I am That
Writer / Producer / Director
Joy Marzec is a writer and director who has always liked fairy tales, myths, ghost and surrealistic stories. As a kid she wrote scenes and directed her friends in plays. At 18 she began adapting books for the stage and directing them which led to her writing screenplays and directing shorts and features.
In 2018 her feature film, I AM THAT, won Best New Mexico Feature at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, Excellence in Film at the Defy Film Festival, Critic’s Choice at the L’Age d’Or International Arthouse Film Festival, and Best Feature at the Houston Pacific Islander Film Festival. It was released by Green Apple Entertainment and can be watched on Amazon Prime and DirecTV.
Her third feature film, Survival of the Holy Fool, is set in Philadelphia and is an urban drama about a divided neighborhood that is brought together by an outsider who changes the community forever.
You can learn more about Joy’s films at www.joymarzecfilms.com.
Q&A with Joy Marzec
Tell us a bit about your film
I AM THAT is an adventure story about a nun who goes on a pilgrimage to resolve questions of doubt.
I AM That is a very unusual story as the main character is a nun having a spiritual crisis of sorts. Where did the story come from?
The story is personal. I was having a lot of doubt about being a filmmaker, an artist, so I wrote the screenplay hoping I could work through it. Like all of my stories, the subject matter (doubt) continued to expand until eventually I was asking myself existential questions, like, do I believe in God?
As I realized the potential depth of the subject matter I knew I needed a character that would also ask themselves these types of BIG questions. I thought writing about a modern day nun could be interesting. I discovered a book about a cloistered convent that sparked the idea for the main character, Sister Skylar. In the book they told a story about a nun whose sister had recently died. They brought the coffin into the visiting room of the convent and the only way she could physically say goodbye to her was by touching her hand through the grille bars. I thought that story showed so much about how the nuns lived and the sacrifice they committed to so they could do their chosen vocation properly. I really related to this story as an artist. I think that artists definitely make sacrifices too. After reading the book I knew I had found a character that could appropriately fit the subject matter of the story I wanted to tell.
I also learned in the book that cloistered nuns take a vow of silence. As a filmmaker this interested me because silence forces storytelling based on images. I knew this would be visually interesting and I’d never done anything like that before so I thought it would also push me artistically to grow.
How long did it take you to write this script?
A year.
Music in this film feels very much like another character. Was that a conscious decision when you were finishing the film? Did you know what music you would be using before the filming or was that discovered in post?
I’m so glad you asked about the music! My brother is the composer and writes all the music to my films. He started working on the music while I was writing the screenplay. Since the film was about a nun I knew that the music had to be as rock n roll as possible in order to modernize the story and have it appeal to as large of an audience as possible. I always wanted the film to be as much like pop art as possible…so in the beginning I told my brother to really give it a rock n roll vibe.
I would show him different scenes I was writing and then he would send me demo songs. Even if I don’t use the demo songs in the final film they help me define the rhythm of certain scenes, which is very helpful when I’m storyboarding the film.
Once we got into postproduction we already have a huge list of potential songs.
It wasn’t a conscious decision to make the music act as the 4th character in the film but my brother’s style is really visceral so I think that just happened naturally…and I’m glad it did.
How long was the shoot? Any particular challenges that you had to face while filming in New Mexico?
The shoot was 24 days and it was challenging because I’m really specific about what I want and we were trying to create magical realism on a 110K budget so sometimes the vibe on set wasn’t what I what I’d hoped for. I think one of my main jobs, as a director, is to create a vibe on set. A vibe where people want to work, want to be there, and have some fun. If that can happen, then spontaneity, art can emerge in unexpected ways. Some days I did better at creating the vibe than others but I definitely walked away having learned that lesson about directing.