IN CONVERSATION WITH NADIA LATIF
Nadia Latif is a theatre maker and film director from London. I had the pleasure of speaking with Nadia about growing up in Sudan, her distaste for matcha, the pros and cons of gatekeeping, serving your creative pulse, potentially being the first Sudanese woman to make a narrative feature film, and so much more. Her first feature film, The Man In My Basement, stars Willem Dafoe and is streaming on Hulu now.
Nadia Latif: Are you in New York?
Hagop Kourounian: I'm in LA!
Nadia Latif: Is it? Nice. I sort of feel like everywhere feels kind of cooked right about now. Do you know what I mean? In a weird way, it's made me love where I'm from because I'm like, oh, this is it. This is the final circle around the bowl of civilization. So, you know, before I'd be like, oh my God, I'm going to try and move somewhere to achieve the life that I want. Now I'm like everywhere is cooked. You can't move to Berlin and save yourself. I used to think if I just moved to Marseille, everything's going to be fine. You know what I mean? Now I'm just like, babe, you can't move away from human civilization.
Hagop Kourounian: I was in Paris just earlier this year, I was in Japan last summer. And I think with Instagram, everyone looks the same. Everyone kind of just consumes the same stuff. Even from where I'm from in LA, there were these pockets of regionalism, right? Growing up in the Valley we used to leave it to go to Hollywood and downtown to experience things that were only in those parts of LA, you know, restaurants and coffee shops and record stores and stuff. Now all of those once regional things are all over our neighborhood. It creates this thing where every pocket of the city has the same four or five businesses that people revolve around and there's really no need to leave the Valley anymore.
Nadia Latif: I didn't grow up in the West. I grew up in Sudan, which is where I'm from. I grew up in a place without cinemas, without theaters. I grew up in a Islamist dictatorship which was a very progressive country and we had this increasingly religious government. So I feel like I associate hard with the film Footloose, you know what I mean? That was in some ways my childhood. I think it's also why I make films because I still believe that it's a chance to experience somebody else's culture and live in it. I don't particularly have that thing where I want to make films about where I'm from. I want to make films about where other people are from because then I can get to live it. Fundamentally everybody's a fucking desk nomad or whatever. I was just in Mexico City a few months ago and there was a protest against digital nomads. People who’ve just moved in during the pandemic and are working remotely. My favourite thing was a sign that just said, “Hey, Gringo, mi casa is not su casa!” I feel like people always hope that when you're the person that moves somewhere that you are somehow not the gentrifier or colonizer. It's like, babe, if you haven't realised who the gentrifier is, it's you. It’s so you. Me and my husband are most definitely gentrifiers in East London. I'm like, babe, I'm black. It doesn't count because I'm also bringing things down. Or at least it balances out. You know what I mean? As much as we raise the house prices, I'm bringing down the neighbourhood in some way. The second, you're like, oh my God, it's so cheap. Just slap yourselves. Just give yourself one big slap across the face because you know who it's not cheap for? Mexicans. But my matcha latte, a matcha is disgusting by the way, it's only two dollars. Shush. Just don't say it out loud. Just keep it in your inside voice.
Hagop Kourounian: I don’t understand the matcha craze. It's not for me.
Nadia Latif: I'm sorry. I went around all of Japan. I did tea ceremonies. I have drunk every type of matcha and I don't get it.
Hagop Kourounian: Here in LA it feels like the matcha capital outside of Japan. It's usually a cup of oat milk filled to 80% and a shot of matcha and some sort of flavored syrup…
Nadia Latif: UUUGHHHH. I'm the oldest of six kids. And my mother raised us all to believe that sugar in your hot drinks is fundamentally wrong. It's very effective. Do you know what I mean? But now when I see people put sugar in drinks I think it's weird. Be a grown up. Matcha, it's not for me. Having said that, my actual cancellable opinion is that I don't like oat milk. I like cow milk. I grew up on a cow farm. So it's very difficult to convince me. Please don't tell anyone because I really feel like that might get me canceled in this day and age.
Hagop Kourounian: I think it's coming back though. I think the propaganda is kind of slowing down and it seems like real milk is back… I'm not sure if you're so familiar with Director Fits and what we do, but–
Nadia Latif: I am so familiar. Such a fan. I don't always agree with you. Sometimes I'm like, how dare you? That's what all style conversations are.
Hagop Kourounian: At the end of the day, this is just one man's opinion. It's all based on my subjective taste. People always send in suggestions and say you should post this, you should post that. I'm like, yeah, maybe I should, but like I don't want to. So I don't.
Nadia Latif: But that's interesting, isn't it? Fundamentally an act of any form of cultural criticism is also an act of curation, but people find that very difficult to stomach because they're like, oh no, we need you to be encyclopedic. I find it deeply strange that people find it very hard to say, that's just not my taste. Like I have friends who are film curators and they'll go, I'm going to do a season of let's say queer films and I'll put together 20 films. Everybody is like, but how could you not include X,Y, and Z? And you're like, it's not my taste. It's not what I wanted. So that's okay. I'm the rare gatekeeper.
Hagop Kourounian: I think there should be a bit more gatekeeping in our culture. Going back to what we were talking about earlier with regionalism, we all don’t need to know the exact same movies, the exact same music because then we kind of all become the exact same people, you know. There's a bit of nuance there, but I think it's good to gatekeep a tiny bit. It creates personal style, personal taste, personal opinions.
Nadia Latif: There’s the adage, everyone's a critic, but actually, I don't think everyone is a critic. I think everyone has an opinion. The great critical black writers of the world, like the kind of Hilton Als’ of the world, whose job is to look at an element of culture and to look at it objectively and kind of turn it around and style is just kind of one of those things. I think we're also at a really difficult point with it, right, because so much of fashion has always been a binary, a bit too accessible than the inaccessible. However, if you walk down a fancy shopping street, Bond Street for example, it feels like the people who are buying those clothes have shifted further and further away from like any level of wealth that any of us would understand. I think what is also incredibly interesting is that it feels like the ethnicity of those people has shifted. When I was a kid, how many black and brown people did you see walking into Chanel? It feels like there's a sort of side of fashion for that, but it's not particularly cool. It's just like a wealth indicator. It's like having a kind of flash car. The Hermès Birkin, I can't think of anything I want less than an Hermès Birkin, but it's a certain type of wealth that wants that. Then there's like the polar opposite, fast fashion, but it feels like the thing in the middle is a very peculiar mix of things, do you know what I mean? I'm very interested in the slowing down of fashion. The whole concept of slower fashion and making things to order and just like being a little bit more conscious of how things are made. I just get a fucking horrible sick feeling in my stomach about what percentage of fast fashion returns just go straight in the landfill because it’s more cost effective than cleaning them and putting them back on the fictitious shop floor. I just can't even begin to think about that. Anyway, that's just random musings.
I think that fashion has always been joy, it gives so much joy in the same way I think that film can give you a lot of joy. In the face of everything that's happening in the world with climate change and lack of resources and inequality, it's like, how can it continue to give us that same level of visual joy without feeling a bit Marie Antoinette-ish? You know what I mean? Like, who's this for? I know there's been a lot of stuff about how much the new Dior collection is costing. There's all this stuff about these people coming out with more expensive collections to say these are for the few. These are for the few people that have this level of style and this level of money and in many ways that is great. I think it's a great thing aesthetically to gatekeep but it's a scary time to remind us that some things are just for the few. So I'm fascinated to know how fashion designers as artists respond to that because it's something that I as a filmmaker and a theatre maker also wrestle with. How do I respond to the fact that what I do is fundamentally a useless thing? Oh God. Anyway, sorry, it got dark real quick.
Hagop Kourounian: No, no, this is important. I feel like these conversations I have never kind of really dive into that dark and scary side of fashion. I love to compare film and fashion because they both seem to utilize a similar creative process, but obviously in different visual mediums, right? Like you're still creating a story on the runway, just like you're creating a story in a film or a short film or a play or whatever. What you said earlier about designing collections for a select group of people kind of made me realize that maybe they’re not as similar as I always thought. While not all films are for everybody, I do feel like film and TV in general are made with the intention for a lot of people to access, right? But, whoever is designing Birken bags is thinking about a very, very small group of people. It’s certainly a status indicator. One product is kind of aiming to be for a lot of people and the other is really kind of aiming to be owned by a select group of people.
Nadia Latif: Well, since man painted on walls with clay, he has aspired to make things beautiful. How can we explain the original impulse to make arts on caveman walls, like that was there. I think we shouldn't try to get away with making things that are beautiful for beauty's sake. I love ballet because it's beauty for beauty's sake and you go and watch it and it's like watching a butterfly inside a crystal because you're like, this is so brief and this is so beautiful and they only have careers that last a few years because literally your human body can't do it for that long and it's so kind of glorious and detailed and designed. In many ways, it's got nothing to do with anything, it's just beautiful for the sake of it and I think that's really important. Do you really sympathize with how you continue to make fashion, which is beautiful and gives people so much joy and it does. How do we, as artists, and fashion designers and directors and everybody at every level of creative making–how are we all dealing with the same moment of existential crisis? Do you continue to be like the guys in the Titanic playing the violins as it goes down or do you try to get in a lifeboat? I don't know, I would be really sad if the kind of aesthetic extravagances of fashion got less and less and less. I sort of think there's too much thinking about art as product and not enough of like, art as process, which is a very wanky thing to say, I apologize. There's hope, there's got to be hope, right?
Hagop Kourounian: Maybe some of that excitement will be coming back soon because I feel like this upcoming Paris Fashion Week has had a lot of changing of the guards in terms of who's running which house now.
Nadia Latif: I love when that happens. It's like in football or soccer you have the transfer window. Change is great, you have to be willing to fail. You have to hope that these people are gonna swing big and it's not about the longest legacy, but having the strongest. He came in, he did some mad shit for a couple of years, and then he bounced. Rather than just seeing this Chanel collection like 52 billion times. I think it's kind of an exciting time and I'm sort of quite hopeful, because it feels like there are some proper renegades, you know what I mean? I remember when I was young, it felt like quite a lot of fashion designers were naughty. Do you know what I mean? I would love to go back there. My background is in the theatre, and I always ask younger directors, it's a trick question. I always ask them, “who do you make work for?” They normally give me quite a long answer, which is like, "oh, I'm making work for people who don't have access to art.” It's a beautiful answer but I always have to say to them, “you're making work for you but I hope as a person in the world that would include other people.” Because you're in the world and you're trying to respond to the world, it'll feel like something that other people want to watch. But I feel like you've got to serve your creative pulse, otherwise you're sort of pretending to be lots of other pieces. It's a bit like having too many voices in your head. It's like, what do I think is beautiful? Or I think it's good? What do I think is pleasing? You just have to hope and pray that other people get behind it.
Hagop Kourounian: I totally agree that you have to satisfy your creative impulse first. Hopefully, if you're a good person, if you have good taste, that will translate to the rest of the world.
Nadia Latif: I'm obsessed with a female filmmaker called Fronza Woods, an African American filmmaker. She made two short films in the 1970s and that's it. They are two of the greatest pieces of cinema I have ever seen. I drove across the south of France with my husband to go and interview her once and she's an amazing woman. She said she didn't have the thing to make a feature film. She didn't speak the speak and didn't kind of understand what was needed. But I said, isn't it amazing that there are these two perfect short films that exist in the world that are so uncompromisingly you? History will remember you so clearly. She's happy, she's wonderful, she's lived a very fulfilled life. I think that's amazing. I'm really lucky because I feel like my film that I just made, I'm really proud of it. It's just 100% me, nobody interfered. If they interfered it was to make it better. So in a way, I'm not afraid of reviews. I'm not afraid because it exists in its entirety as I wanted it. That is such an incredibly rare privilege that we'll figure everything else out. You know, everything else would be fine.
Hagop Kourounian: I haven't even touched any of these questions I prepared for you.
Nadia Latif: I'm sorry, I will talk for hours. Get to it!
Hagop Kourounian: I've never been this “off script.” I haven’t asked a single question 30 minutes in, this is awesome. I usually start off all the conversations kind of with a question that I feel like you might have answered a bit, but I don't know if you got so personal with it. I like to ask filmmakers and critics and costume designers, etc., about their own personal style and their relationship to clothing. It's clear you spend a lot of time thinking about clothes. You have very eloquent, awesome, existential thoughts about fashion. So, I'm just curious about your personal style and your relationship with clothes.
Nadia Latif: I think that I am somebody who has had a very often down relationship with my own personal style. I grew up in a Muslim country that was becoming increasingly conservative. I went from a very normal childhood and wearing whatever I wanted. I come from a family that loves fashion. we are all… my mom, my dad, all five of my siblings, obsessed with clothes and quite expressive through that as well. But it felt like that was against a background of things becoming slightly more uniform in my life. But I think that when I started working initially as a theatre director, I got to really express myself through clothes. I'm sort of not necessarily bothered about what the thing that you were expected to wear was. I also have no fear about being the most overdressed person in any room. I just have no anxiety about that. I would have more anxiety about being underdressed in a room. I think that's a very cultural thing, like where I’m from in Sudan, you should always be very smart. You always come correct. When I started working I would come into rehearsals and have a nice outfit on. Maybe a little dress and some high heel boots, full earrings, full makeup. An older director, an older male director, took me to the side one day, he leaned in and I was like, “oh, he’s going to give me some piece of advice that's going to change my life.” And he said, “nobody is going to take you seriously if you continue to wear such short skirts and such high heels.” My face dropped. I was just like, what? Obviously, I continued to wear short skirts and high heel boots for years and years to come. And I had no problem being a little too glamorous. If I'm brutally honest, that guy's voice was living in my head rent free. It felt like a fuck you. When I was younger, saying fuck you felt like more of a directive in my life. I think that's because when I started in theatre and in film, there were not a lot of black women at all, and obviously still aren't a lot of black women. There are more black women now. I felt like I wasn't necessarily in control of the rooms that I was in. I would make up for that discomfort by like, taking up visual space. Do you know what I mean? I'm actually going to be slightly larger than life, and I'm going to make people notice.
Actually, that's not as it was. I wanted people to look at me, but I wanted to look unafraid. I am so confident that I don't have to look like everybody else. As I moved through my directing career and had more control over the rooms that I was in and who was in those rooms with me, I didn't feel the need to take up space. I felt the need to give space to others a little bit more. I am no longer the only person who looks like me in this room. In fact, we're in the majority. It felt like I could sort of relax just a little bit. It was a thing about fashion as defiance. Personally for me, fashion has been a lot about a means to take up space. My relationship with that has changed in the same way that my relationship with social media has changed. I do them differently in different stages of my life. But also, as I'm currently getting ready for a press tour for this film, I'm a bit like, what is my personal style? It feels like a moment of reinvention. Even though I've been a director for nearly 20 years, making your first film is like a real “hello world, it's me.” Clothes are the way that you do that. I think I'm also very cognizant of what that image says to other women, to younger black women. I was once on a train and I think I'd just gotten a job and there was an article about it in the paper. These two black girls came up to me on a train and said congratulations. I was like, “yo.” Nobody knows who the hell I am. But, to the people to whom your presence matters, it really matters to see yourself. I think there is actually nothing more important than seeing people who look like you do the job that you do before you. I'm really lucky. I've got a lot of friends who are female directors, a lot of friends who are black female directors. So I kind of take it for granted. You should never take that for granted.
It's very meaningful to see people who look like you do the job before you. I would also say that the directors that I'm drawn to aesthetically are therefore not white men, because I don't see myself in you. As much as I can appreciate Paul Thomas Anderson looking fucking sick on every film set, I just don't relate to you. We're so different in our visual worlds and our experiences. I think I'm always looking for the people who looked like me and how they did it. I think it makes me feel better. If you see a fucking sick photo of Charles Burnett in the 1970s making a film, you know, it makes you feel like you can do it. Look at this guy 50 plus years ago, making one of the greatest films of all time, and looking fucking dope while doing it. I feel invincible now. I can definitely do this, because he did it.
Hagop Kourounian: I come from an Armenian and Lebanese family. We barely have a handful of directors worth talking about. After every movie I watch, I stay through the entire credits and scan the credits to look for Armenian names.
Nadia Latif: Oh yeah, anybody whose name ended in ‘ian.’
Hagop Kourounian: Yep or sometimes ‘yan’ too. I don't work in this world so directly, but it's so cool to see that this movie we liked had a few Armenian people contributing their skills. That just gives us a lot of joy. I feel like these terms are a bit overused but it’s so true that representation matters.
Nadia Latif: I think in a way it empowers you to make braver, bigger things because you're like, oh, they did it. I don't have to worry about being the only person to express the story of my country. I'm the same as you. In Sudan, we have a miniscule film industry because we have so much lack of support for the arts. It just wasn't really a thing. Just in the last 10 years, there have been like four or five Sudanese feature films made. Let me tell you, I have not managed to keep a dry eye during any of them. I'm sobbing from opening credits to end credits. For all intents and purposes, I cannot find another feature narrative film made by a Sudanese woman. I'm trying not to think too much about the responsibility that this will be the first one. I don't know where you stand on this, but I think how female directors have chosen to present themselves over the decades is so interesting. The whole tension between dressing practically, but wanting to not deny your femininity and wanting to stand out versus not. Like Christopher Nolan wearing a suit on a film set, I'm sort of fascinated by what that signals about how different directors have felt about what the job they do is, you know what I mean? Now that I've made a feature film, I consider that much more. Can you imagine wearing a suit on set every day? It really makes me think, what does that tell me about how that person makes this film or what they consider the job of the director to be. And it's not like a judgment thing, like I'm fascinated by that.
Hagop Kourounian: I would love to know too. I think you have a better point of view than me because I don't direct. But from what I've gathered after two years of speaking with filmmakers, no matter who they are, they prioritize comfort and practicality on set more than anything. I think the slight nuances with how that comfort and practicality shows up are the personal quirks or decisions or interests that those people have. Some people like Janicza Bravo, while she may dress practically on set, I think there is a slight more capital F fashion with the way she dresses. Like, for example, she did a short film a few years ago with Pedro Pascal and she’s wearing Miu Miu. It’s the Miu Miu workwear stuff that she's wearing but I think that's different from Ari Aster wearing army surplus cargo pants. I think there's a slight difference between those.
Nadia Latif: I think it's two things. Christopher Nolan obviously finds a degree of relief with his suits but he is also choosing to stand out because everybody else is wearing practical pants and big steel cap boots. He's saying I'm the director. The greatest piece of advice anyone gave me was that before you go to bed, lay out your clothes for the next day. Decision fatigue is very real. There's only so many questions you can answer. I think Ava DuVernay says being a film director is just being question answerer in chief. I'm just into uniforms. I like not having to think when I get dressed every day. Having been on a film set now, I just think it's a practical job that is so much determined by the elements and what you're shooting that day. The idea of wearing anything other than like the most practical clothes ever. I'm like, wow, what was that? But I do actually think that there is a grander purpose, right? Which is when you're on a film set, there is so much serious physical labor happening around you and I personally feel this is going to sound like a given, but there can be a sense of equality that can prevail a film set if you choose to construct it that way, right? Which is to say the work of the actor is not more important than the work of the grip or the electrician. Everybody needs to be given their moment and everybody needs to be respected.
Hagop Kourounian: You had mentioned that you had a very specific vision for your favorite dressed filmmakers and I’d love to hear about that more.
Nadia Latif: There's this photo of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène and the French Moroccan director Med Hondo. Two of whom are my favorite filmmakers and they're the fucking goats. They're just sitting, they've each got a pipe, and they're at a film festival. That just so sums up that, I don't give a fuck, feeling. I'm taking up space, I'm totally comfortable. I don't care that everybody doesn't look like me. Ousmane Sembène is very famous for having said that Europe is not his center. It's the outskirts. Obviously you have Melvin Van Peebles, what a look. Bill Gunn, who directed Ganja and Hess but also, I love me some Agnès Varda.They've all got that whole thing in common of being quite expressive people. I feel like I should have thrown another woman in there, but I can't think of one right now. It's because too many films are directed by men. There's only enough women to sample from.
Hagop Kourounian: Melvin Van Peebles is in my top seven. He's one of my favorite people. The Story of a Three Day Pass is just perfect and his personal style is awesome. Even all the way up until the end, he still looked so good. Nadia, thank you so much for the time. This was honestly one of my favorite conversations I've had.
Nadia Latif: Oh, thank you.
Hagop Kourounian: I'm very excited to see the film and I wish you the best of luck at TIFF.
Nadia Latif: Oh, thank you very much, man. I might send you a picture of some of my looks to ask, is this okay? Can you prejudge this?
Hagop Kourounian: Yeah, please do! I'll give my honest thoughts.