A few questions with Eileen Yaghoobian

Talking with Eileen Yaghoobian is like meeting a force of nature. She talks in vivid, opinionated bursts that veer from art theory to Olympic speed skating. Her first film Died Young, Stayed Pretty is an exciting, psychological portrait of contemporary rock poster artists. Instead of making a clichéd documentary that tries fit a rag-tag group of art outsiders into a tidy, fake narrative, Died Young, Stayed Pretty is an exploration of obsessions, styles, and politics.

She answered a few of our questions about the film, but she’ll be on hand at The Plaza Theatre this Wed., March 3 to screen the film and talk more about poster art.

When did you start this project and what drew you to making a documentary about rock posters?

I started it in 2004. My friend is a designer and I was living in my brother’s apartment, and grieving. My friend wanted to cheer me up and sent me a link to gigposters.com

I instantly connected with the graphics. I liked the imagery they took from Americana – I connected to the references and of course I loved the music. I wanted to make a movie about that.

I wanted the movie to be about the imagery. I did not want to compartmentalize the film and create that fake facade narrative arc in it. It was very important for me to do something different than what I’m seen in documentary. Films like that bore me.

It’s about punk. It’s anti-narrative.