From studying supply chain management to the silver screen, Joanna Nelson, Constructor Alumna, class of 2013, defies convention
We’ve all heard it before. The divide between left and right-brains is an impassable line of demarcation: you are one or the other. If you’re a creative right-brain type, you’re woefully inept at matters of logic and numbers, while the analytical left brains struggle with empathy, emotion and expression. However, Joanna Nelson is further proof that, like much in life, not all is black and white. And Nelson is a contradiction in many respects: A lifelong aficionado of the arts, she strongly considered majoring in acting, before listening to her right and pursuing a degree in economics and logistics. Since graduating class of 2013, her work as a film maker has garnered accolades and HBO distribution. For this latest installment of our Faces of Constructor series, we spoke to Nelson about her time, memories and influences at CU, how her life is the living embodiment of an interdisciplinary approach and her latest film, Hambre, which is set to premier in Munich later this month.
Joanna, you graduated from CU in 2012. What do you recall of your time on campus?
I have great memories of my Uni times. I feel those years were some of the best in my life. To be surrounded by such an international community, thriving with so many new experiences, is truly special and influenced me greatly as a person.
How did you end up choosing CU to begin with? One would assume you didn’t come to middle-of-nowhere Bremen-Schönebeck to make films?
That's all (former director of admissions) Marie Vivas' doing. I met her at a college fair in Venezuela. She then guided me and my family through the entire application process. I was 17 at the time and struggling to decide what to study and where. I was considering a major in acting, but my left brain pulled me towards engineering and economics. I’ve always thrived in both the analytic and creative industries and had a hard time choosing only one.
They say that it’s people that make the place. I’m curious, who were the people that impacted your life on campus most? Did you have a mentor or someone who provided you with the inspiration and confidence to move into filmmaking?
Great question. One of the first things I did when I got to CU was audition for the theatre group, led by Renee Wells, the Director of Arts. It’s hard to overstate the impact he had on me. I felt lost at times because I wanted to be an actress and have a career in the arts, but there I was studying Logistics and GEM. Others who impacted me include are Professor Steven Ney, who got me into Design Thinking, a very creative way to solve problems (and I actually ended up attending the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking later on). I remember Christoph Lattemann, who taught me the importance of punctuality! The lunch ladies, such sweet memories I have of my campus life.
CU is not primarily known as a school for filmmakers. And yet, here you are. You’ve won awards, landed international HBO distribution. While you were on campus was there a vibrant film culture?
Not at all to be honest. Streaming platforms did not even exist. I think there was nothing that had to do with movies on campus. However, we organized the Arts Olympix, which included a film competition. I participated and won the 1st prize. I have the duck statue right here in the entrance of my house as a reminder!
The general culture at the university did help me to understand that you can really be whatever you want to be - a mix of everything all at once. Interdisciplinarity is something very embedded in the culture of the University and this was very important to me as well. I remember we made a musical, can still recall the song by heart: inspiration, inspiration, inspiration is a place. Diversity, community and transdisciplinarity, highly selective academics…. My eyes are tearing up… what memories. I strongly believe that the opportunities that we were given to start our own clubs and extracurricular activities really pushed me further into being the person I am today. I was in the radio club, helped found a law and business league, was in various arts clubs, moderated about thirty live events, participated in talent shows and was even in the USG (undergraduate student government) leading the external relations committee.
Where did your love of film come from?
It’s actually a love for telling stories, especially stories that can travel around the world and change peoples’ perspectives on important subject matters, as does my film Hunger, which is about the crisis in my home country Venezuela. I still have a passion for theatre and music.
Your latest film, Hambre, premiers at the Latin American Film Festival in Munich, which starts later this month. Can you share a bit about your process? Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to making films or art, but how do you typically go from an idea or inspiration for a film to finished product? Is that even something you can quantify?
The process began as a non-process, and what I mean by this, is I’ve always had the need to write. I write my feelings, I write down anecdotes, stories, ideas I have for characters I am imagining, etc. So, I was in Venezuela during one of my visits from Uni, and the crisis was really starting to peak. I was at a café and had ordered a coffee. They said: there is no milk, so I said: ok then, just black. Then they said: there is no sugar. I answered: I guess no sugar then. Then they said there is no bottled water… right then, a tanker truck full of Venezuelan petroleum sped by. How ironic, right? This is when I started writing scenes of what was happening right there, what I was living right in that moment. Five years later, I made and distributed a short film called Harina, which means flour, on food scarcity. It was very successful as we sold to HBO. All of this became an idea for a feature-length film, and I worked on that for another five years, and ta-da, thousands of hours of work later we have Hambre, or Hunger. It’s a very long story.
How would you characterize your style as a film maker? Who influenced you?
Influences. This is a difficult question in the sense that I’m not a “cinephile.” I spent a few years where I didn't watch any films or TV on purpose, precisely because I wanted to focus on my own creative style and writing. However, after I got over that, I have studied a lot of the classic filmmakers, new age ones, and gone to many festivals to simply watch films from hundreds of auteurs. I admire so many international filmmakers - it’s hard to say. I would love to make films like Kusturica, an incredible Serbian filmmaker that made films about the disappearance of Yugoslavia and all the aftermath. I really connect to his stories and style, and I feel like what is happening in Venezuela and mass migration as a result are very similar.
Hambre takes place in Caracas, Venezuela amidst a trio of crises, immigration, economic and identity. Its protagonists are an idealist stuck in Venezuela and a “brat” who escaped to Italy, but is forced back to her home country against her will film. How did you land on Caracas and these two protagonists to explore these themes and crises? They are after all not limited to Venezuela.
Hambre takes place between Venezuela and Italy, yes. I did this on purpose because I wanted a character that is a Venezuelan that no longer recognizes her country when she goes back after migrating, and this is because that is sort of my story. As a Venezuelan that had emigrated, coming back to my country made me see it in a different light. This would allow me to talk about the crisis from a very particular perspective. Then we also have the character of someone who is patriotic, that has never left the country, but also feels like he no longer fits in and needs to leave to find a future. This is how I tied in two perspectives on migration with the topic of Venezuela, identity and crisis. I workshopped the script for several years and it changed quite a lot in the process, but the essence became clearer each time.
Classic question to close: what piece of advice would you offer students at CU?
Make the most out of your student years. Work REALLY hard because you can’t catch up later. Work now for your dreams, so they will grow even more in the future.
Joanna Nelson is a director, producer and screenwriter with nearly a decade of experience in the entertainment industry. She wrote, produced and directed Harina (2018), which won multiple awards and was acquired and distributed by HBO. Her latest film, Hambre will premier on December 1, 2024 at the Latin American Film Festival in Munich, Germany. She will be in attendance at the screening, along with representatives from Amnesty International.
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