Dinner with Hot Dog
Interview with Alma Buddecke and Marleen Valien, codirectors of Hot Dog
How did you go about creating Hot Dog? Can you talk us through the filming processes a little?
We just didn’t know any film where someone talked about vaginas. Although there are really interesting stories surrounding it actually. So we wanted to create a contemporary version of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. It was important to us that there is a discord between what you hear and what you see in the film so it would make both levels even stronger. We shot for three days on several locations and improvised along the way. Especially within the team. We weren’t that many people and some worked in positions they don’t usually work in. That made it interesting though. We were really precise about things and had a lot of fun doing it. You’d be surprised how many times you can pour cream in a cup of coffee before you’re happy with the way it looks.
What did you want to explore in this film about the relation between women and their vagina?
As a woman you know how many weird, akward and also funny things you can experience with your vulva and your vagina. And sometimes it’s emotionally and/or physically painful and feels mortifying. But like everything, it’s a process and you learn how to deal with and accept and even start appreciating it. And that it’s not the end of the world if you bleed all over everything by accident.
What do you hope the audience will get out of it, women and men?
Women will hopefully be able to identify with some of the things Hannah went through as well and are like: Oh I’m not alone in this, everyone is struggling. That’s a nice feeling, because then it only feels half as bad. And I hope that men will maybe learn about a couple of things they weren’t aware of before. In general it’d be awesome, if women and men feels less awkward or ashamed by it.
Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
Hot Dog is a brief history of Hannah’s love-hate relationship with her vagina. We went for an episodic and essayistic approach. And we think the short film format allowed us to make it “quick and dirty”.
Hot Dog is part of International Competition I3.
