Sonia Gemmiti is a Montreal-based multimedia artist. Her installation work has been presented at Come Up to My Room 2019, Myseum of Toronto and dance: made in canada/fait au canada. Sonia was the recipient of the 2019 Equity Showcase Cayle Chernin Award for Media Arts, Production. In 2020, she made her directorial debut with Outside My Window.
In addition to her work as an independent artist, she has had a distinguished decade-long career as a Set Designer in feature films and television. Her credits include Robocop (2014) Maps to the Stars (2014) and Suicide Squad (2016), and she was a member of the design team behind Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015), nominated for the Art Directors Guild Excellence in Design Award (2016).
I saw Sonia’s amazing multidisciplinary art installation Cabinet Fantastique: Ghost City at Come Up to My Room 2019 at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto and I’ve been following her on social media since then. I found out that we are both grads of the Interior Design program at Sheridan College. She reached out to me last month with an invitation to watch her directorial debut premiering at the In/Motion Chicago International Film Festival, and shortly after that we had a chat about the film, her set design career, the art blog she used to run, and more.
How did you get into set design?
I’ve always been a cinephile. I grew up watching TCM with my grandfather. From a young age, I was drawn to the marvelous worlds created for Return to Oz, The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, and anything by Tim Burton and Vincente Minnelli. It wasn't until I saw Pan's Labyrinth that it clicked, and I thought, I don't know how but I want to do that.
I studied interior design in college and helped media arts students with their projects. Between my love of architecture and my love of films and storytelling, that led me to set design.
Tell me about Weld Art Collective, your old art blog. What was it like? How long did you run it for?
I started it in 2011. I love the arts, the various disciplines. I've always been interested in learning about art in any form. I just loved speaking with artists who were outside of my field, and finding out what inspires them, their techniques, their process. It gave me this platform to go to different events in the city and just try to catch as many art shows as I could. You know, it’s kind of the idea of the old cafes, of being able to just sit and talk to people in different disciplines. I don’t think we do that enough. And I still have friends from that art blog that I met years ago from seeing them start off as students and then into blossoming careers. I still regret not buying their work because I can’t afford it now (laughs). Amanda Clyne, Elly Smallwood, Keita Morimoto, Charles Bierk, Stanzie Tooth. They’ve all done so well.
I think what inspires you to make great art is hearing about what other people are doing. It gives you a perspective outside of whatever your knowledge is. I ran the blog until around 2018. I still regret that I didn’t just keep it up on the web. But it was just so much work. Coming full circle with my short, I got to interview Guy Maddin. He later ended up being my mentor on my short. That was a bit of a moment. I had interviewed him for a podcast and then I ended up being able to work with him, which is really cool. Greta Hodgkinson was another person we got to interview and that was such an amazing experience to go to the National Ballet to speak with her.
Why did you choose to make a film about dance? Do you have a dance background?
I used to take dance growing up, until college. I've spoken to dancers and they ask me if I’m a dancer, and I say no, I used to be dancer. It’s funny, I recently had a collaborator say to me “Well then, you are a dancer.” I love dance. Since diving into directing, and a through a few of my installation works it made me realize how that foundation has really dictated my creative process and how I express myself. It just felt like a very fluid transition that I wasn't even aware of, I think, until I started working on these projects.
Your film is really beautiful. All the films from In/Motion told beautiful stories in a short time, with only movement and music. Where did the concept for Outside My Window come from?
It is a very personal piece that comes from my experience with anxiety and agoraphobia, which has been very strange with the pandemic, because I finished colour grading a few days before lockdown. And then, you know, everything happened, and it's been weird to see it all sort of reflected back at me just with what the piece talks about. The imagery, even the name. It’s been very surreal that way.
What are the steps you had to take from start to finish?
There's an amazing foundation equity showcase called Cayle Chernin Awards. They have different streams, theater and film, development, and production. I submitted the script and received a grant. The award came with a mentorship through the CSARN program. It was through CSARN that I had the fortunate chance to work with Guy Maddin. It was such an amazing opportunity. I greatly admired his work. Once I found myself in the position of being his mentee, it was very surreal. He's continued to be an important voice of encouragement for me.
So that was the first thing, and then there was a lot of rehearsal, working with the choreographer and really figuring out every piece of movement, ensuring that every piece of movement represented something, was well thought out, minimal, and clean. The movement was essentially the script. I just shot Eva while she was rehearsing. And we would play with camera movements in the hopes that we'd be able to shoot it how I was hoping, and of course we were because I have an amazing DOP (Director of Photography).
We shot it in my apartment and I had to split up shooting. Exterior shots were filmed first and the interior shots were filmed later because I was unsure of how much funding I had.
This was Eva’s very first film performance. I saw her at dance: made in Canada, I had my art installation Cabinet Fantastique there. She was performing a solo and I remember turning to my husband and saying I would love to collaborate with her at some point. You could just tell she would make a wonderful actress. I just had a good feeling, so it was amazing to see her in this challenging role. There was a lot of heavy lifting for her in terms of acting, and a lot of trust on her end.
Still from Outside My Wndow. Photo credit: Sonia Gemmiti. Performer: Eva Kolarova
What's the process for submitting to a film festival? Is there a reason why you chose Chicago over any other potential festivals?
When you submit to a festival it's super competitive. There's hundreds, sometimes thousands of applicants. I’m grateful to In/Motion for giving me a platform to show my work and to hear feedback from an audience. It has been a really great opportunity, especially this year. The pandemic has been particularly challenging. I was watching the other films, and I felt like I was in good company with the other pieces that were there.
If last year had been a normal year would you have gone to Chicago for the premiere and done a talk or a panel?
The online experience has been wonderful and the exposure is different, but it was a little bit strange that way, because I feel that there was a part of the learning that I missed out on. I missed out on seeing the audience watch it and on hearing their feedback. That’s been tough.
So now that you've got a taste of directing, do you ever see yourself wanting to direct a full length film?
I would love that. Right now I'm just working on writing as much as I can. I was awarded through the Canada Arts Council a grant for another short. I would love to work my way up to something longer.
Do you ever pick up any tips or gain any insight when you're working on sets?
You can't help but pick up everything around you in terms of how films are made, what to do, what not to do. I’ve been fortunate to work on a lot of features and it's always interesting to see how the director works with the producers and pitches their ideas, and also just working with a production designer. I ended up production designing my own short. For independent projects you end up juggling a lot and I learned a lot about production design.
What is a favourite or stand out set that you’ve worked on?
I had the unique opportunity to work on a Guillermo del Toro film called Crimson Peak. Everybody working on it knew that they were working on something unique and special. The sets were so beautiful. The production designer was Tom Sanders, he passed away recently. It was a big deal for me to work for him. I was a big fan of his work. Tom had a really unique process. He would build all these models of the sets, which not a lot of production designers do. It was all extraordinary.
You've been in the business for a while. Do you have any advice for anybody who wants to get into set design or anybody maybe is thinking about directing their own film?
I think with both roles, the love of storytelling should be there. With set design, often a lot of set designers do come from an architectural or interior design background. It's an industry you have to love because you’re working long hours. And you have to love film. I don’t always understand people who get into it without an appreciation of film.
For directing, my biggest piece of advice is to just do it. I think the hardest part is working up the bravery to actually want to put something out there for people to see. Watch movies and try to get out of the curated bubble of the algorithm. I personally get a lot of motivation by looking at how other artists have carved out their own paths. The Equity Showcase Cayle Chernin awards just opened up their applications again. It's an organization that completely changed my career trajectory. They've been supporting female filmmakers for a decade.
You bring up a good point. Any time you put something out into the world, you don’t know who is going to see it and how they are going to react. How do you deal with that?
This felt different because it was a personal film. Any artists who make something that comes from a personal place have to have thick skin about the reactions. I think that's been my biggest piece of learning during this pandemic. The film festival process can be brutal. You get a lot of nos before you get any yeses. I made this piece and I’m proud of it. Some people will get it, some people won't. It's black and white, not everybody may get the dance component or it may not resonate with them. And I can't focus on that otherwise it's going to get in the way of what I want to make in the future.
What are you working on right now?
I'm in the arts department, working on a TV show called Titans. That’s been keeping me very busy. I've also been writing some scripts. I am writing a short film concerning the life of my Italian grandparents. I am thankful I am now able to pursue this project. I lost my grandfather the week of lockdown, and he was not able to have a proper funeral. This feels like a way to celebrate him and it may help with the grief I feel. I'll also be working with dance: made in Canada this coming summer on a piece using virtual reality to create a piece around Glenn Gould.
Follow Sonia on Instagram
Interview by Glodeane Brown
Photos and video provided by Sonia Gemmiti
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