The director and performer of the short film “Oasis” tells us about the genesis of her work
Garance is a dance artist originally from Switzerland and currently based in Berlin, Germany. The short movie Oasis, her debut film, after being selected for the third edition of the Indiecinema Film Festival, was screened with great success in Rome, on 9 October 2024, at the Caffè Letterario in Via Ostiense 95. Many curiosities arose by the public after watching the film. We hope some of these can be satisfied by the conversation we had with the author!
The origins of the project
If we understood correctly, Garance, your surprising short movie “Oasis” is also your debut film. So do both the love for cinema and dance coexist in you?
Yes, this is my first official short film as a director. However prior that, I have played around many times with video creation and editing for different projects specially within dance. I have always been intrigued with the medium of video.
Dance has been my passion since very young and, yes, cinema has always attracted some interest in me as well. I see similarities also with both arts as expressive tools and often the purpose of seeking to make the audience feel something. Also, I believe they both allow to create this sort of dream world that opens the mind and soul.
Oasis was also born in a time when time had stopped for the arts, and I wasn’t able to dance like my heart wanted so I also turned to a medium that was more possible to use back then.
We heard that your short film was shot in Berlin, but that you are of Swiss origin. What convinced you to move to Germany?
Yes, I was born in Switzerland, but I left abroad at the age of 18 to pursue my professional dance studies and then my dance carrier. I have lived in many different countries since then. I moved to Berlin at the end of 2019 as I was seeking a new base as a freelance dance artist. The city has many possibilities, inspirations and connections to work as an artist. However, a few months later Covid hit so it was also a strange introduction to the city.
A hypnotic performance in a really fascinating location
Part of the success of Oasis is also due to the charm of the location, with its slightly vintage, old-style scenography. How did you find that place?
I agree I think that this place is quite magical. Maybe it has a slight creepy feeling to it, but I’d like to also see it as a sort of dream place that could be anywhere in space or time.
It’s a night club in Berlin that is called Loftus Hall. The owner of the club was my landlord back then! I was very lucky that he offered me to rent the place for a very low price. He understood the difficult situation I was in as an artist and gave me a space to make some art despite all the restrictions. The place was shut down back then due to lockdown (that was in 2021, I got in wrong in the video I sent you, where I’m saying 2020 🙂 ) Only Alicja and me were there during the shooting, nobody else was involved, we both did a Covid test before and so we still respected what was asked during that time.
We were naturally mesmerized by your expressive dance style. Could you briefly tell us about your studies and type of preparation?
Thank you so much! I did a BA in Contemporary dance in England and graduated in 2013. Since then, I have danced in the UK, USA, Israel, Switzerland and Germany in different companies and projects. For this project I worked on my own, as it was also during the Covid times. I started to work on different ideas of material and sequences and later, when I found the club and decided that the shooting was going to be there (thanks again to my landlord back then, without him it wouldn’t have been possible!), I then also started to create according to the place. I didn’t have much time in the club so I also had to imprint the feeling of each part of the room inside myself so I could keep working outside the club and then the day before the shoot I was able to put my ideas into the room. Some of it is set material and some is improvisation. But each part was planned as we had a very tight timing with Alicja the day of the shooting and since we had to do all the lighting ourselves there wasn’t much room for bringing a lot of new things on the moment. However, the day felt a bit like a performance and the magic of the place made the ideas come to life.
The importance of music and the performance’s possible meanings
Alberto Fiori’s music is also very beautiful. How did you meet him and how did this collaboration come about?
We had friends in common and I knew that he was an amazing musician and composer, so I directly thought of him to compose the music! We were in touch prior the shooting and I explained to him my ideas. For the preparation and the shooting, I used different types of music for each section. Then after the shooting I did a first rough editing with room for changes, took the sound out and showed it to him. We worked back and forth for a while as he was composing on the film, and I would change a few things also accordingly. He did an incredible job in matching the sound to what was already there but needed life with sound. In the club there is a piano that is also in a way the thread of the short film, the same note is played at the beginning and at the end. So, I knew the music was going to have some piano. Alberto is very talented and managed to follow my suggested thread while bringing his own ideas. We then agreed on a final music piece, and I polished the editing around it.
In the message you sent to the Italian public you say to leave interpretation free. For our part, we also “read” in the short film all the discomfort of lockdown, of human isolation, of closed spaces. Do you see yourself in this interpretation?
Yes, the creativity around the short film was also driven by the constraints and difficult time of the lockdown. I was inspired not only from my own experience but the people around me and what I would hear and see in the world. However, I never liked to say that it was a short film about the lockdown. It was just a timeline that made part of the film what it is but there were also some ideas I had prior and then later, during the editing, I also implanted other seeds.
Even though I absolutely cannot watch the film anymore, I’d like to think of it as timeless and that it can transpose on other situations or conditions. Another thread would be for examples chronic pains or diseases that are visible or invisible… The lockdown, isolation or even closed spaces are also ideas that can transposed for this type of conditions. But again, this is just another thread. Oasis was composed also more abstractly. Maybe your neighbor will have a very different interpretation as yours and I would be happy about that. I believe it also depends on what the person has experienced. The short film is a bit dark and might make some people uncomfortable, the question is why is that and what did it trigger in you?
In relation to the title, I also like to think of a moment in time or a place somewhere as a very delicate balance of peace and quietness that one might seek within a lot of chaos and noise. That chaos could be in the mind, in the body or in the outer world. And I’d like to think of this window of peace, however small it might be, as a sense of hope and light that could always be there no matter the situation.
Expression and suppression of emotions/Peace and chaos a confusion of matches and opposites…
The making of the short and its circulation at festivals
How difficult was it to direct, interpret and even edit Oasis? And what feeling was created during the film shoots with Alicja Hoppel who filmed you?
The direction was quite tricky knowing that I was the performer and that again we had very limited time and budget. But I was very lucky to work with Alicja, she is so talented and is able to connect very quickly with the ideas. Her and me worked and talked a lot also prior the shoot. We knew we wouldn’t have much time and no help on set so things had to be quite planned out prior between us while knowing that a space for “on the moment” ideas is also quite important and a space for “this could go wrong!” is also needed. I think Alicja is an amazing videographer. She has a background as a dancer as well and so that also helped to communicate and talk about the possibilities. She did an amazing job, and I am very grateful for her work and her trust in the thread idea. She also helped me with some details of the editing and the last details of colors etc.
Has your work had till now a good reception, at festivals or on other channels?
Yes, I am extremely surprised! There have been many festival selections, and I really wasn’t expecting this. Not only this is my first short film but also the budget was very limited, I paid the rent of the space, and of course my colleagues Alicja and Alberto out of my pocket. The team in the end was quite small so I am aware the quality could have been better overall. But considering also the conditions we were in back then I am still very happy about the outcome and the main thing to me is that it can speak or trigger people out there in any ways and it seems it’s been the case.
Finally, do you want to dedicate yourself more to dance in the next future or do you see other projects of audiovisual nature?
I would like to keep dancing or more precisely get back to it fully as I have been in a bit of a forced break in the recent last months. Dance will always remain the love of my life. 🙂 However I am really interested to keep exploring the video medium whether it’s with dance or differently. Maybe this time I will also seek in getting fundings so I can hopefully upgrade the quality and perhaps have a bigger team. I am currently following a distance professional course in graphic design so I think I will also keep widening my skills in visual arts.
I am also very attracted to acting, I would love to keep creating but one of my dreams is to also be part of some film projects as a dancer or actress.
