Jeremiah Zagar

Interview by Alyce Wilson

Jeremiah Zagar was born in South Philadelphia in 1981, the son of artists, and has been making films since he was a teenager. He completed his first documentary, a short called Delhi House, at age 19. It screened at a number of festivals, including the Slamdance Film Festival. the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, and the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. “Delhi House” also screened at the Egyptian Theatre in LA as part of the American Cinematheque series and has aired on dozens of PBS affiliates across the country.

A year later, Zagar's The Unbelievable Truth was a semi-finalist in the student Academy Awards, screened at Tribeca and was named 'Best Narrative Short' in the Philadelphia Film Festival. Zagar's Baby Eat Baby premiered at the 2004 Florida Film Festival and was named "Best Experimental Short" at the Atlanta Film Festival. His short filmConey Island, 1945 was a precursor to In A Dream. It tells the story of his father's artistic awakening as a young boy in Coney Island. The short premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and went on to screen at SXSW, the Hamptons, and the Times bfi London Film Festival. It also aired on WNET Channel 13 in New York as part of the Reel NY Film Festival. Zagar's first featureÐlength screenplay, Paper Giant, was given the Irene I. Parisi award in the Set in Philadelphia Screenwriting Competition.

His first feature-length film, the documentary In a Dream, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where it received the Emerging Visions Audience Award. At the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival, it received the award for Best First Film.

In a Dream tells the chaotic story of Julia Zagar and her husband Isaiah Zagar, a renowned mosaic artist, who for the past 30 years has covered more than 40,000 square feet of Philadelphia top to bottom with tile, mirror, paint, and concrete. It follows the Zagars as their marriage implodes and a harrowing new chapter in their life unfolds. An exploration of the fallout that ensues when the line between art and life is blurred beyond distinction.

Jeremiah Zagar now lives in Brooklyn, where he periodically teaches filmmaking to high school students and is focusing on new projects with his production company, Herzliya Films.

This interview was conducted over the phone, following the screening of In a Dream at the Philadelphia Film Festival.

(biography adapted from multiple online sources)

I thought that maybe we could talk a little bit about your background as a filmmaker and then really get into In a Dream. And the place I'd like to start, what was it like growing up in a home where your father was constantly creating art around you?

Well, it's not just my father, it's my mother and my brother too. I think that they're an integral part of it. The whole family is involved in the creative process, it's not just him. He happens to be sort of the epicenter or the driving force of it, but they all participate. [...] That's also a part of it. I think that's a huge part of it. A neighborhood in Philadelphia is somewhat more of a catalyst for artistic development, too, than growing up in, say, the suburbs. It's not just that he was creating this enormous artwork around everything; it's that he was doing it in a neighborhood, with all these people that were involved, too.

And you felt drawn in, not just from your family, but also from your neighborhood, is what you're saying?

Yes, just that it was all creative. That South Street was creative. That south Philadelphia was creative and there was like this bursting of energy that was happening and that you were at the center of it, [...] this was my center of that creation. But it was happening everywhere. You know, I had this barber that was just amazing; he would tell these stories that were so incredible. What my family did was open that up for me. What they did is they created a community on South Street, and my father's artwork represents that community, but they built that together.

It was just an incredible street that flourished. I mean, when they moved in, it was nothing. There was nothing. And that's really, for me, where my desire to tell stories and my desire to make films and all those things come from. They originate there. It comes from this desire to create that is represented by my father's work but is instilled in everybody that was with him.

Right. It became, if I'm hearing you correctly, an integral part of how you related to the world and how you communicated your ideas to the world.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

How do you think that background informed your sensibilities as an artist? I'll just keep that open-ended.

I never think of myself as an artist, to tell the truth. I think of myself as a storyteller. I think I always assumed my father was what an artist was, and to me that's something that I'm just not. I'm not reclusive; I don't work alone; I don't create something that's made only for me. What I create is very specifically for an audience. It needs an audience in order to be received. My father would say a similar thing, but it's not where it originates from, you know? The audience propels him onwards, but the truth is he worked for years for no one. He did it all for himself. He has tons of stuff that no one's every seen. Nobody's ever seen.

Yeah, I was amazed in your films to see how much of the [building] interiors had been done. Because I don't think anyone's every seen that aside from your family.

Exactly. Exactly. Or not even my family, there are millions of paintings that exist that other, apart from anyone, have ever seen them. He just does them in his room. I like to tell stories. I like to tell stories about little kids. I like to memorize poems and recite them to a group. I love the idea of the interactivity of storytelling. I always did. And that's really where my excitement comes from, it's not from the more ego-driven, artistic process.

Right, I understand. It seems to me as if, from what I've seen, not just in watching your film but in the research that I've done in order to do this interview with you, that when it comes to storytelling you value the stories that don't normally get told.

That's certainly true. The stories I love are very different from the mainstream stories that are out there.

Right. I'm thinking of a photo essay that you did of your grandfather as he was dying.

Sure, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. That's also interesting. My father's work is, although it's like candy and beautiful, there's a moment in In a Dream that talks about that. I don't know why, but I'm really drawn to the grotesque. I really dig stuff that's really sort of like the underbelly of society, the things that people don't want to look at. I'm really somehow drawn to those things. I was so drawn to my grandfather dying, and not in a way that was like sick or gross, I think, but in a way that was like wanting to know what death is. It's like something we never talk about or think about. We're so willing to think about flowers sparkly things. We're very reticent to think about the really heavy things that are present.

Right. And what can you learn from that? I'm thinking of the photograph of his feet on the pillow and you described it as looking like desert earth that had cracked.

Yeah, absolutely. That was fascinating to me, what happens to your body. I'm like, that's crazy. It's so interesting, because you're with this man and he's so much a part of you; it's me, you know? It's like, that's my blood and he's changing, his whole world is changing. My father realizes that, too, and so does my mother and my brother. They're very grounded people in a way. They're very willing to accept life for life. And I like that about movies and photography. Those are more the things I'm drawn to. I'm really drawn to the combination of the surreal and the hyper-real. When you can make the both marry, I think that's a really beautiful thing to happen. There's a lot of filmmakers who do that, and there's a lot of photographers that do that, and they're really the ones that inspire me.

Right, right. And poets as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Some of the best poems come from what would be really small moments, like finding a dead dog on the side of the road. You know? And elevating that.

Now, at 19 — I'm assuming you were at film school at that point, at Emerson — you shot Delhi House.

Yes.

How did that project get started?

Delhi House, my parents had gone to India the year before. We travel every year to Latin America, because my mother has a Latin American folk art store. I didn't travel there every year, but until I was 15, I did. We have a very content love affair with Latin America, my family in particular. I would say they're as much Mexican as they are Jewish. My mother went to India — it was her first time — and she was like, "You've got to go. I've never felt this kind of energy from anywhere but Mexico. I've never felt so attached to a place. I've never felt so blown away."

And my father felt an intense kinship with this man named Nek Chand, who is an environmental artist like my father. I went to film him and he was gone. I mean, there was nothing there; he was completely senile. So what I was really fascinated with was the intense abject poverty that was so out in the open there.

Me and my friend were in a cab one day, and this woman just put her baby in my lap. I was like, "What?" I picked up the baby and I was holding the baby, and I gave her money. She kept asking for bread or for money, and [when] I gave her money she took the baby back. And we found out later that night that it was like a ring, that it was a crazy tourist trap, that they do. They rent out these babies, they dope them up on opium; they're so placid. They're really not...

Oh, my gosh.

Yes, it was like, "This is crazy. This is too much." And I was like, "We've got to figure out what we can do." We had asked the people we were staying with what they do, because when you're in America you don't see how devastated some parts of the world are. Then you go there and you don't know what to do about it, because it's not a reality where you live. Nobody's going to put their baby in my lap in New York City. So we were like, "What can we do?" They recommended that we do this short video on an orphanage that they gave money to.

Then we went and lived in the orphanage for three weeks, and it ended up not just being an orphanage, it ended up being a clinic and rehabilitation center. It very much changed my life. It was a promotional video. That was a promotional video that ended up just going to some festivals. It ended up being like more successful...

Didn't it also air on public television?

It did, it did, yes. It was on PBS.