After 2021’s El Planeta, Amalia Ulman ups the ante with her second feature, Magic Farm, in every conceivable way. Black-and-white cinematography here gives way to a more energetic camera (shooting in color), featuring cutaways to GoPro footage attached to skateboards and animals. Whereas her debut was a two-hander featuring Ulman and her actual mother, Magic Farm makes use of a larger ensemble cast including Chloë Sevigny, Simon Rex, and Alex Wolff, working alongside non-professional Argentinian locals.
Magic Farm follows a VICE-esque media company whose small documentary crew travels the world to mine regional trends for content. A trip to rural Argentina goes wrong from the jump when producer Jeff (Wolff) mistakenly leads the group to the wrong village altogether. While proving inept at basic tasks like purchasing SIM cards without getting ripped off, this group of hipsters (including Ulman as a pregnant intern) showcase a certain scrappiness when they pivot to construct a fake trend utilizing the talent of the locals. Looming in the background, an unnamed corporation poisons plantation fields with harmful chemicals via old-school crop dusting. Magic Farm satirizes out-of-touch New Yorkers of a certain ilk, while still leaving room for tenderness in spots.
Produced by Spacemaker Productions and MUBI, Magic Farm premiered at Sundance before opening the second annual Los Angeles Festival of Movies earlier this month. Ahead of the film’s theatrical release, I spoke with Ulman about having cool parents, VICE getting a bad rap, and how being a female director makes it harder to fight the expectations that come with larger productions.
Caleb Hammond: Magic Farm is a step up in many ways from El Planeta. When dealing with all of these changes, what new elements were you excited about, and what were you nervous about getting into?
Amalia Ulman: One of the better things of making Magic Farm was the chance to work with talented actors. As a director, it’s always exciting to see all of this talent come to life. Once you say action, it’s a beautiful thing. The main difference between the two is that El Planeta was 100% independent. Therefore, I did it the way I had done many other artworks in the past, whether video art or performances — anything. That’s by trusting my intuition and being in charge of everything. In that way, I didn’t get to learn much from El Planeta because I did it the way I do things naturally. The biggest challenge working in a larger production is the rigidity of professional filmmaking, and how there is little space — I wouldn’t even say for improvisation — to modify the schedule, to decide to change your mind in certain ways, or to get dreamy. I saw this video of David Lynch getting angry because he wouldn’t be able to get dreamy with a certain schedule that was given to him — I can totally relate to that. What I learned in making Magic Farm is that actually my intuition was right. That was a nice realization, but I had to butt heads with more traditional ways of filmmaking to know why I do things a certain way.
CH: As an actor yourself, did you trust your intuition that you’d be able to direct these professional actors, and did you talk to other directors about how to approach anything?
AU: I did not talk to other directors for that. That didn’t even cross my mind. I direct in different ways depending on what the actor requires from me, and that’s my duty as a director, to wear all these different hats and respond to actors the way they need me to. Some actors want more guidance. Some want more freedom to improvise. Some need a lot of reassurance. And some need to be left alone. It’s about being able to manage all these different needs, and I’m more than happy to do it.
CH: Which type of actor are you?
AU: I’m not an actor. What I mean is that when I act — and this is probably the reason why I haven’t acted in other people’s movies — I act as a director and as a future editor. I do whatever I need to do to get the materials I will need later. It’s very different to the acting process of a real actor. In my case, I’m just ticking the boxes of the things that I need as a director.
CH: There are a lot of different narrative threads in the film. Take me into developing them and how you worked to make everything intersect and work together.
AU: I was trying to be as realistic as possible about what actually happens when things go wrong. It’s usually because a lot of other things are going wrong, and then it reaches a peak. So I wanted all these characters to have baggage, and that baggage is the reason why everything is so messy. Of course, they are obnoxious. Of course, they are a bunch of stupid hipsters. But they’ve done other successful documentaries before. This one is as bad as it is because there’s a whole accumulation of things that all of them are going through. It’s gonna spill out in some way or another.
CH: Relationships form between the crew and the locals, and there’s a parallel with Justin (Joe Apollonio) and the hotel receptionist (Guillermo Jacubowicz), and Jeff (Alex Wolff) and Manchi (Camila del Campo).
AU: This may come from my own personal experience, because I’ve been the host more times than I’ve been the guest throughout my life. In a sense, I connect more with the Argentinians than with the Americans. When you’re from a small place where everyone knows each other, it’s very boring. Honestly, there’s this level of horniness that arises when you’re from a small place and finally somebody new shows up. That’s why these relationships take place. In the case of Joe, he cries at the end, there’s this romanticism to it. But most cases are more like the Jeff scenario, where for them it doesn’t mean much. But for you who’s stuck in that place, it’s hurtful because your life is much more boring. That’s where all those relationships come from — that experience of having been that person in the past.
CH: You’ve mentioned that Simon Rex’s character was loosely based on Dov Charney. I’m curious if Alex Wolff’s Jeff is based on anyone. This type who weaponizes feminist language and is willing to be seen as pathetic to get laid, with zero qualms about how he looks — that’s a very real person.
AU: It is based on a real person, but he’s not famous. [laughs.] It’s based on a real person that Alex got to shadow, and this person also gave his clothes for the role.
CH: So he was okay with it?
AU: He hasn’t seen the film yet…
CH: But he knows.
AU: He knows. But it’s also a composite of a lot of people that I know. It’s not only one person. I’m friends with a lot of fuckboys, who, for some reason, trust me with telling me the stuff that they tell girls. I have a long collection of excuses and stories.
CH: What was Spacemaker’s role and influence on the project? There’s a little bit of Eugene [Kotlyarenko] in some of those GoPro interstitials. How did they shepherd the project?
AU: It’s funny, because if you’re saying this because his film [The Code] uses the same cameras, we were making our films at the same time. His film just came out sooner. All of these references were on my visual reference documents from the get go. I’m very interested in animal behavior, which is something that Eugene is not interested in. My references for those cameras came from animal videos online. I’m not that interested in people, but I was always interested in how, for the first time ever, thanks to this technology, we’re able to see more of what animals do in a relaxed state. Before, a lot of animal behavior was based on animals in labs. That’s what I was interested in applying with these cameras. And there’s the relationship stylistically to early skateboard videos that use the fisheye lens — that was another inspiration.
Spacemaker were not officially on El Planeta, but Ricardo [Maddalosso] was involved with the film after the fact. I made El Planeta on my own, but once it was finished and I got into festivals and stuff, I needed help to transform it into a, legally-speaking, “real film.” Ricardo from Spacemaker helped a lot. Eugene wasn’t directly involved, but he did give me amazing advice before making El Planeta that I’m very grateful for. And then on Magic Farm, they were involved on the ground, on set in Argentina. I appreciated that, because unfortunately, as a female director, it’s very helpful to have a group of men supporting me, in case another man is fighting me. I’m sad to have to admit that, but it’s true. The way I make films is very unorthodox. So sometimes you’re dealing with other people that, because you’re a woman that also didn’t go to film school, are like, “Oh, you don’t know how it works.” Having a support network that can stand for me against that has always been helpful.
CH: You’ve talked a lot about having cool Gen X parents. On one hand, there’s a path where an artist has milquetoast parents, and that causes them to seek out these things on their own. And there’s your path, which involves having parents who are interested in a lot of cool things that you’re probably being exposed to. How do you reflect on how that’s shaped you?
AU: It shaped me in the sense that I was always very uncool to rebel against my parents. I’m not a cool person. I’m a nerd. All my friends worked for VICE or American Apparel. I never did that. I’ll work at the library. I’m generally not a cool person in that way. I’m weird and I’m annoying and I’m a nerd. I just rewatched the Crumb documentary, and I remember watching that as a little kid with my parents, because my dad loves Robert Crumb and had all the comics. As a little kid, what I found touching personally with that film was that one could be uncool and be an artist. Robert Crumb was always my main role model as an artist. I never related to current trends and contemporary music. I always feel a bit of an outsider in that sense.
CH: When it comes to writing, directing, acting, editing, is there one stage of production where you come alive, that you love the most?
AU: Pre-production is my favorite part, because I’m very invested in costume design, art direction, photography. I love location scouting, casting, the materiality of making — not a set, because I hate sets — but preparing the settings for the film. That stage where it’s still more dream-like and hasn’t fully materialized — I really love that part. It’s also because I’m autistic, and that’s the part that I get to do completely alone. That’s one of the things that I’ve always loved more as an artist as well, to walk around and look at things, archive and photograph things.
Being on set is the second part that is addicting and amazing. The adrenaline is just off the charts. My least favorite part is editing. I like the first part too much — being outside, and when you’re editing, you’re locked inside with no windows. I find that painful. I can help with the sound design, but that’s not my forte. For sound design and editing, I try to find someone good and delegate to them as much as possible. But everything else, I’m extremely involved, and I get very excited.
CH: Paul Schrader told me once that pre-production is the best, because everything is possible, and you’re getting inspiration from everything. You’re getting inspiration from something while riding the bus — everything is informing the movie, because you’re so close to making it.
AU: That’s how I feel. Once it’s filmed, and you’ve wrapped, it’s like you’re dealing with this corpse. You’re trying to resuscitate this corpse into something [laughs].
CH: You’ve brought up VICE and American Apparel, and to me VICE has this specific hold on a post-9/11, early-Internet era that’s explicitly pre-#MeToo. This movie deals a lot with the language of #MeToo — there’s a juxtaposition of eras at play.
AU: Well, it’s about the death of VICE, the last year of VICE. I don’t think it’s about VICE at its peak. It’s about VICE reckoning with things like #MeToo, but also reckoning with the fact that younger people like Mateo and Manchi are not interested to be part of it at all. Mateo is like, “I’m good. I don’t need to be in their thing.” It’s about the death of an era, and how it’s shaped our understanding of the rest of the world and the Global South. Look, I don’t think what VICE has done is necessarily that bad. I’ve talked about this before, when people are like, “Oh, it’s so clear that they have a story there, but they choose to do something else.” But there’s also this criticism against journalists to always focus on the bad, and not the good or silly things that also happen in these places. There’s this double standard. It’s also nice to see what’s going on in Congo Fashion Week. It’s not necessarily bad. And this applies to every single one of those cases, that whenever you’re in any of those countries, there’s always something horrible going on at the same time. But you have to choose what you’re covering. We’re fighting two systems. On one hand, it’s the inability to change what you’re covering when you go somewhere. Working for a company like this, you’re supposed to be covering a certain kind of content, and that’s it. And on the other hand, it’s the impossibility to fight against something like Monsanto, which is another large corporation without a face, that people don’t even know where to start.
CH: I think it can be easy to forget that things don’t die overnight.
AU: Of course, it’s a decline.
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