It seemed to me that Romilly could find creative value in absolutely anything. And I mean anything!
When Alice Dison and Carmela Uranga first had the idea for TEN, the Paris network of women creatives of which Romilly was a member, we had a meeting at Carmela’s flat and it was quickly decided that the group would organize a soiree to introduce the group and showcase the different member’s work. But since this was our inaugural outing, and some of us were quite nervous about doing stuff that we’d never tried before, it was also decided that we should present something in pairs.
So that’s how Romilly and I suddenly found ourselves as stable mates.
“Why don’t you come out to my new house in the suburbs?” I suggested, “…we could maybe find some inspiration within the piles of toys, books and junk in my children’s rooms.”
We didn’t have a theme in mind, and not even a plan for when she got here, but Romilly bravely agreed and one rainy afternoon in May she came out to the industrial nether regions of the Ile de France.
We pulled out toys from trunks in the attic and analyzed their cinematic potential. We looked at pop –up books this way and that and imagined how shadows could bounce off the walls to bring them to life. We wound up toys and watched them marching, turning around in pirouettes or dancing across the wooden floors of the girls bedrooms. And finally we decided to close the shutters, turn down the lights and use a variety of lamps to create a sound stage for our improvised smash hit mini-movie.
But after about half an hour of experimenting with pop-ups, engaging toys in make-believe and totally improbable scenarios, and filming from every angle possible, it became clear that this little film show wasn’t going anywhere.
And then Romilly’s own internal stage light turned on and as if by magic the inspiration came to her.
From then on in, I was under her command.
“Pretend like it’s a typical day and you’ve just got the kids off to school. I want to film you running around your house, getting on with your day, and doing your daily stuff,” she said.
“But how could anyone care about that?” I asked. “Well if you really think so….”
And so it came to be. Banlieu blues the short film was born.
And what I take away from that day is watching Romilly as a director at work and how she used her craft to conjure up something from nothing, how she transformed the habitual or mundane into a short little film that hopefully a few people found entertaining. Because that’s what she did, deep intellectual inspiration or not.
Romilly just seemed to know what to do. She had a natural flair. And she went home that day having pulled something out of the bag.