narrative. (Writer/Director/Editor) with Julie Queen, Lisa Black. in association with Film Arts Foundation. 35mm, color/so (1.37; Dolby SR), 30 minutes.  San Francisco/Los Angeles.  2004.

Two women meet at a crossroads… My one fiction film to date comes from a genre even more rare in the US than experimental work—adult drama.  Printed in muted tones that conjure silent film handpainting, and merging theater-based naturalism with an elliptical psychological encounter, The Interview at once utilizes and destroys mainstream narrative expectations. Featuring Lisa Black and Julie Queen.  Cinematography by Babette Mangolte.  (San Francisco/Los Angeles). Official selection, Oberhausen International Film Festival Touring Program, 2004, Sammlung Goetz collection Munich.

on The Interview

“Like Ozu and Bresson, Lipman evokes a hidden spirituality in the everyday, mystery within the concrete. A fully realized work about marginal people, made outside the margins of what people understand as cinema.”
-- Brecht Andersch, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; curator, Film on Film Foundation

“...exquisitely rendered in muted colors, and a soundtrack worthy of comparison to Bresson's best. Under Lipman's direction, Babette Mangolte creates a muted atmosphere with her lighting and framing which is further enhanced by subtle color shifts affected by Lipman in the lab. The result is a psychological study of a tense moment of transition. The film is the fruit and marriage of Lipman's earlier portrait and collage investigations with his knowledge of the film medium.”
-- Konrad Steiner, filmmaker; curator, Kino 21

“Haunting. Beautifully shot in muted, forgotten colors, this modest and unsettling short fuses repetitive dialogue, deliberately stiff performances, and an evanescent story line to create a curious and affecting work of art that plants its sly social critique so delicately that some will not notice it at all. Highly recommended.”
-- Theresa Schwartzman, Venice International Film Festival

“a delicate flower of a film, but also a horror film”
-- Berenice Reynaud, critic