INTERVIEW Activist-filmmaker Chelsea Muscat

Interview /Film/ New York City

October - December 2022

MOTHER, MUSE MIRROR: AN ACTIVIST-FILMMAKER MAKING WAVES FROM NADUR TO NEW YORK CITY

In a quaint town on Malta’s sister island is a place known for raving carnivals, a slowness of village life that is disappearing, and more recently, a centre for the fight against the chomping teeth of building contractors. I’m talking about Nadur, where filmmaker and activist Chelsea Muscat resides. Muscat, at 25, is making waves from Nadur all the way to New York, for film and photography works that are at once raw, immediate, confessional and radiating a beauty that aches the heart, reminiscent of Nan Goldin and Tracy Emin. I caught up with Muscat to speak about her artistic practice and activism.

Hey Chelsea. What inspires you?

I aways just follow the feeling, the heart, the gut. It comes very spontaneous and personal in that way as I try to explore that feeling. My art is a way to process. It’s very therapeutic.

You grew up in two very different places…

I grew up in Gozo and never left the country until my parents moved me to New York City. It was shocking, I didn’t like New York. I was disconnected from the sea. You know, in Gozo you see a pony and chicken on the street or a sweet Nanna who

Strolling Up, Story of my Mother

BTS LOST KID By Salvina Muscat

gives you potatoes she grew in her garden. You feel good and safe. I’m more fond of NYC now, but it is intense and huge.

Tell me about the first time you picked up a camera.

I came back to visit Gozo at 13 with a camera that is still the only one I use today. I have one lens and this one camera with sand in it, from 2012.

That’s where I started my photography journey. My first ever subject was the landscapes of Gozo. In high school, I took one elective class of basic filmmaking and loved it. I was depressed in high school so it was a good way for me to process. In college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was “undeclared” as they say, and I decided to do film. I didn’t have a portfolio or any help. I reapplied and I got in and restarted.

Your mother is a subject at the centre of more than one of your works. How did your mother become your muse?

I started taking pictures of her in 2018, but it was really during pandemic that I solidified it, I made account of story of my mother, and thought, ok, this is a photo series, maybe a book or something. Even before that, in junior year we had documentary class and I made a film about my mum. It helped get me into film school.

I’ve been through a lot of things with my mother. This is my way of trying to process our relationship, to understand her in a way, and you can see an evolution in the works. The first works I did of her were very aggressive, in-your-face, but now I think as I get older, the work has also grown and changed, it’s more naturalistic, celebratory. I needed to process my anger and the earlier work

Lost Kid Wanderer Still Searching for the Wave Still

reflects that. It’s more gentle now, as I’ve become.

The work feels like cinematic confessions, just as your newer film Searching for the Wave. What can you tell us about it?

Searching For The Wave is based on a major heartbreak I had. It was my senior thesis film, its very noticeably personal. Its about cyclical trauma, the movie, being still tied to your parents, even when we think we can cut ties and be independent from them. It made me step back and realise I don’t have it figured out and that’s normal. My films are always non-linear in this way, going through memories and fit them together to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.

As humans we try to use logic for everything, including love and death. The brain tries to compute and classify but it doens’t work. Somethings things happen without explaination, like the fact that I never got closure from that relationship. I couldn’t understand how you can go from lovers to strangers.

In 2018, I wrote I lost myself when I found you, which was more intuitive in that I didn’t intend for it to be anything. I was experiencing a lot of existentialism from an abusive relationship and got obsessed in being alone in nature. I was intense and had a strange pulling urge to film myself in nature, immersed in water. I collected a library of footage, walking for hours in greenery. It was gorgeous.

Lost Myself When I Found You Still

It sounds connected to your latest project.

Yes, my new film too; Lost Kid Wonderer, is me by myself in nature. In this film, I imagine the world coming to an end. It’s a cinematic poem about someone choosing between safety and being alone with themselves because humanity hurt them too much.

Is Chelsea Muscat a one woman show?

Hell yes - I love collaborating but I shoot, edit, colour, write and narrate my own work.

What about your activism?

It’s so important to me. A huge project is threatening the landscape of Nadur, so we’ve been fighting for the last two years. When I first heard of it, I went out and shot a little film about it, it really got people talking and wanting to help in the fight. That’s a great connection i have between my art and activism.

I want Maltese people to know, if we really came together and screamed we would have the power. But people need to be wiling to show their faces and understand our power. It’s really that simple.

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