Battlestar Galactica.com Interviews IIana Rein

By Shawn O'Donnell

BattlestarGalactica.com had the chance to sit & talk with Ilana Rein, the director of the groundbreaking film "We are all Cylons"...a fascinating study of Battlestar Galactica, the fans & the actors involved all told from first person encounters & delving into the psychological aspects of "the character" of the Cylon...I hope that someday I can look back & say, hey you know that director? I knew her when...

Ilana: I began my artistic career as a photographer, exhibiting and getting published right after getting my MFA.  
I began gradually incorporating video into my work but was still primarily known as a photographer.
On September 11, 2001, I was living in what became the "lockdown zone" in NYC.
We could smell the smoke and the concrete ash.
After experiencing the tragedy and intensity of that day and all the days that followed, I was compelled to put aside still photography and start making documentary films.
I was motivated, in part, by a need to move away from the toxicity involved in the photographic development process.
Periphery, my first film, recounts events from 9/11 onward, and their social and political aftermath as told through the personal narratives of regular NYers.
By that I mean not widows or firemen but people who had this horrendous event happen in their town and now found that event being used for political advantage. These were ideas that I needed to express that still photography couldn't capture for me.


Shawn: Is your vision...genre?
In other words are you looking for a particular niche to express yourself or is it all "open country"...

Ilana: [I like the term “open country” as I will be working in Arizona soon.]
I believe my work, taken as a whole, transgresses certain implicit niche or genre boundaries of creative expression, but recognizing those boundaries can be helpful with connecting to a specific audience.
Obviously, We Are All Cylons will be and should be classified in the science fiction genre first.
That said, from the responses I’ve gotten, I know that people who have never even heard of BSG have found my film compelling because of the issues it deals with.  I took great care to make this film accessible to people who shy away from science fiction.  
I love science fiction and feel that it often tackles issues that are universal and pertinent to our existence here on this planet.
I wish it weren't so marginalized.
It’s very popular, Hollywood loves it, but it occupies a strange level in our putative cultural hierarchy.


Shawn:This ties in with my previous question...when I say genre, I will be specific...I will say Science fiction...even more specifically...Battlestar Galactica..so, why this?

Ilana: I have loved science fiction for as long as I can remember absorbing media of any kind.  
I fell hard for BSG (2003) in 2007, played catch up on Netflix, and then watched it conclude in real time on cable.
At that point in my life I was going through some very heavy and truly awesome personal things in my life: my father was slowly dying and I was pregnant with my second child.
BSG was the only show I watched during this time.
In fact, I cancelled cable the day after the series ended.
So there was no doubt the show--and its profoundly moving conclusion--had a deep impact on my psyche.
I have always been incredibly sensitive to the input of certain media and knew that there was something special about this show.
It affected me so much that I had to reach out to others to see how they felt about the series.
I realized I couldn't get the show out of my head.
The music was especially instrumental in this. I needed to work through this as an artist.
That meant committing what turned out to be over two years of my life to making this film.
Last year, I was able to talk with Edward James Olmos about this, to tell him how the last scene of William Adama on the mountain alone was so heartbreaking to me but, with Bear McCreary's “Shape of Things To Come” to shape it, at the same time so extraordinarily beautiful.  
We actually both wept a bit. For me, even that interaction with Olmos I feel is part of this whole larger circle of birth and death and rebirth.
Art can be used to express these incredible, unspeakable truths about our existence.

Shawn: Did you have in mind to do a "psychological study" in part with the fans & actors?...it seems that you got some very up front answers from everyone...so they were being honest...so was that in mind?

Ilana: I approached the fans, those in costume and those not, first and foremost as a fan myself.
I was honest about my own strong feelings for the show and why I needed to make this film.
I think when people are communicating honestly and from the heart they will more often than not get honest, heartfelt responses in return.
Aside from dogtags, I never felt the urge to put on a costume, so I wanted to find out what compelled others to do so, how it brought them closer to the show. The actors I spoke with felt very close to the show also.
I wanted to explore how they felt in relation to the fans, as well as how they worked through the process of discovering the characters they played weren’t human.
So they were responding as human beings who played Cylons, to timely hypothetical question so many of us who love technology are asking: what is it that makes us human, and how close are we to fusing with machines?


Shawn: Speaking of a psychological "viewpoint" were you at all surprised at some of the responses?

Ilana: I was surprised at first by the passionate response of a woman who told me she wanted to be Starbuck with all her heart.
What surprised me was that Starbuck was such a complicated character.
Then I realized that Starbuck and all the other characters served as archetypes--or more accurately avatars, of the pre-internet and pre-James Cameron variety.  It’s completely natural for us to identify with avatars.
I also was surprised when I started to realize that people wanted to be Cylons, not simply identifying with the fictional characters--but to actually BE a Cylon in this non-fiction reality.
It makes more sense to me now that I understand that a Cylon is this ultimate expression (I won’t say triumph) of technological progress: a robot that looks like us and learns to become an emotional human being.
We love technology so much it's not a surprise that some of us could idolize what the Cylons are.
While editing the film I internalized what it may mean to be a Cylon and used that as part of the creative process. How would a machine interact with a machine to make art?


Shawn: Do you think...in your opinion...that in someway the action on the screen...the story that is told has an impact...and again...from a psychological basis, upon the fans?...or the actors as well for that matter?...maybe in how they react to things, simply because it seems that it does color perception to a degree....


Ilana: BSG had a huge psychological impact on the fans I know and met.
Rekha Sharma spoke about the challenges she faced being part of a show that was so dark.
Along with its depiction of a whole world and its attendant cosmology,I think that's a big part of its appeal.
It's a dystopian show as opposed to Star Trek, which was more of a utopian vision.
It appeals to different people and the reasons are pretty personal about why so many of us find a particular story so appealing. Imagining ourselves in such circumstances can focus our world to a pinpoint--e.g., to be in a situation where the entire human species is threatened, and nothing else matters except survival. [It clarifies things.]


Shawn: Ok, what was the weirdest reaction you got out of all this...fan, actor...whatever?...the strangest response...

Ilana: I saw a BSG fan wearing a t-shirt that I own.
I mentioned in passing that I had the same shirt. He looked me in the eye and said, "We are great minds you and I...we see the truth and this is it."  
He was very serious but I felt he was disconnected from the level I was on, or I was disconnected from his.
He didn't end up in the film because I think he would have taken it in a direction I didn't want it to go.
There is a very fine line that I explore in the film.
It is a line that allows people to fully invest their energies in this incredible fiction, while remaining tethered to reality.
Nevertheless, I still find there is such horrible judgment in mainstream media against costumers and convention goers.
What's so strange?
Often, those casting such judgments may themselves be obsessed with something like a sport team.
That's one of the reasons I included non-costuming fans in the film, because it's never just about emulation.

Shawn: What's on your plate now?
A lot!  
I am promoting We Are All Cylons in the press and solidifying more screenings at festivals.
The next screening will be at the Arizona Underground Film Festival, which is a very exciting event.
I'm working on getting a DVD out, fund-raising for my new film, and moving everyone down to the AZ desert for the year.  

Shawn: Let's talk future projects then...what is in store?

Ilana: My family and I are going to be living in Arizona for the year starting September, where I will be filming my new project.
It is going to be a cutting-edge hybrid documentary that explores three convergent narrative threads about belief systems in the Southwest: physicists and cosmologists discussing parallel universes, people who have seen UFOs, and stories from Native American tribes.
This will be woven into a science fiction meta-narrative that unifies all three arcs. It is going to be a joint US/UK production and I already have some seed money to start filming upon arrival, which is very exciting.
This film will appeal to lovers of science fiction and documentary and will be a much larger production than any I have worked on previously.