Bianca Poletti & Nikki Lorenzo

Nikki Lorenzo: Bianca and I had some mutual friends in common, and we connected over wanting to shoot together. I remember inviting her over to my little bungalow at the time and drinking wine while we spoke for hours. It felt like a magnetic push that brought us together. We bonded over films, music, and our love for art. I think that kind of kinetic spirit that brought us together from the very beginning is what contributes to our visions always aligning naturally. It’s either by a greater design or magic. Or both.
Bianca Poletti: We were both working with James Franco and his production company on different projects, and we immediately connected over our shared love for beautiful imagery, a hunger for understanding films and people, and a deep love for music and poetry. I was still doing photography at the time while directing on the side. Early in our friendship we started collaborating on photo shoots, and that just naturally evolved into us working on film projects together.
Nikki and I had talked about working together on one of her music videos, and we originally talked about working on a different song, but then she shared Lista with me, and I was immediately drawn to it. It felt narrative, dreamy, and a bit darker in tone, and I loved that. So, we decided to bring that song to life together instead. Nikki and I are almost always aligned creatively; we truly love all of the same things, so we started to chat about what inspired her to write the song. It was a push and pull between two people who deeply wanted their relationship to work, but they just weren’t meant to be. I love any theme that involves relationships, so I took the backstory of what inspired the song and built the concept and story around it.

Nikki: The creative process with Bianca is always so fun and exciting because it feels like a tennis match of inspiration — bouncing electric ideas back and forth that then inspire more ideas. For Lista I shared what the song was about with her and how it pertained to a specific experience in my life.
Bianca: We are constantly sending inspiration to each other, even when we’re not working on a project. Music, poetry, films, paintings, etc.  And we kept that going for Lista. I sent a lot of inspirational imagery, stills from films, photography, and paintings that I found beautiful. That helped me build the story. We always talked about wanting Lista to feel a bit more like a music film rather than a music video and have more of a narrative voice while incorporating dance and movement. Nikki and I truly share a creative brain, and we’ve been friends for over 8 years now, so there’s a lot of love and trust there, which just feeds the machine of collaborating and makes the entire experience absolute magic.

Bianca: Although Nikki and I share a lot as far as our creative tastes, we also have lived very different lives and have had different life experiences. That’s something that we both really love about collaborating. We’re able to bring in different perspectives throughout the collaborative process. I’m really drawn to paintings, photography, and, of course, film. Nikki is really drawn to film, music, and theatre, and so we’re able to really blend all the genres and themes that we’re interested in, which I think always makes a piece that much more interesting. I like to use paintings as light references for my work, and Nikki can tap into her theatrical past and really delve into the physicality of a character. It all feeds into the creative experience, and we’re both just excited by life and art daily, the big and small moments.
Nikki: I think it all comes from and is feeding the same mecca. Life informs art, and in return, art is a way to make sense of life. Bianca and I communicate almost every day, and it’s usually about different creative pieces we’ve been exposed to or situations we’ve gone through, and then we talk about how we can apply it to anything we’re working on.

Nikki: Incorporating dance into the video was one of the first things I mentioned to Bianca, and she immediately agreed and took to it. She and I have an endless love for movement. We’ve both explored it together before, as well as in our own endeavours. I thought we’d just have one choreographed scene. Instead, Bianca made it so much better by having it be these three separate dances, depicting the different chapters of this relationship between the characters. It’s those kinds of decisions that make me geek out with joy over storytelling.
Bianca: It was my idea to show a relationship from the beginning. Excitement, butterflies, heart beating so hard you feel it jumping outside of your chest. All contained in one room, one memory, one phase of their relationship. Then moving into a different room showing the middle stage of a relationship, where you start to feel the cracks growing a bit wider. You’re both still fighting to stay together, but there’s something that’s pushing you apart. Ending with a final room which is the point of no return. Where they’re both fighting to stay in the relationship, but it’s just not the right time and they’re unwilling to fully let it go until they have no choice.

Nikki: Oh yes, (laughing). It was nothing spectacular, as you could imagine. I remember that the song was specifically about me being eight years old, and I’m embarrassed to admit that some of the lyrics were, “I’m eight and I’m so great.” The next song I wrote had a bit more promise. It was about springtime and how “I love spring in the springtime, when the leaves are dancing free. And even though you’re not there, I still feel you here with me.” I’ve never shared that publicly until now, so I’ll either regret that later or giggle my way into the grave.

Nikki: Wow, “poetic psychologist.” I love that. I shall declare myself as nothing less from now on. You’ve created a monster. As far as how I approach writing the complexities of life, I have always thought that if I wasn’t an artist, I would’ve been a trained psychoanalyst. I am endlessly fascinated by human behaviour and the world within and outside of us. I have spirals of thoughts with myself and circles of conversations with friends, and then I step into nature. And then I step inside myself. And then I let it all go and see what will come out when I put pen to paper. Sometimes, I approach with caution, and sometimes, I approach with chaos.

Nikki: In a relationship, there is you, your partner, and then a third element, which is the energy you create together. This ingredient is what could be referred to as the snake eating itself. The energy of this malignant relationship is creating a cycle doomed to echo — and it’s the two parties involved who are at fault. They are the snake, and they are also the ones orchestrating its purgatory. It did come from personal experience. Maybe there was some nuanced form of love there. We were two destructive beasts who couldn’t get out of our own way long enough to be honest with ourselves about what was really going on. I was always half in and half out. I knew they weren’t the one, and I also knew I was addicted to the pattern of turmoil.

Nikki: Run as far away in the opposite direction of that person, go to therapy, and try not to date anyone after that for a while. You need space to heal and collect your own energy again. It takes time but it’s incredibly rewarding, especially if you want any real shot at severing that bond and breaking the cycle. You owe it to yourself, you know? You deserve to have a healthy, giving, calm life. And calm does not mean devoid of passion. It means your nervous system is regulated by your choices.

Nikki: Mainly because it’s taken years to get these songs finished. There were many hiccups and roadblocks outside of my control. I’ve learned to be humbled by the timing of the universe. If it were up to only me, it wouldn’t have taken so long, but it does make me feel that much more grateful now that I’m able to share what I’ve been creating with the world.

Bianca: Yes! I’m deeply in love with coming-of-age stories that take place in these very American settings. I grew up watching Tim Burton and Spielberg films. I’ve always been fascinated by these worlds where everything looks so perfect from the outside, but inside some of these homes, schools, malls, etc. there’s a deeper and sometimes darker story and meaning to the American life.
I had many visual influences for Lista. A few are paintings by Edward Hopper, lighting in Xavier Dolan’s movie Mommy, and photography by various Japanese photographers who have a very cinematic sense to their imagery. A lot of it was very abstract and light-driven. I really love playing with light and attempting to make every frame feel like a painting.
When Nikki and I started developing the idea for this, I knew immediately Kayla Hoff would be the perfect person for this. We have a very similar eye for beauty, and her framing and lighting in all her work is beyond beautiful, femme and whimsical, while also being deeply cinematic. I sent her the creative brief, and she loved it. We talked about the concept, the movement, and the intention behind the light and art choices. She got it immediately and magically brought every frame to life so seamlessly. She’s such a talent, and I’m really so lucky and thankful she keeps saying yes to working together.

Bianca: I think it’s an ever-changing thing; I’m very lucky that I was able to start directing at a time when more opportunities are presenting themselves for women in film. There are so many interesting female filmmakers right now on the rise. I’m constantly inspired by it, and I’m also getting a lot of younger girls asking for my guidance and help getting into directing. I find it so exciting that this is all even possible when, not too long ago, the industry really was a man’s world. I think we still have a long way to go, both in the music video and film industry, but I deeply believe we’re on our way. We need to keep creating, pushing creative boundaries, and thinking outside of the box. My hope for the future of female directors is that we’re allowed to tell all stories, not just personal, intimate feminine stories, but adventure, horror, suspense, action, and all genres. We’re all storytellers in this life, whether you express your storytelling through painting, music, writing, etc. And just because a story is coming from a female’s point of view doesn’t mean it has to be personal and intimate.

Nikki: Everyone has masculine and feminine energy within them, and even if you live in one space more than the other when it comes to a relationship, especially like the one painted in Lista, it is a constant back-and-forth flow of who’s dominating and who’s submitting, and when? I’m not even speaking about sexually. I’m referring more to the fact that there is no: Who wears the pants in this relationship? Because the answer would be we both do. And that also goes for my thoughts on where I see myself within this landscape — a pendulum swinging between these two forces.

Nikki: Yes! I’m currently writing a feature film that Bianca will be directing. John Hawkes will also be reunited with us as well. I can’t say too much right now, but I can share that it will have a lot of original music by both me and John, which is exciting.
Bianca: The project has a musical element to it and lives within the world of Blue Valentine and George & Tammy. It’s currently in the writing phase, but we’re all really excited to bring this story to life together. John and Nikki have such beautiful chemistry together, and I’m really excited to dig into this film with the two of them. It’s going to be a special one.