The turn of the millennium brought a new age in film history with rapid and remarkable advances in technology, which pressured the studios to make ends meet with the creation of hit movies, which are becoming exorbitantly expensive to make due to the higher costs for movie stars, rising production costs, and more. “Tattoo Girls” was conceived on the personal challenge of doing a honest movie on the most simplest basis, with the lowest budget possible, which would be at the same time, a direct return and a reverence to filmmaking as it initially started a little over a hundred years ago.
The first lumiere moving images were only accompanied by a simple piano score, where the viewer was invited to observe one projected reality, usually documenting a daily life event which was not rehearsed. On “Tattoo Girls” we are using the same simple formula, just repeated seven times. Using one camera it captures non-rehearsed life episodes from seven women and the city they all live in, and where a piano is the musical company.
These real life characters don’t speak to the camera or interact with it in at any level, and as over a century ago, a melody is what unlocks the rest of the hidden emotions within the simplicity of the moving pictures. In this documentary nothing is taken at face value, as the film is always trying to understand the underlying and hidden truths of each character by their simple daily actions. If, as they say, an image is worth a thousand words, then I hope the “invisible” multitude of words from “Tattoo Girls” will make audiences feel that nothing is exactly as it seems and that reality is often hidden behind illusions.