Tilda Swinton has many talents, including performing, producing, collaborating, writing, and dressing up, not to mention expressing herself beautifully on screen and in her choice of language. It’s the second time that I’ve interviewed the performance artist at the Marrakech International Film Festival, and I love how she talks. Speaking the queen’s English with long, fluid, contemplative sentences, she’s the most eloquent person in film. It’s soothing to hear her speak. Because behind each sentence is an intelligent thought that marks the reflections of a unique talent.
“One of the reasons I always feel a little alienated when I hear what I call ‘real actors’ talking about their own work is that they very properly have a sense of their own work within the group, and I don’t really,” she says. “My work is to stay connected. It doesn’t live in me. It’s entirely about the connection with others.”
“Tilda Spotting,” as she flits through the festival in Chanel, for whom she serves as a brand ambassador or decked in Haider Ackerman, is almost as delightful as hearing her speak. She’s flawless, stylish and sleek.
For the opening of the 20th edition of the fest. on Friday, Ackerman dressed Swinton in a white, oversized coat that brought a modern, Tilda, stylish edge to the North African event. If the Marrakech International Film Festival has a Fairy Godmother, it’s Tilda.
The former Marrakech jury head and festival regular reflected on her 30-plus year body of work at the festival with an In Conversation session this week. She is not a big fan of looking back.
“It’s something that I have come to, I won’t say enjoy, because there is something quite confronting about looking back at your work,” she says. “I try not to look back at my work. These strange moments when you are asked to contextualize, and not defend your work but give it a shape, I find it quite useful, now I’ve been working for so long. It’s been over 30 years, and I can see from a distance. I’m away from the mountain, and I can see the shape. And I can almost see my young self and my young artist, and I see the development, and I see what I’m making now. I see a real link between the youngest work and the most recent work, so it’s quite a moving thing for me.”
Swinton has created an endless list of credits during her career, including bigger films like “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Michael Clayton,” for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar award, and early experimental films like Derek Jarman’s “Caravaggio.”
In the last year, she has packed in even more. “The Killer,” “Asteroid City,” “Problemista,” and “The Eternal Daughter,” Swinton’s, shot with her first director, friend, and current Marrakech jury member Joanna Hogg which just opened last week in November in the U.K.
She has been hitting new notes in the meantime. Swinton has completed performance work on “The End,” a musical about the end of the world, with the documentary-maker Joshua Oppenheimer, which is in post-production.
“It’s a musical. We sing. I sing. I can’t say any more about it, but it’s intriguing,” she says.
She has also lent her name as director to a film essay on learning, created with the film co-op The Derek Jarman Lab at the Birkbeck, University of London.
“It’s a little reverie about learning,” she says.
Swinton will be seen next month at the Onassis Foundation in Athens in “Embodying Pasolini,” a Pasolini fashion show created with French fashion curator Olivier Saillard.
But does she like dressing up?
“I’m actually a very shy person, and when I go out in public, I need my friends with me, and so to wear clothes that are made by my friends is a way of being with them,” she says. “I do love it (dressing up), but it is like setting up a little environment for myself, and I’m fortunate enough to have these close relationships with people I feel represent me well.”
Her brand ambassador work with Chanel extends beyond dressing up, like in the exquisite floral, sheer, black dress with a high collar and cushioned white flowers as buttons that she is wearing for the interview.
“My work for Chanel has a particular part to play in my life,” she says. “I also have the honor to be their ambassador for arts and culture. And Chanel’s commitment to arts and culture, especially in the last few years, is off all the scales. There are two prizes I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in launching in the last year. The BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Award is not just for one film but for their actual voice, and then there is this extraordinary prize called the Chanel Next Prize, which is artists of all disciplines from around the world we choose, and they each get 100,000 Euros, as a genius grant. So that’s a million euros Chanel gives every year to that prize. They are so serious about it. I’m so impressed by that. I’m very happy to be a part of that. So that’s much more than wearing a dress. But wearing a dress is part of it, but it’s really so much more, and I love that relationship.”
Swinton also considers dressing up “part of the work.”
“Haider, in particular, is someone I’m very, very close to, and we work things out together in a very conceptual way,” she says. “The choice of color. The choice of shape or whatever is incredibly important for the occasion. I couldn’t necessarily wear any of the looks that I wear anywhere else. They are for this moment. That moment. This particular film. This particular festival. It is a piece of work, and I really enjoy being engaged in that.”
How long can she keep it all up? She says of her work as a performance artist.
“I’ve always been wanting to stop. I never really intended to start. It’s not new that I want to stop. I have other creative avenues that really nourish me. I produce work, and I write, and I work in other ways.”
This interview was conducted at the Marrakech International Film Festival.
