You employ a form of theatrical storytelling, drawing inspiration from Brechtian methods, including his “Lehrstücke”. Could you comment on this choice?
Using Brechtian methods is always about taking the viewer seriously : we are offering an encounter on-screen that requires the mutual activity of the spectator and the filmmaker, together. In doing so, we hope to provoke some sort of examination of what one is blocking out, not wanting to perceive or realize about the political questions of the present moment. This, as Brecht said, can only be done if the screen is “ purged of everything magical ”. So, we cast no spells and remain open to the possibilities of film beyond contemporary “film language.”
The narrative of your film is based on Parable Beginning with Revisionist Volcanology by Roque Dalton, Lessons in Tactics for the Liberation Movement by Cyril Briggs, and States of Siege, written by an anonymous author. Can you tell us about these sources ? How did you write these dialogues ?
These texts are from three different historical periods: early 20th century, mid-20th century, and today. In each, we find the author confronting a political moment in which a cycle of militancy seems to be faltering and in each the author makes the case (poetically, analytically) for a new orientation. Through our research into the radical political milieu of the early 20th century, we found similar arguments represented in the debates of the nascent US Communist party. We adapted elements of these texts as dialogue in order to draw the past and present together, while still retaining fidelity to those debates.
The actors and actresses’ performances are detached and restrained, without any dramatic effect. How did you work with them? How did you meet and choose them?
In one text, Brecht wrote: “It is up to the actors to treat present-day events and modes of behaviour with the same detachment as historians adopt with regard to those of the past. They must estrange these characters and incidents from us.” In our film, we asked the actors to apply this detachment to both present and past events—creating a theatrical link between the two and generating a sense that the “distance” we feel about the past is really more about our distance from the present.
Many of the actors come from a theater background and are associated with a left-wing current in New York’s alternative theater scene. We chose them because they were interested in the political questions of the film as well as the formal techniques we were hoping to use.
To Become Ghosts creates a spatiotemporal disorientation and strives to deliver generic rather than specific content with singular details. Why? What were the challenges regarding the film’s structure ?
We have been interested in the question of underground political work for over a decade, but, more recently—during the Atlanta Forest/Stop Cop City movement and the movement against the genocide in Palestine—there have been new calls for a clandestine approach. Our research revealed a certain “resonance” between underground political work from the 1920s and today’s militant activists. We were interested in drawing a connection between these very distant political moments through a blending of times, which, perhaps, generates this “generic” vs “specific” sensibility. The challenge for us was to negotiate which elements would have the feel of the past and which would retain the imprint of the present.
At the end, you finally refer to a very specific episode in modern U.S. political history. Is this the starting point for your film ? Can you elaborate on your initial impulse ?
In this very early period of the communist movement, different tendencies were jockeying to exert control over the new parties and there was an ideological and tactical diversity which would later diminish. During the writing of the film, we felt that we were in a similar moment : with no single ideological or tactical orientation taking the lead over all others. In the 1920s, much of that diversity was shattered by the First Red Scare and the deportations of activists, which forced the US Communist Party to take drastic measures to survive. As deportations of contemporary activists continue to occur, we were interested in capturing how current debates about militancy might respond to the repression of the state.
How has the current situation in the United States influenced the film?
Between when we wrote the film and shot it, there was a huge uptick in political repression that continues apace and the tactics of the previous political cycle (occupations, marches) are clearly no longer enough to force any kind of concessions from those in power. And so, the question of the film and the questions of the moment remains: how to chart a new way out of this political moment ? How do movements survive and adapt? What tactics are we willing to try now when the old ones fail to produce the results we need?
How should we interpret the title of your film ?
The title of the film proposes one interpretation of clandestinity: to join the world of the dead in order to fight for the world of the living. However, clandestinity also means burying oneself and potentially severing the link to the movement, that which gives life, energy, and hope. It also gestures toward the way that the movements of the past and their foreclosed futures haunt the struggles of today.
Interviewed by Claire Lasolle
