“With kinky hair like that, you cannot be my daughter,” says the estranged father to the eponymous heroine in the film Elza by Mariette Monpierre. Those words of repudiation have haunting resonances for the director, because it is what she was told by her own father at age 20, when she went seeking him in Guadeloupe.
Monpierre was in town last week to promote her debut feature film, which was screened at the Samsung Women’s International Film Festival (SWIFF). She says Elza is a fictionalised account, despite the autobiographical elements. “My life is exciting and moving but not cinematic enough. Also I wanted the movie to have a positive outcome.”
Born in Guadeloupe and raised in Paris, Monpierre earned her Masters in Media and Languages at the Sorbonne University. She eventually moved to New York City — where she still lives with her son — to work for ad agency BBDO.
It was a good place to acquire the filmmaking skills that allowed her to make music videos, documentaries, short films such as the highly acclaimed Rendez-vous — and eventually, Elza, which took six years from concept to screen, and which deals with themes close to Monpierre’s heart.
Ground reality
“In African-American and Caribbean countries, some 60 per cent of children are estranged from their fathers,” says Monpierre who believes the roots of this shocking statistics lie in slavery. “Children of slaves belonged to the master of the mother, not the master of the father. The men never developed a sense of responsibility towards their children, a mindset that is taking a while to change.”
Positive outcome
With its themes of race and gender, rejection and reunion, Elza has both a specific Guadeloupe perspective and universal appeal. She narrates how viewers, post the Chennai screening, shared their instinctive impulse to seek reconciliation with alienated family members.
Like her heroine who is no victim but an effervescent woman with a plan, Monpierre too is smart, focussed, and plans to stay relevant in the competitive world of filmmaking.
More, she’s pragmatic about earning a living, and has “set up a video company called MVP — Medical Video Productions — which does doctor interviews and testimonials. In the U.S., doctors are allowed to present themselves on the Net. It’s a niche market but offers good money”.
Though in the process of scripting her next full-length feature film, she, nevertheless, intends to continue making documentaries, and “guerrilla-style, extremely low-budget features. I can’t wait two to three years till I find the budget to make a ‘big’ film, I have to keep doing it, that’s the only way to grow.”
Monpierre’s advice to aspiring filmmakers: Get that first feature done. (Elza has found commercial release in a New York theatre for two guaranteed weeks this September)
