A 78-year-old Indian woman in New York is the world’s most passionate theatergoer. Nicki Cochrane has been going to at least one play every day for more than 25 years. The elderly, culture-loving hustler has developed an array of ingenious means by which she acquires free tickets to most New York theaters. Disliked by theater staff for her behavior, Nicki prides herself on her staunch dedication to the art.
See the US Premiere of ‘One Ticket, Please’ on Friday, February 23 7PM at Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street) as part of New York City’s 7th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival.
By Cristina Slattery, Winter Film Awards: “I’m off to a class that is about the art of listening,” New York University senior and first-time documentary film director, Matiss Kaza, states as he gets up to leave the coffee shop where we have been chatting about his new film, “One Ticket, Please.” Although the class may offer Kaza some new techniques and methods for listening more carefully, this young filmmaker proves he knows a lot already about the art of listening – and the art of seeing – in his documentary that follows his subject, a New Yorker named Nicki Cochrane, a woman who devotes her life to going to the theater and may be one of the most hated people on Broadway.
“I’m interested in people who are not adhering to societal norms,” explains Kaza, when discussing what kinds of characters appeal to him. Film is somewhat of a family business for Kaza, a native of Latvia. His grandfather was a First Assistant Director in a Soviet studio and his mother, a filmmaker, and the person he says he admires most, examines women’s issues in her films. Kaza has been going to see movies in theaters on weekends since the age of seven and he sees as many as seven films per week these days as an NYU student. He thinks his friends would say that he overuses the word, “listen,” but perhaps his speech just reflects what he tries to do well.
The documentary, “One Ticket, Please” allows the viewer to watch and listen to Nicki Cochrane for approximately an hour and Kaza, who met his subject when she sat next to him at a performance of Chekhov’s play, “Uncle Vanya” in the fall of 2014, has gone to many plays with the subject of his film since they first met. A film needs “multiple perspectives,” Kaza emphasizes, and we see Cochrane’s interactions with two of her three adult children in the film as well as moments she spends with those individuals whose paths she crosses as she spends her days seeing plays of all types in New York. Cochrane estimates that she spends about $10,000 each year on the theater and she leaves her apartment early most mornings and doesn’t return until late in the evening on a typical day.
Kaza thought of the idea for this documentary in the spring of 2015 and he finished editing it in the summer of 2016. “One Ticket, Please” has already premiered in Latvia and also in Sweden – Nicki Cochrane attended both premieres – indicating that she was especially pleased when a viewer in Latvia mentioned that the film had helped this person better understand her relationship with her own mother. Kaza admits he is an ironic thinker and those who see the film will notice that this film reflects his thinking.
“It was not my intention to judge her,” the filmmaker says about his subject. “She is incredibly creative in the way she operates and the way she lives,” Kaza continues. But, this young filmmaker does not believe in documentary filmmaking as pure factual storytelling and he asserts that the director has the “right to be creative.” As those who attend the U.S. premiere in New York on February 23rd at the Winter Film Awards will see, Kaza shows the irony that exists as Cochrane exercises her right to participate in New York’s creative theater community while existing according to her own “very specifically defined philosophy of living,” as Kaza calls it, that is, in fact, quite rigid.
Although Nicki Cochrane may believe that “truth is objective,” the filmmaker contends that she doesn’t always think his subject is telling the truth. “She sometimes is in the gray zone between lying and deceit,” Kaza acknowledges, but the viewer will have to make up his or her own mind about the Nicki Cochrane, a perhaps quintessentially New York character. She exhibits “extremely quirky behavior,” according to Kaza, but will “keep herself and [her] uncompromising path” in life. While he readily states that he is a kind of social chameleon himself and adopts an English accent when in the U.K. and an American accent in the U.S., his subject, Nicki Cochrane, claims to admire the motto of her alma mater, Brandeis University: “truth even unto its innermost parts.”
Is Cochrane’s dedication to the truth compromising her own well-being? Kaza presents us with images, and we hear the subject’s words. If we are artful watchers – and listeners – we will come away from the experience of seeing the film with our own determination about this woman, who, as the filmmaker so deftly shows us, “does not adhere to the pattern[s] that many of us do in our daily lives.” Kaza hopes “a lot of New York theater people come” to the premiere – and, perhaps, will be able to sympathize more with Nicki Cochrane. “When you’re working with subjects on such a close level,” Kaza says, “the question is how to paint [the] portrait.” The medium of documentary film provides more flexibility for the artist than perhaps a visual artist such as a painter is given and perhaps it is truly the best way to see and hear a subject. If you decide to spend an hour or so of your time with Matiss Kaza’s film, you will certainly come away with your own impressions.
Cristina Slattery
Cristina Slattery has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek Japan, Forbes Travel Guide, Harvardwood Highlights, Roads & Kingdoms, The Winter Film Festival, FoodandWine.com, Words Without Borders, AFAR.com, Travel+Leisure.com, several airline magazines and other national and international magazines and websites.
About Winter Film Awards
New York City’s 7th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival runs February 22-March 3 2018. Check out our jam-packed lineup of 93 fantastic films in all genres from 31 countries, including Animation, Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Documentary and Music Video. Hollywood might ignore women and people of color, but Winter Film Awards celebrates everyone!
Winter Film Awards is an all volunteer, minority- and women-owned registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2011 in New York City by a group of filmmakers and enthusiasts. The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the NY State Council on the Arts.
