“I’m sort of anti-first person documentaries... I always feel like there’s some sort of fallacy in the first person form.”

~ Jeremiah Zagar

By Catzie Vilayphonh  |  Send to Friend

If you've ever walked down South Street by the Whole Foods, you'll probably recognize the Magic Garden, the mosaic house made up of colored glass pieces, glass bottles, wheels, ehh, just about anything that can be grouted. South Philly native Jeremiah Zagar knows this house very well because his grew up with it, literally. His father, Isaiah Zagar, is the artist who created the Magic Garden -- and also the artist Jeremiah decided to document in his new documentary film, In A Dream. Over the course of seven years, Jeremiah handled the difficult task of getting intimate with a side of his father he'd never known, while maintaining focus as an impartial director and artist documenting his subject.

No stranger to filmmaking, Jeremiah shot his first "real" film at age 19 and has since been making more short films, which have been featured in festivals in the U.S. and abroad, while collecting numerous awards along the way. Although he's been a semi-finalist for a Student Academy Award, he hopes to one day go to the actual Academy Awards. Currently, Zagar lives in Brooklyn, but his heart will forever remain in Philadelphia.

Catz: How long have you been a filmmaker?

Jeremiah: Since I was 15, I guess. I mean it’s hard to say. I’ve made some really bad films, I don’t know if I was a "filmmaker." Before then I was just watching them.

Catz: Which of your films would you say was your first "professional" film?

Jeremiah: When I was 19 I went to India to make a film about an outsider artist like my dad named Nek Chand. He was senile and totally incoherent, so I ended up traveling to Delhi to stay with my family and made a film about a clinic and orphanage and rehabilitation center there. It was called Delhi House, named right after the organization. That was supposed to be a promotional film for the organization [but] my producer Jeremy just started submitting it to film festivals. And it did really well and went on PBS and went all over the country. That’s what made me feel like I could keep making movies.

Catz: How did you decide you would be making a film about your father? What was your initial goal with making this film?

Jeremiah: My mother told me to do it. I had left for college and wasn’t around very much, and I was home for the summer. Like I said, [Delhi House] had become very successful and I was teaching at The Big Picture Alliance and I had all this time off when I wasn’t teaching. My mom suggested I make a film about my father as a man, not as my father. I think she wanted us to develop a relationship outside of the father-son relationship and we did.

Catz: Since the film revolves around your own family, were you conscious of what you would include in the film?

Jeremiah: I started it when I was 19, we've been making it for seven years. So when I was 19 I had no idea. There was only one moment that remained from that summer in West Virginia. That’s the moment where I asked my father about his suicide and he flips the question. He won’t talk about it. That was what most of the footage was like then -- really bad -- he wouldn’t talk, really, and he just wanted to talk about shit that he wanted to talk about. In West Virginia, the whole movie broke open. He told me stories in a way that he had never done before. Very emotional, very visceral, very real. Our relationship changed very much. It scared him a lot and that’s when I knew I was going to make a movie.

Catz: Certain secrets are revealed in the film, and it was evident that you didn't know these things about your father, and it also affected your family dynamic drastically. Why did you choose not to focus on your own reactions?

Jeremiah: Honestly I’m sort of anti-first person documentaries. Some people it works for, but not for me. I don’t really consider myself a character, really. I always feel like there’s some sort of fallacy in the first person form. I didn’t want my movie to be like that. Especially for the more exploratory, intense, emotional docs, I’m always turned off. The docs I love and influenced by are much more character-driven.

Catz: Were there times when you thought this might be too much, that maybe you shouldn't be making this film at all?

Jeremiah: Oh, yeah, absolutely. When I got the film back [and] started editing it, that’s when it really knocked me out. There were so many nights when I was like 'I can’t do this.' There was one night where I walked all the way to the middle of Brooklyn, I picked up a chair and carried it home to my roof and fell asleep on my roof on this big armed chair -- that was one of those nervous breakdown moments.

Catz: I guess you've become accustomed to your parents' being so free and open, but how did it feel to capture it on film and to watch it a big screen?

Jeremiah: My dad takes off his clothes everywhere. It was an issue when I was young, I was a little disturbed by it. My mother also kind of hid it from us. You know if there was an opening and my dad was covered in mud, and naked, running around, she was like 'you don’t really want to see it.' She’s a very grounding force. There’s also this tremendous amount of openness in their lives which is transparent in everything, and that’s why the film works in general. It’s because they believe in it and they believe in being open with the world about who they are, and they have pride about who they are. So it doesn’t feel weird in that way to show it on the screen. It’s hard for me to watch it on the screen for other reasons. It has nothing to do with the nudity, openness.

Catz: Where did the title come from?

Jeremiah: The title comes from my mother. At one point she says “For years, it was as if we were living in a dream." I think there’s this lineation that my parents have between life and art that is pretty extreme. Sometimes they fall in the chasm of living in their created worlds, but I think we all do that in a way. We can easily believe that the world that we’ve created is the world that actually exists, when it only really exists in our minds. It's powerful, that world, and it can manifest itself in an incredible way. You believe that you can do anything, and then we go do it. It’s a lot of what film making is about -- you believe that you can make a film for an exorbitant amount of money and you know that happens and that’s crazy, but it’s also not exactly a reality.

Catz: It’s interesting that you say that because you know there’s that quote in the film that "Art is the center of the real world."

Jeremiah: From my perspective, my father lives in a fantasy world, a world that he created. My mother left, but she lives in his fantasy world. You know when you see that last shot, she’s walking up to her house, and it’s covered in tile mosaics, you know in a way she’ll never leave him. Even if they never get back together, she’ll never leave him, because together they’ve created this singular vision of the world, their real world, which is a dream.

Catz: Your father's mosaic house, the Magic Garden on South Street, is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Philadelphia. Do you feel that because you're an artist as well, that's something you have to live up to?

Jeremiah: I'm pretty driven, I don't think of it in the same way. When you think of filmmaking and art, they're different processes. A film isn't mine. If you look at that sculpture, or that wall, his name is the name of that creation. It is Isaiah Zagar's work. And although I'm the director of this film, it's not mine. There's so many people that go into making a film -- my producer, my executive producer, my editor -- it's our film. You wanna make big things, you wanna affect people, you want it to mean something. But it's different from my father's goal -- I can't go out there and make work without somebody [else] giving a shit everyday. I work with other people, we work together because we believe that what we're creating is important, for whatever reason. My first cut of the film was absolutely horrible; it took a lot of other people to help me make it work. My father's situation is different. Although I think that I would argue that without my mother, there would be no giant sparkling mosaic.

Catz: What projects are you working on next?

Jeremiah: I am working on a film about a woman who's son disappeared from Kashmir, India, 20 years ago, and she's been waiting for him to return. It's going to be a beautiful story, like Into the Wild but from the mother's perspective. It's a lot about wanderlust and grief.

Catz: How do you choose your projects?

Jeremiah: I don't choose them, they choose me. I'm drawn to raw and emotional stuff. If it's raw and emotional, I'm totally in. It's sort of like falling in love; you meet somebody and you're like 'You're amazing, and I want to be around you all the time.' I think that's like the same with how I choose a project. You shoot something, and then you want to watch it over and over again.

 

To read more on Jeremiah Zagar's film go to www.hzfilms.com