When journalist and actor Susanna Cappellaro’s husband came home one day and announced he wanted to become a cyborg, she decided to film his journey. The Indiependent spoke to her about the almost decade-long project.
The Indiependent: What are your overall thoughts on the experience of putting together this documentary?
Susanna Cappellaro: It took me eight years to complete the film, from the inception of the idea until it was properly wrapped up. It was a long and strenuous journey, and every part of it had its difficulties. At the very beginning, it started because my husband one day came home and told me, “I want to be a cyborg.” I said, “what’s a cyborg?”
At the time I was acting and it wasn’t going so well. I was out of work, I was a bit depressed, and I thought, maybe I’ll just make a short film. Then I found a producer, and she said “a short film? No, no, no, let’s apply for funds. This is a really cool story”. So the BFI provided funding and I filmed for a few years.
I struggled a little bit finding the funds to complete the project. When COVID happened, one of the lucky things for me was that people weren’t working. All the sets and productions halted, so I was able to work with a couple of editors I really wanted to work with. When life started up again, I was right back at the end of the queue. It’s an independent film, so the budget is what it is.
When it came to festivals, it didn’t go well. That was maybe the most trying part of the process. I got a lot of rejection. However, what kept me going was that some really big festivals wrote me some lovely things about the film. I knew they really meant it, because they were going into specifics of the film and apologising that they couldn’t choose it.
You mentioned there were obviously a lot of setbacks and struggles. Was there ever a point where you considered packing it all in?
Yes, there were several of these points. When I couldn’t find the finishing funds or couldn’t enter a festival, I was thinking “is there anyone who’s ever going to want to see this film?” But then again, in the rejection and the struggle, I held on to the positive comments and encouragement of people that I admired.
Throughout the film, both you and Scott allude to his reluctance at times to be involved with the documentary. How did you combat that and keep going?
He loves me, so he was really kind and let me do it, but Scott is a private and shy person. If he comes across as a bit of pain at times in the documentary, it’s because I’m shoving a camera in his face when he doesn’t really want that. I’m trying to experiment with whatever he created, and he was trying to live a very private experience. I made it a little bit challenging for him, but he was truly nice about it. He always let me film and he never said no, even when he wasn’t happy.
How did your personal experience with journalism, and as you mentioned, acting, impact the way you went about the documentary?
A lot, especially the journalism.
As a journalist, I always wondered how close I could be to the truth. Truth is a concept that doesn’t really exist, we all have our own versions of it. But with this being a documentary about me and my life, I wanted to be as close to the truth as possible. I strived to be as open about my experience and my feelings as possible.
Even choosing to film with an iPhone was part of trying to be unfiltered, and tell a story in a world surrounded by fake news. Filming cameras, because of size, filters and lenses, create layers of distance from your subject. But we’re all used to seeing phones all day long, it’s no longer an invasive medium for filming.
My background as an actress helped me to know how to frame things. I’m no director of photography, it’s filmed in a very simple way, but that was also to the point of making the film approachable.
Were there any obvious ways in which you felt your relationship with Scott was impacted as a result of going on this journey together?
Yes, but I think this is true of any relationship where somebody you know goes off on a tangent and the other person doesn’t know anything about that tangent. You’re feeling left behind, and you want to find out what the tangent is about. That was the starting point, but our relationship was always going to evolve. Yes, we changed, but we would have changed anyway.
I think the experience for me of learning about transhumanism, cyborgism, bio-hacking, things I knew nothing about before, and for him to go through with an experiment that was important to him, taught us that communication is essential. If he had let me know that he was interested in that world, then his decision would have come as less of a surprise to me.
One thing I found fascinating was the contrast of emotions. This is your everyday life and it’s not the lightest of subjects; was the involvement of laughter and joy something you directly wanted to include?
Yes. I’m a positive person, Scott is a positive person, and we try to make the best of life. We like having a good time. This is a film about life, and life is made of ups and downs and fights and laughter, moments of love and moments of anger. The whole spectrum is condensed in these 93 minutes.
How do you feel the reaction has been to the documentary so far?
It varies. Some people loved it, and that gives me great joy. Others didn’t see the point of any of it, and I do understand that. At the very beginning, I decided I would go on Reddit, which is something that perhaps nobody should ever do, but I wanted to engage with people. I was curious to understand their point. None of these people had seen the movie, by the way—they were extrapolating things, it was super sensationalised information.
One person said it was about a first world problem, but there’s not really a problem. This is a film about a relationship in this contemporary era. I guess, if it were to be the 1800s and I was writing a book I would be writing about my husband going off exploring waterfalls in Africa and leaving me alone, with no idea that I was interested too.
People have said the documentary made them think about the importance of technology in our lives, that we don’t pay much importance to it and maybe we should be more involved in the conversation. Others just think it’s really funny to watch my relationship, and can see their own lives reflected. I guess it’s what every filmmaker wants: for people to be able to relate to their film in some way, or learn something.
It’s a very soft film. I am no authority on any of these things. I am just an average Joe, going about life and just making a film of it.
Interview conducted by Jamie Rooke
My Husband, The Cyborg is now available on digital.
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