Interview with the We Are Magnolias Film Collective
Interview by Mimi Anagli
Copy Edited and Posted by Megan Elias
We Are Magnolias is a film collective based out of Brazil with experience with everything from music videos to NFL ads. Tell us a little about yourselves and why you’ve chosen to answer the interview questions as a group, rather than individually.
Despite being close friends, the fact that we have different backgrounds partly makes up the essence of the We Are Magnolias collective.
We Are Magnolias’ co-director Nate Rabelon has been a cinephile for as long as she can remember. She’s an encyclopedia of titles and directors. She especially loves the weird ones. While studying advertising, she became fascinated by the history of cinema and the arts, which led her to take audiovisual production classes and figure out, without a doubt, that she wanted to be a director.
We Are Magnolias’ co-director Barbara Sassen also studied advertising, but knew half way through college that she wanted to specialize in cinema—which led her to pursue cinema direction at the New York Film Academy. Since then, her stylized aesthetic and feminist point of view, allied with her experiences abroad, are reflected in the way she assembles the decoupage of her shots and guides the emotions of her actors.
Executive Producer Valentina Baisch is a designer at heart and she began her career in the audiovisual industry by working as a costume designer. After a season in New York, however, she discovered that production was what she truly wanted to do. When she returned to Brazil, inspired by the effervescence of Manhattan, Valentina did what she now says was “one of the best things she ever did in her life.” She connected with Barbara and Nate. After that, We Are Magnolias began. So much has happened since then, and nowadays, we say each one of us has a hybrid personality of what we used to be before and what we’ve become after all of the things we achieved together.
The We Are Magnolias film collective: Nate Rabelo, Barbara Sassen, and Valentina Baisch
We Are Magnolias is an artistic film collective that, through women’s eyes, creates films that explore feelings, memories and the way that our sensations affect how we experience the world. In what ways does your film collective support its members?
We’re a collective of three women and friends — advertisers and filmmakers seeking to express ourselves through our own sensitive, but strong point of view. Since the beginning, our team, which consists of directing duo Barbara Sassen and Nate Rabelo as well as Executive Producer Valentina Baisch, has always had a very collaborative and horizontal workflow. That way, we support each other by connecting the creative and productive sides throughout each film, constantly sharing new ideas, formats and ways of creating the best images and stories we can. For us, making films is all about having our collective visions of the narrative, aesthetic, and execution shared and polished into something unique. Our ideas begin as one point of view that becomes a synergy of minds, evolving through every challenge together.
Where did the idea for this collective come from? Is there a story behind its creation?
When we started in the Brazilian film industry around 2012, we met and discovered we shared the same discomforts about the next steps of our careers: how we, as women in our early careers, could grow in such a closed and male-dominated market. Our creative instinct, sensibility, and willingness to express ourselves through films was the motivation we needed to get where we are today. From the very beginning, our partnership happened very naturally. We found ourselves with the same immense desire to do something unique, innovative, and meaningful. And from there, we realized how strong we were when together. That feeling of being part of something bigger gave us the motivation to overcome challenges together. Perhaps out of self-preservation, we decided that we would make our first project by ourselves, almost as a secret. We called our closest friends to help us and within a few months, our short-film Desamores was ready. To our surprise, it was recognized as a Vimeo Staff Pic, and from then on, everything started happening for real.
Still from the music video for Vogue do Gueto, a song by Karol Conka
Desamores is our first short film and it is about memories, feelings, and connection. It’s based on a poem that says: “I would defocus your eyes to see me in flowers so I wouldn’t see the unloved.” We were truly inspired by these words and started to imagine so much surrounding them. We believe we are made by our memories, and especially by the small details we decide to focus on remembering, so this piece is a mix of those emotions found only in the small moments of life: reading a letter, the sound of the ocean in a shell, the sensation of our body in the water, among other things. And these feelings take on another level when we connect two kinds of memories: visions and emotions. The two young girls in the film are constantly interconnected by movements, glances, and objects, and we love the idea of intentionally leaving the true nature and meaning of their relationship for the audience’s interpretation. Each individual can see and connect to the story by drawing on their own memories and experiences.
As a film collective, what sort of projects do you take on?
All of the projects we take on must be special in their own way. Between the lines, the story must have soul and touch the audience on many different levels. We find that short films and music videos allow us the opportunity to explore the unknown, experience different perspectives through our characters’ eyes and more deeply feel the narrative. This challenges us by submerging us in a completely new atmosphere for each project — which we believe is when you feel things more viscerally. We believe the beauty of each project is in mixing various emotions together, giving life to something powerful and genuine.
Tell me about how each of you joined the collective and what is your specific role in it?
As we said before, we have always been only three members — our connection was so intense and strong from the beginning that it worked perfectly for us, and we’ve never felt the need for another member. However, the way we work and operate has always been a matter of curiosity, as we are formed by a Director duo and an Executive Producer. Both Nate and Barbara are equally divided in all parts of the direction process, from pre to post production. They always share equally their general conception of the film, and on set, their synergy is visible and admirable. On the other hand, as Executive Producer, Valentina is an active voice and works very closely to the creative process, approaching production in an inventive and creative way.
A still from We Are Magnolias’ short film The Grenade
The film industry, like most other industries in the world, is dominated by men, so we believe it is important to work with and empower women in each department of production: cinematography, production design, styling, etc. We have the power to represent women in high-level production positions, and we feel obligated to show artists in society that they can do anything no matter their gender. What really matters to us is their talent, vision, and artistic voice. Things are changing in Brazil. For example, a few years ago, we didn’t see any women working as cinematographers. That is because women are not encouraged to pursue what they love and are instinctively drawn to. Most of the time they end up working in a field that society expects of them, so we want to change this mindset. Seeking to work with women collaborators is the only real way to make this situation more equal and less unfair. One person that we love to work with in particular is Licia Arosteguy. She is our main cinematography collaborator, and her aesthetic and style are very unique and powerful. She really puts her emotions and soul into each frame.
How do you embody feminism in your practices as a film collective and what do you take pride in most in the work you’ve done?
Since its first steps, our collective has lived and breathed feminism. In fact, we “inhaled” so much feminism over the years as females and as professionals in the film business, that we felt we needed to “exhale” all of it in our films. All of our personal beliefs are embodied in our work — both advertising or authorial — and communicates the way we see the world today and how we stand as women within it. We keep seeking out projects that can give women a more powerful and consistent voice, like Spotify’s “Listen to the Girls”, a music video that celebrates Brazilian singers and composers throughout the decades and Natura’s “Occupy Your Body“, a very famous body-care brand in Brazil that trusted us with this beautiful campaign about a new perspective of women of their bodies — appreciating every single curve that makes us truly beautiful and unique.
As we said before, the female essence is in our DNA. We came together because we saw a market with limited female representation that made it particularly difficult for young women in the early stages of their career to get off the ground, so the fight against this is reflected in all of our actions and the way we built our collective. Naturally, the brands that approach us want to further explore this principle in their own projects. Every directors’ career is made by special projects, and some projects are so special that we consider them a gift. These two projects are exactly that. From the first moment we read the scripts, we knew these were the kinds of things that we wanted to see through from start to finish, and we were going to do our best to make that happen.
A still from a Natura campaign We Are Magnolias worked on.
Natura’s campaign was a challenge because of the responsibility of being the spokesperson of a brand with a message as profound as the acceptance of women’s bodies. And this touched us on so many levels. The greatest thing about this work is the casting and the truth behind it. We didn’t want traditional models or actresses, so we conducted a huge casting call looking for ordinary women, everyday brand consumers, who had pregnancy scars, stretch marks, were plus size, etc. At the time of this campaign, the diversity of bodies in Brazilian advertising was still minimal and inaccessible to most. Those campaigns were only showing perfect and unreachable body types. But the stories of the women in our campaign were so profound that we made exclusive mini-docs with each woman, documenting how each one occupied her own body.
In the Spotify video, the challenge was a little different. We had many famous Brazilian artists involved in the project, very little time to facilitate the whole production, and an immense responsibility in choosing how to represent so many different artists with different points of view, career stories, and musicality. There was all of that on top of having to make the musicians play literally the same note while incorporating lyrics that paid tribute to trailblazing women artists of the Brazilian music industry; those women were vastly ahead of their time. The work we did with the audio company A9 was essential to putting all these voices together into a unique and powerful song. It was one of the most challenging projects of our career, but one of which we are immensely proud; not only of the final product, but of the message and the reactions from women artists in the music world.
What is your favorite part of being members of this film collective?
When we realized that we were part of something bigger — something beyond only one single vision — about the power of plurality, sorority and creativity in a natural process. Our collective workflow has transformed our vision of the world and the film business, while making ourselves better individuals and creators in many aspects. The way we’ve been creating and sharing our stories and different perspectives has made us singular as a group; we believe that we have a solid point of view and a truthful message. And when we have three minds thinking on how to engage a project, we feel that our goals continue to grow. We prioritize lots of dialogue, partnership and of course, a lot of hard work, and that foundation is what holds us together nowadays. Being a Magnolia, to us, is all about a philosophy, a status quo that represents our love of telling stories and building universes that connect our essence honestly with people and brands.
An ad for the NFL shop created by We Are Magnolias
The Brazilian film industry is one of the best established and most prolific in Latin America. How do you see your place in this industry and what do you think the future holds for Brazilian films?
As women filmmakers, it’s hard for us not to associate our industry with our gender. That being said, we have noticed an open space for female directors in Brazil and Latin America. This is a great opportunity for us to share our ideas and vision for gender equality across the world. That way, we can help create narratives where everyone can feel represented. In advertising, we feel this urgency for women in leading roles much more than the film industry. However, there are lovely and talented women directors representing the Brazilian film industry including Laís Bodanzky, Anna Muylaert, and Petra Costa to name a few. They’re brilliant minds making beautiful and moving films. The good news is that there’s now at least one female director in almost every advertising production company in Brazil, which is amazing not only for our visual industry, but also the next generation of women storytellers. For the future, we hope that brand decision-makers can supply the resources and opportunities (such as awards) for women to make our world less centralized and more about plurality and equal rights.
The lack of women in leadership roles in society is distressing, and we’re all fighting every day to change that, but there are even fewer women in the artistic world than in the business/administrative world. When we started six years ago, we felt so much like outsiders in a boys’ club, so we decided to stick together in order to make a difference and get our names noticed. Now we have engaged a community of women filmmakers in Brazil with a total of forty-seven directors on the Free the Work network. Despite that, the numbers are still very depressing. We are forty-seven out of around 390 directors in Brazil. Of all the action films about cars produced in 2019, just 2% were made by women, and of all the narrative stories, which are generally bigger projects with higher budgets, only 3% were shot by women. So clearly the need to represent a more diverse demographic is massive. That’s why we keep our community close, for us to exchange experiences, ideas, and ways to play this game better. We also truly hope that we can inspire other young women to join the creative side of the workforce because it’s so much fun!
The advertising production companies in Brazil are hiring more and more women directors every day as a statement of creating a new business culture that lends itself to building an equal environment. To get an idea of the scale of this, in the past we had very few women directing pieces, around five women in the entire market, but nowadays we have more than forty women working in production companies or as freelancers. This represents a great development for us all as artists and storytellers. We know, however, that it’s just the beginning, and we want much more than that. As a matter of fact, reality is changing because clients and agencies are asking for a woman’s view, asking for women to put forth their own voices and collaborate to build brand communications truly inclusive of the women audience. According to the latest research, we know that women typically make the final decision in relation to buying a product, so the way the current advertising market is tailored to men doesn’t seem appropriate to reality. We need to reprogram the way that we are doing things by putting an equal vision inside the market and giving women opportunities to grow and showcase their talents. We believe that a better world relies on sharing plural and diverse points of view.
Still from the music video for Vogue do Gueto, a song by Karol Conka
What are some struggles, if any, you have found in fostering a community like this in a global film industry marked by gender inequality?
The gender inequality issue has been a central theme of our career and we’ve been fighting ever since we entered the industry. In so many ways, the lack of opportunity and belief in women creators is huge in Brazil. So, we grouped with the intention of making it happen against all odds, and found in each other the support we needed to believe in our talents, deciding to see this struggle as a challenge to be overcome. And now our intention is to make this community as wide as possible, hiring as many female professionals as we can from all kinds of positions, because we’ve believed in equality since we first started. Also, in 2017 we joined a group called Free The Work which is a platform that connects women filmmakers with agencies and professionals with the intention of creating a network of women and providing opportunity for them to grow in this industry.
With the Brazilian audiovisual market being extremely hard to enter, we were lucky to find each other and to be able to give each other the strength and support we needed in times of difficulty. We don’t like to be attached to the problems and challenges we don’t live through every day. For example, we have heard that we are very fragile from male colleagues and weren’t confident enough in meetings. We also have to be extra careful while communicating our views to agencies and clients because sometimes we have to be firm, and, unlike men who are traditionally considered strong when they speak loudly, women can sadly be seen as hysterical when they stand up for themselves. We’ve had some situations where we needed to be very careful so as to not be misinterpreted. And last but not least, we’ve been asked to work on extremely sexist scripts, and when we explained our reasoning for turning down those projects, we were criticized and judged for our decisions. But we keep working to change this reality, and the intention is to be more and more ourselves day after day and to transform the industry that way.
What are some of your goals for We Are Magnolias in the future?
These past few years, our career has been very focused in the advertising space. As a next step, we would love to evolve and engage in more film, episodic television, and branded content. A huge goal for us is not only making pieces that entertain, but also creating narratives that have the power to connect with our audience in a special visceral/emotional/sensory way. We feel that our industry in Brazil is growing and consequently we’re always getting better at producing this type of content. For the next few years, we have some projects in mind like a short film and a music video that both allow us to explore experimental universes. Those types of projects are a part of us and in our veins. Our goal is to never forget our essence and keep our eyes open for new challenges and new adventures as storytellers.
A still from We Are Magnolias’ short film The Grenade
We’re always seeking projects that inspire us on a new level and give us the freedom to work with feelings and ideas that truly embody our minds and our way of seeing the world. It’s very important for us to stay true to our essence and aesthetic, but inside that concept, there’s a whole universe with different possibilities to engage: storytelling narratives or sensory pieces, film experiences such as exhibitions, and different and unexpected formats to impact the audience in new ways. With that intention, we’re looking for artists and partners that are open to creating these unique stories with us. We might not know exactly what the future will bring us, but for now we will keep collecting insights and brainstorming new forms of creative expression.
Who can join your collective and, for people who are interested in joining it, how might they be able to get in contact and learn more about your efforts?
Maybe it’s because we’re all really good friends, but the vibe on our sets is extremely important to us. When selecting our production crew, we try to curate professionals who not only fit our strong visual style, but also have high energy. This is as important as their craft delivery because we’re always laughing and making jokes. When we started, we felt the need to come together to develop the strength and self-belief to move forward in a world dominated by men. We aim to work with a plural team, consisting of women in executive roles. We love meeting in a room full of strong women. For those who may want to join our next project and know a little more about us, they can follow our Instagram, visit our Vimeo page, or contact us through email via wearemagnolias@gmail.com.
You can learn more about We Are Magnolias on LANDIA and their Facebook. Learn more about Mimi by visiting her profile.