Sutures et Consolation is a very personal film. What made you decide to tell this story as an animated documentary?

A couple of years ago, just after my father passed away, I felt the urge to process the experience of his loss in some kind of way. I think I was struggling to comprehend what had happened, because it happened so quickly, only four months after his cancer diagnosis. At the time, I was practicing contemporary dance quite a lot, and we had to choreograph a solo, so I thought of addressing what had just happened. But it felt too raw, and I wasn’t ready mentally to deal with it. 

During my masters at RCA, we had to pick a subject for our grad film. I first picked the solitude of the elderly (because many old people fascinate me). During a crit session, a tutor suggested I work on something closer to my experience (I kinda feel like an old lady, but I get what the tutor meant). So I naturally decided to work on my experience of grief, as it felt like I was finally ready to address it. 

Were there any challenges in working on such a personal subject matter? 

I was quite scared that it would upset me at first. My tutor suggested that I could reach out for help with the College’s emotional support department. But I also felt that expressing it with an animated documentary could help me cope with my loss in an unprecedented way. I guess I was inspired by many artists, such as Louise Bourgeois, who used their practice as an emotional outlet, to process their traumas. 

Working on such a personal matter meant I had to expose my story to tutors and students from the RCA, which felt quite uncomfortable, especially as grief is a taboo subject, so people don’t usually know what to say, or how to act when a griever tells about their experience. 

You have talked about autoethnographic processes in relation to your work. Can you tell us a little about this?

I approached autoethnography as an exploration of my emotions that I had buried deep underground and was about to excavate. So once I decided to work on my father’s loss, I sat down one night and addressed him a letter, describing  what losing him felt like, at the time of his death and now (then), four years later. This exercise meant that I had to reminisce my thoughts and feelings from the couple of days preceding and succeeding my father’s passing, which were still quite vivid. I then used this material to create a script, that expressed what this experience of loss felt like. I also asked my family to provide me with any visual material they had of my father. One of the videos is at the end of the short film. 

You used mixed-media techniques in the film. Can you talk about the production process?

Indeed, my film is composed of hand-drawn charcoal and pastel animations, stop-motion hand stitched thread on paper as well as a video extract from personal archive. I used a rostrum and DragonFrame to capture my drawings. My animation technique consisted of drawing with charcoal, taking a picture, erasing it, and drawing again. I animated some of the most intricate scenes on my Ipad, before drawing them on paper with the rostrum. Straight ahead animation can be quite technically challenging! 

Were there any particular influences for the film?

Yes definitely! A major influence is William Kentridge and his charcoal animations. Kentridge was actually one of my father’s favourite artists so it is one of the reasons why I chose to get inspired from his animation style. I think I was also inspired by Father and Daughter by Michaël Dudok de Wit, a film that is very different from mine, but which I admire a lot, and touches on a similar subject. 

The work has screened in festivals, how has it been to watch it with audiences?  

It was quite weird to be honest, thinking that my intimacy was exposed to random people in Greece, Poland and of course in the UK. But very grateful I got to show my work!

What are you working on now?

Currently I’m more in the research and writing phases. I’m working on two scripts, one for a short animated fiction inspired by my family’s immigration story (that might be a feature at some point in a loooong time) and a feminist thriller series, mixing animation and live-action, that will hopefully see daylight on screen some day. 

You can find more of Blanche Malet’s work on her website and Instagram. Interview by Carla MacKinnon.