Written by Alexandra Touchard
It was during my year at an American college in New York State that I met Kate Parr, very young and full of hope about her future as an artist. I was captivated by the dynamism of this young woman, whose ideas and enthusiasm seemed to burst forth like thousands of scattered pearls in her mind—an energy so vivid it seems to exist only in adolescence.
But it was in Paris, during her exchange semester, that we truly became friends. In the meantime, a year had passed. I had published my first novel, and Kate had completed her first short films, presented at festivals in the US, Sweden, and Italy. In Paris, she was working on writing a song—and our artistic worlds began to intersect.
I was deeply moved by the emergence of the remarkable woman she was becoming, evolving right before my eyes beneath the gray autumn skies of Paris. I wanted to sit down with her to discuss her current projects, her journey, and her inspirations. She agreed to give her first interview for The Edge magazine.
Kate Parr in Paris
How could you introduce yourself in your own words?
I am a person who never gets bored. I simply don’t know how. My main passions are directing and producing, but apart from that, there are so many things that make me who I am. For example, I can’t imagine living without music. I am a professionally trained pianist and a musician and artist. My love for music informs my projects a lot, especially music videos (which is the perfect way for me to connect the two things that make me feel alive).
I’ve lived in three countries (the United States, France, and Russia) and traveled to many more, which shaped my perspective and made me feel “limitless” in many ways. I am convinced that for a director, the most important thing is not just watching other directors’ work but experiencing the world and building your own creative outlook and perspective.
I would also call myself an explorer, both of the world and of my art. What I love about art is that it is a process of constant learning. You can never grow bored with it because you are always exploring different topics and collaborating with different people. I am also a very optimistic person, even when I write drama. I believe it’s important to give people hope. In life, there is always a way out, and I want to show that through my art.
How does living in NY and more generally in the US give you inspiration?
I moved to New York when I was 17 to study filmmaking. Interestingly enough, New York was never my childhood dream. My dream cities were Los Angeles, Vancouver, or Toronto, but never New York. But I ended up getting accepted to a university here and moving to New York, which became one of the happiest but also the hardest moments in my life.
Well, there I was; I had moved to one of the most expensive and competitive cities in the world without even realizing it. New York doesn’t just give me inspiration; it pushes me to work harder and challenges me every day. That’s what I like about it—I feel like I can find inspiration in many things, but New York accelerates this inspiration with its energy and drive.
Another thing that gives me inspiration is people. New York and the US are a mix of people from completely different backgrounds and industries. I love meeting interesting people and listening to their stories. I am definitely an extrovert; I love getting to know people and listening to their perspectives, opinions, and life stories. In New York, you can just meet a person on the street and start the most interesting conversation of your life. That’s how I met many amazing people here: in art galleries, coffee shops, conferences, etc.
I also find a lot of inspiration in traveling. For me, it’s not just about seeing new places but about uncovering new layers of your emotions and vulnerability. When I travel, I experience things more deeply and get out of my comfort zone even more. I love talking to people when I travel: I remember listening to the stories of a woman from New Zealand, talking to my surf instructor in Bali, and having a chat with my peers from Australia and Germany who were telling me about their lives. Most importantly, they are stories of people who have lives completely different from mine, and that inspires me a lot.
What’s your creative process?
Last year was critical for me in discovering my creative process. I’ve realized that my creative process always starts with challenging myself. This is actually what I like about directing. It’s a process of CONSTANT self-growth. Every project you take on, you learn something new: about the subject you’re exploring, about your approach, and about people. So first, I challenge myself. If I want to create a concept for a music video, a short film, or a commercial, I ask myself, “What’s the most uncommon connection I can draw here?” I take two seemingly different ideas and combine them. This is where creativity appears.
Some other techniques I use are the following:
– Thinking backwards. Whenever I come up with an idea, I ask myself, “What’s the most non-standard way to talk about this in my creative work?”
– Getting inspiration from other forms of art. For example, listening to music. It might be obvious, but because I have training in voice and piano, I’ve been listening to very different types of music throughout my life. So for me, this is not just about getting inspired by some new pop song, but it’s about uncovering deeper senses and meanings in music from different decades. Sometimes, it gets me to a very interesting place creatively. Another source of inspiration is going to museums and art galleries. I especially love impressionism and surrealism. One more thing is reading and writing poems. Sometimes, when I feel inspired, I just start writing anything. My favorite poet is Okudzhava, a Georgian and Armenian poet who writes incredibly emotional and beautiful poems.
-Starting with a concept, then building the story. This is just the way I do it. First, I need to visualize what I want to talk about. I want to build a whole world, a universe around a project I am creating. Only then do I come up with the script and storyline.
-I travel a lot, so I often get inspired by different cultures. This is essentially how world-building for my films often happens. I love immersing myself in a culture, finding beauty and uniqueness in it, and then translating it on screen.
Kate Parr on the set of Out of West Village Blue – Photographs made by Maria Valovaya
Why did you choose the medium of filmmaking as a way of expression?
I am a visual person: I learn, create, and perceive the world visually. As a kid, I was very amazed by the visual aspect of movies and how fascinating it could be to be a director. As an adult, I think filmmaking is about the emotional and visual impact of the stories I choose to tell. It’s about raw honesty; it’s about indescribable epiphanies the audience has after they leave the movie theater; it’s about making people feel. It’s about creating worlds and immersing your audience in them.
And I know some stories can change lives and perceptions, and if my work can touch even one person, I will be happy. My career choice is my incentive to grow, especially when I have to be on set for a lot of hours straight or spend hours developing a script. I know that to be a good director, I need to be impressively knowledgeable and well-rounded and, consequently, curious about the world around me. Directing has taught me that there will never be a point in my life where I stop learning. And that’s the best part of what I do.
Can you talk a bit more about your different works?
My most recent project is called Out of West Village Blue. It’s a short film that tells the story of a teenage girl, Nia, who grows up in a broken household with her single father, and how the return of her mother changes their lives. I came up with this idea because I wanted to explore the complexity and imperfections of family relationships. This film reveals how this family chooses to deal with their imperfections while still choosing each other.
For this project, I organized multiple tablework rehearsals with actors to help them understand the psychology of their characters. At some point, I realized that the characters were so complex that I could even turn this short film into a feature. I worked really hard on my script for this one. All filmmakers know that writing is the most difficult part because if your script is weak, the movie will most likely be bad.
And a fun fact: I finished my script after traveling around Asia and Europe for a month and a half. This is why I always say that traveling is “an investment in serendipity” or, you could call it, “a happy chance.” I do believe that the things you experience by chance can stay with you and find a reflection in your art.
Frames from See With Your Heart by Kate Parr showing actors Michael and Rose Kuhn
This spring, I also directed a music video for a French artist named Lilian. I lived in Paris for six months, and the thing I appreciated most about it was how this city puts you in the position of an “observer.” It slows you down and teaches you to see art in every corner, in every human interaction. And Paris itself feels like a movie set, and we often think of it as a “city of love.”
I thought, “People rarely see New York as the city of love.” At least, this is not the first association that comes to mind. So, I decided to reimagine New York through a more romantic lens. What if New York became the city of love? I was inspired by the movies Midnight in Paris and Before Sunrise, and this is how the idea for the music video Under the Moon was born. This is a visually bittersweet story about a bond between two people interrupted by a one-way ticket.
Finally, my first short film is titled Kupala. It’s not my first film, but it’s the first one I created with a really distinctive artistic voice. The story is set during Ivana Kupala Night, and it follows the story of forbidden love between two people from opposite sides of a river that divides their homelands.
Frames from Out of West Village Blue by Kate Parr
Recently, I also directed a creative campaign inspired by Polaroid cameras called See With Your Heart. Campaigns are very fun to direct because, for me, it’s not just about making a commercial; it’s a way to tell the story of a brand and the people behind it. Our story is about a father taking Polaroids of his little daughter and the importance of the tradition of preserving memories. It turned out to be a very sweet narrative revealing the purity of childhood and the simplicity of happiness.
The highlight of this project for me was working with a child actor. What I love about kids is their sincerity and authenticity. You know, kids remind us of what is important, and I hope that See With Your Heart reminds us to be more present and remember that love is what makes us human.
Kupala Poster
Frames from Kupala by Kate Parr
What were your inspirations for each of them?
My inspiration for my recent film, Out of West Village Blue, was mainly the New York music scene. First of all, I love jazz, blues, and rock and roll. I especially love going to jazz clubs and blues clubs in the West Village. That’s how the world of this film was born. As I mentioned before, I often come up with a concept and a world for my project first. I knew I wanted to immerse my audience in the world of music, so that’s what I did. My second source of inspiration was conversations with people. A lot of the dialogue and scenes in my film are inspired by things I talked about with people—my family, friends, and strangers. It all just came together in my film. And thirdly, if we talk about visual or narrative influences, I really admire the work of Joachim Trier, especially his recent film Sentimental Value. Out of West Village Blue is a very honest story about the raw reality of a broken household. It uncovers themes of childhood trauma, forgiveness, imperfect love, and connection despite misunderstandings.
The See with Your Heart project became one of my favorites. It was inspired by music again, especially the Americana aesthetic of the 70s, the simple beauty of the American countryside, and the tradition of road trips. Another source of inspiration was the purity of childhood and the art of nostalgia. I love people-watching, and my favorite thing is noticing moments of love between families, kids, and their parents. I wanted to emphasize the importance of these simple moments of unconditional love in this project.
Finally, my short film Kupala was inspired by Slavic culture. It’s funny, but whenever people see stills from this film, they ask me if I was portraying some witchcraft because there’s a scene of girls going in circles around a fire. No, haha! It’s an ancient Slavic holiday called Kupala, which celebrates the summer solstice. I’m truly fascinated by Slavic culture, particularly its mythology, philosophy, rituals, and traditions. Slavic folk music is something incredibly moving and deeply emotional, and incorporating it into my art feels very special. When I was younger, I used to hide my culture—I wanted my art to feel more universal in order to fit in. But I think one of the best things about being an artist is being able to tell your unique personal story and share your background through art, and this is exactly what I want to convey now. I always remind myself, “It’s not what you’re talking about, it’s how you’re talking about it.” I remember my very first short film, which I made when I was just 15—it was based on O. Henry’s story The Green Door. Literature has been a big source of inspiration for me as well, and I’d love to adapt another book for the screen someday. In particular, there’s a novel rooted in Slavic fantasy and mythology that I’m dreaming of turning into a TV series or a film.
Can you tell more about the process of making a movie ?
Well, there are three steps: pre-production, production, and post-production. Pre-production is the most important one: you have to visualize your film in detail and, as a director, communicate your vision clearly to the rest of the crew. Production is the most exciting one for me because of the magic that happens on set (well, if you’ve done everything right in pre-production, haha). Post-production is exciting because you can give yourself time. You can have multiple edits, see how your film will feel with different soundtracks, and even experiment a little. After all, editing is called second directing for a reason.
I’ve also learned that being an independent filmmaker means mastering the art of communication. Film is a collaborative art, and, frankly speaking, most people on my crew were people I met at events, through friends, or through recommendations. For a director, it is very important to find a good producer, because it is hard to stay 100% artistic while trying to keep up with all the logistics. I would also advise any director, before even starting to work with people, to get to know them. Having a good team that you trust beyond the set is what’s going to make your experience of working on set magical.
Kate Parr on the set of Out of West Village Blue – Photograph by Andy Cornielle
How do you let go of the visual part to a cinematographer as a director?
A good director is someone who is very clear on what they want from their crew. When I work with people, we have a lot of meetings, calls, and location scouts together. It’s your responsibility as a director to make sure others fully understand your vision and to stay clear about it. If you are not clear, people will make decisions for you. So yes, I guess that’s the answer, and that’s also a great skill to learn for any director.
What are your hopes for this movie?
I would like to screen it at film festivals. I would love to travel internationally with my film, across different states in the US and around the world. I also see this short film as the next step in my constant process of creating.
Instagram : @kate.parrr
