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“You Can Be a Troubled Teen at Any Point in Your Life”: Filmmakers — and MacDowell Fellows — Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew on Their Metrograph Series
Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew met as undergraduate film students at NYU, where they honed a collaborative practice that responded to the high-budget, high-flown projects of their peers with DIY aesthetics and an emphasis on developing their own formal language. Folding in experiences from their respective careers in the worlds and subcultures of art, fashion, and publishing, First (2018), Negative Two (2019) and 38 (2023) form a triptych of canny portraits of New York subcultures and of personal lives unfolding in uneasy symbiosis with the internet. In advance of a series presented by Metrograph and MacDowell, where Chew and Durand held fellowships in 2020 and 2021, I spoke with the filmmakers over Zoom about these films, their shared sensibility, their time in residence at MacDowell, and their upcoming projects.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Jean Yoon: You’ve both spoken in previous interviews about the challenge of capturing the lived experience of internet adjacency without relying on visual gimmicks or the technical apparatus of the internet itself. Can you elaborate on what you emphasized in the making of this trilogy and what felt important to you to say with them?
Daniel Chew: The way we describe the films is that we wanted to show the internet without showing the internet. The way that technology was being incorporated into narrative film, at that time, was often a very literal representation of interfaces that we would see—it would feel as if someone who didn’t grow up with the internet was trying to make a film about this new technology. We live with our phones and our data plans in a very different way than that—they influence how we interact with each other, even on a physical basis, and dictate so much of our social etiquette and social rules.
Micaela Durand: Yeah. We started making the trilogy in 2018, and at that time, the films we were seeing about the internet tended to be really moralistic—like showing a character going online in order to stalk or spy on someone. The reality is that we go on our phones all the time—it’s just connected to our livelihoods. We check our email for work, or we have to check our Grindr, et cetera. We were like, let’s make a film about the internet that represents how much we have to use it—and how that is, at times, not so exciting. It’s banal and exciting and it twists and turns. We wanted to portray a more authentic experience of what it is to be online.
Chew: For me and Micaela, thinking through the language of film as a medium is part of how we think through our narratives. We used formal techniques to stand in for the way we text or how we experience things on our phone or our computer. That’s often represented as a spectacle that happens on top of your life—an intrusion, like text bubbles that just like pop up on screen. We were more interested in the way that the internet is actually so seamlessly integrated with our lives, a constant overlay. With our use of subtitles [to convey texting], we didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that [texts] are technological, but rather that they are always happening while the character is seen living their normal life. It mirrors the way in which I might be having this conversation with you right now but can also be getting texts on my phone. The “always-on” internet—that’s how someone has described it.
Yoon: Each of these films explores different facets of how the Internet has reorganized our desires and the way that we connect, and also the ways in which it’s left certain mundane parts of our experience untouched. They speak to fundamental shifts in the ways that we live now, under or with the internet, and, in following a single character navigating this world, they also offer a particular read of a particular time. I’m curious about how you two reflect on these films from the present moment—how do they resonate for you now, both as filmmakers and as people who have gone on living in the world that extends beyond the moment they frame?
Chew: I would like to think that the films—because we tried to avoid interfaces and really use the medium itself to sort of get at these ideas—feel more timeless, and that, as much as they were responding to a pre-COVID era, their themes are still applicable today. Even though COVID did mark an era, I hope that in 50 years, people will still be able to relate to the ennui and estrangement and weird desires that these characters feel.
Durand: Definitely. We were also trying to create a portrait of New York and certain niche communities and scenes that I think has taken on a prophetic quality. In First, the main character is hanging out in that Chinatown mall—at that time, there were only a few stores that were trendy, and now it’s been completely taken over. There was a huge concert there recently, and it’s been completely transformed through the scene around it and the desire for that kind of thing. And I personally like dated films sometimes. Our films do reference a particular community in the city, and there are moments where someone watching them might think, oh, yeah, I know that place. But because they’re short, these films are also more open, and their specificity is more porous. They allow people to project a lot onto them, and I think that can please or frustrate viewers, depending on what they’re bringing to it.
Yoon: I agree—these films are open by virtue of being so specific and true to a particular context. The occasion for our conversation is the joint presentation of your trilogy at Metrograph, in partnership with MacDowell. Could you talk a bit about your time as resident artists at MacDowell in 2020 and 2021?
Chew: We were in the MacDowell cohort that experienced the pandemic shutdown of 2020. We applied to work on 38, and we had shot it the week before we came to the residency the week before New York went into lockdown. And [MacDowell] was a beautiful experience for those five days, and so the film is forever tied to that experience for me. The community that forms there through the group dinners and hanging out with the other artists was more intense because we were so isolated. I still remember doing karaoke with everyone, and someone was playing the piano… It was a really special experience to basically feel like we were spending our end of days in this really beautiful place with all these other amazing people. But that was just our 2020 experience.
Durand: Where else could you do karaoke with real musicians playing the instruments of that song? I don’t think we’ll ever have a karaoke as special as that. MacDowell is really, really important for artists. Because, you know, we live in New York. [Daniel and I] actually lived together at that time, and it was nice to have our separate cabins and to have the opportunity to forget that you have a full time job in New York and have to get groceries and do the rest of the million things you need to do to just survive in the city. At MacDowell, we were really allowed to drop our tethers to society and to our responsible selves and just be the artists that we wanted to be. That was amazing.
Chew: We conceptualized and shot 38 in the city. It was complicated to shoot because it’s the one with the most dialogue, acting, and intimate moments out of all of our films. We edited part of it in the city, and then we finished it at MacDowell during our 2021 residency, because COVID had obviously put a wrench in that process. The last push is always the hardest—it’s not even the most work, but you have to be the most focused. Sometimes, at the end of a creative process, you’re like oh my god, I just need this to be over. What MacDowell really allowed us was the freedom to be like, okay, we have nothing else to think about. We needed that dedicated time to iron out all the small details that are actually very difficult to go through and assess.
Durand: 38 was also the first time we had an original score, by Okkyung Lee—that was the first time we really were able to make a film with a sound that came full circle through working thoughtfully and closely with another artist. That was really inspiring—to work with someone who was so open and excited about the kind of film we were doing, who totally got it. Sharing an understanding of the vision and similar references—I think that’s really important for us in the teams we work with.
Yoon: Speaking of references, you’ve selected two other films to screen alongside your trilogy at Metrograph—Water Lilies by Céline Sciamma and Afterschool by Antonio Campos—both of which have themes and concerns in common with your work. Could you elaborate on these choices and describe what these films mean to you and how they support or complement the trilogy?
Chew: There’s one scene from Afterschool that has stuck with me forever—Micaela and I still talk about it. It’s the scene in which the camera is on top of the piano, filming Ezra Miller’s character and his love interest, but then the view distorts and the characters are mostly offscreen—you can only sort of see slivers of what’s happening. It so perfectly captures the angst and the tension of the movie without showing too much—almost by not showing anything at all. And there are so many other elements of that movie that have directly influenced us…
Durand: Yeah, I think we’re really into troubled teens—I think we probably were them. [laughs] So there’s that, but I also think both those films really make you feel identified with their protagonists—you’re looking at people and things in the way that they would. And what’s important about these films for me is that they don’t deliver the resolution you think you’re gonna get from them. I think that’s very true when you’re young, and that’s something we attempt in our films—you know, you’re not walking out of them and going like, yes! Things remain unresolved. I think it’s brave when filmmakers create—and leave you in—that space.
Chew: While I do think we are obsessed with this figure of the troubled teen, I think you can be a troubled teen at any point in your life. The protagonist of 38 acts like a troubled teen. We love coming-of-age films, but coming of age is constantly happening to everyone, can happen to anyone at any age. And yeah, in 38, there’s this big, momentous life event, but also a transition where the character is like, oh, I have to relate to my body and my phone in a different way.
Yoon: I love the way you put that—we are constantly coming of age, and that’s not widely depicted, or really depicted enough at all. You’ve both discussed how prominent New York is for you, and the city figures as almost a living character in your films—its architecture, its neighborhoods, its social scenes. And you’ve also spoken at length other interviews about the experience and importance of working with your community, your friends, people who share your vision and even thenon-actors who’ve filled your roles—people you found by looking for a commonality less about performance and more about presence. Could you talk about the evolution of your process—the projects you’re that you’re developing now and the new references, connections, and ideas are you exploring?
Chew: One theme we’re interested in exploring is translation. You can see the roots or seeds of that interest in our trilogy—like,Negative Two is not a film about race, but it is a film about being racialized. I think translation is related to that, and I’ve always been really interested in it—I wish I spoke two languages well enough to be able to translate between them. I think translation is such a delicate, nuanced activity that is also very personal.
Durand: [Our next film] is about a Japanese interpreter whose personal information gets revealed, which causes a lot of people to turn against her. She’s navigating that in the art and literary community—one which we know very well—and we wanted to ask, what does it say about you when your work and your identity are so conflated? That’s how we treat artists, that’s how we treat people, today. And we were interested in more complicated, hard-boiled, strong protagonists who don’t come off as so open to people—what do they give off, and how might people use that against them? What does it mean when something real hits the fan, and people are left to choose sides? Everyone has their own story of something, but where does that leave us in the end? Because this will be our first feature, we’re trying to take from all the shorts—like using subtitles, like when the camera leaves a protagonist and goes somewhere else—we’re trying to work that into the feature and keep developing a stylistic language for onlineness.
Yoon: It feels almost like an extension of the ideas you explored in the trilogy—living individually in this hyper mediated, hyper internet-saturated world, it seems like a natural next step to then ask questions around how we communicate across or through this fraught space.
Chew: Yeah, I think with the shorts, there was very much this idea of the internet as a language, which suggests the translation we do in order to live our lives online and also the translation we need to perform in order to come back into our physical lives. And as Micaela was describing, New York plays a really large role in also this film—it’s really a portrait of a community and how things work here. At one point, we wanted to challenge ourselves to not make a film in New York. But then we were like, no, this is like our first feature—we need to do what we know best, first, and then our second feature can be something else.
Durand: We love and hate New York, and we’re still here.
Chew: I talk about leaving all the time.
Durand: Daniel always is like, I’m going [Daniel laughs]. Yet here you are.
Yoon: As long-time and perhaps sometimes ambivalent residents and artists in this city, you know how rare and difficult it is to find dedicated time and space to make work. You also both maintain artistic careers outside of your joint practice. How do you sustain your collaboration, and how has it evolved? How do you guys make work—and make *it* work?
Durand: A lot of it is holding ourselves accountable to each other—and a lot of it is also support from places like MacDowell and being held accountable by organizations that really want to nurture your creative practice. The film we’re working on right now also went through a workshop in Venice. Doing that type of thing really helps, because our practice is already a collaboration and inviting more people in to work on it is really invigorating and also keeps us on track.
Chew: Art is usually thought of as coming from a single genius, but it takes a village to make a film. I think we really lean into that.
Durand: Yeah, and we’ve been collaborating since college—it’s been, like, 14 years. Besides my mom and my sister, Daniel is the person I share the longest history with, and it’s really nice to make things that are essentially a way for us to just be in dialogue, that’s been really important for us.
Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew are a filmmaker duo. Their work has been shown in the U.S. and abroad including at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, MoMA PS1, White Columns, 47 Canal, MOCA LA, The Shed, BAFICI, Le Cinema Club, and e-flux. They have done residencies at Macdowell and Fogo Island Arts and were recipients of the Jerome Artist Fellowship for 2021-2022. They are developing their first feature that took part in the Venice Biennale College Cinema.
Jean Yoon is the Public Programming Associate at MacDowell.
