Film Through a Musician’s Lens: A Conversation with Lydia Cornett
Still from Bug Farm; courtesy of Lydia Cornett.
A New York City doorman who wears many other hats; a team of employees at an insect farm in a small town; a teenage girl whose family emigrated to the United States from Azerbaijan.
They are all everyday people whose lives create a fascinating snapshot of humanity within each of Lydia Cornett’s short films.
I discovered one of her documentaries quite by accident, browsing the PBS Channel with my friends. We’d found one short documentary featuring historic Tampa neighborhood Ybor City and were searching for more Florida-related content to follow it up with. When the search returned something called Bug Farm, we had no idea what to expect. But within 30 seconds, I was hooked — a close-up shot of hundreds of superworms overlaid with striking orchestral music, followed by a cut to familiar small town Florida scenery, and I suddenly had to know “Who made this?!”
Still from Bug Farm; courtesy of Lydia Cornett.
A quick online search for Bug Farm and “POV” (a PBS program for showcasing independent films) led me to filmmaker Lydia Cornett’s website. There, I found five short films, all in documentary format, but varied in the stories they tell.
Each film contains an intimate look into everyday life, which shows itself to be entirely different from one person to the next.
Although none of them exceed 20 minutes, the immersion into each character’s world is so thorough, you’re left feeling like you’ve just watched an hour-long feature.
Curious to know more about her inspirations and background, I reached out to Lydia and was able to spend some time talking with her. We had a great conversation, shared some documentary film recommendations, and she provided these insightful responses to my questions.
Q: Can you tell me a bit about how you started making films? What made you decide to transition from professional violinist to filmmaker?
A: I grew up in a musical family in Baltimore and studied violin at a public performing arts high school, so I had always planned to pursue some type of career in music. But the combination of an injury and performance anxiety made me want to explore other paths when I went to college. The summer after my freshman year of undergrad, I was fortunate to take a class that completely changed my life — a course on wildlife filmmaking in Kenya, where students were assigned to film with different animal behavior scientists at the Mpala Research Center in Nanyuki, Kenya.
For six weeks, my team and I followed around an evolutionary biologist who was doing research on the endangered Grevy’s zebra.
My first experience of holding a camera and recording sound required patient observation of an unpredictable, non-human world. Making a film about zebra migration patterns felt like a delicate form of expression that I could construct slowly over time, rather than being judged on a few minutes of a performance where I had to get everything right.
But there was still a magic to the spontaneity of what might happen after pressing record, and I fell in love with the documentary process.
Q: How has your background in music influenced the way that you approach filmmaking?
A: Music has always been a through-line of my work, whether in subject matter, editing structure and pacing, or as a felt aesthetic quality.
Because it was the first art form that I was exposed to, I think it was how I learned to express and feel complex emotions.
Still from Narmin’s Birthday; courtesy of Lydia Cornett.
So now when I witness and document moments with my camera that evoke those deeply human feelings — often the intersections of joy, sadness, humor, or absurdity — I feel connected to those early experiences, but this time alongside the participants of my films, whether musicians, bug farmers, voters, or meat processors.
As of quite recently, I’m trying to integrate music more tangibly into my work through composing film scores, for both my own films and for other filmmakers. My scores start with sounds from my violin that I layer, repeat and distort to match the particular mood of a filmic moment, often accompanied by synths and other electronic instruments. With composing, I’m definitely re-experiencing the imposter syndrome that comes with taking on anything new, but so far the challenge has been super rewarding.
Two of her documentaries feature fellow violinists; it’s clear that her background in music has had a major influence on her filmography. As stated in the “About” page on her website, she “makes work that unites the restraint of observational storytelling with the physicality and connective qualities she associates with music-making.”
Q: I noticed there are violinists in Yves and Variation and Teaching in Quarantine, do you intentionally seek out other musicians to feature?
A: I don’t intentionally seek out musicians to feature in my films, but I’ve always had an appreciation for the rigor and discipline of the many musical individuals I know, starting with my parents and sister.
A musical life requires this combination of daily practice with mental and bodily rigor, in addition to a mastery of interpersonal ensemble communication with cues, breathing, and gestures.
That has always been such a fascinating amalgamation to me. I’m equally taken by the dedication of non-professional musicians, or folks who pursue music for the sheer joy that it can bring. Seeing Yves’s connection to the violin and how it’s this daily meditative practice for him was definitely something that drew me in and influenced the making of Yves & Variation.
Still from Teaching in Quarantine; courtesy of Lydia Cornett.
Indeed, the term “variation” is used in music to refer to a material being repeated, but in an alternate form each time. In Yves & Variation, New York City doorman Yves Deshommes is observed living different lives as a father, a violinist, and the orchestrator of a project to restore a run-down schoolhouse in his home country of Haiti. This particular film does not include any interviews, it simply follows Yves as he fulfills each of his roles.
Q: Who are some of your favorite directors, or directors that have inspired you?
A: There are so many! The filmmaker Garrett Bradley, who works in both documentary and art spaces, has an amazing way of combining deeply personal stories with a refined aesthetic and political commitment. I’ve always admired the musical sensibility of filmmaker Alma Har’el and have never seen anything quite like her 2011 film Bombay Beach, which melds observational documentary and choreographed dance sequences. Finally, I’m really interested in filmmakers who also identify as visual artists, like Laurie Anderson and Cauleen Smith: two artists who fuse sound, image and technology in newfound ways.
Q: I love how your films offer such an intimate look into people’s lives and livelihoods. Do you find that you develop a personal relationship with the subjects while filming?
A: When you’re working with people to create something about their lives, there is a degree of trust that emerges from the process, which often leads to a personal relationship that lasts well beyond the making of the film. For example, in making Yves and Variation, Yves and I first connected over our shared love of playing violin and pursuing music in combination with other commitments. But Yves’s enthusiasm for the project led to a shared creative process. In our initial conversations, we talked about making a film that could replicate his experience of seamlessly pivoting from one environment to the next. In approaching the component of the production set in Haiti, I was conscious of my position as a white filmmaker making work in the country, which has a long history of being unfairly portrayed and exploited in Western media.
It was important to me that the scenes in Jacmel and Anse a Beouf were shown through the eyes of artists and individuals who love and know the place best.
While there, I took a backseat to the direction of the filming. Yves was my guide to both the country and our documenting, and he took on more of a “director” role in the shoot, making decisions about which artists and settings we might visit. This shifting of roles felt important to both the production and our partnership.
Still from Yves and Variation; courtesy of Lydia Cornett.
Q: I definitely believe documentary filmmaking has so much artistic potential to explore. But would you ever consider making a film with a fictional narrative and characters?
A: Documentary endlessly pivots between art and science, storytelling and history, fiction and fact. Despite the genre’s origins as an “objective” media form, any creative decision — whether an image, camera movement, sound, or editing choice — contributes its own subjective meaning.
So I think of documentary as this interpretation or expression of reality.
It can be observational, reconstructed, or told through interviews, but that line between fiction and non-fiction is tenuous and complex, which makes it fraught with a lot of ethical ambiguity. So that’s all to say that I think there’s a degree of fiction in every documentary film that we’re always grappling with, but I do really admire narrative films that draw from well-researched, real-life environments. I’d be interested in directing a fiction project that embraces the tensions between what is real and scripted, and makes use of that dynamic in an innovative way.
Q: You recently posted on Instagram about a new film of yours, Fleshwork, that’s premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival in January. Is there anything you’d like to share about this film? The fact that it’s set in a butcher shop definitely piqued my interest.
A: My latest film Fleshwork explores the interplay of movement, artistry and mortality at a family-owned butcher shop in northeast Ohio. It’s my first project working with 16mm, and I shot in black-and-white film on a hand-wound Bolex camera. It’s also the first film for which I’ve composed a film score, built from the field sounds of the shop along with my violin.
I’m excited about the original score’s presence in the film — I see it as an expression of the choreography of motion I observed in the space.
Still from Narmin’s Birthday; courtesy of Lydia Cornett.
In summary, Lydia Cornett’s ability to frame the lives of ordinary people in a way that encourages the audience to consider their complexity and share in their emotion is apparent, and I look forward to following her future work. Currently, Bug Farm and several other previously released films are available to watch for free on her website.
Everywhere we look there are stories to tell, and I thoroughly enjoyed the ones that Lydia Cornett, her crew, and the stars of each film have shared with the world.