IFFBoston Interview: Speaking In Code

Bostonist: What drew you to techno in the first place? What made it so captivating that you wished to make it a centerpiece for a documentary?

Amy Grill: I was fascinated by both the characters in techno and its untold stories. Many electronic music docs focus on the static history and glorify certain figures and genres, or try to justify or create a greater statement about the importance of electronic music. I wanted to tell a good story that was appealing to a mass audience and hopefully break old stereotypes and prejudices larger audiences may have against electronic music in America.

And yes, it's true I love techno: I love the feeling I get when I walk into a club and the soundsystem is just right and the music is right. It gives me full body chills.

I also had a lot of really strong connections to the global and local electronic music scene in Boston through Philip Sherburne and David Day.

Bostonist: An underlying theme of the film is that although techno is huge in Europe, it still remains foreign in America. And yet, the genre was created in 1980s Detroit! Do you go into the history of the genre in the film at all and explain its image's progression into a basically foreign music to American listeners?

AG: I touch upon the irony that it was created in the Midwest and yet faces so many challeges here, but the film is more about showing the now through interesting characters who are obsessed with music and have something big at stake riding on music rather than telling a history. I think it actually has a fighting chance to appeal to a wider audience that includes techno fans, haters, and those who know nothing of electronic music by focusing on passionate and intimate stories told through people.

Bostonist: One of the subjects you follow is your then-husband, and I can't help but somehow connect the aspect of placing your own relationships on film with another documentary being screened at IFFBoston, We Live In Public which focuses on one of the dot.com innovators, his decisions to place himself under 24-hour Internet surveillance, and the affect it had on his life. Perhaps I may be fishing where I aught not, but how did the idea to place your own life in the documentary affect your relationships to those close to you, if at all?

AG: The idea didn't occur to me until months and months after we stopped shooting and after taking time off from the film. I always wanted to record the process of making the film and the struggle, but had no idea the depth of the story that would develop there. I was kicking and screaming when I realized I had to make myself a character. We had to scour the tapes for shots of me; it was an organic discovery that was true to our process of telling the stories that emerged rather than contriving them from the beginning.

Bostonist: Speaking In Code is very much a local production, with numerous local techno and electronic artists involved in front of the camera. In your work, did you find that this city was particularly friendly towards techno and electronic music in general?

AG: Yes and no: depends on who you talk to.

Bostonist: Do you think this film may have a strong and positive impact on the local techno community?

AG: I hope so - I truly do. I hope it has a positive impact on the national, and even global, techno community.