Mentor Profile: Tina Gharavi
TINA GHARAVI TALKS GOING FROM PAINTING TO FILMMAKING, AND SUPPORTING WOMEN FILMMAKERS
By Marian Cook
Tina Gharavi
It’s 10 PM for Filmmaker and Stowe Mentor Tina Gharavi as she sits over Zoom with me, an 8-hour time difference between us. She’s in a hotel in Sofia, Bulgaria, having just finished a day of prep for an upcoming feature. The title is undecided, but she shares some possible names, and by those alone it sounds like a fascinating watch. It’s a love letter to Beirut framed around a woman returning home to visit her estranged father after the 2020 bomb in that fragile city.
With a chuckle, Tina adds, “And remarkably, we’re trying to make Bulgaria look like Beirut, so if there’s ever a monumental task it’s that.”
But Tina will make it happen because, as her resume proves, she’s unstoppable. She is the founder and director of Bridge + Tunnel, a BAFTA-nominated media production company with the mission to uplift “unheard voices, untold stories.” Her debut feature, I Am Nasrine, a coming-of-age story of two teenage Iranian refugees, was nominated for a BAFTA in 2013. Her documentary Mother/Country was broadcast at prime time on Channel 4 in the UK and given top billing by the national press. Her first short, Closer, was an official selection at Sundance. The list goes on.
Before all this, she was a 17-year-old working in an art store in New Jersey until a Hollywood art director walked into the store. As Tina helped her gather her supplies, she became impressed by Tina, eventually offering Tina a job as her assistant. Tina accepted, and at 18 years old she worked on her first movie.
As she tells me this story, I can’t help but think how serendipitous this world is. How for so many filmmakers, like myself, our entry into the industry has been a fortuitous event, someone who took a chance on us.
Tina, with glee, notes, “I just got in touch with her again because she was on Facebook! And I got to tell her how transformative that was, and how I ended up a filmmaker because of that interaction.”
There were of course hiatuses in her journey, but they only strengthened her as a filmmaker and as an artist. She went to college to study painting, but took some film classes where she learned about film movements from Italian to Caribbean, and played around with Super 8 and 16mm cameras. Tina worked as a teacher in the UK just after that, but on a class field trip to France, she decided to go back to school and study cinema--at Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts Contemporains under the tutelage of the likes of Robert Kramer.
“I still think of it as painting,” Tina said. “It’s about telling stories in pictures. And rather than painting, I’ve just got lots of pictures. I use time and music, and it’s about having something to say.”
This is a major pillar of Tina’s filmmaking. After all, she started Bridge + Tunnel because no one was helping her make the films she wanted to see. Since then, she’s worked with subjects from refugees to blue-collar workers. And what she found is that helping people express themselves literally saved their lives.
A still from Tina Gharavi’s I Am Nasrine (2012).
Tina continued, “Stories are like life rafts, they can really save us. Stories are not neutral or arbitrary, they heal us and make us better.”
With that comes a need for fresh perspectives, access, and support. As Tina states, “Tell the stories that are really relevant to you, that only you can tell in ways that maybe don’t fit the mold. Don’t be fainthearted. Nobody is going to love what you’re doing because I think in the face of really challenging stuff, people are always really afraid and nobody embraces that too quickly, and certainly not for women.”
She continues, “I think women in this industry need to be more supportive of each other, no matter where they’re in it. Whether that’s supporting a woman whose film is coming out and you tweet about it, women hiring women, or women in positions of power protecting women or giving them patronage.”
And lastly, find your community. “Connect with great thinkers like yourself. Artists don’t come out of nowhere. They’re often part of a movement or there’s other smart people around them, like Tracey Emin or Salvador Dali,” Tina noted. “So find your tribe and be part of that conversation that will push you further. And I would imagine that Stowe is one of the places where you can find those conversations.”
Exactly. And it is why Stowe is so pleased to have Tina in its community.
Marian Cook is a former journalist, Stowe Story Labs staff member, and current USC student pursuing an MFA in directing. She’s been published over a dozen times, covering topics from local news to federal healthcare legislation. Although she loves the world of journalism, having done documentaries on a range of topics from plastic surgery to segregation in the church, her real passion lies in narrative film. She one day hopes to be a writer-director and tell strong, female-led stories, especially that of Latinas. When she’s not filming, she likes to explore, listen to blues and jazz, brush up on her French, and absorb everything science fiction related. Learn more at http://mariandcook.weebly.com/. At Stowe Story Labs, Marian assists with all aspects of operations, writes for the newsletter, and assists with research and writing to support fundraising and communications about programs.
