Hot Meet-Up With Nour Beetch & Nicky Lapierre At The FDS
Dany Niederhauser: You serve us for 18 min of fun, with a Psyche post porn. What was the idea or inspiration behind the creation of "Fucking Freaks Club"? How did the mix of sci-fi comedy and acid porn come to mind?
Nicky Lapierre: We were living in a small artist's studio/squat where there was a lot of material. We threw ourselves into it with everything at our disposal. Our set design was in our bed (laughs). The idea and the pitch of the film, the multiple identities, and the alter egos in it came at a time when we both needed to express certain things that we didn't necessarily express in our daily lives. It was in my pre-transition period so I think it was a way to exorcise. But basically, it didn't come from me but more from you Nour.
Nour Beech: In fact, we wanted to create alter egos that come from several time dimensions. A bit like little monsters that would come to kill us, who are in a heterosexual, heteronormative, racist regime, but who are at the same time already a bit lesbian. These alter egos come to make them overcome their fear and exorcise themselves, but also to transcend their femininity, gender, and binarity. People think that there are several of us in this film but there are only two of us. These little monsters follow us and are part of our identity.These multiple identities are the ones we want to let go of, the ones that are always there, the ones we want to reach for and transcend. We thought that going towards a slightly psychedelic side by leaving the real and going towards the grotesque was a very good way to illustrate while being light and fun. All these kinds of parallel dimensions, go towards things that don't always make sense. We loved "Les Démons de Dorothy" by Alexis Langlois, it's a bit of a mix of queer films that we watch.
Nicky: We got a lot of inspiration. We started from things that are part of our daily life, and we extrapolated to make fun of them. There is a very assumed part of our parts of clichés and of our parts of extraversion and exuberance.
Dany: So, can you talk a little about the process of creating the film and the challenges you faced?
Nour: The challenge is to film everything with two people, which is quite complicated. I think it's also a touch of hope to tell everyone that you can be solo or two to make a movie. There is no need to be a huge team anymore. We make films with no budget, which was sometimes limiting, for example when you realize that it did not record. These are the challenges we face. Even if we don't have the budget to have fancy cameras, we don't want to reproduce the same thing we're used to seeing. What I find interesting when we started working together is that we're not trying to shoot to look good. We are trying to have points of view that interest us and that will tell something else, and also to be instinctive. We are not really into scenarios. For what we create in our intimacy, it is important to create a micro bubble, a safe place. We play with artifices, and clichés to better denounce them. Very quickly we could feel ridiculous but when there are two of us, we believe in it and we don't make any judgment, we can be vulnerable at the same time. And I think that's a strength.
Nicky: Overall, I think the challenges and limitations are technical but not creative, on the contrary. I think that being two people, we trust each other a lot. It's cool because when you work with a big team, I would have been uncomfortable walking around with a blonde wig up to my butt (laughs). Here it's such a benevolent space of expression that we can allow ourselves a lot of things.
Nour: We laugh a lot, we have a lot of self-deprecation between us. So, I think that the fact of laughing in the creation, during and after, is great. There wasn't a single person who had seen this film and the first time we showed it on a big screen, we were afraid that people wouldn't understand or laugh. In the end, it was cool because we heard people laughing. Afterward, we asked our friends who were in the room and they said that everyone was having a good time. The risk is that it flops. But then we said to ourselves that we had laughed and the most important thing was that we had fun. It had a good series of selections in festivals. For the FDS, in Berlin, in the United States. We are so happy. A lot of people said that it gave the impression that it was accessible to make films, and so we left it without calibration and without mixing because we said to ourselves it is as it is and it works like that.
Dany: The film addresses the complexities of trans and non-binary experiences. How did you work to represent these experiences authentically and respectfully while incorporating fantastical and subversive elements?
Nour: We love being able to try to expose oppressions of the real by stepping outside the real. It's something that helps us talk about our identities, and denounce things that do us violence or oppress us. I have the impression that it makes us this cathartic effect to leave this realism or, instead of being super frontal, one theorizes or sensitively, while remaining very realistic. To go towards the fantastic universe allows us to add sensitivity and emotion and to play with other sensitivities and codes which are not necessarily tangible codes, which do not necessarily pass by the words, but which can pass by many other things.
Nicky: And then I think there is a thing where reappropriating science fiction and fantasy spaces is very important for us as queer people because these are films and ways of making history that has carried us when we were younger but that have few queer representations in fantasy or science fiction films, apart from Alexis Langlois or Buffy. We wanted to be able to take back these codes that speak to us and these parallel universes, that often the queer youth have impregnated and used to avoid the violence that could be suffered in everyday life.
When we first released our work on Vice, we got negative comments saying that we weren't legitimate to talk about non-binarity and trans narratives and we wondered what we had to look like to do that.
Nour: Do you have to have surgery to be trans or transition? I don't agree. At the time of "Fucking Freaks", I made my non-binary coming out in a period where I was more in a masc identity. And now, I feel that I'm in a fem mood in my life and that it doesn't change my gender identity. But I still feel a judgment from the queer community. I think it's a shame because I feel that there is still a misogynistic rejection, whereas I want to play with feminine artifices, I think they are great and I left them for a while because I thought that if I have to deconstruct myself, I have to leave them behind. You can play femininity in an exacerbated way, without it being a classic femininity. It's a pity that there is still this kind of judgment. Afterward, I have the impression that in the festival where the film was shown, it was always presented as a queer/non-binary/trans film. It did ask those questions and that's cool because everyone understood the issues through the film, whereas I don't feel like it was verbally stated at any point. I think that's how people also identified with alter egos or transcendence.
Dany: There is also a kind of injunction, of expectations that we have of you when you want to leave a certain binarity.
Nour: Finally, we just want to be able to do what we want and be who we want to be and I think it's a shame that there are these new injunctions in queer circles. During my non-binary coming out, I felt like I had to fit into a new queer norm when it wasn't me. It was very intense.
I feel like I got a little lost looking for myself and deconstructing myself and when I find myself, I'm less accepted. We want to accept our individuality without being judged!
I have the impression that you have to be punk and dark to be accepted. I just want to wear pink and fuck it (laughs).
Nicky: I think that in a way, in all the films that we made, there is a little bit of research of that and these deconstructions there.
Because "Period Chaos 6XX" is the story of a vampire who is hunting for blood and who comes across a trans guy who is on his period. It is also a way for us to be able to speak about that, which are subjects that are rather little approached. Already menstruation in general and menstruation in the trans community, I think even more so. And the other film we are working on at the moment is called "Old Stuffs Never Die", which talks about the sexuality of octogenarians and has just won a prize in Brussels.
Watch FUCKING FREAKS CLUB on the streaming platform of the FDS
Images courtesy of Nour Beech and Nicky Lapierre
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Nour Beetch & Nicky Lapierre
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