Filmmaker's Short Film to Premier at Roxie During Film Arts Festival

By Dmitry Kiper

"Love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that (they) themselves commit; for if they could, cupid himself would blush." This Shakespeare quote opens French-born filmmaker Deborah Cukierman's short film, "Chronicle of a Love," which will premier in November at the Roxie Cinema as part of the 21st annual Film Arts Festival. The film explores differences between love - the particular instances thereof - and Love - as a concept.

Mostly shot in the Richmond District, "Chronicle of a Love" provides a window into the lives of a couple, played by Seth Wright and Sarah Weinstein, that exchanges intimate stares, embraces and frustrations - all in silence.

Cukierman, who has long, black, wavy hair and big, green eyes, and Ilja Perschbacher, her boyfriend of three years, wrote a short play earlier this year upon which the short film is based. When Cukierman first saw a tape of the play, she noticed there was no sound, likely due to a recording error.

"The body language was so much more expressive," she said. "Every single movement was emphasized by the missing words."

Cukierman, who wrote, directed and produced the film, provides the voice-over in her proper British accent, asking questions like, "I love you this moment, but how am I to know I will love you in an hour, a year, a century?" Contrast is a prevalent theme in "Chronicle": As the film moves between black and white scenes and color, Schubert's dramatic opera "Ave Maria" plays in the background as Cukierman, sometimes on the verge of playfulness - "I love you. Does that mean you will hurt me? Probably. But not for a while, crocodile." - wonders whether specific instances of love, happiness and destiny ought to start with capital letters. In other words, do such concepts exist or are there only individual instances?

"Is love a feeling," she asks, "an emotion, a conscious decision to spend the rest of my life with you? My destiny? - capital d." "I don't have an answer," she said in an interview.

Born in Paris in the early '80s, she developed an interest in acting at the age of 15, which her Tunisian parents allowed her to pursue as long as she studied math and science. She also studied proper British English, which explains her accent.

"I've got a very pragmatic family," she said, adding that they viewed acting as "prostituting yourself."

At the age of 18, she left Paris for London, where she worked a part-time job in a retail store.

"I wanted to see the working world and see how I'd behave in it," she said.

She eventually enrolled at Kingston University in London where she took classes in Shakespearean acting and studied film, primarily theory.

"We would watch films and dissect them," she recalls. "We analyzed how the film reflects who's making it."

Cukierman describes her own films as "organized chaos" because she never makes specific plans prior to shooting. She calls her technique "whimsical filming," which she says is similar to the stream of consciousness technique used by some writers, such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

"For 'Chronicle' I didn't plan anything," she said.

Having been to San Francisco only as a tourist, she arrived in January of this year to study film at San Francisco State University and to live with her boyfriend in his Clement Street apartment. Although passionate about writing - she continues to write screenplays and short stories - she sees herself as a filmmaker, and her career choice is at least in-part a result of her bilingualism.

"I think in terms of images more than words," she said, "because English isn't my first language."

Her next film, which she recently completed, is about how "we don't express emotions in public," particularly in enclosed spaces like busses and trains.

"Chronicle of a Love," along with other short films about love, will premier Friday, Nov. 4, at 6 p.m., as part of the 21st Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema at the Roxie Cinema at 3117 16th St., near Mission Street. The Film Arts Festival will run at Roxie Cinema from Nov. 3 to 6. For more information, call (415) 863-1087 or visit the film festival Web site at filmarts.org.