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Friedrich:
Well, I would never have interviewed any nuns on film or on tape and then have used the material without their knowing the complete context of the film. All the nuns I shot were in the public domain; they were out in the world. And I wasn't making a direct connection between any of those particular nuns and specific material in the film. I think it would be very different and completely unacceptable for me to interview nuns and then reveal their private lives, the way van der Keuken revealed the people in his film, without their permission. I gave my mother final approval of
The Ties That Bind
. I certainly could have thought, "Fuck her, she's my mother; I can do whatever I want with the material." But if she had said that any part of that film was not permissible to use, I would have removed it. When I filmed at the convent, I very deliberately didn't show the name. I tried not to create a context by which people could identify the convent. I wanted the material to be anonymous.
MacDonald:
I would argue that were van der Keuken to explain his politics to the people he films, they would be comfortable about appearing in his film. On the other hand, if the nuns whose images you use knew what the politics of your film were, I'd guess they would be quite horrified.
Friedrich:
Again, this may be splitting hairs, and the nuns definitely wouldn't be interested in my hair splitting, but I made a conscious choice not to use any images of them over any explicit sexual material. I thought that would be going too far. I'm sure you're right that they would all be incensed to find themselves in the film, but what can I do? There
are
nuns who have either come out or have gotten involved with men and left the convent, so the issue in the film is legitimate. I don't think it's sacrilegious or vulgar to suggest that some nuns might be sexually frustrated by their vows and might go to certain extremes to break away from their past beliefs and practices.
MacDonald: Damned If You Don't
seems related to the tradition of psychodrama and trance filmwhat P. Adams Sitney has called "visionary film"where an entranced character (a dreamer, a "seer"in any case, a representative of the film artist) is pursuing Beauty, Vision, whatever. The Troyano character's pursuit of the nun strikes me as an emblem of your pursuing the subject of nuns as a filmmaker.
Friedrich:
I haven't really thought about it that way. I had already shot a fair amount of footage about nuns during the spring and summer of 1986, but it wasn't narrative material. And then in the fall I went to London and was staying with someone who had a tape of
Black Narcissus
. That film pushed me into thinking about my film more in terms of a sexual confrontation between this nun and another woman, rather than as a personal documentary about my experiences growing up Catholic.