Q&A: Alma Har'el, director of Bombay Beach

Alma Har'el: I was born in Tel Aviv in Israel. My parents separated when I was very young so I kind of grew up in two places, one half an hour from Tel Aviv and my dad was in the city. I love my dad and my mum. They kind of inspire me in everything I do. My dad was an alcoholic for most of my life and he used to switch jobs a lot and one of the jobs he had when I was 12 was at a theatre. He was a scenery shifter. I came to visit him and I saw a play there that I really liked and there were children in the play and I wanted to audition for it and I did and I got the part. That was the first time I discovered art and stuff like that.

After that I would try to write little plays, do some theatre stuff, not in any motivated, organised way. And then when I was 18 I started to host a music TV show

And I worked for National Geographic and I asked them to let me direct my own show so that’s how I started directing. And I did music videos. For a while I did video art, Vj-ing. I would cut and mix images on stage. I would film a lot of short films myself and then I would get all these other films like Werner Herzog and Alejandro Jodorowsky and modern dance and I would mix them with the short films I did.

After that I moved to Los Angeles and when I got there I started to do music videos and met Beirut [the band who provide the soundtrack for the film].

TJ: When did you first discover Bombay Beach?

AH: I was making a music video for Beirut . I went along with them to Coachella Music Festival. And while I was there a friend of mine said ‘I should show you this place called Salton Sea. Have you ever been there? It’s a sea in the middle of the desert.’ So he took me there.

We found Bombay Beach and I was so taken with it that I went back there right away -- the day after and the night after. I met the kids that are in the film at the beach and I asked them if they wanted to be in the music video. And I actually ended up shooting the music video right there and then. And then I wanted to go back and do a whole film.

TJ: What did you see that made you think there was a film to be made there?

AH: I’d had an idea a year before that I wanted to do a documentary with dance sequences. And I was looking for a backdrop. I didn’t want the subjects of the film to have dance in their lives. I didn’t want them to be dancers. I didn’t want them to be artists. I’m very drawn to a certain contrast between the loneliness and the isolation and sorrow in life, entwined with the joy and celebration of life and love and romance. I felt when I came there the place was a perfect metaphor for that contrast.

The people are very disconnected from the metropolitan and art and anything like that, but at the same time there’s something very free-spirited about them and a certain openness that would allow me to work with them. And maybe some boredom too. Because there’s nothing else to do.

TJ: Who lives there?

AH: A mixed community, but there’s a lot of people who obviously live there because they’re escaping from something. There’s a lot of meth labs in that area. There’s a lot of drugs, there’s a lot of alcoholism and a lot of hippy outlaws of some sort.

And then there’s a lot of hard-working Americans who somehow found themselves there either because they grew up there or because they moved there because it’s cheaper. There’s also a lot of army bases around there. Navy Seals practise there a lot so it’s very mixed. And then there’s a lot of very poor people.

TJ: How did you go about finding the film's subjects?

AH: I moved there for five months. I would go every day to Bombay Beach. Either hang out with the Parrishes who I already knew from the music video or walk in the streets and sit with them and ask if I could film them, talk to them or go to their houses. I have 160 hours [of footage]. And slowly I met people who were clearly my characters.

TJ: You were given amazing access to their lives...

AH: I was alone with no crew. The camera I was using was a very, very small home consumer video camera so that allowed for a lot of intimacy. But just the fact that we were doing these dance sequences, we were doing a film together and all these creative things together, it just brought a sense of friendship in general. The subject becomes a collaborator and he wants to do it as much as you.

TJ: You don't demonise the Parrish family but recognise them as human, as normal...

AH: I don’t know about normal. But incredible people and sensitive and loving They’re not average. They're special, they’re very human and not what you would expect when you look at their story.

TJ: Why did you want them to dance?

AH: There’s such a rare beauty in movement. I think I love it so much because it’s this one thing we don’t do enough. People use their bodies and move to music and kind of tell a story with their bodies. It can also be such a pure connection with music and I just find it fascinating.  At a certain point in life people only dance if they’re drunk and in a way it’s sad because dance is one of the best things you can do with your body. The weirder a person dances the more I love them.

The dancing is choreographed. A beautiful choreographer, Paula Present, has worked with me on music videos before. She was a great partner. She came and stayed with me. We had no budget. She worked with everybody and it was an interesting process because we were trying to bring out their body language and their story through the dance.

TJ: Have the people in the movie seen it?

AH: I finished the film a week before the Berlin Film Festival. And then we won Tribeca (documentary award) earlier this year.. I brought the Parrishes to New York. Pamela and Benny came to Tribeca. It was the first time they had ever left Bombay Beach. It was probably one of the best moments of my life sitting next to Benny eating popcorn and watching himself on the big screen. He was so happy.

TJ: What's happened since you finished shooting?

AH: Ceejay got into Nebraska University. He’s got a full scholarship. He’s going to be the first kid in his family to go to college. So he’s going to be leaving Bombay Beach.

Bombay Beach screens at Filmhouse 1 on Saturday June 18 at 10.10pm and again on Friday, June 24 in Filmhouse 2 at 8.20pm.