaking the picture on the wall behind her begins to slide around (by accident initially).  So I had the claymation counselor readjust the picture at the end of the scene and it seemed illustrative of her process of trying to heal.  An accident that worked in my favor.

WAMG: Were you familiar with Cookie Thornton before the shootings?

SP: The strangest thing was several months before the shooting my mother told me I ought to interview Cookie and make a film with him as he was having several problems with the city.  The fact that she said this to me remains in my mind to this day.  At the time I was working several jobs and so that was not really a possibility.  It does make me wonder though if I would have interviewed him, told his story, would that have shifted anything?  Making this film was in a way my trying to tell a part of that story that I didn’t get to make with him.

WAMG: You state in the film that Connie Karr was the one that was most allied with Cookie Thornton, at least in her concern for the residents of Meacham Park, so why do you think Cookie still shot her?

SP: This is a very complicated question, one that the women I interviewed were really asking themselves when we started the film.  I think everyone who lost someone that night probably asks themselves, “why this person I loved so much?”  I personally believe that by the time Cookie went to council that night, he was in a psychological state of utter despair- feeling dehumanized, unheard, burdened by who knows how much debt, he was without hope.  I think he saw the entire body of Kirkwood politics as an enemy, the history the council represented, the whiteness, the embodiment of institutional racism.  To do this shooting, he had to detach himself from his own humanity, this is why his brother said, “He went to war.”  So I think much of who was shot was collateral damage in the face of his perceived enemy “City hall”.

WAMG: What has been the reaction to ELEGY TO CONNIE?

SP: I have had many great conversations as a result of sharing the film.  One thing that continuously comes up, is that people want to know more about Meacham Park.  So I am encouraging any residents of color in Meacham Park to tell this story and get it out.

WAMG: How has Connie’s family reacted to the film?

SP: My mother spoke with Connie’s husband about the film when we began it and was supportive but did not want to get involved in making it.  For the most part my sense of their family is that they want to put this event behind them and move on with their lives.  They’ve left Kirkwood.  Since completion of the film, I’ve written a letter to both her husband and her daughter letting them know that I am happy to send the film to them if and when they are ready.  Hopefully some day her daughter can see and hear how loved Connie was by her friends and community.  I’ve tried to respect their need to mourn and not interfer with that process.  Beyond that my mom has really been working at trying to connect with Connie’s old friends and co-workers.  That has been a really beautiful process, at one of the screening my mom met one of Connie’s old co-workers and they were able to complete connect about who Connie was from two very different perspectives.  They filled in each others stories.  In a way this film may actually be more geared towards Connie’s friends, then her family, in that her family knew her in a private way, that we never well know, and so they have a sacred morning that needs to happen for them that is separate then our community healing the  loss of this great leader.

WAMG: Have you heard from any of Cookie’s family?

SP: I met Cookie’s Aunt at the Filmmaker’s Showcase screening and we started crying as we met and hugged.  She had no idea the amount of debt he might have been in, and was curious how I had found that out (via St. Louis Post Dispatch).  She was in the process of writing her own memoirs and I look forward to hearing more about that.  I would love to sit with any members of Cookie’s family that would like to see the film and my mother, that sounds like a space of true restorative justice.  I also understand that a person of color’s initially reaction to hearing that I made this film may be fear and trepidation that I will stigmatize or villanize Cookie.

WAMG: Have you shown the film at other festivals?

SP: The film will be playing at the St. Louis International Film Festival this weekend.  Other than that I am in the beginning steps of submitting it to other festivals around the U.S. and world.  So we will see.

WAMG: Would you ever like to make a more conventional documentary?

SP: Probably not.  I think my main strength is being a visual artist and animator that makes films.  If I was to make a film I’d want to make it like Wes Anderson or David Lynch and have total control over sets, costumes, backgrounds, that doesn’t seem very fitting for a documentary film. I did like the surreal quality of the sets and re-enactments in The Act of Killing and the use of still images and montage in older Errol Morris films like (Thin Blue Line and Tabloid).  Plus Werner Herzog and Les Blank are also just great image makers so these guys would be my inspiration. I never thought I’d be making movies so never say never right.

WAMG: What are your plans for future films?

SP: Right now I want to work on some paintings about white privilege and loss of cultural identity as a part of becoming “White” as a result of what I learned about myself making this film.  Probably if I am to make a film it will be a loosely narrative animated film where I am not using an audio story to guide the film.  We will see as I never know when I find an amazing story.