Know Your Indie Filmmaker: Elise Simard
Says: “I’m so bored when I’m locked into a narrative! I use it as a starting point. For example, Beautiful Like Elsewhere is a sci-fi film, written with a clear narrative. But in creating the film, I backed up — I wanted to evoke a sense that you are viewing this story from another dimension. A more lyrical, visceral experience. Part of that is editing from the gut, rather than editing to a script.”
Where to start: La Traversée (2010). A child and a rabbit explore a forest at night, taking in its mysterious yet inviting sights and sounds. Simard’s overlapping backgrounds echo the curiosity and intricacy of a child’s mind, skirting around the borders of consciousness and imagination in that hazy place between wake and dream. The perceptible sounds of insects, chirping birds, flowing water, and rustling leaves blend with dreamy impressions of animals gracefully walking through the woods. There’s no threat or menace, just big deep inhales of life and its wonders.
Influences: “Artists and friends like Brigitte Archambault, Parissa Mohit, Frances Adair McKenzie, and Faiyaz Jafri have certainly influenced my work,” she says. “Their approach to storytelling in the animated form is very much their own. This is what is inspiring to me.”
Other key works: The Occupant (2007), My Little Underground (2012), Beautiful Like Elsewhere (2017), Robin McKenna’s Thanadoula (2020, Simard as art director)
In a sentence: Combining innovative uses of light, texture, and sounds, Simard creates sensory environments that rest snuggly between imagination, dream, and reality. You don’t interpret Simard’s work, you feel it.
This week’s subject is Montreal, Canada-based animator and teacher Elise Simard, one of the bright – and often unheralded – beacons on the international animation scene whose multi-layered works eschew straightforward narratives and explore overlapping sensations wide open to interpretation.
Currently working on: La Belle Piscine, which translates as the beautiful swimming pool, explores the ethereal spaces that a public swimming pool occupies within its community.
