Building a house can be a bit like making a movie. That’s what Swiss director Sophie Ballmer discovers in her documentary La Maison (a world premiere in VdR’s National Competition). Filmmaking and construction are both big, complicated endeavours with many different parts in motion at once.
Ballmer’s partner Tarik Hayward (a sculptor) had inherited a family home. It was beautiful – but it needed a lot of work.
“It’s my first movie…and it is my first renovation of a house,” the director notes of how the two projects became combined. “How I was working in the house and how I was working for the movie, were really linked. It was like gymnastics for me!”
Early on, Ballmer and Tarik set about knocking down much of the old building prior to beginning the refurbishment. Both were keen to film the process. She is a photographer. He is a sculptor. They also saw a way of telling a bigger story, one which touched on family history, “patriarchy and relationships.”
The director wrote the first-person voice-over early on. “At the beginning, I didn’t want to record it myself because I am not an actress. I don’t have a specific, nice voice,” she says. She started to work with a professional actor friend but quickly realised that it would be better if she did the job herself. After all, these were her words being used to describe her own house.
The director acknowledges that the project took its toll on her emotions. “I think I did the film because I was too stressed with the house. I needed to think about something else. I am really bad with construction. It’s like I have two left hands. I [felt] I would never survive this terrible situation that I am in,” Ballmer says. She worked on the documentary therefore in “blocks” of time during the building process.
In La Maison, the camera is constantly on the move, swooping past the masonry, bricks and plaster. “I wanted to be a bit like a phantom…I wanted to have this subjective [feeling] of someone flying in the house. It could be an animal or a bird.” She also likens herself to an underwater diver surveying a wrecked ship. (“I really like this image because for me it’s a bit scary and super-beautiful.”)
The duo shot a lot of material. They didn’t have to rely on other crew members and so could pick up the camera whenever they felt like it. Tarik designed a special gimbal so he could shoot in the less accessible parts of the house, for example on the roof.
The voice-over comes laced with humour. For example, we hear discussions about the origins of the Ballmer family. The director’s father did extensive genealogical research, made a family tree and discovered that they are from the same branch of the Ballmers as Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men. (They’re yet to meet him, though).
We catch occasional glimpses of Tarik and Sophie working amid the rubble, not always looking as if they know what they are doing.
“I am a bit of a perfectionist in my ideas,” Ballmer responds why it has taken her so long to direct her first documentary. Born in 1978, she is the co-founder of Tunnel Tunnel, an art space in the centre of Lausanne. She is involved in curation and publishing as well as filmmaking. She talks of “slaloming” from project to project. However, having made one doc, she is keen to make more.
La Maison was made on a modest budget. “I was a bit shocked by the amount of time and work to try to find a budget for the cinema,” the Lausanne-based director admits. She raised funds from local foundations.
The house itself still isn’t finished but she and Tarik are living in it. “There are three stairs. We finished one and when we finished it we went to Berlin for one year because we were so tired…now we are back. Sometimes, we need to move into another part of the house,” she says as the work goes on and on.
Her family and friends have now watched the documentary. “I was super anxious because I speak about them and it’s a bit critical [about them]…actually I was a bit afraid of their reaction, but they were super happy and quite proud of the movie.
Ballmer is writing a new project but plans to shoot it “outside the house.”
