Convento, premiering at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, is an art-documentary film created and directed by Jarred Alterman. Following a family of Dutch artists who moved to and converted the Convento São Francisco de Mértola in Portugal, Alterman collaborates with and documents the work of sculptural artist Christiaan Zwanikken. Fusing animal carcasses and scrap machinery, Zwanikken re-animates the deceased animals to experiment with and blur the line between science and nature. Both men took time out at the EIFF to chat to us about the project and their work:

How did you both meet and agree to work on the project?

Jarred: By the beautiful randomness of the universe. I was just travelling in Europe with friends, taking pictures, hanging out, and one of them saw an ad for lonely planet with this tiny little blurb that just said ‘400 year-old monastery, art and nature reserve’ and I thought OK let’s check it out. And I couldn’t have been more surprised, inspired – and there are shots in the film that basically echo what it felt like for me as I was walking through the gates.

Seeing Geraldine in the garden, seeing a man playing around with horses, travelling into this 400 year-old chapel and seeing all this art work: the scenes that I directed in the film were basically just what I was experiencing. And we actually started collaborating before the documentary as we share a certain passion for science fiction and film.

Christiaan: Yeah, I came back from a show and you were already there, and ten minutes later we were discussing the films we liked which was just really cool.

Jarred: Yeah and in two days it was like ‘ok you’re my new best friend’. And it wasn’t until two years later, developing this friendship, Chris came and visited me in Brooklyn, I went to Amsterdam – and I was like you know I’d love to do a documentary now that I know you and know how to cover your work visually. So there was a series of conversations back and forth, learning about Geraldine and things, so yeah it was two years really before anything started.

What made you and your family decide to move to and convert the monastery in Portugal?

Christiaan: Well I went there as a child actually so I just went with my parents. I was raised there and went to school there, and now I produce all my art work there. I went back to Amsterdam and studied at art school and did a Masters degree so I’ve been going back and forth over the last 6 years and eventually switched my studio over to Portugal.

My parents were both artists so I think they were looking for a new way of living and especially my mom since she was brought up in Indonesia so she’s really the person who made this ruin into a cathedral of nature and she’s been protecting it for all these years. So it grew into this incredible natural preserve and I think my brother and I really want to sustain it. I try to do it my own way to get the message across and it’s a place where we can still learn from nature but can also merge art with technology.

The film is more of an art piece in itself rather than a documentary; do you think there’s a fine line between the two and did you intend to blur it?

Jarred: Well you know I look at the film as more of an immersion than a documentary. My goal is to transport the viewer to the Convento and I think the only way to do that was to tell the story visually. So to think of long sweeping shots, not cutting away, and really get a sense of what it really feels like to stand in these hills and these ruins. And just listening to the location was probably the genesis of the filmmaking style. I don’t know if I was consciously thinking ‘I’m going to make an art documentary’ it just so happened that listening to this location and watching it dictated the style. And of course it lends itself perfectly when you’re working with an artist because I look at most of those scenes as meditating on nature and the environment.

And I’m also so hesitant about categorising what it is but I know that we have to do it as you need to attach a label to give a structure to a film festival. But I didn’t make up this sort of doc-art hybrid ‘what is it’ kind of thing.

You were on the road filming a band before beginning the Convento project; do you think your artistic side took over with the chance to film the monastery and Christiaan’s artwork?

Jarred: I think so because you know as a documentary filmmaker, all of us are just naturally searching for the next story. It’s as much to do with exploration as it is about saying ‘OK what is my next movie?’ And in my case my first film was about a piano factory in the Bronx, and as I was editing this film I realised in the later stages that one of the characters was this building.

So bridging the gap between that and Convento, I think I look at the place as the main character and instead of being in the background I’m always thinking about the location first and how I’m going to tell the story of three characters inside this one larger character. And I think that’s what attracted me to it as a filmmaker.

What’s the inspiration behind your robotic creations?

Christiaan: Well it’s funny that I’ve always tried to connect organic matter with all the machinery I use and there have always been both sides involved: the natural world and the artificial world. I think it’s a very interesting time to comment on all of those things and our relation to both technology and nature. So I’ve been working at the Convento because it’s so inspirational to be really close to nature and I wouldn’t say I observe it like a biologist but of course you can learn a lot from nature: and just trying to connect that to the technological world we live in now which is so strong and dominant. So I’m trying to make little comments on how we deal with all of those things and for years I was trying to find a solution to actually put sculptures in nature but I never found the right person or the right artist to collaborate with. And it seems now that we’re at this point where we can do this kind of work, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time so it’s very exciting.

Your life as well as your art seems to revolve around the relationship between nature and science; what are your opinions on the increasingly technological world?

Christiaan: I’m not very optimistic about, well, optimism! There’s a general optimism that technology will solve a lot of problems and I think we are taking such a different path by denying nature. I think a lot of solutions are in nature and so they should merge more into harmony. Of course that’s very problematic because the real technology is huge corporations who actually control our lives and just by showing the works I’ve made I’m trying to give the viewer a sense of freedom; it can be something metaphysical, spiritual and still connected to nature. Of course that’s very idealistic and of course as an artist you don’t want to confront people too hard – I’m not an environmentalist or anything I think I see more of a duality present and see both sides of the situation.

After moving to the monastery in 1980 – how were you able to fund the move and continue to afford living in the grounds?

Christiaan: Well it’s been very tough; it’s a huge enterprise we have there. We do everything ourselves basically but we have additional funding – I have my art work and my mom has her art work, we have an artist residency, we have regular guests and all this is together with some funding from bigger projects in Portugal. It’s funny, the word convento comes from the Latin convenire, meaning coming together, and it’s been like that for years: having regular guests or just people who love nature.

Jarred: And after going through archival films, researching the hell out of it, doing a tonne of pre-interviews, at one time it was going to be a narrative thread but it was distracting what the overall vision what going to be. But as Chris said it’s been 30 years of bit-by-bit and it’s still going now.

What was your role in this project having been friends for so long and getting involved with the filmmaking?

Jarred: Well I guess my background is as a cinematographer. So for the past ten years I’ve worked extensively in dance and also on an art programme called Art 21 which is artists in the 21st century. There are really specific guidelines to both of those mediums. When it comes down to working with artists, television producers are extremely conscious not to reinterpret another person’s piece of art, specifically a sculpture. The way they would film it is: the camera is locked off, very little distortion of the lens, so you can give a very clear depiction of what it’s like in the three-dimensional realm. Doing this for years, and I’m not dissing the programme because it’s great to work with all of those artists, I love the programme, but I needed something different.

With Convento, I felt I needed to cross the line. Christiaan’s work, because it’s kinetic, I felt my camera had to echo the same philosophy. Nothing could be static. Christiaan’s movement of the pieces influences a sort of visual language which is created in Convento, and I started showing these ideas to Chris; that there were certain ways I could light his pieces, could use sound, could break it up into a series of components. His trust and enthusiasm are what I feel enabled me to become more of a collaborator than an observer. I feel any time you record anyone else’s piece of work it automatically becomes a new piece of work: so why deliver a watered down version of that when I can fully embrace it and make a mini-film? I look at those scenes where we shoot the sculptures as micro-narratives: they’re highly personified when Chris creates the soundscapes for his sculptures so why couldn’t I personify them as a living creature?

It goes back to the whole language of ‘what am I doing’? Am I observing? Am I a documentarian? I love being a collaborator, I feed off it. You know Chris is an inspiration because we’re friends, I mean we’re talking about a cinematic experience. Most documentaries about art feel like you’re walking on eggshells!

Christiaan: Yeah and immediately it felt very different. After the first couple of hours we were talking about so many things and I saw his work and was blown away by all the things he’d done. And I said this is exactly how I could imagine my work in films. And my background is actually in film, I’ve been working in cinema for quite some years so I know when I see someone who is able to do it.

What’s next?

Jarred: Well we’ve already made some shorter films while Convento is running the festival circuit. But the big project is the screenplay that I’m writing and collaborating with Chris on and it’s going to be a blend of science fiction and art. And I think that’s the next evolution, taking this relationship and the documentary genre and bringing it into something fantastical. You know two of our biggest influences are Jim Henson and Ridley Scott – and we want to combine the animatronics, the puppetry and the eerie apocalyptic visions of these two great filmmakers and just make our own stuff.