BISSFF2025 | Correspondence 通信计划048：Margins 余白

BISFF Correspondence 通信计划

This program involves conducting brief email interviews with the directors of the international films featured in the festival, in lieu of the traditional Q&A session that follows the screenings. Through this program, we hope to provide a platform for filmmakers to discuss their work and share their insights with our audience in China.

为了跨越种种障碍，开辟更多交流空间，我们设置了“BISFF Correspondence 通信计划”，对部分国际单元的参展作者进行系列访谈，这些访谈将在作品放映后发布在联展各个媒体平台。

Margins｜余白

Clara Becking 克拉拉·贝金

2025｜0:23:00｜Germany｜No Dialogue｜World Premiere

Director: Clara Becking

Interviewer :Yu Qiao

Coordinator & Translator: Suliko

Proofreader:Ruth. C. Zhang

导演：克拉拉·贝金

采访：乔屿

统筹、翻译：苏丽珂

校对：张超群

Q1: Your film reminds me of a concept called “sound sculpture”, which refers to the idea that something is shaped and continuously shaped through sound. Could you elaborate on how you designed and collected the sound materials?

A1: That‘s a very interesting comparison, which at the same time describes well how I worked on the sound. Most of the soundscapes do not directly belong to the images technically. They are not direct sound but attributions. Ways of creating distance, rhythm and attention. Filmmaking is so much about repetition. To keep editing playful, I like to try out what kind of sounds open the image up, what sound I feel is at the core of a certain image or which sounds help it to become a vessel for a certain question, a feeling or a force of narration. This whole process is subjective and very bodily, because sound immerses you differently and connects differently to memories and dreams then images. In my notes for the editing of the film, I found a quote which I copied from a book called „Bodies of Sound“, it says: „Listening (…) is the integration of what is being heard into form and meaning (…) an accumulation of experience and memory.“ Maybe in that way, to take direct sound can mean „hearing“ and to create a sound design can mean „listening“.

Q2: The prism becomes the central theme, emphasising the various meanings of words, the reflection of memory and time, and revisiting a specific space. It also alludes to the multiple voices and consciousness within oneself. You wrote some dialogues in the film that seem to portray a conversation between different versions of oneself. Could you elaborate on this idea further?

A2: For me making a film starts with having questions towards the world. To something that’s important to you. It’s ok for me to interpret the text on the screen as a conversation between different versions of oneself. The essential part of it would be that multiple voices, shifting perspectives and contradiction are allowed: A space where finding, creating and dismissing fixed answers becomes possible. Like in the margins of a book, where you note down your questions on a text, sketch something that shows your agreement or helps you to organize your understanding of what is said. Text on screen makes this possible. Each viewer reads in their own intonation. So yes, maybe these voices are different versions of oneself. But they could also be a conversation of two existing people, an insecure inner monologue or an imagined encounter with someone who is not longer part of your live.

Q3: Why did you create a nearly four-minute static shot of a tree swaying in the wind?

A3: All scenes in the film are lived experiences. The camera became a protection to face these moments. That’s the reason, why this shot exists. In the film itself, the scene acts as a possibility to breathe and process; to let your thoughts wander and to experience time passing. I guess it’s a gesture of relating grief to time and the subjectiveness of how long or short a sunrise can feel as well as how appropriate a certain duration can feel in different contexts.

Margins, Clara Becking, 2025

Q4: I really like the scene where a hand tidies the fringe of the rug. Is that your hand? Why did you decide to include this scene?

A4: I would be interested to know why you liked it. For me, this scene shows that memory can be embodied in touch, smell, sound, and gesture. The hand is mine, and the carpet is the same as in the archival footage of my mother playing on the floor. When I visited my grandmother’s house shortly after her death, I found myself repeating familiar gestures like lying on the carpet, tidying its fringe as I did as a child. I filmed these moments because they comforted me, and I wanted to hold onto that feeling in an environment I knew I would soon no longer have access to.

Q5: You explore many important and sometimes unbearable concepts such as grief, dementia, and illness. However, you mentioned that discovering the transformative potential of these feelings is more important to you. Were you inspired after creating films or art, or did you try to make sense of it through making films?

A5: Making a film implies to spend some time with a certain topic, feeling, experience etc. and in that sense, to make this film allowed me to engage with some questions I had, after a loved one passed. This process, especially because it has this transformative aspect, is essentially for our sense making — no matter if it involves creating art. For many people, the time to grieve is intentionally limited or even rendered impossible. I believe that this withholding of space to mourn compounds harm and is deeply dangerous. It is important to watch closely where this happens and to respond to it.

Q6: I also love the poetic lines you wrote for the film, such as, “Sometimes, you get the word just by filling in others.” Did you write those thoughts first, or did you write them in response to the visual materials?

A6: I don’t exactly remember what came first. The lines are part of a game I like to play independently of the film: describing a concept or word in a way that loosens its common meaning. Poetry works similarly. When I watched the recorded material for the first times and began experimenting with assembling the archive footage, I remembered some lines and started ways of bringing them together.

Q7: Auto-fiction is a popular concept in contemporary literary writing (think Annie Ernaux and Rachel Cusk), referring to a blend of autobiographical and fictional writing. From your perspective, how can this concept be expressed through visual and acoustic forms? What are these "margins" and how do they represent for you? Are they something you wish to explore or aspects you wish to break away from?

A7: That’s a very multifaceted question. From my perspective, autofictional approaches in film allow you to play with distance towards your own experiences. Distance is a central aspect of cinema, which makes this form particularly interesting for visual and acoustic creation. I remember that when I first heard about the idea of autofictional cinema, I wondered whether every film is, in some way, autofictional, since every creative act inevitably carries the author’s position and lived experience.

Margins, Clara Becking, 2025

Q1：你的电影让我想起一个叫做“声音雕塑”的概念，指的是通过声音来塑造和持续塑造某种东西的想法。你能详细说明你是如何设计和收集声音材料的吗？

A1：这是一个非常有趣的对比，同时也很好地描述了我是如何处理声音的。大多数情况下，声景并不是直接附属于对应的影像。它们不只是声音本身，而是一种属性，是创造距离、节奏和赢得注意力的方法。电影创作在很大程度上就是关于“重复”的。为了保持编辑的趣味性，我喜欢不断尝试来发现什么样的声音会打开图像，什么声音让我感到它会成为某个图像的核心，或者哪些声音能推动影像成为某个问题、某种感觉、某套叙述的容器。这整个过程是非常主观和非常具身的，因为不同声音让你沉浸其中的方式不同，与记忆、梦境和影像发生联系的方式也不同。我查看了我剪辑这部电影的笔记，发现了一段引文，是我从一本名为《声音的身体》的书中抄来的，它说:“倾听（listening）(……)是将所听到的东西整合成形式和意义(……)是经验和记忆的积累。”也许在这个层面上，采用同期声只是“听见”（hearing）,而进行声音设计才意味着“倾听”（listening）。

Q2：“棱镜”（prism）成为短片的中心主题，它强调了词语所拥有的不同含义，对记忆和时间的反映，以及对特定空间的重新审视，也暗示了存在于自我内部的多重声音和意识交错。你在电影中撰写的一些对话似乎描绘了不同版本的自己之间的交流。你能进一步阐述这个想法吗？

A2：对我来说，拍电影始于对世界的疑问，还有那些对个人来说重要的东西。我觉得将屏幕上的文本理解为不同版本的自己之间的对话没问题。关键是容许多重声音、不断变化的视角和矛盾在其中存在：这是一个你可以在其中找到、创造、抛弃固定答案的空间。就像在一本书的页边空白处，你在文字旁边记下你的问题，勾画出一些句子表示你的赞同，或帮助你整理你对所说内容的理解。屏幕上的文本提供了这样的可能性。每个观众都能用自己的语调解读它。所以是的，也许这些声音是自我的不同版本。但它们也可能是两个人之间的对话，一个不安内心的独白，或者是跟一个已不存在于你生活之中的人的假想对话。

Q3：你为什么要拍一个近四分钟的，一棵树在风中摇曳的固定镜头呢？

A3：电影中的所有场景都是真实的经历。镜头成了面对这些时刻的一种保护。这就是这个镜头存在的原因。在电影中，这一场景提供了节奏呼吸和处理时间的可能性，它让你的思绪游走，体验时间的流逝。我想这是一种将悲伤与时间联系起来的姿态，探索一场日出可以被感受的时间长短，以及探索在不同情境中，一段持续的镜头，要多长才是合适的。

Margins, Clara Becking, 2025

Q4：我真的很喜欢一只手整理地毯边缘的场景。那是你的手吗？你为什么决定加入这个场景？

A4：我很想知道你为什么喜欢它。对我来说，这个场景展示了记忆如何通过触觉、嗅觉、声音和动作得以体现。那只手是我的，而地毯和我母亲在地板上玩耍的档案画面中的那张地毯一样。祖母去世后不久我去她家时，我发现自己重复着那些熟悉的动作，比如躺在地毯上，像小时候一样整理地毯的边缘。我拍摄这些瞬间，是因为它们让我感到安慰，我想在一个我知道我很快就再也无法回到其中的环境中保持这种感觉。

Q5：你探索了许多重要的、有时令人难以承受的概念，如悲伤、痴呆和疾病。然而，你提到，发现这些情感的转化潜力对你来说更重要。你是在创作电影或艺术后受到这一点启发，还是你本就想试图通过创作电影来理解它？

A5：拍电影意味着你要花一些时间跟某个主题、感受、经历等等进行周旋。从这个意义上来说，制作这部电影让我有机会思考在一个我爱的人去世后我才面临的问题。这个过程，特别是因为它具有这种转化的性质，对于我们创造生命的意义至关重要——不管它是否涉及艺术。对许多人来说，用于哀悼的时间往往会被刻意压缩，甚至有时去哀悼被迫变得不可能。我认为剥夺哀悼的空间会加剧伤害，而且非常危险。因此密切关注这种情况发生之处并做出回应是非常重要的。

Q6：我也喜欢你为这部电影写的富有诗意的句子，比如，“有时候，你只是通过填充别的词语的含义来理解一个词语”。你是先写下那些想法的，还是为了回应视觉材料而写的？

A6：我不记得谁先发生的了。这些句子属于我在电影之外喜欢去玩的一个游戏：将其从常见含义中解脱出来转而以更为流动和松散的方式去描述一个概念或单词。诗歌大概就是这样运作的。当我第一次观看我拍摄的素材，并开始尝试组接这些档案影像，我想起了一些句子，开始想办法将它们组合在一起。

Q7：自传体小说是当代文学写作中的一个流行概念(想想安妮·埃尔诺和蕾切尔·卡斯克)，指的是自传和虚构小说的融合。从你的角度来看，如何通过视觉和听觉的形式来展现这个形式？这些“余白”是什么，它们对你来说代表什么？它们是你想探索的东西还是你想挣脱的方面？

A7：这是一个非常多层次的问题。从我的角度来看，电影中的自传小说手法让你能够在自己的经历与电影叙事之间玩味它们的“距离”。距离是电影的一个核心元素，这使得这种形式对于视觉和听觉创作尤为有趣。我记得当我第一次听说“自传体小说”电影时，我曾经想过是否每部电影在某种程度上都是自传体小说，因为每一个创作行为都不可避免地带有作者的立场和生活经验。

▌more information: https://www.bisff.co/selection/margins