Diverse Voices: Laura Yilmaz

Visual: Filmmaker Laura Yilmaz sits in a dark room with studio lights on her. She is wearing a black singlet with a sheer shirt overtop. It has little black and white ruffles. Her hair is dark brown and short. Throughout the interview, we switch from one camera angle to another, where the camera is zoomed to focus on her chest upward, with her head being the focal point. The other is zoomed out more, showing a table with interesting objects, such as a pink spiky ball, teapots, oranges, and candles. A hand places a card on a silver tray with her name on it.

Audio: I can’t quite fully grasp with both hands... either side of this cultural identity.

Visual:

• An animated clip (one of Laura’s artworks) plays, which shows an animated character standing in a rainforest with an umbrella.
• Another animation shows the same character fighting off a large monster made out of hands.
• An animation of the same character doing tasks such as fighting, fishing, and talking plays.

Audio: My name is Laura Yilmaz. Well, I’m an art director, an animator, and an animation director.

I am originally from the US, Boston. My background is that my father is from Turkey. He was an immigrant to America, and I had this kind of semi-first-generation experience.

I would say, growing up in America. I grew up in a very, white, Irish Catholic place. I always felt very different and very outside of the prevailing context. I felt like this kind of swarthy, little weirdo in this sea of blonde faces.

Interviewer: You said it was almost exactly like the intro in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’.

Laura: Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, watching that film, I remember feeling that there was a lot of familiarity with that experience. You grow up thinking that you are of a particular culture, in my case, Turkish, and as you grow up, you realise, actually... you’re not really part of that culture either.

And there’s a little bit of a displacement and a feeling that you’re living in this kind of liminal space. There was a different language being spoken in my house. There was different food being cooked and eaten.

When I was about five years old, my grandmother came over from Turkey to live with us and helped take care of us. As my mother transitioned back into work. My grandmother was a very Turkish village woman and presented as such. And it was quite a shock, I think, to a lot of the other neighbourhood kids.

You know, I remember being on the school bus, pulling up to my house and just having this feeling of dread as my... as my poor wonderful grandmother would come out of the house to meet me, you know, with her head scarf and her skirts and all these things.

And I could see the way the other kids looked at her.

Looking back on it, I wish I had a stronger voice. At that point, they would openly make comments to me about her and about myself. I always withered under that.

Visual:

• The animated character Laura created walks through a bush.
• The animated character fights off a large red dog-looking monster.

Audio: I come from screen-based animation and linear screen-based animation, but in more recent years, I’ve been moving into games, both in my personal work and professionally.

The most recent project that I have been working on started as quite a biographical piece. It was pulled very much from the experience of my own grandmother.

She was married at a very young age. She was about 15, when she got married to a man who was almost 40. She was his second wife. She was, as women in this context around the world are, she was a mother and she was a housewife. And she was seen and treated as ‘less than’ for her whole life.

I think I was very interested in trying to bring this sort of narrative into the space of video games. Uh, which are a medium that, uh, I grew up with, but I often feel like didn’t really grow up with me.

The way narrative operates in the game space, and in the interaction interactive space is very, very different. And it carries an enormous set of new challenges in trying to figure that out.

Visual:

A clip of card paper shows, written on it the credits. These are written below:

• Producer, Writer and Director: Pachali Brewster.
• Director of photography, editor and colourist: Ben Dickens.
• Featuring:
  • Oriwa Hakaraia
  • Jade Jackson
  • Aditya B. Parige
  • Kathleen Winter
  • Laura Yilmaz
  • Casey Zilbert
  • Raqi Syed and Missy Molloy as the facilitators
  • and Glen McLaughlin as the butler.
• Special thanks to:
  • Massey’s School of Music and Creative Media Production
  • College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwhārangi.
• Production manager assistant, 1st assistant director, and Unit: Anna Valentine.
• 2nd camera operator: Elise Lanigan.
• 3rd camera operator: Nathan Roys.
• Sound Recordist: Jessy McNamara.
• Sound Recordist Assist and Sound Mixer: Matt Asunder.
• Art Department: Glen McLaughlin.
• Hair and Makeup artist: Serena Parsons.
• Stills photography: Celeste Fontein.
• Runner: Ivy Robinson.