by Dov Kornits
“I was 12. I came with my parents. It’s the usual thing, you’re born in Eastern Europe, if there happens to be an uncle or an aunt in a developed economy, you go and follow,” says North Macedonian-born Housekeeping for Beginners writer/director Goran Stolevski from his study in Melbourne.
“When I moved here, I didn’t have any friends. I started watching movies obsessively, and that became more of a reality to me than my day-to-day life. We lived in a pretty poor area, and there were these vouchers handed out for cinemas. I started going to the cinema a lot more. And then, the Oscars were on around that time, and there was a montage of every Best Picture winner ever. I started tracking down these films on VHS at my local council’s library. And then it became more and more obsessive.”
Housekeeping for Beginners is Stolevski’s third feature film in 2 years, following his debut You Won’t Be Alone and last year’s Of An Age, which was recently nominated for numerous AACTA Awards. “I wish that I could have been there, but there was some emergency vacuuming that had to be done, so I couldn’t make it,” says the filmmaker in a po-faced manner that he maintains for the rest of our chat, only actually earnest.
“I was unemployed for 20 years, so I had a lot of time to write,” he answers when we ask how he managed to make 3 major feature films in 2 years. “I’ve been trying to make a feature for 22 years. I’ve only made three in that whole period.
“I learned English from watching Beverly Hills 90210 in Eastern Europe, which is how most of us learned English in the mid ‘90s.”
As we speak with his book and DVD collection behind him, we can’t seem to spot the guilty pleasure Aaron Spelling production.
“There are a lot of people who have shaped me,” he says. “Once you’re making a movie, you’re not really thinking about that. It’s a fool’s errand to mimic another filmmaker. Having grown up watching Todd Haynes films or reading Alice Munro … they seem unrelated, but in my case, they shaped me. I think the influence has probably come through in an unconscious way, not a conscious, intellectual one. Often, people who watch my work will comment on the influences. I don’t realise it, but they’re right. There are aspects of my films that don’t become clear to me until five years later when I have some distance.”
His experience of growing up in North Macedonia certainly shaped the themes of his latest, and arguably best film, Housekeeping for Beginners.
“I grew up in a two bedroom apartment, there were six of us living in it. And that doesn’t count the 49 cousins that came in and out of the house every single day. That was what reality was to me. If it wasn’t biological DNA, it kind of becomes the most important thing. I’m still close with all of those cousins, who are not in Australia. I go back all the time to Macedonia. I don’t speak with a funny accent, no one looks at me weird when I start speaking. Actually, they do, but for different reasons…
“But to be honest, it wasn’t a sense of ‘oh, I have to make a film in my native country’. I like what it means in terms of the canvas for the story. I know Macedonia is small and obscure and barely anyone has heard of it, but in terms of the way people live day to day, it’s much more similar to the majority of the world.
“Out of the 190 countries in the world, only 30 or so are in the OECD. The rest of them are not, and that’s the majority of the world’s population. Being queer in Australia or LA doesn’t really reflect the majority. Even in terms of economic development, if you look at the list in order of socioeconomics, Macedonia is right in the middle. I would have been happy to set this film in Ukraine or Poland, or anywhere that would give me money. I’m really a whore when it comes to funding. But with Macedonia, I thought I might have easier access and I know it quite well, obviously.”
Housekeeping for Beginners is about family, starting off with lovers Dita (Anamaria Marinca) and Suada (Alina Serban), with the latter sick, and forcing the former to marry housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor), in order to adopt her two children in case she passes away. Meanwhile, Toni’s young lover Ali (Samson Selim), moves in as well, creating the sort of melodrama that may have actually seeped into Stolevski’s subconscious after watching Beverly Hills 90210. Albeit infused with a flowing camera, close-ups and authentic performances.
“The stories I end up making are usually things that come from instinct. The ones that I decide I’m going to write about this issue or this genre and sit down and do it, come out mechanical and crappy. The only good stuff comes out of the subconscious, essentially.
“In this case, there was an image I saw of a group of queer people living in a warehouse, essentially, in the ‘70s in Melbourne, and I updated it to present day Macedonia. And then, in terms of filling those personalities and dynamics … like the character of Ali, he is loosely based on someone I know who was part of that …”
Ali and Suada are queer and Roma, moving into the city from Shutka, ‘The Gypsy Capital of the World’. They’re outcasts in their own country but are welcomed into a makeshift family that is formed in an apartment in Macedonian capital, Skopje. “I didn’t sit down and go, ‘I’m gonna talk about these issues’. These kinds of energies and personalities came to me and then the story is shaped by what everyday life would be. I don’t give a shit about the politics or making a statement. I never expect to ever change anyone’s mind about anything, but I do believe in preserving that feeling of what day-to-day life was like for a certain kind of person in a certain time. If we don’t do it right now, it’s going to disappear, without a record. No one’s going to know that these people even existed, whether they’re queer or Macedonian.
“The lead character Dita is Albanian, and people in the West don’t realise how oppressed the Albanians were in that region because they’re Muslim and they’re forcibly lesser and not actually white. But Dita was born into a wealthy family, and that protected her. I didn’t want to emphasise that too much because ultimately the story is about something that’s very universal and I think that’s the way you should make stories about minorities; by treating them as human rather than as demographics.”
When it came to casting, “it was complicated, but it paid off wonderfully on set. Anamaria, who plays the lead, is a friend of mine for many years, and she was also in my first film. She’s Romanian, but I knew she could learn languages phonetically and still deliver a great performance. She actually doesn’t speak a single word that she is saying on the screen. Alina, who plays her partner is also Romanian, also learned, not just Macedonian, but Macedonian Romani, phonetically.
“We had two casting agents. One was in charge of the Roma characters. She went to Shutka every single day for three months, meeting everyone. Also, Sanela [Emin], who plays the grandmother in the film, was not just an amazing actor, but also as a community liaison. The day we started location scouting, she came in the car with us to help. I think thousands of people were photographed. We didn’t do auditions. I don’t really believe in auditions, especially for non-professionals. They would just be photographed, and asked if they want to be in the movie. And then I went through the photos, and based on her instinct for people, the casting agent would tell me who she thought wouldn’t mind being in a film that has homosexuals and children in it. Because that’s also complicated. We spoke to them individually, told them exactly what the script was in detail, asked if they’re okay with the subject matter and how that is going to impact their lives from then on; when they go back to Shutka after this, they needed to live day to day and still feel safe…”
Housekeeping for Beginners is in cinemas nationally May 9, 2024