An Interview with Paloma Lopez
by Susanna Demelas
Paloma Lopez is a Venezuelan director and filmmaker, based in both Los Angeles and Paris. Her film, Girls & The Party, was featured at BFI Future Festival. The film follows a group of girlfriends preparing for an anticipated summer party in a cramped bathroom. Between their teenage talks of boys and makeup, character Mercedes navigates her blossoming attraction towards one of her female friends. In this interview, Paloma talks to us about creating queer cinema and her creative plans for 2021.
Congratulations on your film, Girls and the Party, being part of BFI Future Film Festival! What does it mean for you to be a part of this event?
It's great to be able to share my work with a lot of people! Thank you BFI! I’m grateful for the opportunity to build a community and to benefit from the discussions it has brought out.
Still from Girls & The Party
What inspired you to create the story?
I was interested in exploring the theme of blossoming of attraction and desire. I wanted to portray what it feels like to be attracted to someone in an extremely emotional setting, where there is a lot of intimacy but no privacy.
The cinematography in this film has such a timeless feel to it – was there any films or filmmakers that inspired the style of Girls and the Party?
Thank you! Matthew Chuang, the cinematographer, and I developed it. To portray the desire and curiosity of Mercedes, we wanted to make the film feel palpable and attractive. To underline these qualities, we knew that shooting in 16 mm would be perfect. A big influence was Carol, directed by Todd Haynes and shot by Edward Lachman, as in Carol, a lot of the story functions outside of dialogue, through glances and touches.
Another reference was Francis Bacon’s portraits. I love the way he renders multi-phased, contorted human figures. The morphing of his subjects felt like a visual metaphor for the search for the identity of my teenage subjects in the bathroom before a party.
Still from Girls & The Party
I loved how this film looked at coming-of-age tropes through a queer lens. Is this something which is important for you – making queer people feel seen within tropes which don’t usually include them?
Making queer people feel seen within tropes that don’t include them is more a happy consequence rather than my intention when creating work. I was interested in representing my experience of desire specifically within a lesbian dynamic. It is a coming of age story and it is about love, but instead of including queer people in tropes defined by rapports that exist within the norm, I like the idea of creating something new that doesn’t necessarily belong in existing tropes but that explores a different narrative specific to its queerness.
Still from Girls & The Party
Finally, do you have any upcoming creative projects in 2021 that you’d like to tell us about?
Yes! I’m developing my next short! I’m excited about it. It’s the story of a seemingly ideal Venezuelan family that moves to France, but their life becomes disjointed when their expansive furniture from Caracas, arrives at their small and somber Parisian apartment. I will be shooting in Paris in June.
Where to find Paloma -
Her site - https://paloma-lopez.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/zepolamolap/
