This is an interview I recently had with the American director Daviel Shy. It was first published in German in The Gap. The English version is slightly different.
Copyright: Das Buffet ist Eröffnet 2012 (C) DavielShyFilms
Lesbian Zombies from Outerspace
The American director Daviel Shy is in the process of shooting a lesbian horror movie in Vienna. In an interview on her current project „Das Buffet ist eröffnet“ she tells us what the lesbian horror movie is all about and why you have to call it like that. Scattered light, rustling plastic foil on the floor and a bucket full of pig blood steaming in the beam of the headlights. When Daviel Shy shoots a zombie movie the low-budget underworld glamour sprays sparks. Today the final scene of the 5 minute short film is to be shot. A naked woman is lying on the table – the last victim. She is decorated with a raw heart of a pig on her bare skin. The zombies – lesbians from different time periods – are sitting around the table and start cutting the slimy pig innards with their knives. „Now wake up!“ Daviel commands and the naked woman on the table slowly rises. But something goes wrong. The table overturns and the naked undead slips on the pig blood until she slowly glides onto the plastic foil. „Are you okay?“ – „Hast du dir wehgetan“ (Did you hurt yourself?) Everybody comes running, talking in different languages. But it‘s all good and the scene is already shot. Despite every spontaneity and the short time within the movie shooting was arranged everything seems very professional – last but not least because the director seems to know exactly what she is doing. A photo of the Vienna-based Brasilian photographer Roberta Lima inspired Daviel to the horror idea. Lima had taken a shot of herself in the role of some kind of sleepless zombie woman in a Victorian dress standing in a Viennese street. Now she is playing that character in Daviel‘s film.
Daviel Shy talked to us about the message of her film and about the constitution of collective identity in the lesbian arts scene.
Copyright: Das Buffet ist Eröffnet 2012 (C) DavielShyFilms
The undead in your movie are passing the zombie virus to each other through extreme sexual acts. Would it be possible for people to get the message wrong and associate it with the transmitting of disease?’
Daviel Shy: The zombie-like characters in Das Buffet ist Eröffnet kill only with their bare hands and mouths. They devour each other through sex, taking the common idiom of “eating pussy” literally and to the extreme. Because the victims come back to life, as women hungry cannibals themselves, it is possible that, as you suggested, one could make the association with the spread of a virus/disease.
Wouldn‘t that be the opposite of what you want to say?
Not every character “turns” through sexual contact. When the last character is introduced, it creates a rupture in the established pattern. She stands in the doorway, frightened but eager, and bites herself, signaling her desire to enter into the ritual of her own accord and “volunteering” to become “one of us”.
Is it important to call it a „lesbian“ horror film instead of just saying „horror film“? Does that label play a role for empowerment of lesbians? Doesn’t calling it a lesbian horror film create an inequality itself?
I completely understand the argument against narrow compartmentalization, especially when labels can often be thrust upon artists to in order to further ghettoize or deny entry, power etc. But it has always been very important for me to use the term lesbian. Too often people shy away from the word either in favor of no word at all, in which case the piece can be subsumed into a broader culture and lost to those seeking a specifically lesbian film – or in favor of a looser umbrella term such as queer.
Doesn’t that give collective identity of lesbians a more essential role than being lesbian as one feature of a personal identity?
While it is completely up to each artist, I prefer to staunchly stand by the beauty and specificity of the term lesbian, whether sexuality is part of the work or not. I am proud of this film, which was made by mainly lesbians and all women cast and crew. And the lesbian label has been a part of the project from the very beginning.
Artists rarely use distancing effects in such an extended way as you do.It seems like the movie is trying to be very loud and irritating, like a slap into the face of the constructed social norm of being hetero. Is this your way of expressing the term „empowerment“ that you use so often?
I really like the idea that it has aspects of an installation. I used various techniques to produce the desired experience of the film; what you called, “a slap in the face.” I took inspiration from horror, camp, melodrama, spectacle and sexploitation films engaged both aesthetically but also for what they do. I wanted to make a film that does not to shy away from blood, death, and disease.
Exploiting existing fears is a part of the horror genre. While not my primary intention, to imply that lesbianism is a disease, spreading through pleasure from which no one is safe, is a manipulation of the fear invented by homophobes but re-purposed through camp. In a recent lecture, film theorist John Malarkey (of Kingston University, London) argues that the feeling of horror is produced in film when that which is usually in the background demands attention. In a political context, if those who are usually marginalized threaten to take the foreground, this can be terrifying to audience members who now occupy that space. In other words, horror is one way to say, “Be afraid. Be afraid of what is happening in this film because we (lesbians) refuse to be peripheral.”
The movie will be released next Halloween.
Copyright: Das Buffet ist Eröffnet 2012 (C) DavielShyFilms
