“I’m drawn to things that challenge me”

With an insatiable curiosity and a fearless approach to trying new things, emerging filmmaker and VCA film graduate Emily Quattrocchi is one to watch.

Emily has spent this year immersed in the development of her Master of Film and Television graduate project, Dance Floor Murder, which she says is the biggest film production she’s worked on thus far.

The short film, a “magical realism whodunnit”, follows homicide detective Nisansala as she tries to solve the murder of a young girl at a party, all the while learning that her own fierce independence is not a remedy for feeling like an outsider.

As a writer and director, Emily says she drew inspiration from her own experiences in crafting Nisansala’s story.

“Before doing my master’s, because I was making videos very independently by myself, I was doing everything from the camera to the writing to the editing,” Emily told Southbank News.

So, I thought that’s what a director had to know, to know everything and be an expert on everything. And what I learned from the master’s, it’s really about collaboration, I don’t have to know everything.

“I work with other people, and they all bring their own skills, and then we create art together.”

Around 70 volunteers joined forces to bring Emily’s vision to life, from extras and cast members to crew and heads of department.

The project was her first experience working with movement practitioners on set; she worked with choreographers Leyla Boz and Opal Russell to develop the film’s dance and movement sequences, which inject the story with an element of magical realism.

​​“I’m drawn to things that challenge me in a new way,” she said. “I wrote the film in the genre of a homicide detective whodunnit because I had never done that before, then added magic realism and dance, because I’d never done that before.”

“The film worked in a mind space that wasn’t really in reality, so it was hard to communicate what I was seeing in my head to the different collaborators to help bring that vision to life,” Emily said.

“So, I learned a lot about how to communicate, and it must have worked, because the film worked and it’s on screen, and they all did amazingly. They all brought the vision that I was hoping to achieve.”

Emily noted that the process of making Dance Floor Murder taught her to balance feedback and criticism of her work with following her gut. 

That was really challenging, because your writing is your imagination. You don’t have anything solid with you, and it’s really scary because you might be wrong, you might be right. You might make a story that doesn’t work. But I just thought, you know, I’m a student, and if I changed what I believed because I was scared, I wasn’t being a true artist.

As she looks towards her graduation this December, Emily remembers her excitement upon being accepted into the course back in 2022. She first learned about the Master of Film and Television degree course in 2019 from a stall promoting the VCA at the St Kilda Film Festival.

From that moment, Emily was set on getting into the course.

She had previously completed an undergraduate degree in film studies, but in 2018, not long after she finished her bachelor’s, she had a car accident and became a paraplegic.

Emily continued to make films with her DSLR camera at home with some help from friends; she says she learned just how different filmmaking as a wheelchair-user would prove to be.

After applying to the master’s degree course for the first time in 2019, she got an interview, but wasn’t accepted.

She sought feedback from one of her interviewers and set about improving her skills and making her own short films.

When she reapplied and was accepted into the course in 2022, Emily said she shed tears of happiness.

Looking ahead to what’s next, Emily is currently in early development for multiple projects and is hoping to turn Dance Floor Murder into a web series, with each episode following one of the detectives introduced in the original short film.

“I hope to keep making films,” she said. “I want to keep learning and challenging myself, improving my skills and telling stories.”

Dance Floor Murder is available to stream as part of the VCA Film and Television Graduate Season 2024 on ACMI’s online platform, Cinema 3, until December 10. •