DOCS New Doc by Marta Pulk is on the Way

Pealkiri New Doc

on the Way

Filipp Kruusvall interviews director Marta Pulk. Her new international documentary fi lm is about the isolation during the pandemic.

Photo by Sigrid Kuusk

Although the COVID19 crisis has shaken the whole world, there are only a few fi lms about the epidemic itself, and its impact on humanity. It might be that Tell Me from Estonian director Marta Pulk will be one of the fi rst poetic documentaries that show the global eff ect of the epidemic on such a large scale. To premiere in autumn 2021, the fi lm tells the story of life in isolation, which people worldwide have had to experience repeatedly during the year. At a time when people are feeling so much but have few outlets to express it, 19 fi lmmakers from 12 countries set up a series of voicemail boxes around the world. People are encouraged to call and leave messages with anonymous thoughts or feelings be it stories or songs, laments, or proclamations. These calls are brought together as a unique portrait of humanity in isolation.

Marta, how did the idea for this movie come to you? As isolation was imposed worldwide, it was a situation the world had never witnessed and one that I could never have imagined. Suddenly, there was so much happening, so much to fear, but no one to share it with. It reminded me of a phenomenon called the Wind Phone in Japan. After the tsunami in 2011, one man set up an old phone booth in his backyard to speak to his deceased cousin. Collectively it was a time of overwhelming grief, of unexpected and insurmountable loss for hundreds of thousands of people. There was so much pain and no place to put it. Soon enough, thousands of strangers started showing up at the man’s phone booth with a rotary phone connected to nothing. They came in silence, picked up the disconnected receiver and privately spoke to their lost loved ones while overlooking the ocean that had swallowed them. And thinking of that, I realised that sometimes all we need is a space, a silence to shelter the Other. So in these extraordinary circumstances of isolation, we created that space—the imaginary Other in the silence after the tone. To listen to people, what they were feeling and experiencing. Were they stuck alone or with their children, with violent partners, or elderly parents? Were they afraid for their lives or completely elated? Did they want to lament or just sigh? What did they need to get off their chest, and how much of it was the

same, one big human symphony that knows no limit of country, culture, political regime, or death toll?

What was the most surprising thing you discovered about these calls? I was most surprised by how many people turn to songs or poetry at a time of distress. When we’re under the most pressure, when we most need meaning, it became apparent that the symbolism of poetry helped people worldwide cope with their diffi cult situation.

The production of the fi lm was very international. How did you manage to coordinate this during such a complicated time? Over the past year of creating Tell Me, the codirectors did not have the chance to actually meet, and therefore the process demanded enormous trust. That trust is based on the privilege of knowing each other beforehand. We all fi rst met in 2018 in a Werner Herzog masterclass in the Peruvian Amazon. There we all witnessed each other creating short fi lms in extreme rainforest conditions under Werner’s strict and unrelenting mentorship. Having been through that together one of the most intense experiences of our fi lmmaking careers created a closeness and a collective unlike any other. In Tell Me, we bring all these diff erent creative voices together into one wholesome piece.

When you fi nally saw the fi lm as a whole, what did you experience? I was most surprised by the level of poetry we achieved by sticking just to the rawness of the anonymous voices. It’s people speaking to people, pure and simple. It almost hides the authors because it rises above someone’s individual creative ambition. From the getgo, we wanted to search for the timeless in this situation, create a new cinematic quality that transcends the journalistic or sentimental coverage of the crisis. And through so many authentic and heartfelt voices of the anonymous callers, it really works as such a documentary of humanity in isolation, a piece that poetically mimics the psychological stages of being torn from your reality as you know it. It’s a manifest of solitude, wholesomeness, change, and adapting, but above all it’s true and honest, and you really feel it in the fi lm.

Does everyone perceive the COVID-19 crisis equally? We are not equal, and we do not receive equal opportunities in this world. There are people more vulnerable to the crisis and the disease, both within every society and in comparison. But there is one universal component that doesn’t ask about race, sex, fi nancial status or social security numbers that’s loneliness. People in more open and sharing cultures will come out of this in a better psychological state than the highly individualistic ones, even if the death toll is higher. And I think many people who didn’t suff er any loss will only in hindsight understand the psychosis they were operating in over the past year due to their emotional isolation and the constant state of fear created by it. We need our support systems in place, and to feel connected to the world; that’s what saves our spirits in the end. EF

COVID-19 has shaken the whole world, but there are only a few films about the pandemic’s impact on humanity.