Angelina Jolie on Directing 'Without Blood,' Collaboration & Atelier Jolie

Hi, I'm Angelina Jolie and I'm on set shooting the cover of L'Officiel. It's a strange thing because I spent most of my life making films. You don't realize that you're used to making things that are not permanent and it never crossed my mind that usually I work and then for a year and you build something to to be dismantled and I I realized how much you have to put into something that's going to take time and grow and I built it to to be a home for other artists so the hardest thing for me and the best thing for me is that I'm dependent on other artists to help me build it and so while that's been challenging to explain where it is and open the doors and have people welcome I've also built a really great family and now and now we're building it together so now it's starting to happen. My dream for it was that I traveled around the world and I saw so many amazing artists that didn't have because maybe where they were maybe their whatever their experiences were their countries whatever it was that was their barrier extraordinary people and thinkers and artists that were lacking in community and a network and a place to be seen and so I thought if I could build these in my mind it's like it's like little art embassies where people from all around the world can come together and we are in talks in Vienna and in Cambodia in different countries and so the idea is that there will be and we have a resident coming in from Rwanda in September so the the hope is that you have these hubs and that everybody's switching and sleeping on each other's couches and spending time together and making more projects together so the dream is this kind of international network of a place that is not built by some curator and marketing company you know but that's built by artists for artists you know it's a funny thing when you're making something you can't know what it's going to become so I think I'm most excited that we're we're all coming together and we're becoming real friends and we're learning about each other's work and we're trying new things together I think it's great that we don't know what it's going to become because we don't have a plan a goal beyond being able to do our do our work and share but I've already seen different projects starting to come together I've already seen people from different countries and who work in different mediums joined together in projects I've seen one couple's formed and and so we have a family so the house actually belonged to Warhol who gave it to Basquiat and I think we all have an idea of what these times in the past were of these great art movements but we idolize them like they're this perfect thing that knew what they were going to be and they had some plan and I think the plan was to make space to just be and be bold and have life experiences and try things I really have been liking Ferrari Shepard's work he's a painter and he's also been making some jewelry and and some videos he's very interesting artist I think his work's been beautiful my friend Prunori who's currently in residence at the Atelier I I think her work is very very beautiful and meaningful but I like many different artists I think ones that you know there's really not somebody I think anybody who's bold and comes from a good place I'm I'm all for it there's a thing called an exquisite corpse it's a strange name but it's a painting that's made by many different people everybody does a piece and it's very cool you can look them up and so the idea of like you're on a table and you just keep passing around the same painting and you all do a piece of it and that's your exquisite corpse or a piece of the jacket where you each try add something to it or I I love that I never feel that I'm the person to give anybody advice I always feel like I'm still trying to figure a lot out it's important to have the permission to fail to fail to give yourself that understanding that you don't have to know everything right now and so if you're passionate about a global issue and you want to help you can you can just start and you can care and you can learn and you don't have to be you're not going to get it right for a while but if you're if it matters to you that's what that's the most important thing if it really matters to you then whatever it is you love to do you're going to do it well and you're going to keep doing it no matter how hard it is because it really matters to you I think storytelling is a very good form of advocacy not in the ways that everybody thinks you know sometimes it's just doing a very relatable human story from a country that you don't know and you don't feel as close to and so you laugh with a people you've never met and that can be more important than just hearing facts about challenges you know to be close to each other I think in times like this you might even lean into lighter things or comedy or hopeful things or something elegant and takes people into a nice you know like poetry or beauty to just the film that is coming out in September is is a difficult one to watch and and it's not to say it's intentionally so but it's honest to say that in situations of real trauma and post-conflict there just isn't a Hollywood ending and it's just it's just not easy it's not easy to be at that table it's not easy to deal with some of these things and some of these thoughts so it's not an easy film by any means and so I'm grateful that I was allowed to bring this book to life because I know it's challenging to see however the the essence of it I think is very important for people and there's something very beautiful in the novel that got to me that said we return to where we broke which means that for all of us all of you right there's some part of your life could be something that happened in your childhood could be something something happened that really transformed who you were and that thing in some way affects so much and you find yourself coming back to it somehow you circle back to it and you carry it and it's very formative so I think that we really would like to be able to sit across the table from the person that hurt us the most and we'd like to be able to understand and so that's what happens in this it's two people from different perspectives of a conflict situation that had a profound effect on each other's lives as children and then spent the years of all the effects of that and now here they are willing to sit at a table and hear each other's perspective I think maybe what I've learned the most is if that you're not out there on your own so really gather the thoughtfully the right crew become a team become a family listen to each other know that they're all strong minds in their own area and if you've all come together well then you're all doing it together and then that's when you pull out the best from each other and and and it feels great and it works really well being careful with the actors so the actors are very strong actors Selma who's a friend did such amazing work but I knew it was a lot it's a lot to put her through and so I think when you're when you're pushing especially when pushing another woman to like go into her trauma or go into those spaces where you're screaming and alone and you're thinking of the worst things in your life then you want to help get them there and then you want to help pull them out or you want to help make a safe space so I think it was it was that that the challenge was that that it was just just complex and at times just to be very protective of everybody's emotional health and to you know enjoy the process that's all for today thank you for having me