When We Are Big: The Boo Heard ‘Round the Mountain
When this short film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2006, it was booed at every screening it played at, in three separate venues, by three different crowds of people. When We Are Big was paired with The Page Turner, a French thriller soon forgotten in the midst of all the hubhub. It was screened/booed first at the Sheridan Opera House, but I was present for its second public shaming at the Chuck Jones Cinema, a theater that was packed to capacity with 550 passholders and a gaggle of staff. When I watched it I was blown away–I thought it beautiful, though-provoking, Surrealist, and, having no dialogue, director Eveline Ketterings really mastered the “universal language” of film. Just as I burst into impassioned applause, the rest of the pack booed profusely. As a festival staff member I was mortified, and even more so when the emcee invited the filmmaker up on stage mid-boo. She rattled off a generic thank-you speech and marched off the stage down the aisle flanked by her persecutors. The emcee got back on the mike and said “Eveline Ketterings will be available for questions after the movie,” and she shouted back “No I won’t, I’m going to a party!”
If contemporary art has taught us anything, (and what these booers were so quick to forget,) it is that “Thou Shall Not Hate” should be upheld in art’s arena, and that the things that shock and outrage us the most usually come from artists who herald the mark of a new movement in art, and often are the names that are beloved by successive generations. I say if you get your short film into the Telluride Film Festival and it is booed at every screening, you’ve got it made. After all, it’s three years later and I am still talking about it, and now it is finally available online. Watch it here:
The film is beautiful, allegorical, and impossible, fantastical, Surrealist, recalling the violence and dream logic of films by Buñuel, Dalí, and Maya Deren. The message is clearly open to interpretation, but the setting is ultimately not realistic nor is what takes place–how could the girl drown while the man lives if they are both underwater for the same duration? Why is there a swimming pool in a living room with paintings and a chandelier? Though it is intense and a bit disturbing I think there is plenty more to go off of here than to simply call it pornographic and boo your uptight heart out about it. Leave a comment and do your worst.
-Christianne Hedtke
You are so correct, Christianne, and I’m glad you posted this. I always felt Eveline’s film was totally misunderstood at Telluride–and on top of that, her trip there was quite rocky in its own right… Thanks for writing such a clear defense of her film.
Wow. This is so striking. To me though, it’s the end credits that probably made people want to boo. Because it’s one thing to show the act + allow people to derive whatever metaphorical interpretations out of it, but it’s another to have this heavy music over several shots of this presumably dead child.
That’s the moment to me where the poeticism and beauty of it crossed the line just that tiny bit too far, and the filmmaker, rather than making me think about it - was causing me to really just plain old wallow in it.
Isn’t it funny though - if that was a male adult instead of a female child, I think people would have had a completely different reaction.
I was sitting next to you during this screening at the Chuck. I contacted the distributor last fall, mentioning that I wanted to write a paper on this film, and he wanted $$ and a copy of the paper. Needless to say, I never sent him the money, nor did I write the paper.
Thanks for finding this (free) copy online. You have made my month. Now I can show it to all my friends and post it on my blog as well. I promise to give you credit!