Olga Lvoff is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a member of The European Film Academy. Her feature doc “When People Die They Sing Songs” was nominated for a Student Oscar in 2014 and won the CINE Golden Eagle Award.
“Busy Inside” will premiere at the 2019 DOC NYC film festival on November 11.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
OL: I started making “Busy Inside” as a film about people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. But I ended up making a film less about the disorder itself and more about the extraordinarily brave and inspiring people brought together by Karen Marshall, a unique person herself.
One can say that Karen’s body, mind, and heart do not belong to her alone. Diagnosed with DID, she shares them with Rosalee, a smart and perky teenager, Timee, a flamboyant, puerile youth who wears women’s clothing, an old lady who is a habitué of museums, and a dozen of other alter egos.
With time, Karen learned to manage her personalities, wrote a book about it, and even became a licensed DID therapist.
In my film, thanks to Karen and her patients, I could show DID as never witnessed before, giving audiences a direct window into the inner world of people who live with this disorder every day.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
OL: Since my teenage years, I’ve been interested in psychology and even considered becoming a psychologist at some point. When I discovered DID, I realized that it was my gateway to understanding the mystery of the human mind better.
People usually develop this disorder as a result of physical and mental trauma caused by child abuse. Following abuse, DID emerges as a defense mechanism that allows the victim to pass on their unbearable memories to someone else — a different personality created in the victim’s mind.
Gradually, such a person develops more personalities, each serving different purposes. Incredible as it may seem, some individuals with DID have been known to have more than twenty identities, each of which varies greatly, embodying different temperaments, ages, professions, and even genders.
DID helped me appreciate our mind’s uncanny and wonderful ability to dissociate itself from reality by creating imaginary worlds and characters. We’ve all experienced it — for example, on the subway, when we miss our station engrossed in a book, or when someone greets us and we are so self-absorbed that we don’t notice.
These are all instances of dissociation, but it is with DID, an extreme condition, that we see the splendiferous complexity of our mind as if through a magnifying glass.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
OL: Together with my crew, including the film’s producer, Victor Ilyukhin, I wanted to return dignity to those with DID and break the stigma that surrounds it. We also wanted those viewers who have DID or other mental conditions to be encouraged to reach out for professional help because it does work.
I want viewers to reflect upon their own identity when leaving the theater. When I first learned about DID, I was puzzled, thinking: is my identity a function of my brain, a social mask, or an illusion? Analyzing my behavior at work, at home, or at parties, I accepted that to a degree, my identity was a convention that altered depending on the occasion.
At some point, I asked myself: how different are we from those with multiple personalities? As Pirandello wrote in his marvelous essay on humor and human nature: “What if we have within ourselves four souls fighting among themselves […]? Our consciousness adapts itself according to whichever dominates, and we hold as valid and sincere a false interpretation of our real interior being, which we ignore because it never makes itself manifest as a whole, but now in one way, now in another, according to the circumstances of life.”
Yes, these are terrifying revelations, but eventually, if you go all the way through in your self-exploration, you get to appreciate your life — any life, really — much more so. Likewise, I want viewers to question their own identity so that they’d have this therapeutic, cathartic experience.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
OL: The biggest challenge was to listen to the horrible abuse stories of my characters. Unwittingly, I blocked these stories in my mind — that was the only way to concentrate on the work — and it was only later that I felt the psychological toll hearing these stories had had on me.
I had to ask the most difficult questions and push people, however tactfully, to recollect the things they had been trying to blot out of their memory for most of their lives. Yet it was essential for the film and for the cause of bringing awareness about people with DID.
So the biggest challenge was to walk the fine line between having my characters talk about their traumatic experience and having them feel comfortable enough to talk about it.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
OL: There were several major sources of funding: private donors, investors, companies interested in spreading DID awareness, and crowdfunding. Working on this film, I experienced how substantial the support of private donors can be if they share your agenda.
I greatly appreciate the trust and rapport I have with them, and I will continue reaching out to individuals passionate about my future projects and willing to participate in them because we have similar values and concerns and because they believe in me as a filmmaker
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
OL: I think it all began when I was a student of journalism at Moscow State University. I was taking a course taught by Yelena Masyuk, a famous Russian journalist and one of the most influential TV reporters in 1990s Russia — when TV wasn’t state-controlled as today.
Our final assignment for the course was to make a short film. Working on mine, I became completely immersed in the process. I could neither eat nor sleep while editing. I revel in the same magic of editing to this very day.
I also loved feeling transformed by the camera, which let me “become a stranger in my own environment,” as Susan Sontag put it. That’s exactly what I did in my very first film, about the school where I’d studied for 10 years. The camera helped me to defamiliarize it, to see it as if for the first time.
After that course, I understood that documentary film was perfect for someone like me, eager to learn about the wonders of the world and people living in it, as well as to convey these discoveries through this most sensual, multifaceted, and authentic art we call cinema.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
OL: The best advice I’ve received was to be ready to change my original idea if the reality demanded that: to hearken to what life, your ultimate scriptwriter, is telling you.
The worst advice I’ve received was to delay getting insurance on my camera.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
OL: The advice is universal. The Greeks had two great principles. First: know thyself. For me, it means be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses and use your character to your advantage. Second, take care of thyself: never ignore your health and set aside time for physical exercises and good night’s rest.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
OL: Kira Muratova’s “The Sentimental Policeman.” Nowhere is the absurdity of life shown so implacably and yet with so much love for human beings.
W&H: What differences have you noticed in the industry since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?
OL: #MeToo and #TimesUp did bring about some important changes in the industry.
As for me, the environment I found myself in, first studying at the School of Visual Arts and then working in New York on my own, has been a truly welcoming and egalitarian one from the very start. I realize how fortunate I am.
I believe it is those who suffered from harassment personally that can give a more informed answer about the degree to which the industry changed.
