SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - CITY SEARCH

Director Iara Lee has made something of a career of focusing on the role of technology in our lives. Her 1996 documentary, "Synthetic Pleasures," surveyed a who's who of contemporary futurists and other professional geeks, from virtual reality innovator Jaron Lanierto Mondo 2000 founder R.U. Sirius to web community guru Howard Rheingold. It also had one of the best soundtracks in recent memory--certainly for a documentary--collecting electronica by Terre Thaemlitz, Single Cell Orchestra, Pete Namlook, Deren Verhagen, and others. The "Synthetic Pleasures" companion CD became the flagship of Lee's record label, Caipirinha Music. No surprise, then, that Lee's follow-up film, "Modulations," is all about electronica. It's a veritable audio-visual kaleidoscope, featuring interviews, recordings, and live performances from some of the genre's most innovative current musicians (Alec Empire, Oval, Scanner), and some of its most important founders (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, Holger Czukay). What results isn't simply a montage of the history of one genre, but an extended meditation on the role of computers and other machines in the creative process.
--Marc Weidenbaum

Lee: When I started off, I wondered: am I doing a film about music or a film as an excuse to talk about culture at large. In the end it's not about thetechnicalities of making electronic music; it's about philosophical questions. This is what happened to the first film, "Synthetic Pleasures"--it's not about face value, and it's not about the latest Macintosh, the latest technology. It's what we do with all this power we gain--the technology and how it reflects society at large. It's more internal, not just about the latest trends, like jungle; I can go back to Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, musique concrete. I'm very proud that we included thepioneers. It's fascinating to see how they impacted the kids.

CitySearch7: How knowledgeable did you find the various contemporary musicians about their forefathers?
Lee: Very influenced but in a very nonconscious way. Some are very articulate; some do it in a very instinctive way but it's still highly intellectual.There were a lot of different personalities, but I think the electronic musicians tend to be more introspective and more intellectually stimulatingthan pop or rock musicians.

CitySearch7: Was anyone particularly well spoken?

Lee: These people from Ninja Tune [the independent British electronic label] are definitely very interesting. Matt Black [one of the label heads] was a highlight. He brought exactly the philosophical issues--that this is the culture of hybrid, it's not enough to just have the machine, it's not enough to be 100 percent human, but it's the combination of analog and digital and how you play with sound and, in particular, with visuals. You know, how do you really push the chemistry and the synergy of the human and the machine? And David Toop [author of "Ocean of Sound," a 1995 book about ambient music], on the other hand, is like, "Yeah, but it's so much that we give up our humanism and let the machines take over." It's an interesting discussion. I think it's...I like that I give you Prodigy andthen Future Sound of London. One, Future Sound of London, did its interview over the ISDN line. Liam from Prodigy was; "This is about the flesh, the body, and the stage presence, and here I am; I'm not interested in hiding behind the computers."

CitySearch7: Did you interview Achim Szepanski, who runs Mille Plateaux Records in Germany?
He's very well spoken on the subject.

Lee: He was in the hospital for a long time, for being overworked. He runs all these labels--Mille Plateaux, Force Inc., Chrome. And me, I have a few assistants and people running the label, and he was just the one person in his office. I think he had a nervous breakdown. People thought he went away on vacation, but he was home; he wouldn't answer the phone or come to the door.

CitySearch7: In the movie one of the fellows from FSoL says that he's not a musician but a collage artist. As a documentary filmmaker whose work consists of snippets of interviews with a number of people, what do you think of his statement?

Lee: I think the question is totally relevant, because it's about building mosaics. Bill Laswell [the producer and bass player] continued the discussion [in the film], because it's like we've done everything and the only way to get anywhere new is to combine the past and the present, and that experimentation will make something new. That's exactly what's happening with electronic music. You mix and match, you cut and you edit, and you change it around; a lot of things are sampled.

CitySearch7: When you were done making the film, did you look at your technology a different way?

Lee: I was not a computer nerd when I started "Synthetic Pleasures." I would only use Microsoft Word, and I realized I was a victim of my own dilemma. It totally evolved, my interaction with technology. Is that what the question was?

CitySearch7: Well, more specifically, did you have a different relation with your film equipment. Do you feel closer to your machines?

Lee: I have to agree that I do. I have given up on desktop computers. I just have my G3 everywhere. I always have to buy another battery because if I'm on a plane I'm going to be working all the time. You know, we say that machines have no feelings. But they really interact with you like humans. I think humans have a sense of superiority, compared with plants, animals. But I think we coexist. We have this love-hate relationship with machines. It's something you don't find so much with girls. This woman wrote this article for the New York Times, "Where Are the Women in Electronic Music?" I make fun of myself--I tell my friends, look at my bag, no makeup, nothing for girls, just beepers and cell phone and computer. I think there's a new wave of women getting hold of the technology, being creative. It's a very slow process. The film is so politically incorrect. A lot will say it's a boy's club. I did speak with Laurie Anderson and Andrea Parker...but when you're editing the film you can't say, oh I have a black guy, now I need a white guy; a boy, now a girl. I'm going to be crucified. As a woman, I would first say it's not about being politically correct, but about showing today's situation. But I do believe that women will get a hold of the technology and create art. I never thought I'd start with documentaries. I totally go with the curiosity point of view, surround myself with consultants and people who are experts, and take this big journey. It's good I start with this fresh perspective, because if I'm learning and I am entertaining myself I can dothat with the audience, and the biggest task is how do you capture the attention of the experts and not make this a basic, watered-down, silly version, and how do you also [interest] the people who are not exposed to this culture. When I did the first film, all the Wired editors were so into it and on the other hand people who don't even have computers are so into it.

CitySearch7: Was "Modulations" a natural progression?

Lee: It's absolutely a natural progression, and a more focused topic, because "Synthetic Pleasures" was almost a pilot for a series, and people told me now you have to investigate these different subjects in detail. And I was like, no forget it, I won't do it and all of a sudden "Modulations" started and it was exactly what people wanted me to do: take a subject in detail. So it is a natural progression. On the other hand, I'm going to go to the other extreme. The next film is a narrative film, my first narrative film. It's going to shoot in Brazil. I'm adapting a 19th-century novel by our greatest writer in he ortuguese language, Machado De Assis.

CitySearch7: I thought the poet Fernando Pessoa was the greatest writer in the Portuguese language.

Lee: In Portugal. Machado is from Brazil. The novel is a little bit like Shakespeare's "Othello," even more tragic; there's this sense of mysteryand you can never tell what happened.

CitySearch7: Did the Internet play a role in the production of your movie?

Lee: I think, yeah, a very crucial role--research for example. I am not an expert in electronic music, at least when I first started; now I am halfway there because I have a very extensive library of CDs, but when I first started with this curiosity to get into it the Internet helped to find information on Stockhausen, to be in touch with all the electronic music writers in England.

CitySearch7: Do you find releasing records as rewarding as making films?

Lee: Absolutely, because films are very cumbersome things to do, and CDs--in the year 1998 I am releasing 15 CDs and working with those musicians. Film is such a long, laborious, expensive, cumbersome, logistically crazy medium, and CDs are very intimate, more personal. You find a musician who makes great music, and you get together, talk, create the CD; you can market it, get it to the store two months later. I can have something very long-term with the filmmaking and have recurring pleasure with CD releases.

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