Pasquale Marco Veltri: I’m a filmmaker and my films have screened nationally and internationally in Canada, Britain, France, Italy, and Egypt. My film Measuring Tape Girl has screened at the Cannes Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival.
NL: What is the film about and where did it come from?
PMV: Drowning is a film that examines the physiological effects of being forced into prostitution at a young age. It is a story is about Anna, a woman trying to reinvent herself after working in the sex trade, and how she relates and confronts the people who have coerced, enabled, manipulated, bought and sold her. Anna returns to her childhood home to face off against her family, her enablers, and her own mental distress, and she must figure out what a normal life could possibly be for someone who feels so disconnected from her own emotions. Anna needs to empower herself to overcome her homicidal tendencies, while navigating between reality and her fantasies of revenge.
NL: That sounds heavy. How did you come up with the story?
PMV: All my characters start their lives as my default character of Measuring Tape Girl. Measuring Tape Girl was a film I made 8 years ago and it’s a representation of all the fears and lost dreams one can suppress in early adulthood. The film was an examination of self-esteem which created a new friend I’d bring with me to help deal with all the self-abuse issues I was dealing with at the time and still carry with me. I was working with a non-profit to try to get the funding for a documentary on the sex-trade off the ground. The documentary was never produced but in the process of working on the project lead me to examine what would happen to Measuring Tape Girl if she was forced into the sex-trade. I began to question, how would someone overcome that abuse? How can they break free of the cycle of self-esteem issues that would arise from being trapped in a cycle of abuse?
NL: What lead to the creation of so many flawed characters?
PMV: The film is full of mirrored characters who have their own response to being abused. Sometimes it leads to self-abuse, sometimes it leads to denial and with the character of Marcus it led his character to abusing others. The biggest challenge was creating ways for characters to break free from each of their cycles of abuse.
NL: What was your writing process like?
PMV: You’re locked in your room for a long time creating characters and figuring out how they might interact. Once the characters are set, the world fills in and I play off the idea of an unreliable narrator who uses wish fulfillment to overcome abuse. After several drafts, I had a few story editors send some notes, and then revisions started taking place. The land of rewriting can be painful but eventually you get the script to a place where it has a life of its own, then the real work begins. I’m usually writing a few different things at the same time so that I can have a day away from characters and then I can come back to the script with fresh eyes. Dealing with the darker areas of the story took some work and development. Sometimes you keep your characters with you and they become your friends, in this case I needed, and wanted to walk away from them all once the project was finished.
NL: Many of your films feature a female lead - are they inspired by any of the women in your life, and how are their strengths reflected in your characters?
PMV: The strength of all the women in my life is reflected in my characters and I’ve always felt more comfortable with women in my writing and in real life. Throughout my life and into my early 20’s I didn’t talk much. I have always listened more than I’ve talked. Most people wait for their turn to talk, I just listen. I never feel the need to speak unless it’s necessary. It’s my never-ending shyness that leads me to hear things differently. There is a complex speech pattern to the way people talk that leads to a different level of communication, if you’re listening enough you can hear it.
NL: You’ve mentioned before how many of your films are therapeutic. How did your life inspire your films, and how has creating helped you?
PMV: I’ve always dealt with deep self-esteem issues which always seemed to exist without reason. My very early work tended to focus on self-harm and cycling self-abuse. Throughout my childhood and early adult life, I have always had issues with accepting reality, which leads me to create characters who also have issues with reality. I see what I want to see and I hear what I want to hear. As we all do, but we rarely accept it. Through the creation of my core default character, Measuring Tape Girl, I was able to bring to light all of my self-esteem issues with an alter ego who said the things I was unable to say. I try to create characters who might actually have strong reasons to escape reality. Drowning is an examination of cyclical abuse and its effect on a character’s ability to deal with reality and the emotions brought forth from recurring abuse. The lead character uses wish fulfillment to break free from her cycle of abuse. Real abuse leads to self-abuse. Anna does not have the self-esteem to overcome the abuse she suffers in the real world, so she creates a new reality where she fights back.
Learn more about Pasquale Marco Veltri’s future projects at, www.pmveltri.com
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