The deeply personal documentary short kiss kiss bang bang sees director Ollie Launspach chart his gender transition mainly through the eyes of his partner, Sterre. As the film goes on, Launspach finds that his cinematic language also needs to encompass that of literature in order to allow Sterre to express herself as both try to understand each other through moments of fundamental change.

Launspach began the Documentary Directing course at the Netherlands Film Academy in 2020 and, after premiering his work in the short-film competition at IDFA, will now take kiss kiss bang bang to Karlovy Vary, where it will be part of EFP’s Future Frames. Cineuropa asked him about what it was like making himself the central subject of his own documentary.

Cineuropa: How difficult did you find it making yourself and Sterre the central subjects of kiss kiss bang bang and exposing your situation in this way?
Ollie Launspach: I didn’t experience it as a difficult process at all. It was a bit strange, of course, talking about very intimate things with a camera in between us. Or having a fight and thinking to myself, “Where is my audio recorder? This could be a great scene!” Suddenly, everything in our relationship was potential material; that was an interesting but also an uncomfortable place to be.

The difficulty of being the central subjects only started when the film got an audience. While making the film, I was very focused on making it a good one, but I wasn’t really thinking about it being seen by others. Even while editing, I didn’t fully comprehend that we were telling a very personal story. I guess that I was approaching the film as a director, not as a character. When one of my best friends who is also trans came to see an edited version and couldn’t stop crying because he found it so relatable, I felt for maybe the first time that I was making something that was very intimate. And that scared the shit out of me. Luckily, that realisation came quite late; otherwise, I don’t think we would have ever made the film.

You are not “front and centre” in much of the work.
Stories about transitions are mostly centred on bodily transformation. I wanted to refrain from that. I explicitly did not want to make a film about my transition; I wanted to make a film about love and all the complexity that comes with being with someone. Me not being front and centre was a deliberate decision to shift the attention away from my body and towards that theme.

Also, in all honesty, I really disliked the idea of making a film about myself. Who would be interested in watching that? I figured that experiencing the story by reading Sterre’s face would be much more interesting than watching mine. I liked the idea of her being both a main character and a reflection of me. Which feelings belong to her? And which feelings belong to me?

Practically, how much footage did you find yourself going through to edit the film, and how tough was it to piece together?
I love editing. Nothing can beat the feeling of, “Alright, this is all there is. This will have to do.” The first time the editor watched some footage, I could see in his face that he was eager to start: the material already had a certain energy; it was intimate, funny and surprisingly engaging. It was a relationship unfolding on screen in a way I mostly see in reality TV. Having fun while editing really makes the whole process a lot smoother. I am a firm believer in trying out a lot of things, and then throwing most of them away.

The movie is made up of home video, conversations, diary entries, pictures and audio recordings. Over the years, I had already worked with the home-video material, so it was mostly the conversations we had to go through. I found that each of our conversations had naturally centred on a specific theme. Only a few minutes of each conversation felt resonant and worthwhile. The selection of footage we eventually started the piecing-together process with was relatively small.

I was making something about my own life. That could have been a liability – by not being able to direct at a distance – but I experienced it as a big advantage: I knew and understood the material inside out. It was quite a puzzle but a very fun one to solve.

What projects do you think you’ll be working on next?
I’m currently working on a short documentary about desire for others within monogamous relationships, as well as my first feature-length documentary about a personal family story. I find myself returning to the complex dynamics between people who love each other. How can we be together?