{"id":116726,"date":"2019-09-09T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/?p=116726"},"modified":"2019-09-09T10:59:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T15:59:41","slug":"interview-filmmaker-nora-mandray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/interview-filmmaker-nora-mandray\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Nora Mandray on Using History to Understand the Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

We spoke with director Nora Mandray about contextualizing history and keeping a complex political timeline vibrant and legible in short form.<\/h2>\n

After Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, Field of Vision<\/a> commissioned Nora Mandray<\/a> to make a short film about the presidential race in France. Dancing With Le Pen<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>illuminates a decades-long shift toward the far right, led by a family of politicians. It’s a pithy, sobering look at the sustained tolerance for bigotry and xenophobia in France, but viewers recognize the mindsets of Trump followers who sound like Mandray’s subjects.<\/p>\n

\"Director<\/p>\n

PremiumBeat:<\/strong> The parallels to the rise of the far-right in the U.S. were timely for American viewers. Tell me how the idea for the film came about. Did you begin with a plan to go back to 1972, after the short dance floor introduction?<\/p>\n

Nora Mandray:<\/strong> What was happening was (and still is) certainly resonating with the rise of the alt-right in the U.S., so the plan was to document how those ideas were spreading. The French election was also happening, just shy of a year after the Brexit vote, so the traditional balance of powers felt very fragile at that time. Nobody knew what the outcome of the election would be. Macron was this new figure, with a brand new party, which completely smashed the political landscape as we knew it.<\/p>\n

That said, the National Front (now “National Rally”) is a special case, because of its long, steady rise since its creation in the 1970s. Translating its extent into a compelling story for an American audience was a challenge. Also, at the time of the shoot, no one knew what was going to happen! But the one thing that I knew for sure was that it would be a very emotional campaign and moment. In France, people are passionate about politics, and they show it. That was something that, in my mind, Americans could relate to. So, as I set out to tell this story, my plan was to create a character-driven v\u00e9rit\u00e9 narrative: I cast characters who would each embody the party’s evolution \u2014 the origins, its “rebranding,” and its future.<\/p>\n

I definitely had the party’s biggest historical moments in mind \u2014 the main “story beats” so to speak! But mostly, I wanted to have room to let the story of the election (this potential massive political and cultural shift!) unfold. The story structure very much shaped itself in the edit.<\/p>\n