American Cinematographer - March 2011 - 20

The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, shot by Magela Crosignani, follows Asya (Élodie Bouchez), a French-Arab artist living in New York. In this scene, Asya visits St. Nick’s Jazz Pub in Harlem.

A Woman of 2 Worlds By John Calhoun

The first shot in The Imperialists Are Still Alive! features lead actress Élodie Bouchez wearing a Keffiyeh around her face and nothing else. Cast as Asya, a New York visual artist of French upbringing and mostly Arab descent, Bouchez is also acting as stand-in for writer/director Zeina Durra, who grew up in London but whose ethnic background mirrors Asya’s. The character is an expression of the filmmaker’s own identity, that of a 21st-century woman who is not caught between Muslim and Western worlds but straddles them, easily navigating New York Bohemian culture while remaining vitally connected to the political realities of the Middle East and post-9/11 America. The opening shot is certainly attention grabbing, but if one can look beyond the naked actress to take in the whole frame, other details may become apparent: grain, for example. The kind of grain associated with film, that is. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is a low-budget indie shot not with a DSLR, but with that longtime indie stalwart, Super 16mm. “I didn’t have to pitch it at all — Zeina was definitely committed to Super 16,” says cinematographer Magela Crosignani of the film’s director. “She did not want digital, nor did she
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want 35mm. She wanted the images to be grainy, and she also wanted a lot of texture.” “I understand why someone might want to shoot digital, but I didn’t become a filmmaker to shoot digital,” says Durra. “I feel that film picks up something that digital can’t, and that’s what excites me.” Crosignani, who had previously shot some short films on Super 16mm, says, “I knew it was going to work well for us because of the small locations we were working in, and because we had to move so fast.” Obtaining the proper texture was key. “Zeina showed me her thesis film, which she’d shot on 35mm at New York University, and said, ‘I don’t want it this clean.’ She wanted something rawer.” At the same time, “she felt that pushing 16 would be stylizing it too much. She wanted the grain, but didn’t want to call attention to it.” The two collaborators had known each other since their student days at NYU; Durra was in the graduate-film program, and Crosignani, a native of Uruguay, was in the undergraduate program. “I was shooting grad thesis films, and I shot one that Zeina produced,” recalls Crosignani, who went on to earn a master’s degree in cinematography at the American Film Institute. When Durra began prepping Imperialists, she interviewed Crosignani along
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with other cinematographers. “Of all the directors of photography I met, Magela just understood me,” says the director. “It’s very important that a cinematographer understand your language, because then they want to help you get your film across.” “I really loved the script, and it seemed like an incredible opportunity for me to film in New York,” says Crosignani. Imperialists was shot over 23 days in early 2009, but this short burst of filmmaking followed an extensive preproduction process. Durra had many visual references to show Crosignani and production designer Jade Healy, including works by Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi (for the winter light), Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama (for his city shots), and a number of films. The French N ew Wave figured heavily, as did 1960s movies by Antonioni and Fellini. “Some of the references were from La Dolce Vita, which also had a main character moving through different strata of society,” notes Crosignani. In sharing her references, Durra made it clear that the graininess of 16mm was just a piece of the visual atmosphere she wanted to create. “She wanted a lot of texture in every location,” says Crosignani. “For instance, she’d show us pictures of bathroom tiles and say, ‘I want these tiles, but I don’t want the wall to be this white; I

Images courtesy of Hi, Jack Films.

American Cinematographer - March 2011

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