---

Patricia Rozema was born and raised in Canada. She studied philosophy and journalism at a Christian liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, MI (USA), and after a short career in journalism, her first feature film, I Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), launched her career as a filmmaker. She has produced films in Canada and the US, and since 2023, teaches writing and directing part-time at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television.

Anne Cremieux: Thank you for meeting with us like this. We are so sorry you won’t make it to Paris for the screening of When Night is Falling but we look forward to screening a short edit of this interview on November 20^th, at the Chéries-Chéris festival.

Patricia Rozema: Thank you so much for your interest. And thank you for persisting, even though I was hard to pin down on this.

Anne Cremieux: So to start off, can you tell us how you became a filmmaker?

Patricia Rozema: From a fairly young age, I would say in my teens, I thought I would write. The invention of stories was always interesting to me. But how was I going to make a living? I grew up in a small industrial town in a family that had business, and I just didn’t know any artist. I asked my grandmother, in Dutch, if there were any artists in our family. Maybe a writer or a painter? She replied, “No,” they were all “normal.” That’s when I decided I would be a journalist and later, I would write fiction.

Anne Delabre: Did you become a journalist?

Patricia Rozema: Yes, and through journalism, I came to writing for television, then editing pictures and music. I found it endlessly fascinating, how you lead the eye across the screen and what the music can do to the emotions. I remember editing a piece on the Cruise missile, and how thrilling it was. Of course I’m a complete pacifist, but this missile was soaring through the air and with the right music, it was just fantastic. But I needed to tell more interior stories; journalism tends to reduce you to an exterior story; people’s representation of themselves. I needed to work with metaphor, get closer to the bone. I wanted to work with fiction, to create a journalistic enterprise of the heart and the soul. That’s how I came to filmmaking. Filmmaking just combined all of my interests and more. I knew from the start I would never tire of this. It combines all the art forms; filmmaking is a lifetime of exploration.

Anne Cremieux: How did you make your first film?

Patricia Rozema: I just started applying for grants in Canada. I’m happy that I wasn’t starting out in the United States because I think I would have had to be more genre-oriented and market-oriented, having to sell my work right away.

Anne Delabre: Was it different in Canada?

Patricia Rozema: Yes, because we had a very youthful industry and people like me, who had no credibility on any level, could apply for these little grants and then grow from there. The timing was right and I made I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987). Pierre-Henri Deleau, the programmer for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, saw it and chose to program it, and it sold in 40 countries. And just like that, I could actually say I was a filmmaker! I never thought it would be my full-time job. I thought it would what I did on my break from real life.

Anne Cremieux: Because real life would have been journalism?

Patricia Rozema: Probably, yes.

Anne Delabre: Did you go to school for journalism?

Patricia Rozema: Well, I studied philosophy, which I thought was the root of all thought, and that was the most exciting enterprise for me. I minored first in English literature and later in journalism. I did an internship first in Chicago, and then in New York City, which led to a job in Toronto on a news magazine story. In reality, after five years in the US, and having attended a Christian college before that, I wasn’t exactly qualified to cover the news in Canada, but I did. It did not last very long.

Anne Cremieux: A Christian College, like inWhen Night is Falling? But before you answer that, did getting the Prix de la Jeunesse in Cannes in ’87 open doors and opportunities for you? Did that launch your career?

Patricia Rozema: Yes. I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing was a stunning opportunity for me to be invited into all kinds of cultural conversations around the world. It was actually in competition for the Caméra d’or, and I found out later it was very close. Distributors hear about that and it generated some excitement in Cannes. And the Prix de la Jeunesse, of course, was a feather in my cap. The press was just lovely. This was all new to me. I had made a film and figured this must be what happens when you make a film. Well, isn’t this nice? I didn’t really realize what a rare, glorious, golden moment I got to experience.

Anne C: Do you feel that making this lesbian movie as your first film either boxed in or had you recognized for what you were?

Patricia Rozema: Yes, that’s the way it works. They don’t know if you have a broader palette. I wanted to make a lesbian story, but I knew that I didn’t want it to be about a lonely woman who may or may not be allowed to be a lesbian with some other lesbian. I wanted it to be more like life, where you’re a lesbian, but you’re also a journalist, and you’re also of Dutch heritage. You are many things. I wanted her lesbianism to be one aspect within the richer context of life, which for her is the art world, artistic insecurity, Toronto. The film is really about confession and self-doubt. In fact, I was inspired byMy Beautiful Launderette (1985), which starts out inconspicuously, and not until well into the movie do they kiss. That’s the strategy. It’s sad that I felt that I needed a strategy, that I couldn’t just say, here’s a woman who likes women. But I was aware of how the world was at the time. So I snuck it up on the audience. I made you like this woman, this young bird-like creature. I made you invest in her and vote for her and through her eyes, enjoy a lesbian love story.

Anne C: And it worked, well done. So to go back to that Christian college you went to, did that inspire When Night is Falling? What were the circumstances of making that film?

Patricia Rozema: Well, after I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, there was a lot of anticipation for my second film, White Room, which people didn’t like at all. It was an abject failure. Interestingly, the restoration and rerelease is well-received, especially by young people saying it’s the best thing I’ve done. I’m thrilled because I was so devastated by the response at the time. I just thought, “I’m not strong enough for this business. I can’t. I guess it was beginner’s luck, and maybe that’s the end.” But then I also thought this was my last chance, “I better do my classic lesbian love story.” That’s what When Night is Falling is. I was going to make it as beautiful as possible. I worked endlessly with my cinematographer to try to make all the tones rich and warm, the gold, the burgundy, the velvety blacks. We picked the film stock that would be the kindest and most luscious when it came to skin tones. It was all designed to be sensuous, like the beginning of a love story.

Anne Delabre: Pascal Bussière wasn’t famous at the time. How did you cast her?

Patricia Rozema: As a Canadian, I’ve always been very attached to, invested in and even attracted to the French side of our country. There’s a depth of artistic culture. I loved going to the Montreal Film Festival, and I loved Nouveau Cinéma. I auditioned actors in Montreal. I had loved having Paule Baillargeon in I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. It’s a bit of cliché, in Canada, that everybody falls in love with their French teacher. The glamor, the elegance, the cultural nuance. I was playing with that cliché, too.

Anne Delabre: And you chose Pascale Bussière.

Patricia Rozema: Yes, the minute I saw her. She’s certainly beautiful enough to fall in love with. And her acting. During takes, I would think she could give me a little more but then later, I would watch it, and it was just brimming ever so subtly under the surface. Such a deeply natural and intensely felt presence on screen. I was so thrilled with her.

Anne Cremieux: How do you make such a pristine movie after your previous movie failed? How do you find the money to produce it?

Patricia Rozema: Canada.

Anne Cremieux: Canada?

Patricia Rozema: The funding bodies in Canada understand you can have a sophomore jinx. My second film is actually quite lovely, in spite of having failed at the time. People were expecting all that warmth and humor and magic the first one had. They did not understand my change of tone. And my third film wasn’t a big budget. One million Canadian dollars, I think. That’s not a lot of money. But beauty isn’t about money. It’s about choices. The lushness was intentional and built into the whole idea of the piece.

Anne Delabre: Where did the idea of including the circus come from?

Patricia Rozema: I wanted to write a very classical love story. When Night is Falling is my most conventional film. There’s no unusual framing device. My other films are more formally adventurous. I was writing a “girl meets girl,” with some triangulation with the boy. They are from different sides of the tracks, from different worlds, and they must overcome their difference and run off together. The art circus is simply the opposite of a classical Calvinist environment. It plays on the fears people from very conservative world have about a gay life: “it’s a circus.” It’s crazy, everybody’s cookey and irresponsible and dresses weird. I’m a hedonist in lots of ways, and I was looking for opportunities to put in as many things that I love as possible in one film. The circus acts, the juggling balls of light – it’s pleasure for me. I’m very devoted to pleasure in cinema.

Anne Cremieux: And it wasn’t expensive then?

Patricia Rozema: That circus wasn’t expensive. They’re just extras dressed up in a costume or a gigantic dress. That circus is gilded junk. Having women swinging an iron isn’t expensive. It’s wildly dangerous but it’s not expensive. That was a piece by a local artist, Hillar Liitoja, and I just captured it. The extravagance of the ideas I owe to my beautiful production designer, NAME?

Anne Cremieux: Did you always mean for them to be an interracial couple?

Patricia Rozema: No, I didn’t write it that way. Deirdre Bowen, the casting director, asked if I was open to different nationalities and races and had Rachel Crawford come in. She had all of the irony, chutzpa, playfulness and sexiness I was looking for. I asked her, actually – and I realize it’s not really fair to ask an actor because they want the job – if it was racist for me to cast her and not examine the issue of race in the story. Is it dismissive of difference to not discuss it? She really thought about it and she said, “not in this movie, but in the sequel, it would be.”

Anne Cremieux: That’s interesting. What does that mean?

Patricia Rozema: I asked her what she meant. She said, “When you’re from different worlds and you just fall in love, you feel like you can be anything. But when you have to meet each other’s families, go to restaurants together or buy a house together, perform all of the more formal aspects of a relationship, then race would actually play a big part.” That would have been an interesting film, but it wasn’t that film.

Anne Cremieux: You did not change anything?

Patricia Rozema: I was aware of the possibility of her character being interpreted as an exotic seductress, that her race could play into reductive and negative stereotypes. I was aware people are unintentionally racist all the time. But I was careful, and I think we walked the edge fairly respectfully. She was given an interior life. Neither character is given much of a backstory. I was equally vague about where they come from and why they’re here and hoped the script was respectful of both characters in terms of emotional time and emotional focus.

Anne Cremieux: How was the film received? Did it mostly screen at festivals or in cinemas?

Patricia Rozema: It was invited into competition in Berlin, which was lovely, because it gave it a respect that was thrilling. It didn’t have a big festival life because it was released soon after. I did go to Australia. Lesbian love stories were still rare, and it was so lush, it almost felt like it was not underground enough for festivals but because most of the reviewers were straight white dudes of a certain age, they couldn’t take it that seriously either. And I never expected them to. I didn’t expect people to love it. I thought I knew I was asking for emotional investment in something that most of the world was suspicious of, that male reviewers could hardly understand. I went to festival after festival where I was the only female filmmaker. I was a novelty act.

Anne Cremieux: Not only were you female but you were a lesbian.

Patricia Rozema: Actually, it wasn’t really that openly lesbian. I was in conversation with anybody, but once there was a recording device on, I was cautious. I wanted to be able to do other films and I thought people would think I don’t like men. I wanted to say lesbians actually usually like men more than straight women do. I thought I knew it would limit my imaginative ambition. I also just didn’t want to talk with creepy dudes about my love life. I didn’t want to even have to deflect them. Maybe I should have been more brave. I don’t know. I did what I could. That’s where I was at the time.

Anne Delabre: It had great distribution in France with Haut et Court, no?

Patricia Rozema: Yes, because my ex-partner was Caroline Benjo, actually. She was the set photographer on the film; we split up shortly after the film. She and her new partner distributed the film, and they did a beautiful job in France.

Anne D: Haut et Court also distributed Go Fish. How do you position yourself compared to Go Fish and the many gay and lesbian films of the 90s?

Patricia Rozema: It’s not my place to position myself, but I know that I loved Go Fish, and I was slightly envious of its comfortable insider status. It wasn’t a coming out story. It was just about being out, meeting someone you like and see if it works out. I was aware that coming out stories were already a little bit retro at the time, but I although thought it was the only way to get the film made. Coming out stories are much easier to get financed because at least there’s one guy in it. And it was important to me not to portray of an awful man. I just wanted a man who came from a conservative world and who loved her.

Anne Cremieux: Why was that important to you?

Patricia Rozema: Well, like I said before, at the time, many people assumed women fall in love with women because they hate men. No, actually, it’s not about men. It’s just about women. I fall in love with women because women are extraordinary. That      was an important statement for me to make, that’s why I give him some sympathy, and grieve with him for the loss of his relationship.

Anne Delabre: Was it a good time for lesbian cinema?

Patricia Rozema: Yes, because it was new. There wasn’t much out there. I actually a beautiful experience when I saw Portrait of a Lady on Fire. I wrote Céline Sciamma to thank her for that extraordinary movie. I gave the full rave and the full bowing to her achievement and told her “You have re-ignited my wish to tell stories of women in love.” She wrote back and said, “I thank you. My 15-year-old self thanks you for When Night is Falling, back when I skipped school and I took the train to Paris in order to see that film. It’s so moving to think that I… She’s extraordinary, and to know that I gave her just the tiniest little bit of… I don’t know.

Anne Cremieux: You gave her hope.

Patricia Rozema: I gave her hope. Exactly.

Anne Cremieux: Are you going to make more lesbian content then? Is that your next project?

Patricia Rozema: I’m working on one right now.

Anne Cremieux: Fantastic, what is it about?

Patricia Rozema: It’s very close to the bone. It’s about me early on. I am also working on a series whose protagonist is a lesbian.

Anne Cremieux: Excellent, because we need more of those. You said you weren’t always openly lesbian to the press, but did you call yourself a feminist at the time?

Patricia Rozema: I’ve never for one second hesitated to call myself a feminist. I have completely embraced the idea that women’s rights have been limited since the beginning of time, and that is injustice, and that needs to be righted. Certain levels of justice have been reached in different cultures at different times. We’re nowhere near finished. I think the process of accepting women as fully within their rights to tell any story, to run any country, to run any enterprise and have full autonomy, is very far from being a reality. We are nowhere near that full acceptance. But I can’t embrace anything that suggests that women are better, are morally superior, are kinder than men. Or that all men should be pushed off a cliff. I can just say that as a gender, women have been underestimated and opportunities have not been equal by any stretch of the imagination. In a tiny portion of the world, in the privileged West, there’s something approximating equality. But in most of the world, women are second class and horribly abused. I’m fully a feminist, and I’ve never, ever hesitated to say that.

Anne Delabre: How have things changed in the movie industry for you since you started?

Patricia Rozema: Of course, a lot has changed. I would go to film festivals where I’d be the only woman. This happened many times. One famous filmmaker once told me, “I’m sure your film’s lovely, and you seem very charming. But I have to say that a woman’s greatest creative achievement is having children.”

Anne Cremieux: I saw that one coming.

Patricia Rozema: Because it’s a very common belief. I just patted him on his bald head and said, “You poor old dinosaur.” I didn’t get a cheer for that because it was all men at the table; they all agreed with him. So many times I’ve had people exclaim about my having children. “Where are they? How dare you leave them? My response was always, “Have you ever asked that of a male filmmaker?” As a mother, I felt discriminated against. As a lesbian, I’ve definitely felt discriminated against. I feel like I was lucky enough to be born in one of the most progressive countries. It’s the new world; and the most left, most progressive country in the new world. I’m part Dutch, too. I come from the most progressive cultures, the two pioneer countries of same-sex marriage. The US is much farther behind in so many ways. That’s partly why I have stayed very connected to Canadian culture, because I have so much respect for the freedom and support I was given as an artist here, and as a woman.

Anne Delabre: In film or in Canada in general?

Patricia Rozema: We had Margaret Atwood and the unfortunate Alice Munro. There’s a respect for women artists here. It’s a tiny country compared to the US but it’s also a smaller pool to be a bigger fish in. I’ve tested US waters, but without getting swallowed up.

Anne Cremieux: Do you feel that there’s been a change with the #MeToo movement?

Patricia Rozema: Definitely, and now we’re in a backlash, I think. There’s definitely a change on film sets. Film sets used to be one big sexual innuendo. Women were treating like walking genitalia. You could call it flirtation or you could call it sexualization, and assault or at the very least, emotional assault. The #MeToo movement was healthy and necessary and needed. But now, with a man like Trump in charge, the forces of sexism and male entitlement have come back full force. It’s very disappointing to watch all of these so-called progressive filmmaking industrial leaders just backpedal and stop hiring women. I was lucky enough to witness the blossoming and the opening up, and now we’re watching the doors close again.

Anne Cremieux: After When Night is Falling, your next big project was Mansfield Park. Was it very different from other projects?

Patricia Rozema: Well, it was. Miramax came to me, and it was a much bigger budget, and it was fun to do. It really was. There had been a run of Jane Austen movies and I didn’t want to do another tea party. But then when I read the book, I felt so much anger on behalf of the main character. I read academic essays around about Mansfield Park, and I came to realize that it was about colonialism and how slavery was basically funding all that leisure. Now that was something I could do outside the canon. I was very excited to be able to illuminate that context for what is basically a domestic comedy. It was also fun shooting in England, at that acting level, with that budget. It was great.

Anne Cremieux: You did not lose artistic control?

Patricia Rozema: After one week of shooting, I got an email saying, “We don’t like her fringe.” What are you telling me to go back and shoot again? That was from Harvey Weinstein. I just kept shooting. At the very end, there were some interactions but no, I didn’t lose control at all.

Anne Cremieux: And that criticism of colonialism, did that go over well?

Patricia Rozema: It’s actually Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary and I’ll be at the BFI, the British Film Institute, on December 12^th. The reaction is so different today. At the time, adding anti-colonial, feminist and lesbian content did not go over so well, “just get your dirty hands off of our lovely Jane Austen.” Several academics have recently written that my interpretation was legitimate. I feel so vindicated, even if it’s many years later.

Anne Cremieux: Well, you should. How do you go from your first very indie film, to bigger productions, to a short film, to a TV series. Is that easy? Do you still have that freedom? How does that work?

Patricia Rozema: I just go for the idea, I don’t care about the scale. A smaller budget means you have fewer people to convince. A bigger budget is slower with more people you have to listen to, and you do. It’s their money. But if I feel like they don’t actually want me to direct it, then I just don’t get involved. Because if I direct it, it becomes my responsibility. I could have worked more or made more money, but I want to be proud of my work on my deathbed.

Anne Delabre: What’s your favorite film and what’s your most successful film?

Patricia Rozema: Mermaids makes me very happy. I love that it’s still funny, strange, and touching. I have two children. The youngest one is an artist. They were 17 when they saw it for the first time, and I asked from the stage, “Eddy, what do you think?” They said, “It gives me courage to be an artist.” That was a deeply rewarding moment, so many years later. I also love When Night is Falling. I feel it’s my most beautiful and most sexy. And Mansfield Park – but I can’t go on saying what’s great about my movies! One more: Bach Cello Suite #6 as part of a series called Six Gestures about Bach’s Cello Suites. It’s a very unhinged format with documentary, drama, performance, historical and musical aspects, it has skating in it. It’s crazy. I was given complete freedom and I used it. So that one I like. There are also some shorts I made that I’m proud of. I haven’t made my perfect film yet. I’m still working on that. I still feel like it’s coming. That’s what keeps me alive.

Anne Delabre: What about Mouthpiece that came out in 2018, can you talk about that film?

Patricia Rozema: Yes. It’s two people playing one person. It’s Charlie Kaufman-esque, and I still love that outrageous concept. Absurdist. Kaufman, or Pirandello and Pinter.

Anne Cremieux: One woman is played by two women because they represent two voices in one head, right?

Patricia Rozema: It’s basically a visual representation of internal conflict. Yes. Of the voices in our heads. It’s not Jekyll and Hyde. That’s not my experience of my internal life. It’s two sides that change and shift, one is dominant sometimes, and then the other one, and maybe there’s a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. It’s adapted from a play about losing your mother, and neither actors had that experience, but I did.

Anne Cremieux: Mouthpiece really reminded me of W. E. B. Du Bois’ theory of two-ness in The Souls of Black Folk, where he explains that Black people in America in 1900 experience two-ness – they have one self in their home, in their community, and a different self when they are around White people. One body, two souls.

Patricia Rozema: But that’s also a queer experience, right?

Anne: Yes, it’s similar. And in your film, a woman’s experience.

Patricia Rozema: Very much a woman’s experience. And less a straight white male’s experience who can say, “I am what I am, deal with it.” But women have historically constantly been made aware of how they appear, of how she is registering in someone else’s estimation. Someone else’s eyes, someone else’s beauty standards. We’re constantly, from very early on, being made aware of that. And I think that splits you in two. I think you lose touch with who you really are.

Anne Delabre: You said in an interview that Persona was a movie that really marked you as a child. Is that connected to Mouthpiece?

Patricia Rozema: Very much. Thank you, that’s a great observation. Persona was the first coup de foudre for me. For the duality and unspokenness of internal conflict, for the celebration of femaleness, and a million other things. I can’t even begin to try to capture what that film did for me. I’ve been examining the dialectic within us all. In almost every film, there’s a two-ness, there’s a duality. I think it’s because I had to be two people in order to survive. In White Room, one person is the front person, the artist, who does the singing, and another person pretends to do the singing. As an artist, you have to be both the confident person who represents and sells your work and the messy, fragile, open person who actually makes the stuff. I explored that dialectic in that film, and in all of my films, but also especially in Mouthpiece. Recently I was invited to speak at a screening of Persona, and I realized I’ve been struggling with this sometimes unpleasant, sometimes enriching bifurcation since I began.

Anne Cremieux: Du Bois actually uses the word “two-ness” and says the two selves or souls are at war with each other. It inspired Fanon, a psychiatrist, to make the connection between the experience of racism, especially as a colonized person, and mental health issues.

Patricia Rozema: I went on a philosophical journey about human duality, in many contexts. My producer wanted stars so it would go further but I couldn’t take it away from them, I wanted it to be true. And if it means the film doesn’t circle the Earth, well, that’s not part of my agenda. I will make it as best I can. It’s someone else’s job to get it out there.

Anne Delabre: And eventually it does, as it did with White Room. Patricia Rozema: Maybe it will.