For me, having two critics, one who's four Rem and one who's maybe critical of Rem, that just is boring. And that just to me doesn't really tell you anything that you couldn't find by a quick internet search about his buildings or reading a book. When you see a film, you want to see something that you can't see anywhere else. And primarily for me, you want to feel something.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Arknax Sessions, One to One. I'm Amelia, and this week I'm speaking with LA-based filmmaker, Thomas Kolhas, son of the one and only Rem. Thomas' documentary about his father, simply called Rem in all caps, premiered a few weeks ago at the Venice Film Festival. But don't expect a teary biopic or a heady architectural cell, though.
Thomas wanted something more impressionistic with big shots on Rem's big projects, alongside human encounters, focusing more on the emotional than the intellectual. He joined me in our studio to talk about his process and portraying his father in the film, as well as his own influences as a filmmaker. Why don't we start with you telling me a little bit more about your work with Mike Nesett? Well, it's kind of a typical LA situation where we met socially, but then I saw his art show and he, of course, became aware of my film that I was making.
And then there's just been, since then, kind of an ongoing process of interchange, where we start to see situations where the work we're doing can overlap and see not similarities in terms of direct visual similarities in terms of his paintings and my work, but just philosophical similarities in terms of our thoughts about each profession and about how we would like to work and where we would like to work. And so we're really not only working on my new film, which is a documentary about LA, he's a character in that film, but also we're exploring lots of different other ways that we can combine our work. And his work is mostly in the medium of painting, but you would say that there's a lot of more side-specific aspects to it that kind of bring in architecture, and is that kind of where you found a middle ground? I mean, that's the thing about people like me and Mike.
I think what's interesting about our work is it's hard to sum up in one term. So I think to say painting about Mike doesn't really do it justice. I mean, yeah, he uses paint, but I wouldn't even just call it painting. I definitely think because of his architectural background, there's a scale and there's a philosophy and a thought process and a way of working, which is very architectural.
I mean, his work, he makes concrete canvases a lot of times, and a concrete canvas is more like an actual structural wall in a building than a canvas that you buy in an art store. So is that painting or is that architecture? I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure that it matters.
I think those kind of distinctions become less important and less clear when you start to kind of blur the lines of different ways of doing things and different ways of thinking. And that's also something I'll try and do with my filmmaking. Well, with film and with architecture, there's obviously a huge production cycle and all these different measures that have to be managed to form this perfect concert of concerns and expressions to build an overall project. Would you say that it's a fair comparison to put the methods of architects and filmmakers together?
I mean, I think the methods are less similar than the philosophy. I think what's similar about architecture and film is more so how many different things you have to understand to do it properly. And from the position of a director and architect. Right.
Exactly. So you have to understand that it's not only as much psychology and sociology involved as there is engineering because you're making something for people. And the same thing when you're making a film, of course, you have to understand lighting. You have to understand editing.
There's a lot of technical processes you have to understand. But if you're going to make something that really connects with people, you have to understand the psychology, the sociology of whatever subject you're exploring. And I think that's the most similar thing. And as a director and as an architect, it's not just one skill.
There's many different skills that you have to be able to do it successfully. And I think that's where it's similar. Because we see or architects has featured in the past many different architects that have decided to move into film in multiple roles, whether they're directing or shooting or set design or production design or things like that. And speaking to this kind of generalist sensibility or at least this empathy for the generalist ability where you can really have that whole and all the different disciplines and be the conductor of it all is really the common skill.
And of course, we're here talking because of your recent film, Rem, about your father and his work going all around the globe. But of course, before Rem, there was other film work and you came to LA, I believe around 2001. Okay. So about 15 years ago, and you went to film school specifically to moving from London to film school.
So what initially in that move to study film were the kind of the guiding lights, the films and the styles that you wanted to pursue most? It's funny because it's a very natural question to ask that kind of thing. And it's the same when people ask me about references with the film, Rem, and it sounds almost like a Kanye West kind of answer when you say like, you're your own inspiration or you're your own role model or something like that. But there wasn't really any specific films that made me want to go to film school.
It was just a kind of understanding that my type of personality and my type of skill set was best suited to one kind of thing. And I think what you said, hit an L on the head was orchestration, you know what I mean? And being able to bring all of these things together. It's a rare kind of person who is creative but also organized and can also get other people to do things in an efficient way.
And that's very important in architecture, but that's also very important in film. And I'm one of those people that can do that. So I thought it made perfect sense to go to film school. And some of the work I'd done in London, I worked for Tank Magazine and I'd worked for MTV.
So at Tank I saw really, really interesting and really experimental photography techniques. Of course it was still photography so it was different. But I found that really interesting and something that was really beautiful but also very smart and very creative and very different from anything I'd seen before. So that made me want to get into the kind of visual side of it.
But again, I thought photography and fashion photography in terms of just one still image was a bit limiting. And when I worked at MTV I saw a more narrative version. Even though it was all shorts, it was either programs or music videos. I still saw where you could take that kind of really experimental and beautiful visual imagery and then create something else with it.
So those kind of two influences were more important also than any other kind of film. But I think it was mainly some kind of tactical awareness of my skill set as a human being and where it would fit in best in the world. Well because that has to as well because around that time in the early 2000s and coming to LA and being a part of the movie scene at that point in the film industry, so many things were changing so drastically in terms of graphics and just what was possible in film. And a lot of times, and you could say around 2000, of course, with the recession, the investment architecture would also go away.
And I might encourage architects to look for other avenues specifically in narrative of filmmaking or so. So I like how you describe it as simply like this is what I knew I could do. This is what I was very good at and less about saying I had a story to tell necessarily because I think it's also a sign of the times to be able to come into the industry at this point and really take advantage of what you can. Well, it's interesting that you made that comparison between the recession and the time I moved here maybe I think four months before 9-11 as well.
So not only in terms of technology, which was a very important time in technology. And I went to film school. That was the first time anyone started using HD cameras. So when I first went, an HD camera was this crazy weird alien thing that you could almost knock your hands on, but my film school was lucky enough to have two of them.
So it was really a very important time when we were switching from one phase to another. But it wasn't clear that that was going to be a new phase. A lot of people thought these HD cameras would never catch on because film's so much more beautiful. So you're right, it really was a very pivotal time.
And if that hadn't happened at that time, if I hadn't gone to film school at that time and moved to America at that time, none of the things that have happened subsequently would have had any chance of happening. And of course, that's true in any life, you know, you go down one path. And the gates are the choices. But just in terms of all the technological advances, it's allowed everything to happen, including the film rem.
If I hadn't gone to film school at that time, I wouldn't have felt ready to take on a project like rem at the time that I did. And at the time that I started filming rem was when drones started to come into existence, cheaper DSLR cameras start to shoot really nice HD, really nice 4K. You can now edit 4K on your computer at home. If any of those things hadn't happened at the time that they'd happened, which coincided with me making the film, the film wouldn't be what it would have been successful.
If Kickstarter hadn't existed, the film wouldn't exist basically. So it really is purely down to all of those shifting technological advances that these things could happen. And before that time, they couldn't have happened. And I see through REMS Korea and other architects' career that those same changes have also affected what architects can do.
Absolutely. The change in media and the accessibility of incredibly high quality, high fidelity images of architecture has totally changed the architecture industry. First of all, just how things are marketed, how things are perceived. It's not just an Instagramification of sorts, but it's so much about like- I like that Instagramification.
I'm going to use that. Feel free because I'm sure I'm not the first. But that you have this idea of I want it now, I can see everything now. I have to have an image that commands people's attention.
And drones, of course, have made a huge impact on all types of marketing efforts. And you have these firms that then exist as marketing firms are advertising firms, or simply in the architecture firm, they have their own in-house studio that are working on different ways of representing architecture through film. And there are firms that are doing some pretty interesting work. Spirit of Space has produced a bunch of different videos specifically with Stephen Hole that kind of imagined his new projects in imaginative ways alongside imagery of plans and drawings and actual interviews with people involved in the project.
But that's a whole other separate field of filmmaking because the goal is always about either selling the project or representing the project in a way that is going to sell future projects. So when you came into first doing architectural work in filmmaking, was that with Rem? Was that the first time that you had started attaching architecture as a subject? I mean, to whatever degree you can separate architecture from every film.
For the purpose of the interview. Exactly. Growing up with Rem as your father, you think about architecture in a way that most people don't. And I think I've always been conscious of that in framing and every decision, let's say, as a cinematographer.
And I think that's also why my cinematography has a certain feel to it in a certain look that people also resonates with people. And I think that's part of that is because of my deep connection with architecture. So yeah, I would say it's always been a focus of mine in every project. But this is the first time that I definitely made an architecture project for sure.
And I mean, that's also partly on purpose because I came here to America on my own and wanted to go down a certain path. And I didn't necessarily want it to intersect with anyone in my family or anyone I knew was doing. I wanted it to be completely independent and different. Is it a feel rebellious to decide I'm going to not pursue architecture straight up?
No, it didn't feel rebellious because the way I grew up was very different from most people. As you can imagine, Rem isn't like most people in any way and as a father the same. So most people have, I would say, kind of expectation of them that they're going to be something, they're going to do something. I must say there really wasn't much expectation for me.
There wasn't, so there was never a desire like you should do this and let alone architecture but just in general there was no kind of narrative that I was expected to fit that I had to do this or I had to do that. I was literally left basically to my own devices. They must be extremely refreshing for the son or daughter of any architect because I think that's a pretty rare story in that regard. But when it comes to making a film about, I'm hesitant to say it's about your father because in a way it's so much about simply the world that has become a major architectural figure in and the works that he's done to help create the image of the world that we have today and have a kind of globalized architectural idea.
So I'm hesitant to say whether the film is, even though it's called Rem is about Rem or whether it's about his architecture or whether it's even a helpful device to separate the two which is probably isn't. But simply as his son, having that, you can't get away from your connection to this person. How do you try to then, when you're making a film, what kind of steps do you take in the research and the building of the information before you actually set out to filming? How do you adopt a perspective that is actually constructed and helpful for your creative process and whether that perspective is really just I am the son, I'm going to go with that full force or whether that's something, another hat you have to put on.
I think like central to this idea is how you think about two things. Number one is how do you think about objectivity versus subjectivity? And number two, what kind of perspective do you like to see in a film? You know, like Rem, I don't think like most people.
So I also don't really believe in objectivity. Which is something that people might want or assume is inherent to the documentary feature. Right, exactly. But which I think is an illusion.
And of course you could say I'm even less objective than the average filmmaker, even if you don't believe in objectivity. And that's definitely true. But I think what comes down to is just perspective. What perspective do you want to see?
If I had tried my hardest to make it an objective in quotation marks film, I could have done that. I could have got critics, architecture critics, one who's for him, one who's against him. And did that usual synthesis, which is what most documentaries in general do, but especially architecture documentaries, I don't think that creates objectivity any more than having Fox News and CNN creates an objective media. That's just one extreme than the other extreme.
And then you create some kind of synthesis of your own when you look at both of them. But for me, having two critics, one who's for Rem and one who's maybe critical of Rem, that just is boring. And that just to me doesn't really tell you anything that you couldn't find by a quick internet search about his buildings or reading a book. When you see a film, you want to see something that you can't see anywhere else.
And primarily for me, you want to feel something. When I look at two critics, talking headshots of two critics, I don't feel anything except the desire to fast forward. So I thought with a film, the best way to do that is give it a very immediate and very visceral and very raw perspective. And the way I could do that was, as you said, to embrace my perspective, embrace my subjectivity and show something that can't be seen anywhere else.
And people that have seen the film, if it's to your liking or not to your liking, that's of course a subjective choice or a subjective reaction from that person. But one thing that people can't deny is that the film contains a lot of things that you can't see or find anywhere else. And you will maybe never see again. And that side of Rem that is shown in the parts where there's super, super vulnerable and really honest and really raw information and things that he says and ideas that he just hasn't expressed anywhere else.
That couldn't have been captured by anyone else. And I know that as someone who knows Rem, I know what happens when a stranger blasts a camera on him. It's a different thing that they capture to what I captured. So I had that choice very early on to try and be objective and create this kind of synthesized contrived version of subjectivity and quotation marks.
What I decided to do was just to embrace it and do something much more immediate and much more real and raw. Well, really, I mean, you will have a spectacular position because you really are the only person who can do that. But I'm interested to and just how you decide to approach this given all of that. You're going to fully embrace the subjectivity.
And I'm totally on the same boat where I don't believe that there's any type of pure objectivity, especially in a documentary feature because film is such an emotionally effective media. And so when you are deciding, say, you know, you're going to shoot this structure, you're going to be there with Rem, you're going to be in some place and you're going to have to prepare specifically what you want to capture in the images of that certain project. What kind of plan would you set out for each project? Well, that's the interesting thing about documentaries versus narrative is that oftentimes that's not the case.
So it's a weird combination of extreme planning and then having to be just really open and immediate and present and aware of situations as they unfold. And you know, most of my work is in narrative, whether it's short or long. So I've been used to in my career, oftentimes, you know, really meticulous preparation and shooting for a specific thing, which you then have in editing. Whereas, of course, documentary, unless it's all staged and then it's arguable, that's not a documentary.
But if you're filming actual occurrences, which is what I did, you can't decide exactly what you're going to film because you don't know what's going to happen that day. If it rains, people may not be there. If it's sunny, people may not be there because they may be outside, you know, everything affects what's going to happen. And of course, not everyone wants to talk to you.
Not everyone wants to be filmed. You can't get permission to shoot everywhere. So there's a lot of different factors that really make it almost counterproductive to be too prepared or have too much of a rigid plan. You know, I would argue the same is true in life in general, but it with the filming of especially other documentary, it's it's it can be really bad to have too much of a preconceived idea of what you're going to get.
But having said that thematically, philosophically, visually, you do have to have a plan of what you want because otherwise you'll film stuff that won't cut together in a coherent way. And I think once I had my idea of focusing on the human stories and focusing on the kind of let's say stream of consciousness flow of REMs, philosophical thoughts and getting inside his head, that dictated how I would shoot everything and what kind of footage I would film where I would film and those kind of concerns. And you speak to at least a few inhabitants or prior inhabitants of some of REMs buildings, specifically there's Louise of the Moon, which I'm sure I'm pronouncing, but who are herself as a filmmaker and her time with her father in Bison, Abodou, and as well as two homeless individuals that spent time in the Seattle Library. How did you first get in touch with those people and how did you develop a relationship with them to then interview them throughout the documentary?
Well, that's again where it comes back to I was the only person who could do this because that's the thing. It's not just a situation where these relationships occurred suddenly because I was trying to film. I went to Mays on Baudot many times when it was being constructed. So I've met all the family.
I know them. I've been part of that relationship. I actually physically helped to construct part of that building when it was being done. You know, typically a REM I came to visit the site and he told a construction car to hand me a shovel and start digging.
So I have a physical relationship not only with that house, but also with the people that inhabit it. So it's not like I had to just suddenly get their contact information from someone at LMA, you know. So that helped also the same way that I could capture something much more personal and immediate and raw with REM. The same thing with someone like Louise Lamoint.
I mean, I could guarantee you she would probably wouldn't do an interview with anyone else. And so that intimacy and that pre-existing relationship really allowed me to do that in those situations too. But for example, the homeless guys, that was a completely different situation. And that was a situation that again was one of those that you can't plan for and that you can't be too rigid about because I had an idea that it would be really interesting to talk to a homeless person in the Seattle Library about what their experience is of the building are because, hey, those people are never present in films and I think they deserve to be.
But also because I'm interested in perspectives and I think they have a very unique perspective because of their vulnerability, the way they use the buildings different, but also the importance of the use is a different. For example, let's say the library was closed to a student that may be some kind of a hindrance because they'll have to go to a Starbucks and pull out their laptop and blah, blah, blah. To a homeless person, that means they maybe can't shower, they maybe can't have somewhere peaceful and safe to spend a day. They can't get on the internet to try and find a shelter for that night.
They can't play a musical instrument, which may be one of the only things that makes them feel like a human being that they do that day. That's a massive difference. And I think that's something that I knew I wanted to capture from the start. But when I went there, it was a very different story.
I didn't know this, but the security people at the library told me that many homeless people are convicts because they come from other states and they get away. They want to escape whoever's looking for them and the authorities probation, whoever. So they go to another state and just become homeless. So a lot of the people there were really, really and violently opposed to being filmed.
I was actually threatened a bunch of times by people and it makes sense if they're on the run that they don't want to be filmed. Then also you have mentally ill people with paranoid who think the camera is stealing their soul or something like that. And so you have a lot of different things to contend with where it becomes not a very straightforward process, even though you have that idea of wanting to film a homeless person. So I was really lucky that the first day that I filmed just at the end of the day, we were walking out and then we met Mark.
And I had basically given up on interviewing anyone. And so it was just a complete coincidence that we met someone who was not only willing to talk, but really wanted to talk because he wanted to share his experience with a building because he thought it was very unique, especially because he'd been an engineer. And not only did he want to talk, but he was super smart, super open and super eloquent. So it was just pure luck, basically.
I can't take credit for that. It was one of those things where I thought, this is actually, yeah, I got great shots at the building, obviously, that's easy. And I filmed other users of the building, but my real goal was to get an interview with a homeless person. And I thought that wasn't going to happen in literally five minutes before we left it did.
So that's one of those things you just have to be lucky and have to be open to. Did you ever consider putting the camera on yourself to talk about the buildings or your relationship with them? Yeah. Well, basically, I feel like if you watch a film about an exceptional person, you really want to understand how they think.
If you get to the core of why someone watches a film, I don't really watch, let's say I watch a film about Steve Jobs. I wouldn't necessarily think I wonder how Steve Jobs' relationship was with his children. I don't know if he even had children. I'm just saying hypothetically.
But what I do think is, okay, what made Steve Jobs think differently from other human beings that he could invent these things? And the same goes with Rem. Like, why is he a provocateur in quotation marks? Why is he so different from other architects?
Why does he have the whole theoretical background with the writing and all these different theories that many architects just don't have, many other architectures build buildings? Why does Rem have this whole other aspect to his work, the whole research aspect? I think the only way to answer that question is by getting inside his head and understanding how he thinks. Seeing me doesn't help you do that.
Seeing me on camera, I don't really know what that achieves. That makes that achieve me getting well known, I guess, which definitely isn't one of my goals. But putting you on the same platform as Liza or one of the homeless people to say that you also have this kind of specific knowledge that regardless of your actual familiar relation, you still also use these buildings and how you might compare. That's true.
I think, though, the difference is that when you're making the film, you have to kind of choose a role. And the same way that people ask me what kind of input Rem had into the film and Rem had zero input into the film because you have to do that. If you're handling footage of yourself, it puts you in a very strange situation. And so that's why Rem couldn't have any input in the film because you can't make a film about yourself.
And I can't make a film about someone who is having input into the film. The same way, if I start to make the film about myself, let's say, it would completely change the way I'm looking at it. And again, to talk about subjectivity, objectivity, I feel very uncomfortable looking at my own image. I think a lot of people these days who have 5,000 selfies on their Instagram may feel differently, but for me, I don't like to see myself on camera.
And that's not something that I wanted to do from the start of the film. And the shift in perspective of making yourself a character in a film, I think is pretty dramatic. And also, in terms of narrative, if you don't have yourself as a character, you're really more inclined to explore other avenues and create a narrative that is focused on the person, that's focused on the experience of the other people, rather than, say, taking an easy option and just having me explain everything. Because that's the other problem is a lot of films have someone, an erator, usually the person making the film who mediates the information.
I did not want the information to be mediated at all. I wanted people to be able to see the perspective and it was very first person perspective. And I didn't want to spell everything out. I didn't want to wrap everything up with a neat little bow and give everyone all the information.
I wanted them to have a specific experience and a specific perspective. And then erator, including myself in the film, I think would take away from that and make it less immediate and less organic. And what you're saying as well about, you brought up the Steve Jobs movie, which I think is funny, because even though you haven't seen it, or at least this is a documentary. So it's not a perfect analogy.
But in that film, there is so much, it's such a clear narrative where the whole thing is set up through this very strict structure of the only time you ever see Steve Jobs and the only time you ever watching what's happening is in the specific lead up to his keynote presentation. And of course, that's the device of the film. And in that, they try to cram all of the narrative devices of character development and actual plot development and crises and resolutions and all that. And as a result, personally, I thought it was a complete mess.
And this is beyond the film criticism that we're necessarily here to discuss. But when you're filming an impressionistic documentary that is in a way because it is so highly edited and run is not a clear A to B narrative, when it is so impressionistic, it really does compromise those impressions to try to bring in those other tropes of saying, now we're going to flesh out his son's character and why the son is making this documentary. And that's just simply not topic. So I'm interested in when you came to that realization and you know exactly like this is not what I want the film to be, how did you think that that would then come off to viewers who had no idea who run was?
Well, that's another part of it. I think people assume that you have to include a lot of, let's say, biographical information in order for people to understand something. I don't really agree with that. I think people can understand a lot more if it's represented in a more experiential way.
I think actually, as you said with the Steve Jobs film, you said it became a mess because they tried to put too much information in it and too much character development. I think in a odd way, the less information and the less, let's say, contrived character arcs and character development and blah, blah, blah, that you have, let's say, narrative devices, the more understandable it becomes and the more accessible it becomes. And of course, that's not going to be for everyone. Some people don't like anything that's nonlinear.
They get scared and they think it doesn't make sense and they can't just kind of go with the experience, let's say. Keep expecting something that's more linear and more traditional. But I think in a weird way, it makes it more accessible. And that was something that was very important to me to really, really avoid all of those contrived devices, also to avoid rehashing everything that's already known about them.
You know, and you might say, right, not everyone knows that. But at the same time, I don't feel like a film is the best place to aggregate existing information. I think if there's certain information people want to know and that the film doesn't answer, then they can look on Google afterwards. You know, and I pretty much do that every time I watch a documentary.
I might even pause it and then start looking up things about what's in there. And so I think that's a more interesting way to do it than put the burden on me to incorporate all of this information, like his whole life, his background, my life, his relationship with me. I just think, as you said about the Steve Jobsman, which I haven't seen, so I don't know if I agree with them. But it becomes too contrived, it becomes too obvious and it becomes too, let's say, crammed, you know, and too rigid.
And for me, what I wanted was something that was much more fluid and nonlinear and free and just more of an experience. So you can sit there, you can find out some things about rem, you can really get deep into certain philosophical things. Yeah, you're not going to find out where he was born, but ultimately, does that hinder your experience or in a weird way, does that enhance it? It's an interesting question and I know it's just met rhetorically, but it's in so much of architecture media and also what ARKINEC does is in a way to try to humanize the architecture profession.
And it sounds like from what you're saying that that's the way you think is the most accessible and the most overall dramatic and impactful way to make an impression is by having this open-ended kind of provocation, right? And then you can get the audience to look up whatever other details they want, they have the means to do that themselves. But from a kind of mass perspective, and you look at, okay, how do you humanize someone or how does a story around someone become interesting, is it does start to sit around these human interests kind of aspects? Like, what are the small personal details that I can use to pick out and humanize this person?
And I don't know what the best method is. I think that there's a lot of easy traps to follow to when you start doing that. But at the same time, something that's perhaps too up to, to a certain type of consumer, they just won't have the patience, they just won't want to engage with it. So I think it's an interesting practice of creating this kind of film where it's so laden with significance to a certain small community of architects and people who know as much as they can about Rem's practice versus everyone else who's experiencing it.
Well, I think the best way to think about that is something that Mike Nesbitt also talks about, which is layers. So I don't think it's either or. So either you have to know this and then you have a certain experience or you can understand it. And then if you don't know this, you can't understand it.
I think what I tried to do with the film and of course, whether I was successful or not, depends on who's watching it, but there's just different layers. So if you have a certain level of understanding, you can understand certain things. But then again, someone who's just open minded and is just going with the experience, they might understand them but on a different level, on a more instinctive level, they might have a different interpretation of it. But I don't think for the very reason that I avoided all of the sort of technical, hypothetical and ideological architecture jargon that is in all most architecture documentaries, I think you need less knowledge to understand this film than you do most architecture films, ironically, even though there's less information in it because there's so many other aspects to it.
So if I'm watching a film and I watch a film about the homeless guy telling me that the library looks like an open book, I don't need to know anything about Rem to understand that. I don't need to know anything about Rem to understand Louise Lemoine talking about the metaphor of the building and her father's body and the connection between those two and how after his death, they needed to figure out a different way of using it because it was specifically designed to his needs. I don't think you need to know anything about anything to understand that. You just need to be a human being with feelings, you know.
So I think in a weird way, that goes back to what I said before, which was in a weird way, the less information you put in there, the easier it is to understand because I just think it takes a different way of watching it. And again, going back to what I said before, it's about layers. You know, there's layers upon layers upon layers of subtext in that film. And that's something that you can do, especially when you're the cinematographer, the editor, the producer, the director, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So there's certain things that maybe only I know or understand in that film because it's layers upon layers of meaning. But then again, maybe someone else will feel it, but he won't necessarily understand why they feel that because maybe they don't have the knowledge, but it's still in there. So if you have a certain way of watching a film and just are open to it, maybe you can experience these things without necessarily understanding them in a cerebral weight, but maybe subconsciously you can't. So I'm here in Venice a couple of weeks ago.
What other opportunities might there be for people to be able to see it? Well, I'm working now on where it's going to be screened in America. So I can't really talk about specifics because of course you have to be very tactical in terms of film festivals, blah, blah, blah. But we're working on that soon.
It should be able to be seen in America. And then of course, it's important to me that the film is available for everyone to see in terms of the usual outlets online and hopefully in cinemas, et cetera, et cetera. But also it's very important for me to, although I wanted to make a film that appeals to wider audience and just architecture people, let's say, I still think it's a very important part of this film's process for it to go to architecture schools to different organizations who are interested in showing things about design and architecture. So that's also definitely part of the plan.
Very cool. I'm sure Arkanak would love to put together some type of screening. We'd have a bunch of community that would love to see this. So before we wrap up, thank you so much for coming on.
But I'd love to hear if you have any film recommendations to share with those. Yeah, for sure. Well, in the same vein of what I was talking about in terms of more non-linear and more subconscious experience, which is what I'm personally into with documentaries, there's two films, one called Baraka, one called Samsara. They're both a really experimental non-linear documentaries where you just see images of the human condition and they're connected in a way that maybe there is a connection, maybe there isn't, and it depends on the person watching it, but definitely has a very interesting feeling to it.
Also, another film which might sound surprising is Babies, which is a Disney documentary, but in a weird way did actually inspire how I approach the film, not in a direct way, obviously, but just in a sense that it doesn't have an narrator, it doesn't have any kind of mediated message, it just literally shows you the experience of a bunch of different babies all around the world. And then it allows you to make the connections. And I think that definitely watching that film definitely, at least on a philosophical level, gave me some kind of inspiration for the approach that I eventually took. You've come full circle to the filial relationship.
Yeah, exactly. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to our Connect Sessions one to one with Tomás Kohas.
Donna LoVoynoff edits the podcast and not skilings composed by our music, myself and Bob Bortuna are the producers of one to one. New episodes come out every Monday. You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Google Play Music or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like the show, consider leaving us a review.
We are at our Connect at arkeneck.com. Thanks again for listening.