Q&A with Grace Kim
A conversation with filmmaker Grace Kim on her short film, An Interloper's Kiss.
How did you first get into filmmaking?
After a brief existential crisis as a university student, I decided I wanted to try my hand at screenwriting (I was an English literature major). After spending a year consuming books, podcasts, Youtube videos, and online courses about screenwriting, I finished my first short screenplay and realized that I didn't want to hand it over to someone else to direct. I then plunged into making my first student short film with no on-set experience whatsoever. The result was a messy, incomprehensible film with really sloppy green screen and ADR a la 'The Room' but it was kind of like a filmmaker's boot camp for me where I learned the basic ins and outs of production. I graduated from university a few months after I completed that film and moved to New York on a whim.
What was your creative process for this film?
Because my intro into filmmaking was through screenwriting, I firmly believed that story was king. Then I made my first short film, an absurdist dark comedy about a man who falls in love with a woman's voice after hearing it on a banana phone, and I realized that I didn't quite nail the tone that I wanted. It was supposed to be something between heartfelt and funny, and I felt like I only got broad strokes of the emotions that I wanted to convey. Because I didn't go to film school, every film I make was a separate learning experience, and An Interloper's Kiss was kind of an exercise in tone. I wanted to understand how a film could evoke a mood or feeling without relying on a narrative arc, and really began thinking about composition, lighting, and color.
For this film, I stripped away any sense of a narrative plot, and just tried to capture that peculiar, intimate feeling of watching in on someone when they presume themselves to be alone. What idiosyncrasies and emotional details do we reveal about ourselves when we're by ourselves?
I decided I only wanted one shot per scene because I didn't want any cuts to make us feel like we watching a film but rather, wanted to get as close to the tedium of watching one particular thing for a very long time. The script for this film was incredibly sparse, a lot of the VO got added in later on, but I built out each scene, not with the intention of moving the plot forward, but to reveal more details about the main character. It was really peculiar because I shot everything first and then felt like I was crafting the narrative all over again in post-production as I rewrote the voiceover.
What projects are you working on next, and how can people who are interested best support or follow you.
I'm kind of always working on a million things at once because I have such a short attention span and need to switch gears often in order to not get bored. But at present, I just finished a film that premiere at Bushwick Film Festival. It's an experimental documentary-animation-live-action-hybrid film about various Brooklyn residents' heartbreak experiences, woven together into a cohesive reflection on heartbreak, loss, and healing. It was supported in part by the Brooklyn Arts Council, and while it's going through the festival circuit, I actually want to present it in New York as part of an installation, involving some drawings and paintings that I created in line with the theme of the film. I'm most active on Instagram (@gracekime) when it comes to my work, so follow me there or go to my website.
