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| Barbet Schroeder and Olaf Möller at the Sodankylä morning discussion, 16 June 2018. Photo: Sanna Bohm / Midnight Sun Film Festival. |
Barbet Schroeder in discussion with Olaf Möller in English.
The School, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 16 June 2018.
MSFF: "Veteran director Barbaret Schroeder was the guest at Saturday’s morning discussion at the Kitisenranta school. Schroeder’s films deal with extreme subjects and complex people and he told interviewer Olaf Möller that his relationship with cinema is connected to two traumatic experiences. Disney classic Bambi was the first film Schroeder saw and it caused him such a strong reaction that the young Schroeder had to be dragged screaming out of the screening.
However, Schroeder’s most important film experience in terms of the content of his own films the Iran born director received after moving to Paris. Schroeder’s mother is of German background and she decided to educate her son on the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany after some locals called a friend of the family a “Jew”. The Alain Resnais’s classic Night and Fog (1956) had such a strong impact that it basically gave the then 14 year old Schroeder a new direction for his life. While still young, he managed to join the editorial team of Cahiers du Cinema and spent a lot of time with other cinephiles.
Soon Schroeder took another step forward by becoming longtime friend Éric Rohmer’s producer. He founded the Les Films du Losange production company so that his friends would be able to make small budget films as independently as possible.
Gaining more confidence by working with Rohmer, Schroeder mentioned that becoming a producer at such a young age taught him how to handle setbacks and difficult situations. Schroeder told anecdotes about risk taking producers as well as challenging productions in unfamiliar environments and cultures.
It was from Rohmer that Schroeder learned that there is a seed of documentarism in every film. Rohmer respected the authenticity of a scene even when making fictional films. Möller lead Schroeder to admit that this is characteristic of Schroeder’s films also. La Vallée (1972), for example, is a metafictional commentary on filmmaking that follows a group of youngsters travelling to an indigenous people’s area.
Schroeder has never shied away from switching genres and styles. He said that he is looking for adventure via his films – that makes him feel alive. Somewhat surprisingly, he added that he was also happy making Hollywood films. Despite receiving criticism, he told that he has always been attracted to films aimed outside the arthouse audience. Still, Schroeder’s Hollywood films are genre films mainly because it is easier to get financing for such films rather than convincing producers of one’s own ideas.
Dealing with out-of-the-ordinary themes and phenomena in his films, Schroeder said that he chooses his themes simply based on whether they interest him or not. He familiarizes himself with the subjects of his films extremely well before the filming begins. It was Schroeder’s research on how Baruch de Spinoza and Buddha conceived hate and self-control that led him to make his latest documentary The Venerable W. Schroeder’s ponderings on ways of dealing with personal anger led him to information about Burmese monks who provoke fascism and genocide in their country.
Schroeder thought about what his desert island film would be for a long time, but if he had to pick his favourite film of all time, it would be F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927)."
AA footnotes:
At 13 in Paris I really started to go to the cinema. At La Cinémathèque francaise I saw the entire Bergman, Mizoguchi, Hawks. To see the complete works was really a luxury. I was 14 by then. I was one of the first row guys. There were 20 of us. Sometimes I missed the last subway, and there was an over a half an hour walk home. Then I realized that I'm going to make movies. My way was paved. I just have to follow it.
Of Cahiers du Cinéma I was a big fan. I just went there to see what happens. As an excuse I mentioned an out of print issue, and then we started talking with Éric Rohmer. He was my main target of admiration. Whenever he needed help I was there.
Launching Les Films du Losange we first made the first two Contes Moraux, La Boulangère de Monceau and Le Carrière de Suzanne on 16 mm. We filmed in every season and needed to have access to the same actors for a long period. Those were people I knew, many from my circle of friends. Suzanne is one of my favourites. We had no money whatsoever. To the café scenes we called friends. We had no money to pay for the coffee.
Paris vu par… was an omnibus film, episodes of which were directed by Chabrol, Rouch, Douchet, Rohmer, and Godard. The idea was to first do a sketch, then a feature. The novel idea was to distribute this with a new Debrie machine with which you could project 16 mm like 35 mm.
I was 22, not familiar with France, and the obscure rules. But I learned them. Then came the bad news: the Debrie concept was not working. It needed a special technician to follow the film. The system fell apart. We needed to blow up the film to 35 mm.
The name Losange: I wanted to call it Triangle, in hommage to the classic American company. But it still existed, in bankruptcy.
So I had dinner with the brilliant poet Philippe Sollers. He suggested to take two triangles, and it’s a losange. (The name does not refer to Los Angeles).
My mother had a beautiful Emil Nolde painting. Nolde was a friend of the family. That painting helped finance the company.
Once the company started, Henri Langlois made a major event around it. I had never planned producing. The task of the producer is to assemble all the different energies.
OM: What did you learn from Rohmer?
BS: Original characters. Document yourself. Precise detail (such as real prices). For a scene with a rose he planted the rose in time to have it in the scene. A respect for the reality. Interest in the documentary. Rohmer at the time was making educational movies about Pascal and the industrial landscape.
OM: Acting. BS: I never had any ambition to act. I went only when asked by very close friends. It is difficult to talk to a wall. I experienced the maximum loneliness of not playing a leading role when you don’t know the rituals. As a result of this experience I take extra care of supporting actors.
OM: More. BS: I learned my number one lesson. The film is always too long. The first cut was 3½ hours. How to cut to a reasonable length.
Murnau was one of my main influences.
OM: Gégauff. BS: Paul Gégauff was extremely brilliant, a young man, half German, had read everything, very joyous, always drinking, extrovert, close to Chabrol, to Rohmer. A big influence on Rohmer. He had a house not easy to access.
Rohmer to Gégauff after Ma nuit chez Maud: “I finally got rid of your influence”.
He was an important presence, politically right, belonging to the anarchist right. The Cahiers team was not left, not right. This was a period when in the French intelligentsia everyone was a Communist or close.
OM: Social life. BS: At the Champs-Elysées we would all meet in the cinema and start talking at the Cahiers office and go downstairs and continue at a cheap restaurant. It was like a modern salon.
OM: When you make films are they things you know or things you want to know. BS: Either I want to find out more or I want to tell. Inju: I had no previous knowledge of that world. But we got the details rights about the geisha police.
OM: Being a foreigner. BS: Home is wherever I make a movie. Two weeks in another town. I’m floating.
OM: Do you want to feel a stranger. BS: I like to feel at home everywhere.
OM: You even made a jungle epic. BS: La Vallée is my island that is not on the map. I’ve added it. When you go there you don’t come back. There was no boat. Only six people in a Land Rover. A valley obscured by clouds. I believed in the dramatic structure but here I tried to do something different. Instead of a dramatic structure we created a contemplative movie. It has some charm. We did what the characters did. The people there saw a white woman for the first time. It took six months. In CinemaScope with direct sound. We were 13 altogether. It was some kind of an exploration.
OM: Documentaries. BS: Koko. A woman had volunteered to take care of Koko living next to the gorilla. She had to be engaged as well. Koko knew exactly where to start the camera. He was extra sensitive to sound.
OM: Tricheurs. BS: I had met a gambler who became a close friend. I went to the racetrack with him. He lost everything except the sky, the nature, and life. He said it was delicious. After the night there was suddenly a world of beauty. He was throwing money under the table. “What does it matter”. I went crawling under the table.
The producer in US gets a salary. Few producers gamble. Paolo Branco was a gambler. Steve Reich was a real gambler. Playing the director of the casino.
OM: The ambition to make a US film. BS: Americans financed La Vallée, and Koko had a US producer. There was always America.
OM: Barfly and Golan-Globus. BS: Barfly was not a Hollywood film. Stallone hated it, called it a disgrace, would never work with anyone involved.
Bukowski wrote an entire book on Barfly. A book called Hollywood. But it was a different type of cinema. He could never really understand. Cannon was an Israeli company making low budget films.
Reversal of Fortune was only distributed by Warner Bros. The finance was foreign. It was a big success for WB. They were ashamed because “we didn’t do too much. No campaign. We could have done more”.
I got offers for all kinds of big movies.
Single White Female: that kind of film I love. I was very happy to do that.
OM: Genre movies. BS: I believed that it’s better to do something that somebody wants to do.
OM: Dershowitz. BS: Brilliant. Gave a background to Verges. He admired Verges. Belonged to the same family. Defending bad people. All my life I wanted to do a Verges film. He was an anti-colonialist, fighting for the independence of Algeria. He was my hero. I followed him. But there was a dark side. A man for me, that’s for sure.
OM: Verges your key film. BS: It was waiting in the wings. A director was doing a documentary on him. He wanted to defend Saddam. Everyone wanted to do a documentary. Then the Brits gave up. That’s how I got it. I hadn’t met him before.
OM: Your only real epic. Others are more intimate. BS: It’s called dramaturgy. Epic deals with something huge. Here: the beginning of terrorism. During the Algerian war beautiful women were carrying bags with bombs. They were extreme terrorists. There is a straight line to the Twin Towers.
OM: After Hollywood. BS: I felt a drain on a human level. Not enough adventure, discovery. I was going back to Colombia all my life. My heart is there. From the writer of La virgen de los sicarios I read everything. I wanted to do something together. Killing 18 people is something I cannot relate to. Negotiations were getting it down to the number of killing five people. A love story. Vertigo is the mother of all love stories. No insurance company would cover it. The first movie shot on HD. It was not simplifying things. For aesthetical reasons. The city is one of the characters. A homosexual love story. The city was very present. On HD, background always in focus. Digital gunshots are easier. I was exhilarated.
OM: Inju. BS: A book that Raoul-Luis gave me. Fantastic. There was one French actor, all others were excellent Japanese actors. Luciano Tovoli has been in all my movies. It was a challenge to communicate. We shot the entire movie in Japan. It was painful. To shoot in a public park they state: “no big deal”. They never say no. Shooting in the street. They never say no. But it is impossible. Shooting at night. Always limitations.
OM: Japanese crew. BS: When we started there was at 8 o’clock a big reunion. Everything was discussed in detail. We finished at night. Everything was fine. Two days later: “there are a few little details. We need a short little meeting”. It took until 9 o’clock pm. But. When we started we had a crew of fanatics. Only never change anything.
OM: The venerable W: how did you find him? BS: A few years back I had an important experience with my neighbour, and for the first time in my life I felt hate. I did not know what to do. I tried to understand. In Spinoza and Buddha hate is to be avoided at any cost. At 19 I visited India to visit the places related to Buddha. In Sri Lanka the Terabada Buddha tradition was passed as oral tradition for two centuries before it was written down. I cured my hate.
In 2015 I started to discover about the genocide in Myanmar. Buddhism is against hate. Then I found the venerable W., the Buddhist monk of hate. I had found my ultimate bad guy to end my trilogy.
We were two tourists, I with a young female with a camera. We spent a couple of weeks trying to find someone to introduce us.
When we met W. we told that Marine Le Pen is about to become President of France, sharing the same ideals with W. “You can ask anything. I’ll answer any question”.
By the time we had the movie in Cannes the big genocide was on.
I was born in the shadow of the history of pogroms. My mother refused to speak German having escaped from Hitler’s Germany. That is why I don’t speak my mother’s tongue. That’s why I don’t speak German.
OM: Projects? BS: I never talk about my projects.
Desert island film:
L’Aurore – Sunrise.
And a good satellite antenna powered with sun panels.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: BARBET SCHROEDER INTERVIEW WITH SANNA VIKMAN (YLE) / PRESENTING GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA, REPORTED BY VALTTERI MÖRTTINEN (APU) / INTERVIEWED BY HANNU BJÖRKBACKA FOR KESKIPOHJANMAA:
