Asian A.V. Club newsletter #16: Paris Zarcilla
Issue 16 introduces us to director Paris Zarcilla who is fighting for a seat at the table through his award winning passionate gothic thriller 'Raging Grace'.
Meet director/writer Paris Zarcilla, a UK-based creative who garnered attention at this year’s SXSW by picking up the Narrative Feature Jury Award and Thunderbird Rising Award for Best Debut with his film Raging Grace. The movie follows Joy (Max Eigenmann), a struggling undocumented Filipino woman who desperately takes on the position of a caregiver/cleaner in a sprawling mansion. Adding to her pressure is the fact that Joy is also trying to hide her young daughter Grace (Jaeden Boadilla) from her employers within the house’s ominous creepy halls. Amidst insidious owners, a lively child and the constant threat of detention, it’s no wonder Raging Grace has kept audiences on the edge of their seat.
But the films recognition belies the fact that as a British director of Asian descent, Zarcilla is facing an uphill battle back home with the lack of support and creative care. As a “coming-of-rage” film, Raging Grace takes on an even deeper meaning when you understand the odds that are stacked against him as a Filipino filmmaker in the UK.
We had a very honest, emotional chat with Zarcilla recently, but on a surprising location.
Asian A.V. Club: Where are you going to? I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed anyone while they were on a train before!
Paris Zarcilla: Yes, sorry about that. I'm on my way to the office. I've got a meeting there. (Sees the fan made background poster of Raging Grace I’ve used for the zoom call) I really enjoy that poster.
Asian A.V. Club: Right! I saw it online and thought it must be so lovely to have a situation where you've put something out there and now you have people like giving back with things like fan made posters. What has that been like for you?
Paris Zarcilla: That is really wild and so charming. Especially a poster, that's something I never expected anybody to do this early on. But you know what? I think it's like the audience reactions that I get to experience when I'm at festivals that is so well, it feels profound.
Asian A.V. Club: Speaking of profound, we here at Asian A.V. Club are always keen to hear origin stories. Can you tell us about yours and how you got into filmmaking?
Paris Zarcilla: Okay, strap in, because it's a very mediocre story. (laughs) Directing wasn't something that was immediate to me. However, it did stem from a time when I was left alone a lot in my house, just due to the nature of my parents’ work. There were shelves of VHS that I was absolutely not supposed to be watching. But since there was no one there to tell me what to do, I spent many a day watching every single video and I kind of found my own screen family. And it was just a brilliant place for me to escape my loneliness.
But that had a pretty profound impact on me later on in life. Especially during my teens, when I discovered cinema in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir: Michel Gondry) or Lost in Translation (dir: Sofia Coppola), that really kind of kicked it off me. But when I got to university, I decided to do 3D animation. I was obsessed with Toy Story (dir: John Lasseter) and anime. But when I graduated, I remember seeing the insides of these animation rooms and it's basically a dark room with the windows literally gaffer tape shut and there's no light. That was going to be me 16 hours a day, and I just thought no fucking way. (laughs)
Then I started making music videos during the wild, wild west days of YouTube, for Grime artists [and SBTV] back in 2011. It was a great place for me to expand my mind and put crazy ideas on to screen, and to practice how to tell short stories in less than three minutes. But you make no money with these videos, None. Absolutely none at all.
Then I went into commercials for about a good seven, eight years and with that, you give your best ideas away to brands that you don't really care about. And while you do get paid, I was paying with my creative soul and I was deeply depressed.
So, I left the world of commercials to do my own short film, which was Pommel. It was a story between two young brothers who are pitted against each other in an up-and-coming gymnastics competition. They say write what you know and the world of gymnastics was something I knew because I did it for a long period of time when I was younger. It was a great way to be able to express what I loved and hated about that world, but through the lens of an unsuspecting thriller and unorthodox horror in a way. All those flourishes have made its way to my current film, Raging Grace. So and that is me in a nutshell. (laughs)
Asian A.V. Club: I feel like I need to sit down after that description! It’s not mediocre at all! You mention your new film Raging Grace and I heard that the COVID pandemic was an instigator of the story. Can you tell me how?
Paris Zarcilla: It’s true. Raging Grace was a reaction to so much what happened during the pandemic. I was really having a crisis. When we had enormous amounts of time to ourselves during lockdown, I began to realize I had spent pretty much the majority of my life rejecting my heritage, my mother tongue, my culture. And it was because I was taught by parents who are immigrants here in the UK but had gone through their own trials of experiencing micro and macro aggressions, but never really had the language to articulate that. I also think they didn't realize that they were teaching us to assimilate, and I really took that to heart. It was about seeking white approval, aspiring to whiteness, those types of things. As my dad would say, that is how you survive, that is how you succeed.
But during the pandemic, I pretty much realized I had no idea who I was or what the fuck I'm doing. And this level of shame and anger was compounded by the open aggression towards Eastern and Southeast Asians. Plus the content of that aggression and that hatred was stoked by a government who is deeply xenophobic and anti-immigrant. I mean, they railed against the same immigrants who were supporting a very beleaguered NHS (National Health Service), which is very underfunded and under resourced. On the frontlines were immigrants who were Filipino nurses, Filipino doctors, people that looked like my mom, my dad, my uncle's, my Auntie's. My mom even came out of retirement to help the British public! And honestly, that inspired an incandescent rage that I thought was so fucking dangerous, that I needed to put that in a space where I could give myself the permission to be as angry and as messy and as difficult as I could be. To let me be all the things outside of the cookie cutter mold of the “Good Immigrant” model.
Asian A.V. Club: The film definitely encapsulates all of that. I wonder now that you’ve processed all of that into Raging Grace, what is it like to present this energy to the public? That must be a different kind of emotion for you to take on.
Paris Zarcilla: Absolutely. It's terrifying. It's intimidating as fuck. You know, that's how I felt then and it’s how I feel now. The effort it takes to continue writing and promoting and pushing out messages that confront a very colonialist society…taking aims at oppressive structures. I wasn't taught to confront these things. I was taught to just lay low, blend in, get the good grades, excel, don't stick out… give me one second…
[Paris offers his phone to get his QR ticket scanned by the train conductor]
Asian A.V. Club: I love it! I just got scanned! That’s never happened to me before! (laughs) Sorry… back to the interview. We were talking about now having to present this film to audiences.
Paris Zarcilla: I often have to steel myself before I go out and sit before an audience. This film has unearthed a great deal of discomfort for certain audience members. And having to ready myself for being confronted with that discomfort is something I was expecting but makes me extraordinarily exhausted.
Asian A.V. Club: Plus the film is no longer yours anymore. It belongs to the public.
Paris Zarcilla: You’re right. This film has been so personal but it is no longer mine. That in itself has been a process for me to let go. Ultimately, I wanted it to express this rage. It was this process that allowed me to be able to transcend so much of the anger and frustration to get to a place of healing. And I want other people who watch this film, to be able to feel the same need to experience that collective cathartic spectacle. I watch it grow as you would a child and imbued it with as much as I could possibly give and hope that it can stand up there on its own. I’m proud of it.
Asian A.V. Club: There’s beautiful speech, almost to the end of the film, where Joy (Max Eigenmann) confronts her employer about the unreasonable expectations and inequities of being an immigrant in the service industry. What was it like to write that speech because it’s so much larger than what’s going on in the film.
Paris Zarcilla: Thank you for acknowledging that speech. That was actually the first thing I wrote, so I'm really glad that you brought that up. It was just a small paragraph, while thinking about my mother, and all the nurses and domestic workers, and doctors, who prop up these systems. Those words were the only way I could express my rage gracefully. In a way that was a summation of all the effort, the blood, and the sacrifice it takes to be a pillar of society.
The whole process has been quite difficult because I was constantly putting myself where I had to dismantle so many of the elements of my brain that were deeply colonized. I think for me, that was the only time writing ever felt cathartic.
Asian A.V. Club: What is it like to be an Asian creative trying to tell their stories in the UK? Since you’ve spent some time in the US with this film, do you get a hint of FOMO seeing projects that are inherently Asian centered being made here?
Paris Zarcilla: Yeah, like times 50! I often look over the pond with very envious eyes, but to the communities that have been forged in the US and have collectively come together and made a massive difference. We do not have that here, we're still just in the infancy, in terms of opportunity. It's dire out here. And I'm really not trying to be hyperbolic here, but the level of opportunities for people of color are so fucking small. In our industry, the systems that are supposedly there to support early talent, are still suffer from very systemic issues of prejudice and racism. Whether they like to admit it or not, you just have to look at the statistics. Look at the 1077 British films made in the past 10 years. What do you think the percentage of that was made by say, East or Southeast Asians? .8% ! That's in 10 years.
Raging Grace is going to be the first British Filipino film in British cinema history. And I hate that I am the first or have to be the first. I'm proud of what we're doing, but it feels like we have to arrive in this industry fully formed. I cannot afford to be mediocre. You have to be fucking good in this industry, just to have a seat at the table. I mean, I won two of the biggest prizes in South by Southwest this year, Grand Narrative Jury Award and also the Thunderbird Rising Best Debut; no one in the UK gave a shit. The reception here has been fairly icy. And I can speculate all day long as to why. But we live in a very small and tribal system here, where if your film was not made under public funding policies, then you'll not be supported in the same way that other films will be. It's as simple as that, ours was made outside of the system.
But in so many ways, I love that we did it this way because it's proof that we don't have to rely on these very limited means of trying to make a film or to be heard. But it does mean that you are always operating from this position where we're surviving, where we have to work three times harder than anybody else. And I'm tired of that, I'm really fucking tired. But I have got an Olympic sized pool of energy to continue telling stories like this. And I know that I have to look where the opportunities are. And for me, that might be the US.
Asian A.V. Club: I have total faith that you're going to find ways to tell your stories. While you’re traveling to promote the film, I have to ask who is taking care of your cats?
[For those of you who didn’t follow #CatDad back in 2018, Zarcilla found a stray cat who gave birth to 4 baby kittens under his bed one day. Posting on the internet, he immediately amassed a new audience desperate to follow the adventures (and feels) of his new instant family.]
Then:
Now:
Paris Zarcilla: (laughs) That was a really good segue way. I have very trusted granddad person who looks after the cats. I don't trust many people, because they've got such specific feeding times, play times, snuggle times, you know, they need all of it. And I'm not kidding, they really, really do. They became so attached during the pandemic, that they genuinely get anxiety. So I have to really prepare when I have to leave. I have to put in calming practices for that.
Asian A.V. Club: I look forward to photos! Thank you again. This was such a wonderful chat.
Paris Zarcilla: Thank you.
This was an insightful read -- eager to catch up and see Paris’ film soon.