INTERVIEW: ‘Wall’ depicts details, debates of border wall
Photo: Wall is a new animated documentary from director Cam Christiansen. Image courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada / Provided by Film Forum with permission.
Cam Christiansen’s new film, Wall, uses the poetic musings of playwright David Hare to look at the controversial border wall between Israel and the Palestinians. The barrier, which stretches for 435 miles, is perhaps the most talked-about structure in the world, and it inspired Hare to write a monologue play a couple of years ago. That play then inspired Christiansen to make an animated film about the details and debates of this division.
For the director, who is also the editor and animator of the film, the project came to him because of a request from the National Film Board of Canada.
“I didn’t actually seek the project,” Christiansen said in a recent phone interview. “It was the National Film Board actually. I had made a film with them prior, and we were looking for projects together.”
An associate of Christiansen’s had heard a podcast about Hare’s play and thought it could be an interesting film. The director was called in, and Wall began to take shape.
“I’m not Jewish; I’m not Arab,” the director said. “Obviously the knowledge I had about it was what most average North Americans would have I’d say. I didn’t really know all that much about the topic. I certainly was struck by [Hare’s] visual imagery, the use of language and how visual it was. The way he was describing the wall, it felt very visceral. Also, I felt a certain amount of apprehension, too, because it’s such a political hot-button topic as well, so I think those are things that ran through my mind immediately.”
Christiansen was concerned about the controversial nature of this border and how he might depict it, and this apprehension changed the way he went about directing the movie, in particular when it came to his creative license.
“It’s an animated film, and obviously as an animator, I have an enormous amount of artistic license to do whatever I want really,” he said. “It could be anything really, but I really grounded it in the idea of a documentary, which I thought was an interesting idea — an animation and documentary combined. But the real reason was mainly because I was self-conscious about this position of being an outsider. I felt I could ground it in the truth of the play.”
The director and his team traveled to Israel and photographed the wall in many different locations. The animation in the film is then built off these photographs.
“It was really meant to ground the film in what I consider to be the reality of the physical environment as much as possible, even though I have a lot of artistic license,” he said.
To create the actual animation, Christiansen started with hand-drawn storyboards, called animatics. These simple greyscale models are loose drawings and meant to inspire additional detail as the project progressed.
“I describe it almost like going to the eye doctor where you slowly focus the lens,” he said. “The aesthetic took a long time to develop. I wanted it to feel like it had a hand-drawn aesthetic. You can see mark making in the aesthetic of it. That was important to me.”
These ideas must have worked well because Wall has been celebrated by my critics and invited to numerous film festivals, including the Calgary International Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival and Doclands San Francisco.
Of course, for American audience members who take in a screening of Wall at New York City’s Film Forum, where it’s playing with free admission, there will be parallels between the Middle Eastern conflict and the current situation involving the U.S.-Mexico border. Christiansen hopes these parallels are drawn.
“We tried to reference the larger Middle East region itself, but also it’s meant to imply that, yeah, we’re talking about the Israel-Palestinian situation,” he said. “But there’s parallels and a number of situations, whether it’s the U.S.-Mexico situation or even philosophical barriers that are being erected like Brexit in England, which is in some ways a retreat or putting up walls between Britain and the EU for example. I hope it will trigger thoughts in the larger sense.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Wall, directed, edited and animated by Cam Christiansen, is now playing New York City’s Film Forum. Admission is free due to support from The Ostrovsky Family Fund. Click here for more information.
