‘Animation is Cinema’ – An Interview with Signe Baumane

Signe Baumane is an independent artist, animator and filmmaker based out of Brooklyn, New York, and she has spent seven years working on bringing her new film “My Love Affair With Marriage” to life. And now with the film playing at the 2023 Florida Film Festival, I had an opportunity to ask a few questions about the process of making this film and how animation can be seen as a viable genre for adult storytelling.

Chris Crespo: In the seven years it took to make this movie, what were some of the biggest challenges in making sure this film got completed?

Signe Baumane: The first challenge is in the psychological realm – how do you continue work on the same film for 7 years and don’t lose motivation, inspiration and excitement? In that regard I am like a terrier who grabs a leg of a fox burrowed in a hole and keeps pulling it until the fox is pulled out of the hole. Every day I sat at my table and made 30 – 70 drawings until the film was done. The reason why I was able to do that – I felt that the film’s message was important, I felt I was serving a higher purpose, not just feeding my insatiable ego.

The other challenge was funding. This is a truly independent film and early on we decided we are not going to have investors’ money. So, we had to finance the film through grants and donations. Which meant that time to time I would have to put my pencil aside and, with my partner and the film’s co-producer Sturgis Warner, launch yet another fundraising campaign. It was maddening and frustrating having to stop the creative process, but without the money we would have been forced to stop the project.

The bright side of the fundraising – we received amazing support from 1,685 backers, some of them people we had not met before. They are now part of the film’s family. The film’s 1,685 moms and dads.

CC: At what point in the process of making this film did you feel confident that it would actually be completed and ready for audiences?

SB: To be honest, I was delusional the whole time, from day one I never had the slightest doubt that we will finish the film. Even in the darkest hour when funding would fall apart or we had another set back, I held to the hope that it would work out. And it did.

If we had a smoother ride with the funding, the film probably would have been done sooner, in 4 or 5 years, not 7. I am not religious, but in making this film I always had a sense that there is a Divine Provision wanting us to finish it. Of course, we worked our asses off, too. Not just counting on Divine Provision.

CC: For this film you assembled a team that spans several countries, including Latvia and Luxembourg, along with having an Italian composer. What are the advantages to having so many different people and cultures involved in bringing your story to life in your home base of Brooklyn, NY?

SB: “My Love Affair With Marriage” was a co-production of 3 countries – Latvia, USA and Luxembourg. Our composer Kristian Sensini is an Italian living in Italy. We had a multinational team of artists working on the film in my studio in Brooklyn – artists from US, Ukraine, China, Turkey, South Korea and Honk Hong among others. I think working with so many different artists from around the world accents the universal appeal of the film’s story. When you work with people from different cultures you become aware what can get lost in translation and what could transcend our cultural differences.

When I communicated with one of our main artists Yasemin who is from Turkey, on why this particular set had to look a particular way, I had to focus on what was really important and what was the subliminal message behind the esthetical choices. Yasemin then would take the particulars of my experiences and style and would make it her own, transcending the particulars, making them universal.

CC: This movie is a mixture of mediums, which includes building miniature sets which look intricate and rather incredible. What happened to these sets when production wrapped? Are you able to re-use any of them for future projects?

SB: My studio right now is filled with sets from “My Love Affair With Marriage”. Wherever I look – on tables, on shelves or floor – I see sets and sets and sets. We are hoping to have an exhibition of these sets in an art gallery, in conjunction with the New York release this fall. So, we are not throwing them out.

As for reusing the sets in another project – I am not sure about that. These sets were created for this particular film and they served that story. A new story may require a new visual approach. We’ll see.

If I am forced to move out of the studio I would have to reconsider keeping the sets. Throwing them out would be difficult, I am very attached, so much work and time went into making them! I heard that one can sell things like that on eBay, but I never looked into that.

CC: Many artists have been striving to get across the message that animation doesn’t have to be just for kids or families – what do you hope people get from watching this film and will you continue to work in the animation medium or is live-action filmmaking in your future as well?

Interesting you should ask if I see myself as a live action filmmaker in the future. A while ago I thought that maybe live action filmmaking is the way to go – I thought it as less painful process with shorter production time and much more glory and acceptance. I wrote 5 live action feature scripts and several treatments. But those scripts didn’t satisfy the way writing for animated feature satisfies me.

In animation I can freely go between everyday life and the world of Biology, between political maps and a person’s imagination. I can cover 100 years of history in 2 minutes, giving a larger context for characters’ thoughts and actions. Most live action films I see are less ambitious in their scope – they focus on a few weeks in the character’s life and can mainly show a characters’ life from outside. They have harder time linking intergenerational trauma with pain a character experiences. To me, animation is a far superior storytelling medium, capacious, flexible and super nuanced.

But 100 years of Disney associating animation with the ‘genre for children” has done a great damage on general public’s understanding what animation is and what it can do. People reluctantly come to see animation for adult audiences. I don’t know how I alone can change it. We should work together.

The greatest compliment I received after watching “My Love Affair With Marriage” was from an audience member who in general dislikes animation, he said “watching your film I forgot it was animation”. YES, it is because it is cinema. Animation is cinema.

Chris Crespo is a movie critic, writer and podcaster based out of Orlando, Florida. He hosts the weekly podcast Cinema Crespodiso, and has also made appearances on Doug Loves Movies, A Mediocre Time with Tom and Dan, The Curtis Earth Show, and more. This is his 13th year covering the Florida Film Festival.

This interview was conducted via email.