Vanessa McMahon

It’s Halloween time again, which means shadows, death and magic are in high demand. Here to speak and sate dark fantastical desires is Oscar nominated Tom Van Avermaet, director of the 2013 Oscar nominated short: DEATH OF A SHADOW.

Nathan Rijckx is a dead soldier walking on a thin line somewhere between this world and the hereafter. He walks the sinister and shadowy streets of old world Europe collecting the souls of the deceased like a celibate vampire hoping to gain entry back into the material world. Why? Love eternal, of course. But does the love of his former life still feel the same about him, or has she moved on? This is a haunting tale about love and its ability to transcend all things; even space, time, death and shadows. - Vanessa McMahon

I recently interviewed Tom. Here is what he had to say:

ME: Can you tell us a little about what inspired you to make such an original short film?

TOM: First of all, a big ‘thank you’ for the kind comments. As a filmmaker I’ve always been intrigued by symbolic and metaphysical figures and the different interpretations we give to them in folklore, legends, tales…When I started writing the film I began from the basic idea that I wanted to give my own interpretation to one of those figures, namely ‘Death’. I wanted to do this in a way that I felt was original and I came up with the idea of making death like an art collector, where instead of paintings and sculptures, this figure would go out and collect moments of death or people at the moments that they die. As I love to tell my stories as visually as possible, I then began looking for a graphic element that this figure could collect, and a shadow has always held for me that special connection between man and life; it appeared to me like something very drastic if you would separate one from the other. So I thought, why can’t he just collect the shadows of people at the moment they die, shadows also having a strong symbolic resonance for what we like to call a soul or the essence of a person. I then began to wonder if this larger than life figure would really go out and collect these ‘pieces’ himself or would he have someone already in the gallery, someone who already died, who he could offer a second chance in exchange for one shadow for every day that he lived. I chose this person to be a soldier because I felt that soldiers, especially in war, are always already surrounded by death and are usually cut down in the prime of their life and have a certain amount of discipline. This is how the story of the main character was formed. The story in itself, especially his story, was also slightly inspired by ‘Orpheus & Eurydice’, the Greek myth that always has held a special place in my life.

ME: Do you think you might make a feature out of it?

TOM: I don’t think I’ll make a feature film out the idea, at least not very soon. It took me a very long time to get the short film made and I feel that, also after doing almost a year and half of festivals with the film, that I’m ready for a new world. I wouldn’t say that the world of the collector might not coming knocking at the door of imagination in the future though, but at the moment I don’t have any plans to adapt the story or the world in feature form.

ME: Would you say that magical realism and sci-fi are your favorite genres?

TOM: They’re definitely genres that I’m drawn to, as is almost everything in the surreal and the fantastical. I think I’m most in love with imagination in general and how the unreal can have its own reality (or creating that own reality for something that’s completely fantastical). These genres explore definitely many of the things I love and try to bend reality or bend our idea of reality in the narrative form. Personally as a filmmaker I love to create own little worlds, be they close or far from reality, and then give them their own structure, their own rules and history and try to breathe life in them. I’m definitely drawn to anything in audio-visual or literary form that tries to do the same

ME: Is there a subliminal message in your film? Or do you prefer to let audiences decide for themselves?

TOM: There’s definitely an idea behind why I made this movie and what story I wanted to tell, but as a filmmaker I love to add different layers and different kinds of symbolism to the images and the film. So there are definitely different things I wanted to explore and share with the viewer apart from the main storyline. There is for instance a lot of reference to the early days of film, to the question of what taking a photo does with a person, a thing that’s explored in many cultures as well where taking a photo is akin to capturing someone’s soul, an element I wanted to explore to the extreme. I do find it quite fascinating to let an audience give their own interpretation to some of these elements. I always love it when people, after seeing my film a second time after a first viewing, tell me that they loved finding new elements and exploring new things in the film. It’s also a huge compliment to me that people want to watch it second time. So I definitely welcome people finding their own meaning in the story. In terms of real message, I think the film is also an exploration of love, and how sometimes in the purest form real love demands the greatest sacrifice of us, and how in great pain there can also be great beauty.

ME: How long did it take to get your film made?

TOM: Getting the film made was quite an ordeal. In total the film took five years to make, which for a short film is not a short time (or for any film). Most of the time was spent in getting the financing of the film with the help of my producer Ellen De Waele from Serendipity Films, which took three and a half years and the project had a lot of false starts, unfortunately. We finally did shoot, thanks to a co-production between Belgium and France, namely the regions Flanders & Champagne-Ardennes, the latter is where we shot the whole film. The shoot itself took five and half days, which I can tell you, doesn’t feel like a very long time after spending that amount of days living and working up to it. Like the flash of the camera used by the main character in the film, it was over quite quickly and then the post-production, which also featured a lot of work on the visual effects by a Belgian company named Digital Graphics, lasted for almost a year. But we got there in the end and I’m glad we didn’t compromise to get to the end result that the film deserved to be and I’m glad people have responded to the hard work of the whole team of cast & crew in such a positive way.

ME: You were recently nominated for an Oscar for this short? What has that experience been like?

TOM: As someone who loves the surreal, this has been quite another level. Especially after having to fight for multiple years to try and get this project made, it’s quite fulfilling to see it travelling the world and have it reach the higher echelons of the film world. It’s quite an honor to be among such great filmmakers and see that something you worked day and night for be part of that spectacle and be appreciated by people around the world. Short film also has a limited way to get shown to people, especially on the big screen and the Oscars also have helped with that by giving the short films a limited theatrical run. It also created a lot of opportunities for me to explore a next project and a first feature film and it definitely opens doors that otherwise might stay stuck a little longer.

ME: You now have an agent with CAA. That is a big deal. What has your experience been so far?

TOM: It’s great. I actually have three agents, Jon Cassir, Hylda Qually and Maha Dakhil, all very inspiring and talented people (and as a bonus they apparently don’t need sleep as they seem to be working 24/7). It’s really been a great experience to have people like this believe in you and try and help you get to that next level and get that new project. They’ve been very supportive of what I want to do and don’t pressurize me to do one thing or the other, which I was actually quite surprised by. So far, it’s been a great experience and I’m really happy to have these people work with me to get new stories told.

ME: What are your favorite films and who were your greatest inspirational filmmakers?

TOM: I’m such a film lover that’s it’s quite difficult to pick, as I love so many films in such a diverse range. Some of my all-time faves would definitely be ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘Requiem For A Dream’, ‘Memento’, ‘Brazil’, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind’, ‘Twelve Monkeys’, ‘Barry Lyndon’, ‘The Third Man’, ‘Patton’,…The list is almost endless when I start, I just love the medium so much that it’s already hurting me to not mention the list of hundreds of movies that I hold so dear. Filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese but also silent filmmakers like Murnau or Dreyer are all examples, but again I feel ashamed for not mentioning others. I’m so in love with the medium that I’m grateful every time I enter the cinema or watch another screen and discover a gem like I’ve done many times in the past, I think it’s one of the greatest things in the world and I hope one day to at least be part in my small way of that wonderful world of cinema.

ME: Did you always know you would be a filmmaker? Or was it a process?

TOM: From a very young age on I’ve always known that I wanted to be a storyteller. I always had a very vivid imagination and was sometimes in lost in my own world of stories that I was reenacting with my favorite toys. When I entered primary school I started coming up with stories and even was very proud when one day I could come to the ‘older’ classes and tell them one of my tales. From the moment I was introduced to film as an infant, (‘Snow White and the 7 Dwarves’ on the big screen no less) I fell in love with it and I spent most of my pocket money at the local videostore. That love for film always stayed with me and I felt I needed to be part of that world in one role or another. A film that really pushed me over the edge to want to become a director was ‘Requiem For A Dream’, as this film took all the audio-visual elements of filmmaking and molded them into such a powerful experience that I really felt inspired to also try to reach that level in my own modest way. A director felt to me like the ideal role to really make a film your own, thus I entered film school with that goal in mind, this at the RITS film school in Brussels, Belgium, where I then studied for five years and ended up with a thesis film called ‘Dreamtime’, the only other film I’ve made so far.

ME: You have been traveling world from festival to festival. What has been your favorite experience so far?

TOM: There have been plenty. I’ve always loved festivals and discovering what different audiences think of your film. I really enjoyed the film being screened in Japan at the Saporro Short Film Festival, was touched by receiving the audience award at the biggest short film festival in my home country, always a frightening moment as this is of course your home country. I loved being pampered in Gérardmer in France and Valladolid in Spain, was flabbergasted when winning my Oscar qualifying prize with a best of the festival win at LA Shorts Fest, only the first international festival the film had played by that time. It’s been a blast and an honor so far and so many gratifying experiences that it’s very hard to pick one over the other. If you know your film has been shown and appreciated in such varied places as Mexico and Bagdad, Colombia and Japan, LA and Fargo, Paris and Madrid, from India to Taiwan, it’s really and honor and such a pleasure.

ME: Do you have an idea what you will film next?

TOM: I hope to try my hand at the longer audio-visual form now with a first feature film (or perhaps even a TV series). I’m exploring multiple options at the moment, trying to have multiple irons in the fire (a mistake I made with my previous film was being focused on just that project for all those years, a mistake I don’t want to repeat). Hopefully the coming months will really tell which project becomes the most realistic and viable option to make next, but I’m confident that even if it takes me another five years, I will make another film!

View the film's trailer here: 

Interview by Vanessa McMahon on October 15, 2013