From the Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue: "When I get a new part, I immediately get my hands on the screenplay and – I am at a loss for another word – infect my whole being with it. Days – yes, many weeks before filming I totally withdraw from public life – I would say – omphaloskeptically, focused only on the process of infecting my soul. And soon I feel with growing intensity and anxiety that the character grows in me, and I transform into him. It does not last long, and people know that – right before filming – I move around differently, even in the civilized world, I talk differently, I see differently, I behave totally different from usual, – the Conrad Veidt in me has slowly become another person, and I have to “represent” him, with my Ego that has transformed and unconsciously changed from within. Possession is the perfect word to describe this state. On the first day of filming I normally do the following: I wander around the sets by myself, I look at them carefully, I allow them to influence me, and I stroll around them until I totally own the space, even with my eyes closed – as if it were my apartment bedroom. When they turn on the lights for filming, I become blind and deaf to reality. I see and hear only that world of dreams, the world of fantasy, and that has to be the other reality. Often all this continues, and sometimes way after the lights have been shut off and the director has turned his shoulders to me, I continue to “act”, until someone, some colleague, wakes me up asking me if I’ve gone crazy..." Conrad Veidt, in Paul Ickes: Conrad Veidt. Berlin, 1927.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Albert Capellani: A Cinema of Grandeur II (intro by Mariann Lewinsky, Stéphanie Salmon, Richard Koszarski)
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| Albert Capellani: Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (FR 1914). Based on the historical novel by Alexandre Dumas (père) depicting the Great Terror after the French Revolution. |
Albert Capellani: un cinema di grandeur II
Capellani ritrovato
Catalogue: "His name was always familiar, yet it was only attached, shadowlike, to two films (Les Misérables, 1912, and Germinal, 1913). Il Cinema Ritrovato’s Albert Capellani retrospective, presented in two parts, in 2010 and 2011, is a major event: a great director and his work are re-discovered. In this year’s programme we are screening more than twenty titles, from all three stages in Capellani’s career: short films before 1910; the sublime masterworks from his years as artistic director of S.C.A.G.L., Germinal and Quatrevingt-treize, newly restored by the Cinématheque française; and the largely unknown films of his American period.""
"Rare copies of Camille (1915) and The Feast of Life (1916) were located in the collection of the Národní Filmový Archiv in Prague. We are able to show, at last, the complete L’Homme aux gants blancs (1908), in a newly restored version funded by the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. Germinal (1913) and Le Signalement (1912) are shown in the “Silent Colour” section, and several Capellani films are included in the section “A Hundred Years Ago: Seventy Films from 1911”.""
"To make the Capellani season last longer than the festival, we are bringing out a DVD, Albert Capellani - Un Cinéma de grandeur, featuring twelve films made from 1905 to 1911 and including many extras. The edition is a co-production of the Cineteca di Bologna and the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé.""
Capellani, Film Director of Two Centuries
"As a 20th century director Capellani works with stories rooted in the present of their times: he achieves a wonderful Effet de Réel with Paris street scenes (Les deux soeurs, L’Homme aux gants blancs). He weaves his characters and plots into continuous narratives consisting of photographic evidence of the sequence of events. He shows cinematographic images of great immediacy, which grab and hold the audience. This is the cinema of empathy, of feelings, the cinema of the now-past 20th century.""
"Capellani is a director of this 19th century. His films allow us to participate in the cultural life of the ‘800: they give us access to its imaginary worlds, its entertainments and its fantasies. There are féerie subjects, with special effects and apotheoses (La Légende de Polichinelle, 1907). There is the fascination with the ancient world and its decadence – veil dances, shimmering colours, goblets of hemlock (Amour d’esclave, 1907)– and the “local colour”, be it Cuba (Feast of Life, 1916), Elizabethan England (Marie Stuart, 1908) or Paris, recreated in Studios in the U.S.A (The Virtuous Model, 1919). There are realistic reconstruction of events that took place in 1796 (Le Courrier de Lyon, 1911), and monumental frescoes of war and social struggle. (Quatre-vingt-treize and Germinal).""
"I would like to thank all those who have participated in this communal enterprise of many people and institutions. Special thanks go to Blažena Urgošíková, Vladimír Opĕla e Karel Zima and all colleagues in the archives for their help in the preparation of the section. I am very grateful to Camille Blot-Wellens, Stéphanie Salmon, Richard Koszarski, David Mayer and Jay Weissberg for their text contributions to the catalogue. And to Sophie Seydoux, for everything." Mariann Lewinsky
Albert Capellani in France: 1905-1914
Catalogue: "Albert Capellani came from the theatre and began his cinema career with Pathé in 1905. His contribution – as a man of letters with a tremendous capacity for hard work – came at a time when the company’s studios were embarking on a new phase of their history. Between 1906 and 1908 the team was changing radically, with the departure of directors such as Lépine and Heuzé and new arrivals including Denola, Burguet, Gasnier and Leprince. In 1908, in the early days of the first cinema crisis when, crucially, production policies were undergoing drastic changes, he made his mark with L’Arlésienne and Charles Pathé then promoted him to artistic director of the Société Cinématographique des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres (S.C.A.G.L.).""
"Albert Capellani was working at that time with the cameraman René Guichard and, whether supervising or directing in the studio in Vincennes on Rue du Petit Parc, his work schedule was hectic. In the space of a year, from March 1910 to March 1911, he made no fewer than 25 films! His directorial talent, manifested in his narrative skill and the fluidity of his editing, his naturalistic style, his talent for suggesting a protagonist’s character and intention, earned him respect in the professional world. When he adapted works he had read as a student, he was crucial to make the cinema “a great art” – which was what Charles Pathé and his colleagues were striving for, not only in setting up S.C.A.G.L., but also in initiating a system of film rental, which enabled them to offer more films in a wider variety.""
"Capellani’s influence grew throughout the 1910s, and we can easily imagine, from the testimony of Henri Étiévant, the impression he made on his team: “He was a large fellow, with red hair and a strong personality; very intelligent, a real gourmet, and a film maker who mastered his work with consummate skill.” Stéphanie Salmon.
Albert Capellani in America: 1915-1922
"On April 24, 1915, Moving Picture World announced that the World Film Corporation had acquired the services of Albert Capellani, hailed as “the man who made Les Misérables”, a film released in America two years earlier but still regarded as a milestone. “Much of the general excellence of pictures may be directly traced to Mr. Capellani and his advanced ideas regarding the possibilities of the photoplay,” the World reported, which included being “one of the first to utilize the services of famous dramatic artists” in motion pictures. World, controlled by the Shubert theatrical organization, put Capellani to work on a series of theatrical adaptations, often with Parisian settings, shot at their Peerless Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. After completing Camille, starring Alice Brady, Capellani joined Maurice Tourneur and Emile Chautard at Paragon, a new studio which Jules Brulatour had constructed just down the street from the Peerless. Here he made La Vie de Bohème, again with Alice Brady, and began an association with Clara Kimball Young that would continue after Young left to establish her own production company. Those films, including The Common Law and The Foolish Virgin, were also made in Fort Lee, this time at Alice Guy Blaché’s disused Solax studio.""
"Capellani surrounded himself with many other French émigrés, including cameramen Lucien Andriot, Lucien Tainguy and Jacques Monteran, and designers Henri Menessier and Ben Carré (his brother, Paul Capellani, also appeared in many of the films). By the autumn of 1917 Capellani was working for Metro at their New York studio, where his films included three starring Alla Nazimova, notably The Red Lantern (shot in California when the 1918 influenza epidemic temporarily closed most of the studios in the East). Returning to New Jersey the following year he established Albert Capellani Productions at the old Solax studio, where he worked as both director and producer. Capellani supervised several George Fitzmaurice features while personally directing such films as Oh, Boy, an ambitious adaptation of a popular Jerome Kern musical, and The Virtuous Model, one of his most atmospheric “Parisian” reconstructions. On December 20, 1919, while Capellani was directing The Fortune Teller, a fire at the studio destroyed the Solax laboratory, which had only recently been enlarged and improved by the Blachés. Capellani subsequently joined William Randolph Hearst’s new production company, Cosmopolitan, for whom he made his last four American films. He returned to France after directing Marion Davies in an adaptation of Marie Corelli’s fantastic melodrama, The Young Diana (1922)." Richard Koszarski.
COFFRET ALBERT CAPELLANI
"The Albert Capellani DVD box set edited by Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and La Cinémathèque française is one of two volumes that the foundation has dedicated to the great French filmmaker. The box set is divided in two parts. One part deals with early films (1906), prints of which are conserved by Pathé and were restored by the foundation. La Cinémathèque française chose three films of which it has the negatives and offers them here with their original colors. One of the titles included, Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, has been restored for the first time. The booklet included in the box set contains new articles by Richard Abel, Bernard Basset-Capellani, Camille Blot-Wellens, Pierre Rissient and Stéphanie Salmon.""
Four transpositions of French literature. L’Assommoir, 1908 / Germinal, 1913 / Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, 1914 / Quatre-vingt-treize, 1921
The beginning of a career: a selection of seven films. Drame Passionnel, 1906 / Mortelle idylle, 1906 / Pauvre mère , 1906 / La Fille du sonneur, 1906 / La Femme du lutteur, 1906 / L’Âge du coeur, 1906 / Aladin ou la lampe merveilleuse, 1906
Alice Guy: Tribute to a Movie Pioneer (intro by Kim Tomadjoglou)
Alice Guy: Omaggio a una pioniera del cinema
Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna), 2011.
Section, programmes and notes curated by Kim Tomadjoglou.
Catalogue: "A truly transnational figure, pioneer Alice Guy was at the forefront of international, technological, industrial, and cultural changes that defined the cinema as a new popular form of mass-media entertainment in the twentieth-century. Her long impressive career comprises the novelty period through to the single-reel film and the nickelodeon era – to the multi-reel feature and photoplay of the mid to late teens. Not only was Guy the first woman to direct films, she also wrote, produced, supervised, and distributed films. To this day, she is the only woman to have owned and operated her own studio plant, Solax, first located in Flushing, N.Y., and then in Fort Lee, New Jersey (1910 to 1914).""
"In 1894 when Léon Gaumont hired a young Alice Guy to work as his secretary at a still-photography company, he likely never imagined (nor she) that Guy would be at his side when he decided to purchase that business and establish a firm of his own. Guy was indispensable to the success of Gaumont, fulfilling a variety of roles from personal secretary, to managing the business, to directing and writing scenarios, to overseeing and directing performers for Gaumont’s chronophone synchronized sound system (1902-1906). For eleven years, as head of production she helped create a Gaumont “house style” by training a number of her male colleagues, including the renowned director, Louis Feuillade. A remarkable achievement for a woman of her time! Perhaps Guy’s crowning French glory was having directed the biblical passion play, La Vie du Christ (Gaumont, 1906), one of the earliest films of increased length and high production values that harnessed a new direction in the industry in which cinema found its vocation as an art form of serious commercial value, marketability, and didacticism.""
"If Guy’s life was not already exciting enough, then leaving France in 1907 to immigrate to the United States was simply the next chapter of her already adventurous story. From 1910 to 1914, the newly married Alice Guy Blaché managed her own production company Solax, in which she was part-owner with her new husband Herbert. Building on her professional experience in France, Guy managed the Solax studio during the cinema’s international period of transition which saw cinematic attractions, exhibitionism and performance acts of the European café-chantant, American dime theaters, nickelodeons, and vaudeville stage being gradually integrated with narrative modes of storytelling, as the cinema drew on a range of intermedial nineteenth-century artistic forms, among them literary novels, theatrical plays, painting, and pantomime. Following the French model, Guy employed a steady cast of players, artisans and technicians and trained a diversified team of metteur-en-scene to direct a wide range of genres, from westerns to comedy, from drama to melodrama – to mystery and detective stories. Guy’s special touch of course, was her unique ability to combine comedic situations and to present often controversial and conservative points of view regarding traditional gender roles and sexuality as expressed in the form of character cross-dressing and role reversal.""
"In August of 1913, with the establishment of Blaché Features, a new company formed by Herbert Blaché with Alice Guy Blaché listed as “vice president,” Solax was gradually absorbed into the new company and ceased production one year later. While Solax’s demise was likely due to ongoing distribution problem resulting from the Motion Picture Patent Company Trust and its dominance over the U.S. market through vertical and horizontal integration, distribution problems continued to plague the Blaché’s despite Herbert’s effort to form his own distribution branch. The increased cost and investment required of feature filmmaking had significantly shifted the terms of international film production. Faced with the economic reality of survival, both Blaché’s found themselves becoming independent directors. From 1914 to 1919, Guy directed a number of features for other companies, most notably, The Lure (1914), a lost film based on the theatrical play of the same name and dealing with the controversial but then-intriguing topic of white slavery. While the move to independent direction offered Guy an opportunity to remain attached to the film industry she helped to create, it also denied her the freedom of expression and control she once reveled in as a studio head. Finally, the end of her marriage to Herbert and the dissolution of their long-term partnership seemed to further seal the fate of Guy’s unfortunate departure from the cinema. Tarnished Reputations of a Soul Adrift (Perret Pictures, 1920), written by fellow French national Léonce Perret was her last film." Kim Tomadjoglou.
Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna), 2011.
Section, programmes and notes curated by Kim Tomadjoglou.
Catalogue: "A truly transnational figure, pioneer Alice Guy was at the forefront of international, technological, industrial, and cultural changes that defined the cinema as a new popular form of mass-media entertainment in the twentieth-century. Her long impressive career comprises the novelty period through to the single-reel film and the nickelodeon era – to the multi-reel feature and photoplay of the mid to late teens. Not only was Guy the first woman to direct films, she also wrote, produced, supervised, and distributed films. To this day, she is the only woman to have owned and operated her own studio plant, Solax, first located in Flushing, N.Y., and then in Fort Lee, New Jersey (1910 to 1914).""
"In 1894 when Léon Gaumont hired a young Alice Guy to work as his secretary at a still-photography company, he likely never imagined (nor she) that Guy would be at his side when he decided to purchase that business and establish a firm of his own. Guy was indispensable to the success of Gaumont, fulfilling a variety of roles from personal secretary, to managing the business, to directing and writing scenarios, to overseeing and directing performers for Gaumont’s chronophone synchronized sound system (1902-1906). For eleven years, as head of production she helped create a Gaumont “house style” by training a number of her male colleagues, including the renowned director, Louis Feuillade. A remarkable achievement for a woman of her time! Perhaps Guy’s crowning French glory was having directed the biblical passion play, La Vie du Christ (Gaumont, 1906), one of the earliest films of increased length and high production values that harnessed a new direction in the industry in which cinema found its vocation as an art form of serious commercial value, marketability, and didacticism.""
"If Guy’s life was not already exciting enough, then leaving France in 1907 to immigrate to the United States was simply the next chapter of her already adventurous story. From 1910 to 1914, the newly married Alice Guy Blaché managed her own production company Solax, in which she was part-owner with her new husband Herbert. Building on her professional experience in France, Guy managed the Solax studio during the cinema’s international period of transition which saw cinematic attractions, exhibitionism and performance acts of the European café-chantant, American dime theaters, nickelodeons, and vaudeville stage being gradually integrated with narrative modes of storytelling, as the cinema drew on a range of intermedial nineteenth-century artistic forms, among them literary novels, theatrical plays, painting, and pantomime. Following the French model, Guy employed a steady cast of players, artisans and technicians and trained a diversified team of metteur-en-scene to direct a wide range of genres, from westerns to comedy, from drama to melodrama – to mystery and detective stories. Guy’s special touch of course, was her unique ability to combine comedic situations and to present often controversial and conservative points of view regarding traditional gender roles and sexuality as expressed in the form of character cross-dressing and role reversal.""
"In August of 1913, with the establishment of Blaché Features, a new company formed by Herbert Blaché with Alice Guy Blaché listed as “vice president,” Solax was gradually absorbed into the new company and ceased production one year later. While Solax’s demise was likely due to ongoing distribution problem resulting from the Motion Picture Patent Company Trust and its dominance over the U.S. market through vertical and horizontal integration, distribution problems continued to plague the Blaché’s despite Herbert’s effort to form his own distribution branch. The increased cost and investment required of feature filmmaking had significantly shifted the terms of international film production. Faced with the economic reality of survival, both Blaché’s found themselves becoming independent directors. From 1914 to 1919, Guy directed a number of features for other companies, most notably, The Lure (1914), a lost film based on the theatrical play of the same name and dealing with the controversial but then-intriguing topic of white slavery. While the move to independent direction offered Guy an opportunity to remain attached to the film industry she helped to create, it also denied her the freedom of expression and control she once reveled in as a studio head. Finally, the end of her marriage to Herbert and the dissolution of their long-term partnership seemed to further seal the fate of Guy’s unfortunate departure from the cinema. Tarnished Reputations of a Soul Adrift (Perret Pictures, 1920), written by fellow French national Léonce Perret was her last film." Kim Tomadjoglou.
Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato, 25 June - 2 July, 2011
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, 25 June 2011.
It feels bizarre again to be on my way to Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato on Midsummer Holiday, but what can one do with programming as great as this:
PIAZZA MAGGIORE - the latest big restorations such as The Thief of Bagdad and America, America.
HOWARD HAWKS - his complete surviving silent oeuvre, selected 1930s works, and the restored Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
CONRAD VEIDT from Caligari to Casablanca
AT THE HEART OF THE 20TH CENTURY: SOCIALISM IN THE CINEMA
ALICE GUY: A Tribute to a Pioneer of the Cinema
BORIS BARNET: Poetic Visions of Everyday Life
THE CHAPLIN PROJECT: A. Edward Sutherland
RECOVERED AND RESTORED
SEARCHING FOR THE COLOR OF THE FILM
100 YEARS AGO: THE FILMS OF 1911
HOMAGE TO MAURICE TOURNEUR
ERIC ROHMER, THE DOCUMENTARIST
ALBERTO CAPELLANI: A Cinema of Grandeur
LUIGI ZAMPA: Civilian Laughter
NON SOLO DIVE: WEBER, NELSON, MUSIDORA
It feels bizarre again to be on my way to Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato on Midsummer Holiday, but what can one do with programming as great as this:
PIAZZA MAGGIORE - the latest big restorations such as The Thief of Bagdad and America, America.
HOWARD HAWKS - his complete surviving silent oeuvre, selected 1930s works, and the restored Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
CONRAD VEIDT from Caligari to Casablanca
AT THE HEART OF THE 20TH CENTURY: SOCIALISM IN THE CINEMA
ALICE GUY: A Tribute to a Pioneer of the Cinema
BORIS BARNET: Poetic Visions of Everyday Life
THE CHAPLIN PROJECT: A. Edward Sutherland
RECOVERED AND RESTORED
SEARCHING FOR THE COLOR OF THE FILM
100 YEARS AGO: THE FILMS OF 1911
HOMAGE TO MAURICE TOURNEUR
ERIC ROHMER, THE DOCUMENTARIST
ALBERTO CAPELLANI: A Cinema of Grandeur
LUIGI ZAMPA: Civilian Laughter
NON SOLO DIVE: WEBER, NELSON, MUSIDORA
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Apichatpong Weerasethakul morning discussion hosted by Peter von Bagh (2011 Sodankylä)
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| Apitchatpong Weerasethakul in the morning discussion hosted by Peter von Bagh. The School (Kitisenrannan koulu), Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, 19 June 2011. Photo: Saku Soukka. From: The Midnight Sun Film Festival website. |
The School (Kitisenrannan koulu), Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, 19 June 2011.
Q: THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW? A Thai film I saw with my parents with a helicopter flying over the sea over the bank to the water. The birds were beautiful. Cinema was a floating experience, letting yourself go. We were living in a small town. My parents were doctors, pioneers from Bangkok. They picked this area, dry, poor. Everything was very rudimentary. The other kids were also doctors' kids. The background of sickness and death was natural for us.
Q: THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW? A Thai film I saw with my parents with a helicopter flying over the sea over the bank to the water. The birds were beautiful. Cinema was a floating experience, letting yourself go. We were living in a small town. My parents were doctors, pioneers from Bangkok. They picked this area, dry, poor. Everything was very rudimentary. The other kids were also doctors' kids. The background of sickness and death was natural for us.
Q: IN SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY YOU GO BACK TO THE CHILDHOOD. I was quite young then when we lived there, and I got a lot of help from my mom to reconstruct the circumstances.
Q: YOUR MOTHER, YOUR FATHER. My dad died in 2003, my mom is still alive. I was closer to my mom, who loves movies, and I got to shoot in 8 mm. My father was mostly away, always on call. The circumstances in my childhood were primitive. There was no gas, we used fire. There was no water closet. I grew up with that, but now it's all gone. There is now a big modern doctors' dormitory. My father was also a politician, and that's how I learned not to trust politicians. But my father came to his senses.
Q: DID YOU READ MUCH? Kid stuff: ghost stories, mystery books, UFO's, ancient Egypt. I had no access to serious literature.
Q: HOW ABOUT THE MOVIES? I saw a lot, and used our 8 mm camera. There was a stand-alone cinema with more variety than today. There were Indian films, Hongkong films, Thai films, and American film. This situation lasted until the 1980s. Then it changed into more American domination. There were the US science fiction films. Steven Spielberg I totally embraced, the classical storytelling, the camerawork, the dolly shots, the music. For a kid, Spielberg is easy to love.
Q: THAI CINEMA? There was also the comedy, and stars from Hongkong kung fu movies like Andy Lau. In the 1980s the Hongkong industry collapsed, and we only saw Hollywood films. On VHS we saw horror films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Q: YOUR MOTHER, YOUR FATHER. My dad died in 2003, my mom is still alive. I was closer to my mom, who loves movies, and I got to shoot in 8 mm. My father was mostly away, always on call. The circumstances in my childhood were primitive. There was no gas, we used fire. There was no water closet. I grew up with that, but now it's all gone. There is now a big modern doctors' dormitory. My father was also a politician, and that's how I learned not to trust politicians. But my father came to his senses.
Q: DID YOU READ MUCH? Kid stuff: ghost stories, mystery books, UFO's, ancient Egypt. I had no access to serious literature.
Q: HOW ABOUT THE MOVIES? I saw a lot, and used our 8 mm camera. There was a stand-alone cinema with more variety than today. There were Indian films, Hongkong films, Thai films, and American film. This situation lasted until the 1980s. Then it changed into more American domination. There were the US science fiction films. Steven Spielberg I totally embraced, the classical storytelling, the camerawork, the dolly shots, the music. For a kid, Spielberg is easy to love.
Q: THAI CINEMA? There was also the comedy, and stars from Hongkong kung fu movies like Andy Lau. In the 1980s the Hongkong industry collapsed, and we only saw Hollywood films. On VHS we saw horror films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Q: YOUR FAVOURITE HOLLYWOOD STARS? Buster Keaton I liked more than Charles Chaplin.
Q: YOU ARE A CINEPHILE WITH A KNOWLEDGE OF WORLD CINEMA. I watch a lot but I don't remember names. On VHS I saw Fellini, Pasolini - only the famous ones. I read a lot about movies, and based on that I created my own movies in my imagination.
Q: IMAGINING MOVIES MAY BE AS IMPORTANT AS HAVING ACTUALLY SEEN THEM. I'm not sure. There is instant gratification in seeing films. There was no film festival culture in Thailand. In 1997 we organized our first film festival in Thailand.
Q: WHAT ABOUT SCHOOL? I was miserable, very scared, wearing a uniform. At lunch we always had to finish our food although some things I hated. I felt uncomfortable in a crowd. At high school I skipped classes and ignored school. At the university I studied architecture, and that's when I started to like education. My parents were very liberal and adventurous. My sister went into ceramics and my brother into computer business. I studied architecture for five years.
Q: HOW DID YOU SLIP INTO FILM-MAKING? Because of Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark, how they open the box and people melt. I was interested in special effects. The film department had just opened. The Thai film business was in such a state that no credit cards were issued if you worked in the film business. I studied visual arts in Chicago with a focus on film, on experimental film. The best thing was that they showed the films on film. That was the last school that let film be cut on film, cut like Aki on a Steenbeck. Then they merged with video. Q: FATALLY. I think so. The relationship of film and time is essential, to be able to see the frame, the restoration of motion. From the film frames I can tell how the movement will be.
Q: YOUR U.S. EXPERIMENTAL FAVOURITES? Bruce Baillie (West Coast, Canyon Cinema). He is really free to express himself, a wizard in controlling the light. Of course Stan Brakhage, and Maya Deren.
Q: IT IS RELATIVELY RARE TODAY THAT THE INFLUENCE COMES FROM THEM. The Chicago Film Center has a film festival all year round. There were always retrospectives and guests such as Edward Yang and Abbas Kiarostami.
Q: YOUR SHORT FILMS. I made little short films getting to know the medium, from five to 20 minutes, in 16 mm in black and white. I love black and white. Q: EVERYTHING ON FILM? In Thailand it's not practical. I shot on video, also The Mysterious Object at Noon on a video camera. I shot on Hi-8, DV, HDV. Digital progresses fast. Super 16 (Uncle Boonmee) is also still valid. Q: YOUR NEXT ONE WILL BE A FILM CALLED SODANKYLÄ. I find the red curtains of Cinema Lapinsuu fascinating.
Q: THE REAL BEGINNING OF YOUR FILM-MAKING CAREER. The Mysterious Object at Noon was structured in segments because of the funding. We were moving into another village, and it took four years to complete. With Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady it was so shaky to get a funding.
Q: THE THEME OF TIME. Time - that's how our mind works. Godard said that a film is 24 lies / truths per second. For me all is a lie. Even Discovery Channel, and National Geography is fake.
Q: JEAN ROUCH IN THE SAME CHAIR WHERE YOU NOW SIT SAID THAT CINEMA IS A LIE MORE TRUTHFUL THAN TRUTH. Gabriel García Marquez says that a memory may be so vivid that it seems true, yet it may not be true. Q: HIS MAGIC REALISM. It's like a film script, so visual, with close-ups. Q: HAVE YOU EVER FILMED A NOVEL? Only books, such as Uncle Boonmee. Q: BUT IT WAS JUST THE INSPIRATION. Yes, it is not an adaptation. The book is very open. We read the same book, have a different image.
Q: IS THERE A GOOD AUDIENCE IN YOUR COUNTRY? Blissfully Yours was a flop, the record lowest box office ever. I'm proud of that. Because of Cannes we sold dvd rights. In Bangkok it was screened on 20-30 screens, Tropical Malady on 3 screens, and Boonmee on one screen only with a full house all the time. Thailand is as big as Texas. There was one print travelling. We don't have arthouse cinema. "Why don't you make a more bankable film" they ask. The Thai way is not so aggressive.
Q: TROPICAL MALADY WAS A BREAKTHROUGH INTERNATIONALLY. IT TOOK MANY YEARS TO MAKE AND HAD A TWO-PART STRUCTURE. Darkness is one of the characters. I needed a light, bright part. A lot of my memory, love, and fantasy is there. In the jungle you don't see but you are scared. Q: IN FINLAND THERE WAS A SELF-EVIDENT SENSE OF NATURE IN THE CINEMA UNTIL THE 1950S BUT NO LONGER. HOW ABOUT THAILAND, HOW DO THE YOUNG EXPERIENCE NATURE. Not much in Bangkok today. Myself, I'm in the middle. I talk about memory, not the contemporary experience. Childhood is important, like in the work of Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time). You remember more and more about time past.
Q: WHAT ABOUT YOUR MADELEINE, YOUR PAST-PASTRY, YOUR ROSEBUD? There is no such object, but there is the feeling of the hospital. I woke up early, at four o'clock, to play with the construction stones, watching the shooting stars, facing the life and the death at the hospital. For a child it has no philosophical angle, it is all fun. The steam of the laundry emerging from the ground.
Q: THE TWO PART STRUCTURE. The contrast that exists in my environment - the peaceful and the violent - the chaotic - in a country that mixes everything. There is a big demonstration to fight for democracy - and the shaman we still have who throws blood at the prime minister's house.
Q: THE RICHNESS OF THE CONTRAST OF THE ARCHAIC AND THE MODERN. I'm so sick of the country, but it's a blissful sickness. There may be no tattoo of a religious figure on your body. There may be no image of an alcoholic beverage in a movie - it will be blurred with mosaic.
Q: THE LOCAL UNDERTONES IN YOUR FILMS. There are in the language certain things you cannot translate, such as jokes about monks. People of a certain age when they see Uncle Boonmee laugh at the dry jokes. The dialogue is deliberately funny, and some are sad since the things referred to are gone.
[EXCERPT: TROPICAL MALADY: the Buddhist trek in the caves]
After one hour I had to leave for the shuttle bus to the Rovaniemi airport. I heard later from Peter that Joe's desert island film was: The Unchanging Sea (US 1910, D. W. Griffith).
Q: WHAT ABOUT SCHOOL? I was miserable, very scared, wearing a uniform. At lunch we always had to finish our food although some things I hated. I felt uncomfortable in a crowd. At high school I skipped classes and ignored school. At the university I studied architecture, and that's when I started to like education. My parents were very liberal and adventurous. My sister went into ceramics and my brother into computer business. I studied architecture for five years.
Q: HOW DID YOU SLIP INTO FILM-MAKING? Because of Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark, how they open the box and people melt. I was interested in special effects. The film department had just opened. The Thai film business was in such a state that no credit cards were issued if you worked in the film business. I studied visual arts in Chicago with a focus on film, on experimental film. The best thing was that they showed the films on film. That was the last school that let film be cut on film, cut like Aki on a Steenbeck. Then they merged with video. Q: FATALLY. I think so. The relationship of film and time is essential, to be able to see the frame, the restoration of motion. From the film frames I can tell how the movement will be.
Q: YOUR U.S. EXPERIMENTAL FAVOURITES? Bruce Baillie (West Coast, Canyon Cinema). He is really free to express himself, a wizard in controlling the light. Of course Stan Brakhage, and Maya Deren.
Q: IT IS RELATIVELY RARE TODAY THAT THE INFLUENCE COMES FROM THEM. The Chicago Film Center has a film festival all year round. There were always retrospectives and guests such as Edward Yang and Abbas Kiarostami.
Q: YOUR SHORT FILMS. I made little short films getting to know the medium, from five to 20 minutes, in 16 mm in black and white. I love black and white. Q: EVERYTHING ON FILM? In Thailand it's not practical. I shot on video, also The Mysterious Object at Noon on a video camera. I shot on Hi-8, DV, HDV. Digital progresses fast. Super 16 (Uncle Boonmee) is also still valid. Q: YOUR NEXT ONE WILL BE A FILM CALLED SODANKYLÄ. I find the red curtains of Cinema Lapinsuu fascinating.
Q: THE REAL BEGINNING OF YOUR FILM-MAKING CAREER. The Mysterious Object at Noon was structured in segments because of the funding. We were moving into another village, and it took four years to complete. With Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady it was so shaky to get a funding.
Q: THE THEME OF TIME. Time - that's how our mind works. Godard said that a film is 24 lies / truths per second. For me all is a lie. Even Discovery Channel, and National Geography is fake.
Q: JEAN ROUCH IN THE SAME CHAIR WHERE YOU NOW SIT SAID THAT CINEMA IS A LIE MORE TRUTHFUL THAN TRUTH. Gabriel García Marquez says that a memory may be so vivid that it seems true, yet it may not be true. Q: HIS MAGIC REALISM. It's like a film script, so visual, with close-ups. Q: HAVE YOU EVER FILMED A NOVEL? Only books, such as Uncle Boonmee. Q: BUT IT WAS JUST THE INSPIRATION. Yes, it is not an adaptation. The book is very open. We read the same book, have a different image.
Q: IS THERE A GOOD AUDIENCE IN YOUR COUNTRY? Blissfully Yours was a flop, the record lowest box office ever. I'm proud of that. Because of Cannes we sold dvd rights. In Bangkok it was screened on 20-30 screens, Tropical Malady on 3 screens, and Boonmee on one screen only with a full house all the time. Thailand is as big as Texas. There was one print travelling. We don't have arthouse cinema. "Why don't you make a more bankable film" they ask. The Thai way is not so aggressive.
Q: TROPICAL MALADY WAS A BREAKTHROUGH INTERNATIONALLY. IT TOOK MANY YEARS TO MAKE AND HAD A TWO-PART STRUCTURE. Darkness is one of the characters. I needed a light, bright part. A lot of my memory, love, and fantasy is there. In the jungle you don't see but you are scared. Q: IN FINLAND THERE WAS A SELF-EVIDENT SENSE OF NATURE IN THE CINEMA UNTIL THE 1950S BUT NO LONGER. HOW ABOUT THAILAND, HOW DO THE YOUNG EXPERIENCE NATURE. Not much in Bangkok today. Myself, I'm in the middle. I talk about memory, not the contemporary experience. Childhood is important, like in the work of Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time). You remember more and more about time past.
Q: WHAT ABOUT YOUR MADELEINE, YOUR PAST-PASTRY, YOUR ROSEBUD? There is no such object, but there is the feeling of the hospital. I woke up early, at four o'clock, to play with the construction stones, watching the shooting stars, facing the life and the death at the hospital. For a child it has no philosophical angle, it is all fun. The steam of the laundry emerging from the ground.
Q: THE TWO PART STRUCTURE. The contrast that exists in my environment - the peaceful and the violent - the chaotic - in a country that mixes everything. There is a big demonstration to fight for democracy - and the shaman we still have who throws blood at the prime minister's house.
Q: THE RICHNESS OF THE CONTRAST OF THE ARCHAIC AND THE MODERN. I'm so sick of the country, but it's a blissful sickness. There may be no tattoo of a religious figure on your body. There may be no image of an alcoholic beverage in a movie - it will be blurred with mosaic.
Q: THE LOCAL UNDERTONES IN YOUR FILMS. There are in the language certain things you cannot translate, such as jokes about monks. People of a certain age when they see Uncle Boonmee laugh at the dry jokes. The dialogue is deliberately funny, and some are sad since the things referred to are gone.
[EXCERPT: TROPICAL MALADY: the Buddhist trek in the caves]
After one hour I had to leave for the shuttle bus to the Rovaniemi airport. I heard later from Peter that Joe's desert island film was: The Unchanging Sea (US 1910, D. W. Griffith).
Saturday, June 18, 2011
A Letter to Elia
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| Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones: A Letter to Elia (US 2010). |
US © 2010 Sikelia Productions. EX: Stone Douglass, Taylor Materne. P: Martin Scorsese, Emma Tillinger Koskoff. D+SC: Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones. DP: Mark Raker. S: Ron Bokor, Bill Orrico. ED: Rachel Reichman. A documentary on Elia Kazan. 60 min.
A 2K DCP from Echo Bridge Entertainment screened at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 18 June 2011.
An exceptionally passionate and personal portrait of a film artist by a fellow artist. An essential study of Elia Kazan, and an essential contribution to Martin Scorsese's oeuvre.
Martin Scorsese tracks the whole career of Elia Kazan, and reveals his experience of it as a part of his own Bildungsroman ever since he saw On the Waterfront for the first time. "That's where I lived", literally and symbolically: "the sense you're nobody - loved and hated at the same time". "I was living through that movie". In East of Eden "he knew me", "maybe better than I knew myself". Elia Kazan acquired for Scorsese "the role of a father - a different father - but a father". But although Scorsese got to know Kazan from 1964 to the end of the life of the maestro, he never revealed him about his having been a father figure. The key film for both is America, America.
A wonderful visual quality in the DCP. Rarely do clips look this good in a compilation.
Film concert Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (2011 Silva Sound Creators, Midnight Sun Film Festival
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| Phil Jutzi: Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (DE 1929). Gerhard Bienert (Schlafbursche), Vera Sacharowa (Strassenmädchen Friede), Alexandra Schmitt (Mutter Krause), Fee Wachsmuth (Kind), Ilse Trautschold (Tochter Erna Krause) (v.l.n.r.). Quelle: Murnau-Stiftung, SDK |
The SFI print with Swedish subtitles screened with electronic subtitles in Finnish and English viewed at the Tent (Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival), 18 June 2011. Presented by Peter von Bagh.
Silva Sound Creators = ex-Prima Vista = Günter Buchwald (violin, piano), Frank Bockius (perc), Romano Todesco (double bass).
I commented on the movie last year after our screening in Cinema Orion (Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück). Now there was a chance to experience it with the music performance that was premiered last year in Pordenone. The score is not based on Paul Dessau's original but is newly composed by Günter Buchwald with quotes from Hanns Eisler ("Die Einheitsfront"), "Ich hab das Fräulein Helen baden sehen" (Raymond Fred, Fritz Grünbaum), and "Die Internationale". Both choirs of Sodankylä joined forces to a sung performance of it, and the audience joined them.
Le Havre
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| Aki Kaurismäki: Le Havre (FI/FR/DE 2011) with André Wilms (Marcel Marx) and Blondin Miquel (Idrissa). |
FR/DE © 2011 Sputnik / Pyramide Productions / Pandora Film / ARTE France Cinéma. Dépôt légal: 2010.
P+D+SC: Aki Kaurismäki. Excerpt from "Kinder auf der Landstrasse" in Betrachtung (1913) by Franz Kafka.
DP: Timo Salminen - 35 mm (Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219) - camera: Arriflex II BL - editing table: Steenbeck 35 mm - laboratoire: Éclair - 1,85:1. PD: Wouter Zoon. Cost: Frédéric Cambier. Makeup: Valerie Théry-Hamel. S: Tero Malmberg. ED: Timo Linnasalo. Loc: Le Havre (Région Haute-Normandie).
C: André Wilms (Marcel Marx), Kati Outinen (Arletty Marx), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Monet), Blondin Miquel (Idrissa), Elina Salo (Claire), Evelyne Didi (Yvette), Quoc Dung Nguyen (Chang), François Monnié (grocer), Roberto Piazza (Little Bob), Pierre Étaix (Doctor Becker), Jean-Pierre Léaud (denouncer), Ilkka Koivula (the Italian).
103 min.
Version originale française.
Visa d'exploitation n:o 124875.
A 35 mm Sputnik print with Finnish subtitles by Irmeli Debarle, and e-subtitles in English by Mikko Lyytikäinen.
Viewed at the Big Top in Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 18 June 2011.
Music excerpts: Einojuhani Rautavaara: Apotheosis. - "Matelot" perf. The Renegades, "Musettina" perf. Erkki Friman, "Bolero" perf. Antero Jakoila, "Pour un seul amour" perf. Damia, "Chansons gitanes" perf. Damia, "Jambaar" perf. Hasse Walli & Asamaan, "La Nostalgique" perf. Alain Chapelain, "Chanson du pavé" perf. Alain Chapelain, "Statesboro Blues" perf. Blind Willie McTell, "Sheila 'N Willy" perf. Little Bob, "Maailmanpyörä" perf. Aaro Kurkela, "Cuesta abajo" perf. Carlos Gardel, "Libero" perf. Little Bob. - J.S. Bach: Petit prélude et fugue en mi mineur BVW 555.
In the presence of Aki Kaurismäki hosted by Peter von Bagh.
A turning-point in Aki Kaurismäki's odyssey. Le Havre differs from his other films in the same way as The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions) differ from Alfred Hitchcock's other films. There is a volte-face in the psychological fundament of the story. The suspense is no longer about what will happen to the protagonist but about how he will succeed in helping others.
Marcel's wife Arletty lands into a hospital with a terminal case of cancer. Marcel tries to help the ten-year-old African exile boy Idrissa who is alone in Le Havre and wanted by the police.
Aki is in full form with his familiar strengths. The laconic wit of the visual storytelling. The deadpan performances with a sense of nuance. The firm control of the framing and the mise-en-scène. The bold sense of colour. There is no newly written music score but memorable selections of pre-existing tracks. The movie is spiced with references to film history. There is a solid flow in the movie with no empty moments.
The film is in French so I'm not able to judge if the dialogue has the same anti-realistic, droll, stilted, and parodical quality as Aki's Finnish films.
Aki has always been a storyteller with a fairy-tale aspect, and in Le Havre this aspect has grown more prominent. This is not a dark fairy-tale like The Match Factory Girl, that somber antithesis of H.C. Andersen, Anni Swan and the Angélique stories. Le Havre brings to mind The Kid by Charles Chaplin, the films of René Clair, Frank Capra, and Vittorio de Sica, and the 1950s Giulietta films of Federico Fellini (La strada, Le notti di Cabiria). There is a similar sense of caricature, stylization, and archetype.
Aki has not given up his dark fatalism, but the wish-fulfillment ending is a transcendent way of expressing it. We are living like there's no tomorrow but we'll never give up fighting for a tomorrow.
The protagonist Marcel is a new kind of guy in Aki's oeuvre. He is neither naive nor cynical. Outwardly he is a loser but inwardly a winner, salt of the earth. His sense of humour is of a more profound quality than anything in Aki's films so far.
Le Havre is a poet's vision about being a refugee, an outcast, a stranger, an outlaw in our world today. We have built a world in which too many of us are unwanted guests. (Including the majority of the original species... )
There was something wrong in the projection: either the print had low contrast or the projector lamp was too bright. People who had seen Le Havre before confirmed that the cinematography looks great in proper projection circumstances.
I look forward to Aki's next film more than ever.
P.S. 26 July 2011. There is a quick Melville hommage in the opening vignette about the Italian mafioso who meets the killers. - The container is on its way from Libreville (Gabon) to London. - The most memorable scene: the silent looks of the refugees in the container. - The final image of the cherry blossoms is an hommage is to Ozu.
P.S. 7 September 2011 (the opening reception at Maxim and Andorra). At Maxim, a 2K DCP was screened (I sampled just the beginning). Having seen Le Havre five times before I still haven't seen a normal 35 mm screening.
Runoraati [Poem Jury] - poems to accompany short films (2011 Midnight Sun Film Festival, hosted by Minna Joenniemi)
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| Heikki Aho & Björn Soldan: Suomi kutsuu / Finland Calling (FI 1932). |
The Little Tent, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 18 June 2011, hosted by Minna Joenniemi, poems recited live by the actors Anna Paavilainen and Samuli Niittymäki (both from Zaida Bergroth's Hyvä poika). The Runoraati concept has been inspired by Levyraati (the Juke Box Jury in Finland).
New poems by contemporary Finnish poets have been written to Finnish silent films that were screened from a dvd.
Kauneuskilpailu 1933 [Beauty Contest 1933] - poem by Sinikka Vuola read by AP.
Pojun ja Velin kevätpuuhia [Poju and Veli's Spring Games, 1935] - poem by Kasperi Laine read by SN.
Suomi kutsuu [Finland Calling, 1932] - poem by Saila Susiluoto read by AP.
Kesämatkailua Suomessa [Summer Travel in Finland, 1933] - poem by Paula Vesala sung by AP.
Helsingin marathon [Helsinki Marathon, 1933] - poem by Matti Johannes Koivu read by SN.
Wonderful new poems well performed.
New poems by contemporary Finnish poets have been written to Finnish silent films that were screened from a dvd.
Kauneuskilpailu 1933 [Beauty Contest 1933] - poem by Sinikka Vuola read by AP.
Pojun ja Velin kevätpuuhia [Poju and Veli's Spring Games, 1935] - poem by Kasperi Laine read by SN.
Suomi kutsuu [Finland Calling, 1932] - poem by Saila Susiluoto read by AP.
Kesämatkailua Suomessa [Summer Travel in Finland, 1933] - poem by Paula Vesala sung by AP.
Helsingin marathon [Helsinki Marathon, 1933] - poem by Matti Johannes Koivu read by SN.
Wonderful new poems well performed.
A panel of Finnish film-makers
The Little Tent, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 18 June 2011, hosted by Liselott Forsman, with Anssi Mänttäri, Dave Berg, Otto Kylmälä, Zaida Bergroth, Elina Knihtilä, Jan Forsström, and Dome Karukoski. - There seem to be two trends in Finnish cinema now: solid budget productions (Dome Karukoski) and low budget task force productions of contemporary topics (aikalaiselokuva).
Souleymane Cissé morning discussion hosted by Peter von Bagh
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| Sodankylä morning discussion, Kitisenrannan koulu, 18 June 2011. Peter von Bagh in dialogue with Souleymane Cissé. |
The School (Kitisenrannan koulu), Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, 18 June 2011. In French, translated into Finnish by Katja Kukkola.
Q: THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW? It was a Western.
Q: YOUR CHILDHOOD, THE COUNTRY YOU LIVED IN THEN? It was French Sudan, and my family were poor workers, not political.
Q: EDUCATION? My family was very religious, profondement musulmane depuis des générations, but my father didn't forbid my going to school.
Q: DID YOU HAVE FAVOURITE READING? Mamadu and Bineta, lecture pour les primaires scolaires.
Q: YOUR WIDE AWARENESS OF THE CINEMA AND THE WORLD? We'll come to that later. But I had a very active childhood. When I was 12 we lived dans un quartier populaire. I am a person formed by work. I was active and mobile, and during a football game a fellow player jumped on my leg breaking my shinbone. I was three months in a hospital. In 1952 basic medical care was inferior, primitive. There was a plaster, a metal cage, and a draw bandage. When I was released it was the greatest relief in my life. Ça m'a beaucoup affecté, reconstitué ma vie. My mother was exhausted, she fainted and was paralyzed. It was a strange time of hiding things. I had to build my life anew. I could not make it to the exam, I had to quit school, I became a porter, and I studied at night school. I was a good trader.
Q: WHAT FILMS DID YOU SEE WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG? I saw American films, Arab films, Egyptian films, Hindi films, some rare French films, since 1945. Q: ANY FINNISH ONES? [Apparently none. But we heard how Aki had thrown himself in the feet of Souleymane Cissé in the forest and how Souleymane tried to outdo him in return.] Q: DID YOU HAVE A SPECIAL CALLING OR ILLUMINATION? No, and my education was not of literary culture. My passion: traverser des siècles. Every night I went to the cinema. J'ai resté cinéphile. I am a practical person. I do not have a wide literary background. Encounters and life have formed me. In the cinema I travelled through centuries, seeing two films a night for 25 years. The city has formed me. All this information you can find in the internet, too. Indian films made me cry, as did sentimental Arab films - and as did Mika's Mama Africa. We need to speak up. We cannot stay silent anymore.
Q: AFRICAN CINEMA: IT HARDLY EXISTED. I never felt like I'd become a cineaste, myself. Cinema was a source of happiness and discovery. I became politically active. I did not have much knowledge about the cinema but a desire and a passion to change things.
Q: THE TURNING POINT: MOSCOW. The process of independence in 1959-1960 was fantastic and also a little delicate as we were searching for the impossible. We only had a few engineers and teachers. I was very engaged and acted as a presenter and projectionist of newsreels. There were always lively discussions. The country was going forward to a new era. The young people started to organize. The most awesome experience was when I screened a newsreel about Patrice Lumumba being bullied. Personne ne respirait. C'était un moment très fort. That was the moment when I realized that cinema might be a medium even for myself. I have always fought against unfairness. Mali was struggling and was supported by Socialist countries. The Soviet Union granted 300 stipendia for students, and I received one of them.
Q: THE TEACHERS IN MOSCOW. I had a six months' grant to study cinéméchanique, to educate myself as a projectionist, then another six months to continue my studies, a year for cinematography and still five years to study film direction and cinematography. Altogether I studied nine years in Moscow. There was always a teacher to support me around the clock. I did not have time to pay attention to the drawbacks of the society because I was focusing so much on my studies. So I was formed. I received un permis de conduire dans le cinéma mondiale. We saw all the great films, the diversity, and we learned comprendre le monde. Tarkovsky finished his studies two years after I had started. Every night there was a cinematic event. There were also films that were "not necessary to see" but that were screened anyway. I learned to understand the social dimension of the Italian cinema.
Q: THE RUSSIAN FILM PEOPLE. I was absolutely dedicated in my own bullpen. We had different teachers, and Mikhail Romm was not officially my teacher, but when he taught, we hid in the lecture hall to listen to him. I had no academic background. I was filling my intellectual suitcase.
Q: YOUR FIRST FILM. My life is not interesting, but my films are worth talking about. In 1969 I was lost, nothing was available in Mali, there was hardly any equipment, only a couple of 35 mm cameras, and I had to run around for four years doing actualities and official work. Cinq jours d'une vie was a short film that won an award in Carthage, Tunis, but there was a sanction. C'était un crime de présenter un film dans un festival. I was reproached by the administration. "Where do you imagine you are, in Hollywood, in Mosfilm?" I needed an authorization. Den muso / The Girl was my first feature film. I wanted to do a feature fiction film, and for a year I tried to acquire a permission to shoot. I established an association and invited officials as members. In the airport, gendarmes were waiting for me. I was summoned in front of a tribunal and put for two weeks in prison after being kept three days in jail for interrogation. They accused me of an intention to sell the movie to Italians. African film people were activated, and all accusations were dropped. It was a social movie about a 15 year old girl who gets pregnant and commits suicide. All Mali saw the film. I still don't understand the commotion and the vortex of censorship, control and surveillance.
Q: YOUR CONTACTS WITH THE REST OF AFRICA. I had met Sembène Ousmane in Moscow and in Tashkent. There was a strong connection, and then FEPACI (Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes) was founded to bring together the whole African cinema industry. Then also the FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou) was founded. The demand for them was great. Then there was a great crisis in the 1990s. We really have fought, but the unwillingness to promote African cinema lives in ourselves.
[EXCERPT FROM MIN YE... / TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT.]
Q: THE INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION. Finyé / Le Vent / The Wind was my first film with a broader distribution, and the echo was positive.
Q: THE TOUCHY SUBJECTS, THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN. With Den muso I wanted to study the subjection of women, and then I was left alone, I got more leeway. In The Wind I got to deal with things relevant to the military administration. I felt free to go all out against the military administration. I started to realize that my persona was the reason for the trouble. I had not asked for permissions. We are led by mediocrities. They come to step on our fingers and toes.
Q: HOW ABOUT ATTEMPTS TO COMMERCIALIZE, DO FORMULAIC WORK? That has not been my dream. That would be trop facile.
Q: HOW ABOUT THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE 1980S? With Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Abdoulaye Ascofaré, and Adama Drabo, we all had studied in Moscow. Others worked for the television.
Q: WAS THE AUDIENCE PROGRAMMED BY AMERICANS? There was only one cinema in Mali. It was for the privileged. You really had to be well off to visit it. On television there was Indian entertainment, Brazilian glamour, a rare American film, not many European films. Europeans distribute American films into Africa.
Q: THE AFRICAN QUALITY IS THE SENSUALITY OF THE IMAGERY. THE PURELY AFRICAN FILMS HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE NATURE, WITHOUT IMITATION, WITHOUT AMERICAN MODELS OF NARRATION. Many of our films are co-productions. There are so few films produced, yet I don't see all. There are a few films like that. But we deal with modern life, things have developed. Now there is no magic but accounts of everyday life in Mali. Je suis dans un étérnel conflit avec moi-même. I want to make un cinéma qui parle de la réalité de notre vie - pas si differénte de votre vie. In my early films I dealt with social questions, but I wanted to change and imagine a story (Yeelen). In the magical approach I wanted to transcend material details. Magic was a means to approach humanity. Yeelen is about the eternal conflict between father and son, the chain of problems that continues through generations. It is also linked with nuclear energy. When I met Martin Scorsese in a conference he told that for him it was a shattering film, un film de découvert, un film plus profonde que de la magie. We discussed it for two hours. We now have a sacred mission to rewrite Africa, but we are incapable to convey even a little bit to the world. There are trop des tabous.
Q: HOW ABOUT YOUR TEAM? I meet my team in Bamako every year. The administrative machinery is like concrete.
[EXCERPT: FINYE / THE WIND] My cinematographer is Étienne Carton de Grammont. He was very young and sensitive and spent months with me. My films are very delicate. I cannot function on the run. My team has to understand first what we are doing.
WHICH FILM WOULD YOU TAKE TO THE DESERT ISLAND? Angel [Andrei Smirnov, SU 1967. Souleymane Cissé told he had seen the day before the end of the screening of the two-episode Nachalo nevedomogo veka. The last episode is actually Larisa Shepitko's Rodina elektrichestva. But Angel was the title that Cissé mentioned, and I think he must have seen it in Moscow at the time. The film was shelved and released only during glasnost, but as a VGIK student Cissé would have had access to screenings of unreleased films, as well.]
Q: THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW? It was a Western.
Q: YOUR CHILDHOOD, THE COUNTRY YOU LIVED IN THEN? It was French Sudan, and my family were poor workers, not political.
Q: EDUCATION? My family was very religious, profondement musulmane depuis des générations, but my father didn't forbid my going to school.
Q: DID YOU HAVE FAVOURITE READING? Mamadu and Bineta, lecture pour les primaires scolaires.
Q: YOUR WIDE AWARENESS OF THE CINEMA AND THE WORLD? We'll come to that later. But I had a very active childhood. When I was 12 we lived dans un quartier populaire. I am a person formed by work. I was active and mobile, and during a football game a fellow player jumped on my leg breaking my shinbone. I was three months in a hospital. In 1952 basic medical care was inferior, primitive. There was a plaster, a metal cage, and a draw bandage. When I was released it was the greatest relief in my life. Ça m'a beaucoup affecté, reconstitué ma vie. My mother was exhausted, she fainted and was paralyzed. It was a strange time of hiding things. I had to build my life anew. I could not make it to the exam, I had to quit school, I became a porter, and I studied at night school. I was a good trader.
Q: WHAT FILMS DID YOU SEE WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG? I saw American films, Arab films, Egyptian films, Hindi films, some rare French films, since 1945. Q: ANY FINNISH ONES? [Apparently none. But we heard how Aki had thrown himself in the feet of Souleymane Cissé in the forest and how Souleymane tried to outdo him in return.] Q: DID YOU HAVE A SPECIAL CALLING OR ILLUMINATION? No, and my education was not of literary culture. My passion: traverser des siècles. Every night I went to the cinema. J'ai resté cinéphile. I am a practical person. I do not have a wide literary background. Encounters and life have formed me. In the cinema I travelled through centuries, seeing two films a night for 25 years. The city has formed me. All this information you can find in the internet, too. Indian films made me cry, as did sentimental Arab films - and as did Mika's Mama Africa. We need to speak up. We cannot stay silent anymore.
Q: AFRICAN CINEMA: IT HARDLY EXISTED. I never felt like I'd become a cineaste, myself. Cinema was a source of happiness and discovery. I became politically active. I did not have much knowledge about the cinema but a desire and a passion to change things.
Q: THE TURNING POINT: MOSCOW. The process of independence in 1959-1960 was fantastic and also a little delicate as we were searching for the impossible. We only had a few engineers and teachers. I was very engaged and acted as a presenter and projectionist of newsreels. There were always lively discussions. The country was going forward to a new era. The young people started to organize. The most awesome experience was when I screened a newsreel about Patrice Lumumba being bullied. Personne ne respirait. C'était un moment très fort. That was the moment when I realized that cinema might be a medium even for myself. I have always fought against unfairness. Mali was struggling and was supported by Socialist countries. The Soviet Union granted 300 stipendia for students, and I received one of them.
Q: THE TEACHERS IN MOSCOW. I had a six months' grant to study cinéméchanique, to educate myself as a projectionist, then another six months to continue my studies, a year for cinematography and still five years to study film direction and cinematography. Altogether I studied nine years in Moscow. There was always a teacher to support me around the clock. I did not have time to pay attention to the drawbacks of the society because I was focusing so much on my studies. So I was formed. I received un permis de conduire dans le cinéma mondiale. We saw all the great films, the diversity, and we learned comprendre le monde. Tarkovsky finished his studies two years after I had started. Every night there was a cinematic event. There were also films that were "not necessary to see" but that were screened anyway. I learned to understand the social dimension of the Italian cinema.
Q: THE RUSSIAN FILM PEOPLE. I was absolutely dedicated in my own bullpen. We had different teachers, and Mikhail Romm was not officially my teacher, but when he taught, we hid in the lecture hall to listen to him. I had no academic background. I was filling my intellectual suitcase.
Q: YOUR FIRST FILM. My life is not interesting, but my films are worth talking about. In 1969 I was lost, nothing was available in Mali, there was hardly any equipment, only a couple of 35 mm cameras, and I had to run around for four years doing actualities and official work. Cinq jours d'une vie was a short film that won an award in Carthage, Tunis, but there was a sanction. C'était un crime de présenter un film dans un festival. I was reproached by the administration. "Where do you imagine you are, in Hollywood, in Mosfilm?" I needed an authorization. Den muso / The Girl was my first feature film. I wanted to do a feature fiction film, and for a year I tried to acquire a permission to shoot. I established an association and invited officials as members. In the airport, gendarmes were waiting for me. I was summoned in front of a tribunal and put for two weeks in prison after being kept three days in jail for interrogation. They accused me of an intention to sell the movie to Italians. African film people were activated, and all accusations were dropped. It was a social movie about a 15 year old girl who gets pregnant and commits suicide. All Mali saw the film. I still don't understand the commotion and the vortex of censorship, control and surveillance.
Q: YOUR CONTACTS WITH THE REST OF AFRICA. I had met Sembène Ousmane in Moscow and in Tashkent. There was a strong connection, and then FEPACI (Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes) was founded to bring together the whole African cinema industry. Then also the FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou) was founded. The demand for them was great. Then there was a great crisis in the 1990s. We really have fought, but the unwillingness to promote African cinema lives in ourselves.
[EXCERPT FROM MIN YE... / TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT.]
Q: THE INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION. Finyé / Le Vent / The Wind was my first film with a broader distribution, and the echo was positive.
Q: THE TOUCHY SUBJECTS, THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN. With Den muso I wanted to study the subjection of women, and then I was left alone, I got more leeway. In The Wind I got to deal with things relevant to the military administration. I felt free to go all out against the military administration. I started to realize that my persona was the reason for the trouble. I had not asked for permissions. We are led by mediocrities. They come to step on our fingers and toes.
Q: HOW ABOUT ATTEMPTS TO COMMERCIALIZE, DO FORMULAIC WORK? That has not been my dream. That would be trop facile.
Q: HOW ABOUT THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE 1980S? With Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Abdoulaye Ascofaré, and Adama Drabo, we all had studied in Moscow. Others worked for the television.
Q: WAS THE AUDIENCE PROGRAMMED BY AMERICANS? There was only one cinema in Mali. It was for the privileged. You really had to be well off to visit it. On television there was Indian entertainment, Brazilian glamour, a rare American film, not many European films. Europeans distribute American films into Africa.
Q: THE AFRICAN QUALITY IS THE SENSUALITY OF THE IMAGERY. THE PURELY AFRICAN FILMS HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE NATURE, WITHOUT IMITATION, WITHOUT AMERICAN MODELS OF NARRATION. Many of our films are co-productions. There are so few films produced, yet I don't see all. There are a few films like that. But we deal with modern life, things have developed. Now there is no magic but accounts of everyday life in Mali. Je suis dans un étérnel conflit avec moi-même. I want to make un cinéma qui parle de la réalité de notre vie - pas si differénte de votre vie. In my early films I dealt with social questions, but I wanted to change and imagine a story (Yeelen). In the magical approach I wanted to transcend material details. Magic was a means to approach humanity. Yeelen is about the eternal conflict between father and son, the chain of problems that continues through generations. It is also linked with nuclear energy. When I met Martin Scorsese in a conference he told that for him it was a shattering film, un film de découvert, un film plus profonde que de la magie. We discussed it for two hours. We now have a sacred mission to rewrite Africa, but we are incapable to convey even a little bit to the world. There are trop des tabous.
Q: HOW ABOUT YOUR TEAM? I meet my team in Bamako every year. The administrative machinery is like concrete.
[EXCERPT: FINYE / THE WIND] My cinematographer is Étienne Carton de Grammont. He was very young and sensitive and spent months with me. My films are very delicate. I cannot function on the run. My team has to understand first what we are doing.
WHICH FILM WOULD YOU TAKE TO THE DESERT ISLAND? Angel [Andrei Smirnov, SU 1967. Souleymane Cissé told he had seen the day before the end of the screening of the two-episode Nachalo nevedomogo veka. The last episode is actually Larisa Shepitko's Rodina elektrichestva. But Angel was the title that Cissé mentioned, and I think he must have seen it in Moscow at the time. The film was shelved and released only during glasnost, but as a VGIK student Cissé would have had access to screenings of unreleased films, as well.]
Friday, June 17, 2011
Film concert Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin (2011 Silva Sound Creators / Midnight Sun Film Festival) (2005 Deutsche Kinemathek restoration) (original Edmund Meisel score arranged by Günter Buchwald)
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| Sergei Eisenstein: Броненосец Потёмкин / Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin (SU 1925). |
Броненосец Потёмкин / Bronenosets Potyomkin / Panssarilaiva Potjomkin / Pansarkryssaren Potjomkin. SU 1925. D: Sergei Eisenstein. The Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin) restored version (2005) /18 fps/ 70 min with German subtitles on the print and electronic subtitles in Finnish / English over the screen. Viewed at the Tent (Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival), 17 June 2011.
Silva Sound Creators = ex-Prima Vista = Günter Buchwald (violin, piano), Frank Bockius (perc), Romano Todesco (double bass).
Original music by Edmund Meisel arranged by Günter Buchwald for the trio.
With brio for his trio Günter Buchwald had arranged the original music that was composed by Edmund Meisel for the Berlin premiere. In the Moscow premiere there had been a compilation score played by the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre.
Battleship Potyomkin was the least popular film in the opinion of Eastern European film-makers such as Makavejev and Kieslowski when they visited Sodankylä during the glasnost years in the 1980s. It had became a symbol of the legitimization of power. But in fact it was always a call for mutiny against any authoritarian power structure.
Followed by the traditional night trip to the outdoor dancing floor by the Porttikoski falls. A night of magic and partying in the midnight sun.
Mama Africa (in the presence of Mika Kaurismäki)
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| Mika Kaurismäki: Mama Africa (FI/ZA/DE 2011). Miriam Makeba. |
FI/ZA/DE © 2011 Starhaus Filmproduktion / Millennium Films / Marianna Films / ZDF Arte. P: Don Edkins, Mika Kaurismäki, Rainer Kölmel, Hans-Robert Eisenhauer. D: Mika Kaurismäki. SC: Mika Kaurismäki, Don Edkins. DP: Jacques Cheuiche, Frank Lehmann, Eran Tahor, Wolfgang Held, Martina Radwan. M: Miriam Makeba. S: Uwe Dresch. ED: Karen Harley. Perf: Miriam Makeba. With: Lionel Rogosin, Harry Belafonte, Hugh Masekela, Angelique Kidjo, Stokely Carmichael, Paul Simon. 90 min. A Starhaus Filmproduktion print, English version. DCP 2K [?] viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 17 June 2011.
In the presence of Mika Kaurismäki, Don Edkins, and Iikka Vehkalahti. Mika told there have been 27 edits of the movie because of complicated circumstances with the rights to the images and the music.
A music film biography of Miriam Makeba, the magnificent South African singer and civil rights activist who spent most of her life in exile, as an international star, dreaming of African freedom and unity. A world historical personality. A rousing and inspiring story. Visually, the movie has compilation quality
Leffaraati [Movie Jury] hosted by Jukka Virtanen
Koulu (School), Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 17 June 2011. The judge was Jukka Virtanen, and the members of the jury were Kari Väänänen, Atik Ismail, Minna Joenniemi, and Neil Hardwick.
The Juke Box Jury format was popular in Finnish tv under the title Levyraati. The show was transmitted in 1961-2005, hosted by Jukka Virtanen in 1980–1997. The ratings were 0 to 10.
Opening Speech (Norman McLaren, CA 1960): 8,9,5,6
Dom / The House (Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica, PL 1959): 6,9,10,0
Uppbrott / Departure (Arne Sucksdorff, SE 1949): 10, 10, 3, 7
Lambeth Walk [the Hitler trick spoof] (Charles A. Ridley, GB 1948): 9,8,6,11
Ssaki / Mammals (Roman Polanski, PL 1962) 8,10,5,9
Jukka Virtanen conjured up a great spirit of fun in this spoof jury session, where the films were all quite good. I saw all but the last film of the show (Elsa by Marja Pensala was the winner).
The Juke Box Jury format was popular in Finnish tv under the title Levyraati. The show was transmitted in 1961-2005, hosted by Jukka Virtanen in 1980–1997. The ratings were 0 to 10.
Opening Speech (Norman McLaren, CA 1960): 8,9,5,6
Dom / The House (Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica, PL 1959): 6,9,10,0
Uppbrott / Departure (Arne Sucksdorff, SE 1949): 10, 10, 3, 7
Lambeth Walk [the Hitler trick spoof] (Charles A. Ridley, GB 1948): 9,8,6,11
Ssaki / Mammals (Roman Polanski, PL 1962) 8,10,5,9
Jukka Virtanen conjured up a great spirit of fun in this spoof jury session, where the films were all quite good. I saw all but the last film of the show (Elsa by Marja Pensala was the winner).
Nick James Masterclass on The Third Man
GB 1949. The Cinema Mondo print of the 1999 re-release version with Finnish / Swedish subtitles. Sampled at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 17 June 2011.
Nick James gave us comprehensive coverage (I missed parts of it) of the many aspects of The Third Man, that "film about a dead man made by spies". We got the historical background of the situation in Vienna and remarks on the anti-romantic urge of the film and Carol Reed's obsession with the theme of the man on the run. Selznick supplied the stars but Korda had the power to say no. Greene disliked all the movies based on his work except this one. Nick James made the connection to the British spirit movies, introduced us to the international cast, reminded us about Graham Greene's lifelong friendship with Kim Philby, and praised the detail, the speed and the constant sense of irony in the picture.
The Third Man is my candidate for the most brilliant black and white cinematography ever (Robert Krasker). This 1999 re-release version is ok but the brilliance is missing. My most memorable experience of it is a nitrate sample screening at the National Film Theatre.
Nick James gave us comprehensive coverage (I missed parts of it) of the many aspects of The Third Man, that "film about a dead man made by spies". We got the historical background of the situation in Vienna and remarks on the anti-romantic urge of the film and Carol Reed's obsession with the theme of the man on the run. Selznick supplied the stars but Korda had the power to say no. Greene disliked all the movies based on his work except this one. Nick James made the connection to the British spirit movies, introduced us to the international cast, reminded us about Graham Greene's lifelong friendship with Kim Philby, and praised the detail, the speed and the constant sense of irony in the picture.
The Third Man is my candidate for the most brilliant black and white cinematography ever (Robert Krasker). This 1999 re-release version is ok but the brilliance is missing. My most memorable experience of it is a nitrate sample screening at the National Film Theatre.
Atom Egoyan morning discussion hosted by Peter von Bagh
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| Atom Egoyan at the morning discussions in the The School (Kitisenrannan koulu), Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, 17 June 2011. Hosted by Peter von Bagh. Foto: Annina Mannila. From: Jutta Sarhimaa: "Festarineitsyt Sodankylässä", Ylioppilaslehti, 23 June 2011. |
Atom Egoyan showed three very impressive excerpts, of Next of Kin, Gross Misconduct, and Calendar.
Q: THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW? The Sand Pebbles. In the scene with the man trapped in the piston my grandmother covered my eyes. The Sound of Music. Jesus Christ Superstar. I had read Bible stories at school, but when my father brought me a record of Jesus Christ Superstar it changed everything. I was just a kid. My parents were painters. My father went to an art school in Cairo, and my mother ran a furniture store with Scandinavian furniture such as Arne Jacobsen. Movies came much later on. Persona was the film that opened film to me as an art form. It was inspiring.
Q: YOU ACTED AS AN INTERPRETER BETWEEN CULTURES. My grandmother spoke no English, and I acted as a go-between. The world of my grandmother was completely different, and my parents' customs and habits needed interpretation. When you are young, you learn a language easily. Personality is possibly a construction. You are aware that you come from somewhere else. That's natural when you are young.
My first feature film Next of Kin was about a boy of 23 who goes to therapy with his parents. The boy is almost catatonic. The therapy involves videotaping. By mistake a tape of another, Armenian, family is mixed up. It is about a daughter who rejects all their values. Peter the boy is going to find that family, they believe his story about his being a lost son, and he begins to solve their problems and bring them together. It is about someone who isn't in the right place.
The films that are shown here are all very personal. Even in commercial films I try to bring something of myself. A film for me is a story that must be told.
Q: EARLY TRACES OF THE ARMENIAN PAST AND PRESENT? This is very complex. All my other relatives moved to big cities. Where we went there were no other Armenians. My father was disillusioned with the conservative aspect of the Armenian world.
His early work was naturalistic, and he was adored by the community. He received a full scholarship for the Chicago Art School in 1952 in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. When he had a show in Cairo people thought it was a joke. "You learned to paint like a child". It was a catastrophe, deeply humiliating. So in Canada, they moved away from the Armenian community. Assimilation was everything. At 18 in Toronto I re-learned Armenian. My Armenian heritage I learned to understand first at the university. Later I was exhausted by the ultra-nationalism, Armenian terrorist attacks against Turkish embassies. It was strange to reconcile this violence. Why custom officers are so prominent in my films? It might be an unconscious memory of a 3-year-old coming to the country, witnessing the battery of forms. As a student I was inspected as a suspected terrorist. It was about having to explain yourself.
Q: LITERARY INFLUENCES? I love theatre. I presented plays. As a child I read the usual stuff, Hardy Boy adventures, MAD magazine, etc. But then I read Martin Esslin's book Theatre of the Absurd, and it changed my life. I got familiar with Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, N.F. Simpson, Pinter. At the same time I was watching Monty Python on tv. You can't imagine how amazing that was. My theatre style was really influenced by these plays. I read Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment). I loved satire: Jonathan Swift, not only Gulliver's Travels, but also A Modest Proposal, about the Irish famine. George Orwell, besides Animal Farm his brilliant essays, The Road to Wigan Pier, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Homage to Catalonia, that's where he developed his concept of double speak - the absurdity of language, language robbed of meaning, someone being "more equal than the other".
Q: THE INHERITANCE OF MODERN THEATRE IN THE CINEMA? I didn't study cinema. Once I was rejected from the college dramatic society I joined a film club. At the time it wasn't trendy to make films. I joined the same club which David Cronenberg had belonged to before. I held this Bolex camera that had perhaps not been used by others since Cronenberg. I had studied so much theatre that I made of the camera a character that is watching. I thought this was a completely new idea: there is someone missing, and the camera has the point-of-view of the missing member. I have also directed opera. Samuel Beckett (Krapp's Last Tape, Eh Joe) had an influence on me. You have to have that delusion of doing something new. I hadn't seen a lot of films, and so I had the delusion of doing something new.
Q: STEPS TO FILM-MAKING? I was just working at the film-club. When I made Howard in Particular I was 18, and I won, I got a prize. I didn't understand cutting. I shot master shots and long sequences. I set monitors in the room and let the camera zoom into the monitor. I learned about coverage, but it was a nightmare. The whole didn't make sense, eyelines didn't match. It was almost early cinema, with the sense of the proscenium. It's not natural for me to film. I'm in awe of Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, the Dardennes: their film-making is impulsive, not considered. Filming is not second nature for me. I have a tendency of formalism. There is something forced. Q: THE "MISTAKES" ARE SOMETIMES THE SALT OF THE EXPRESSION.
[EXCERPT FROM NEXT OF KIN (1984).] "What does he do all day?" - "He pretends" [quotes from the dialogue of the powerful excerpt].
I tried to reject the other love, the theatre, and founded my own film company. In Canada because of the terrible tax shelters they made terrible genre films with faded stars. Cronenberg was the only one with a thing of his own, but he was not very respected at the time. - NFB (National Film Board of Canada) made fine documentaries and docudramas. CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), too.
Gross Misconduct is based on a true story. I loved hockey. Brian Spencer was a hockey player who became an enforcer and a drug runner in Florida, and he was shot dead in a drug deal. I received the script which was a tragic rise and fall story, and I read the book on which it is based. In one paragraph there was the information that the night Brian played his first broadcast game the father who had trained him, he bought an antenna, set the antenna on the roof, but the game was not broadcast in the area where he lived. He got a rifle and held a CBC person in hostage demanding the game should be transmitted. There was an ambush, and the father was shot dead. - Father and son, they both were shot dead.
[EXCERPT FROM GROSS MISCONDUCT (1993)]: it never gets shown. This was by first experience with structure. It was quite rigid, made by the CBC, and I had access to kinescopes of all the hockey games, old b&w images. [The twin brothers have a tyrant father. "Skate figure eights until I say". "Control your fear. Learn how to use it". The father visits the graveyard with his sons to teach them a lesson, giving dismal descriptions of the people buried there. "You can live here and you can be buried here, or you can play hockey".] Films with more life were made outside Canada. Especially in the English-speaking Canada it was a struggle.
Q: YOU WENT FAST TO THE ESSENTIALS. Sweet Hereafter was more muted, very graphic. I like mystery, even though direct, the tension between what you see and what you're expecting.
Q: THE EARLY FILMS. Calendar was really important. In it, my themes found a clear form. There are 12 images of churches for a calender. Armenia was the first Christian state in the world, since 301 AD. The photographer has a tripod and waits for the perfect light. Meanwhile, the wife falls in love with the guide. A year later they are divorced, and the photographer has 12 very bad dates with escorts. This was a breakthrough for me for the perfect form. It gave room for amazing improvisation and interesting energy. It is my most perfectly constructed film, yet with real feeling. My wife Arsinée Khanjian plays the female lead. People thought Calendar was a documentary about our actual break-up! I love the simplicity, and there was no budget. With The Adjuster I won first prize in the Moscow Film Festival in 1991 and a one million ruble reward to be spent for a film production in the USSR. I was excited to get to shoot in my native Armenia at last, but then the USSR broke down, and the prize lost its value. Then in Germany, Das kleine Fernsehspiel offered me 80.000 USD for a film to be shot on 16 mm (and also with a video camera). There is a texture between video and film there. These differences have now become invisible for instance in Michael Haneke's Caché. I now need to explain these differences.
[EXCERPT FROM CALENDAR (1993).] In Calendar, video represents memory, it is the imagery of his feelings. During the long shot of sheep he felt she reached out to touch him. The first date is with a Russian escort. There are 12 different escorts: Russian, Italian, Hebrew... more and more painful. The characters are trying to create their own therapy, assentuating their own pain, thinking it's healing, but it's just assentuating.
Q: WHEN YOU FINALLY GOT TO ARMENIA, THERE WAS A FEELING THAT YOU WERE ALREADY INSIDE. Oh yes. Arsinée was really opposed. She had had a nationalistic upbringing. The place was very different from what she expected. She was quite depressed. I fell in love with the amazing landscapes. It was a spiritual journey. I go back every year. I started a film festival, not quite like this, but we get drunk a lot. Projection conditions are not as good as here. Armenia is trying to recover. They had a strong film industry under the Soviet studio system. There was an effective distribution, and the film-makers enjoyed a certain freedom once they made films based on approved subjects. Paradjanov, Ivan Passer: the system allowed the crew to wait all day, and it meant a lot. Armenia was divided into the diaspora and the Soviet republic. We were raised in the Middle East, and our sense of custom is Middle Eastern, but Armenia is Caucasian. The language is very different: the pronunciation and the use. First and foremost I'm Canadian. In Canada, your ethnic background is part of who you are. I'm Armenian-Canadian. Multi-culturalism is a catastrophe in Europe, but it works in Canada.
Q: THERAPY AND FILM-MAKING. Film-making is an odd practice. There is an artificial family, with the actors and the crew, with incredible conversations. We don't see each other often except on set. It's a very unusual process, also the whole process of speaking about films, explaining Exotica. Arsinée's a playwright. Film has a miraculous ability of being re-energized by the live performances. Also Metropolis last night was amazing. There is something deeply therapeutic in the cinema. Most art forms took a long time to develop. The film grammar developed soon and hasn't changed. Even the technology hasn't changed until recently. How we knew to do it like that? It's the way we dream, in master shots and close-ups. We all dream like that. In films, dream sequences are corny. But otherwise, that's the way we play it out in our unconscious. From Murnau, Dreyer, cinema really hasn't evolved.
Q: ARE DREAMS IN BLACK AND WHITE OR COLOUR? Science cannot help, and we really don't know. Are there dolly shots? Crane shots? Helicopter shots. We really cannot capture that. A machine to play back dreams belongs to science fiction.
Q: PERSONAL SOULMATES? The friends in the festival circuit, such as Aki always inviting me and giving me the ultimatum: this is your last chance! Q: YOUR IDEA OF A FILM FESTIVAL: HOME VIDEO + ALCOHOL? Very little vodka, but we have very good Armenian brandy. There is a blessing by the high priest and then a visit to the brandy factory.
Q: YOUR ENSEMBLE, COMPARABLE WITH BERGMAN, GUÉDIGUIAN - ARSINÉE - FOCUS ON THE HUMAN FACE? The industry is cruel about ageing, almost demonic. Garbo, Dietrich were hidden from that process. Previously movies were difficult to access. Now it's effortless, we have absolute access to imagery. What does it mean about seeing a face in a movie? A face is vaguely sacred. I made a short film in a cinema for Cannes, Artaud Double Bill for Chacun son cinéma, with clips from Vivre sa vie and La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc with the most famous close-up of Artaud. The person send via a mobile phone a glimpse of Falconetti as an e-mail attachment, and Artaud comes as a bonus. The most magical thing is a close-up. It is deeply mystical. I don't know if we are continuing to do that. In Metropolis, there is the transformation of the beautiful Maria into the evil robot. Besides cinema, I have directed opera and created installations, such as Steenbecked in Manchester, with John Hurt in Krapp's Last Tape, 2000 feet / 20 minutes on 35 mm suspended all around the room, reconnected to the magical aspect of screening.
Q: WHICH FILM WOULD YOU TAKE TO THE DESERT ISLAND? Jesus Christ Superstar.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Tarkastaja / [The Inspector]
FI © 2011 AV-Heltech / Riskifilmi. P: Anssi Mänttäri, Pentti Kasurinen.
D+SC: Anssi Mänttäri. Poems: J. K. Ihalainen. DP: Heikki Katajisto. Cost: Suvi-Marja Korvenheimo. M: Asko Mänttäri, Antero Priha. S: Matias Hakala, Petri Varpiola. ED: Sampo Laine, Paavo Virtanen.
C: Niko Saarela, Eeva Putro, Anna-Maija Tuokko, Kari Hietalahti, Matti Onnismaa, Jukka-Pekka Palo, Anssi Mänttäri, J. K. Ihalainen, Antti Litja, Leena Uotila, Tom Pöysti, Juuso Hirvikangas, Aake Kalliala, Mervi Herranen, Jari Sedergren.
A Riskifilmi DCP viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 16 June 2011.
In the presence of Anssi Mänttäri, hosted by Eero Tammi: Usually the subject dictates the style. Now the style came first. There is a surrealistic touch, with something like automatic writing. I don't know what a subject-matter is. But there has to be some kind of a structure. My films are about the haahuilijat [drifters] and the others. It's about a controlled chaos. It's about that all the others win in the lottery.
From Lauri Timonen's catalogue notes: "A surrealistic tragicomedy with an undercurrent of Godardian detective stories especially in the key of Alphaville. An insurance inspector played by Niko Saarela is given a desperate mission of establishing what happened to the accounting books of a certain company. As he continues his investigations it soon looks more and more certain that they have been burnt to the last ledger, but oddly enough everyone he meets seems to tell a different version of the events. The film glows in deep red hues, taking the spectator to the borderline of dream and reality amidst fatal women and soulless cronies of the business world. The film's dialogue, consisting primarily of cryptic but weighty sentences, has a flow stronger than truth. The bar still provides a (sort of) home to those who come, and the adventures of the small-time bureaucrat in the monument of capitalist structures bigger than himself never lack Kafkaesque touches. There is a fundamental trust in cinematic licence in Mänttäri's grungy directorial sound, and he does not set question marks between realism and poetry. The inspector learns to know many faces of humanity during his quest, and even the heat of romance is not necessarily farther than a lottery jackpot away."
Anssi Mänttäri's first [released] cinema feature film in seven years, his [second] digital film. His cinema is largely based on faces, and that central aspect looks fine in digital. There is a brighter colour palette than before, but not in a jarring way. [Corrections in square brackets based on Anton Asikainen's remarks.] [Joensuun Elli was shot digitally but released on 35 mm film. Tarkastaja was also screened from a DCP.]
It was close to midnight. I hadn't slept much the night before and not at all the night before that, and I fell asleep during the film, so I need to see it again.
C: Niko Saarela, Eeva Putro, Anna-Maija Tuokko, Kari Hietalahti, Matti Onnismaa, Jukka-Pekka Palo, Anssi Mänttäri, J. K. Ihalainen, Antti Litja, Leena Uotila, Tom Pöysti, Juuso Hirvikangas, Aake Kalliala, Mervi Herranen, Jari Sedergren.
A Riskifilmi DCP viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 16 June 2011.
In the presence of Anssi Mänttäri, hosted by Eero Tammi: Usually the subject dictates the style. Now the style came first. There is a surrealistic touch, with something like automatic writing. I don't know what a subject-matter is. But there has to be some kind of a structure. My films are about the haahuilijat [drifters] and the others. It's about a controlled chaos. It's about that all the others win in the lottery.
From Lauri Timonen's catalogue notes: "A surrealistic tragicomedy with an undercurrent of Godardian detective stories especially in the key of Alphaville. An insurance inspector played by Niko Saarela is given a desperate mission of establishing what happened to the accounting books of a certain company. As he continues his investigations it soon looks more and more certain that they have been burnt to the last ledger, but oddly enough everyone he meets seems to tell a different version of the events. The film glows in deep red hues, taking the spectator to the borderline of dream and reality amidst fatal women and soulless cronies of the business world. The film's dialogue, consisting primarily of cryptic but weighty sentences, has a flow stronger than truth. The bar still provides a (sort of) home to those who come, and the adventures of the small-time bureaucrat in the monument of capitalist structures bigger than himself never lack Kafkaesque touches. There is a fundamental trust in cinematic licence in Mänttäri's grungy directorial sound, and he does not set question marks between realism and poetry. The inspector learns to know many faces of humanity during his quest, and even the heat of romance is not necessarily farther than a lottery jackpot away."
Anssi Mänttäri's first [released] cinema feature film in seven years, his [second] digital film. His cinema is largely based on faces, and that central aspect looks fine in digital. There is a brighter colour palette than before, but not in a jarring way. [Corrections in square brackets based on Anton Asikainen's remarks.] [Joensuun Elli was shot digitally but released on 35 mm film. Tarkastaja was also screened from a DCP.]
It was close to midnight. I hadn't slept much the night before and not at all the night before that, and I fell asleep during the film, so I need to see it again.
Film concert Metropolis (2011 Cleaning Women in Sodankylä, the 2010 reconstruction)
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| Fritz Lang: Metropolis (DE 1927). Der Maschinenmensch / The robot Maria. |
DE 1927, the 2010 reconstruction, 145 min, a 35 mm print from Transit Film screened with electronic subtitles in Finnish and English. Viewed in the Tent, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, 16 June 2011.
Live Cinema Concert with a new score by Cleaning Women with Nara Ali Omar (vibraphone, perc), Gudmund Rotevatn (organ, synth), and Ivan Afanasyev (sound effects).
I liked the new reconstruction of the almost complete Metropolis for the first time I saw it in Bologna last year, and this screening confirmed my opinion. Metropolis is an awful and fascinating film, jarringly corny, yet with immortal images whose power keeps growing with the years.
The original music experience as arranged by Frank Strobel and performed by a full symphony orchestra line-up is for me now so definitive that I keep hearing it although the music played is something different.
I have heard many powerful live cinema performances by Cleaning Women, but this time I was not able to focus on them. Metropolis has a sonata structure, a crescendo structure, and musical punctuation with the "Metropolis organs". That's what I was still hearing, but the audience response was enthusiastic to the Cleaning Women performance.
PS. I talked recently with a colleague who had visited the legendary skyscrapers of Abu Dhabi and then taken a tour in the vicinity, with some of the most abject slums he had ever seen. After a pause we uttered in chorus: "Metropolis".
Loong Boenmee raleuk chat / Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
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| Apitchatpong Weerasethakul: ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ / Loong Boenmee raleuk chat / Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (TH 2010). |
ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ / Setä Boonmeen edelliset elämät
TH/GB/FR/DE/ES/NL © 2010 Kick the Machine / Anna Sanders Films / Eddie Saeta S.A. / Iluminations Films / The Match Factory [tbc]. P: Simon Field, Keith Griffiths, Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
D+SC: Apichatpong Weerasethakul. DP: Yukontorn Mingmongkon, Saymobhu Mukdeeprom – Super 16 – digital intermediate – print format 35 mm. PD: Akekarat Homlaor. Cost: Chatchai Chaiyon. S: Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu. ED: Lee Chatametikool.
Cast: Thanapat Saisaymar (Boonmee), Jenjira Pongpas (Jen), Sakda Kaewbuadee (Tong), Nathakarn Aphaiwonk (Huay), Geerasak Kulhong (Boonsong), Kanokporn Tongaram (Roong), Matthieu Ly, Vien Pimdee (farmers).
114 min.
A 35 mm The Match Factory print with English subtitles viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (Apichatpong Weerasethakul), 16 June 2011.
In the presence of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, also known as Joe, hosted by Peter von Bagh, Satu Kyösola. AW: The film is based on a book, and it gave me a basis to explore my fascination for memory, but I could not make an actual adaptation of the book. It is about a human being's memories of a different life, of an existence as a different animal. It was filmed in North-East Thailand, on a small crew, in home-made circumstances. Everything is intimate, the film was shot on a Super-16 camera. As usually, I made the film with non-professional performers. The reception of my films in my own country is for a specialist audience, and there are very few prints. In Bangkok, it started in one theatre only, and then made the tour across the country. It made well for such a specialized art film. Designed to be screened in a 35 mm print, the film is divided into six reels of 20 minutes of duration. Each reel has a different tribute to past cinema. Film is like music, but I'm not a musician. I react spontaneously to the temperature of the day, to the mood of the performers. Also the approach changes in each reel. The first reel is documentary, the second reel is a television horror movie, the third reel again documentary, the fourth reel royal costume drama, the fifth reel is an adventure tale. There are also political references. Red used to be a taboo colour. Communists spread in that area first, and everything that had red colour was destroyed.
AA: Uncle Boonmee belongs to the experimental cinema. There is an affinity with the intimate poets of the avantgarde. For a Finnish viewer there is immediately something familiar in the feeling for nature in the first sequence with the water buffalo in the enchanted forest. The sense of nature brings us to a timeless, primordial dimension, which for us is familiar from the Kalevala myths till contemporary authors such as Veikko Huovinen.
The framing story is about uncle Boonmee's dying of kidney failure. His deceased wife Huay appears as a ghost at the dinner table. His lost son Boonsang is incarnated as a monkey ghost in the jungle. In the spirit world, a princess with a skin disease stops by a waterfall in the jungle and sees in the reflection in the water a beautiful version of herself. She gives a sacrifice of her jewels to the water god, and experiences divine extasy with a catfish. The final part of Boonmee's journey, his death, also takes place in the jungle.
Uncle Boonmee seems to be a Buddhist vision about the cycle of life. I saw the film for the first time, and from Joe I have seen only Syndromes and a Century before. The film is so special and original that I need to see it again to really appraise it.
Although shot on film, there is a heavy digital look in the print, because it has gone through the digital intermediate mangle. There is a feeling for nature in the general outline of the image, but the juicy fine detail is missing.
Michael Chapman 2011 morning discussion at Midnight Sun Film Festival hosted by Peter von Bagh
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| Michael Chapman at the morning discussion at Midnight Sun Film Festival hosted by Peter von Bagh, Kitisenrannan koulu, Sodankylä, 16 June 2011. |
The School (Kitisenrannan koulu), Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, 16 June 2011.
Q: THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW? The Plow That Broke the Plains, The Wizard of Oz. Wednesday or Saturday afternoon, a bus took us to movies, and that's how I saw a movie every week, an Abbott and Costello movie or a Western. Cinema was the church of the 20th century. My family lived outside Boston, Massachusetts. My father was a teacher, a bit like Mr. Chips, and my mother, a librarian.
Q: WAS THERE A SPECIAL FILM THAT WAS A TURNING-POINT IN YOUR LIFE? Not really. In the childhood, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, later, Jean-Luc Godard. - Dying is easy, comedy is difficult. - Genre movies I'm fond of, they are today's folk tales, fairy tales, they may get deeper into the unconscious than art films. Taxi Driver is a werewolf movie, an urban folk tale. - WWII newsreels had powerful images with profound effects.
Q: THE LIGHT, NATURE. The light on the coast of Maine is like that in Scandinavia.
Q: AFTER COLLEGE? I studied at Columbia University (New York) and hanged out in the fringes of the art world. I had an amorphous idea about being a Bohemian artist. I found work as a freight brakeman, paid rather well, and it was even chic among the Bohemia. I got drafted, and after the military service I stumbled into movie business. I fell in love, and the father of my wife got me into the movie business. I started from the lowest of the low.
Q: THE BEST WAY TO START? That is the way to do it, the medieval guild system. I had to earn a living to support my family. I had to pay attention and learn.
Q: WHAT GOES WRONG IN THE FILM SCHOOLS? Film is a business, and that leads to the art, not the other way round. But ironically now I'm a teacher at a film school. Before studing film-making you should learn about history, culture, literature, life. It's wrong that only film informs film.
Q: IN THE 1930S, 1940S, FILM-MAKERS HAD A BROADER BACKGROUND OF CULTURE. - In the 19th century, opera was a vast business. Thousands of operas were written, it was a huge popular business. But opera became obsolete, and today only some dozens of operas are in the basic repertory. Film is a popular art like opera was, with a vulgar, popular aspect.
Q: YOUR FIRST FILM PROJECTS? I made any film that came along. I was very lucky in becoming Gordon Willis's assistant. We did anything, but we got to do Klute, The Godfather, and Bad Company.
Q: BORIS KAUFMAN? Boris Kaufman was a big cameraman of New York (On the Waterfront). I was his assistant, not on the big films but in the commercials he was reduced to do. He was a terrible operator, he couldn't operate the wheels. He was an old, sophisticated, sweet man.
Q: THE NEW YORK FEEL OF BORIS KAUFMAN? He allowed New York to be New York - large, vibrant, overwhelming. His lighting is wonderful. There is a richness of light and shadow.
Q: DID HE HAVE A WAY TO REFLECT THE ACTOR, A SYMPATHY WITH BRANDO, LIKE YOU HAD WITH DE NIRO? I don't think so. Perhaps symbiosis, not sympathy. Let's not sentimentalize. Cameramen should not think like that, they should not be aware of such things. The word art should be barred from the set.
Q: GORDON WILLIS? Gordy transformed the way lighting should be. In a room, light coming from above, you should leave it like that. The Godfather: that's the way real lighting looks like. Then it was new and realistic. Gordy is the real thing. The Godfather is as good as lighting gets.
Q: A GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN CINEMA. "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" in the 1970s: directors had more freedom, it was the last golden age, and it invigorated cinema. I was at the right place at the right time.
Q: WHAT IS AN OPERATOR? He looks through the camera, moves the camera, and frames the action. I agreed with Gordy on the outset about the balance of the frame. The operator's is the best job, it's utterly satisfying. You have immediate gratification, and there is an athletic quality. I'm as proud of my accomplishments as an operator as I'm of the movies I shot. You need to be relatively young to have the reflexes.
Q: JAWS. In my early DP jobs I operated whenever possible, nominally hiring an operator and telling him to stay away and have a beer. Taxi Driver I couldn't operate. The Last Detail I operated; there was no lighting. For Jaws I was recommended by Phil Kaufman to Bill Butler. I needed work. - But probably it is a good thing to have someone else operate.
Q: THE LAST DETAIL. The script had been around for quite a while. Jack Nicholson was involved in getting it made. Hal Ashby gave Nicholson much freedom. There was a sense of freedom and exuberance, yet it is a sad movie, curiously anti-war. It was realized with primitive lighting. There is the basic contrast of exuberance and containment, it is both sad and funny. Ashby deserves a lot of credit. There was nothing fancy, he was just showing what's happening. - It is Nicholson's best film. Robert Towne wrote for Jack, and he exploded.
Q: IT IS ALMOST A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT NICHOLSON? I guess it was. I didn't really know him then, I was just letting Jack be Jack, and he sure was. I was terrified. It was my first movie as a DP, and I felt a fraud. I let the light be the light, let the camera record what's in front of it. - The locations are real, the places are real. The opening scenes were shot on an actual Canadian base.
Q: MARTIN SCORSESE AND TAXI DRIVER. I shot White Dawn for Philip Kaufman. He had a quality of humanity, a lack of irony, and a kindness. He was among the finest in the 1970s, an underrated director. - Taxi Driver was a union movie, yet made on a very low budget. We got along pretty well with Marty, we were drunk on Godard, and we both talk very fast. - The usual way to shoot night scenes in New York is to hire a tow truck, install a generator, and shoot like on a lit set. - We did not have the time and the money to do that. Turned out to be the right thing. - Let New York light itself, show the spectacle of New York. It was a ghastly place at the time. - In Jaws, the mechanical shark didn't work, and that's why we didn't show the shark until very late. That, too, turned out to be the right thing. - Let the mechanics dictate the aesthetics. - I used wide angle lenses to show the amazing, bloody awful New York. Marty had an amazing eye for set-up. We tried to put the character in the real world.
Q: THE MOST DIFFICULT THINGS TO SHOOT IN TAXI DRIVER? The night drives in a taxi. We were squeezed in a real taxi. Those endless driving shots, with Marty and me and the operator and the focus puller in the car, with De Niro driving. We were exhausted after those long, gruelling nights. But after the long, gruelling summer we knew we were onto something.
Q: THE ORIGINS OF TAXI DRIVER? Someplace Marty said that "Taxi Driver, that's Paul's movie". It was an extraordinary script. A folk tale, a werewolf movie. A genre movie. Even his hair changes. Taxi Driver is the movie I'm proudest of.
Q: THE BERNARD HERRMANN SCORE? First I thought it wasn't right, as did Paul Schrader, but later I realized how great it was.
Q: DIGITAL RESTORATION. I'm happy with it. The Eastmancolor negative was a scandal. I have no experience in digital film-making. Others did the technical work. I'd be glad to do The Last Detail in the same way.
Q: THE FILM FEEL. You can't change technology. In a certain sense, film disappears. Grain disappears. I love grain. They try to put it back onto digital. But it is better to get on board than be left behind.
Q: THE LAST WALTZ. It was wonderful, a goodbye to a whole era on the road and an aspect of rock and roll. I had a horrible time in the actual concert. The whole place had been lit by a local crew, completely bugged up. I didn't sleep in 2-3 days trying to change all that. We shot with 10 cameras and had too many cues. I happened to get Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs as operators. It was a nightmare. I was exhausted, but it turned out well. The Band were intellectual leaders of rock and roll. There was a feeling of sadness of moving to middle age. Q: IT WAS A REUNION OF THE FINEST CAMERAMEN OF THE ERA. There were storyboards for the cameras.
Q: RAGING BULL. Raging Bull is a veristic opera, like Cavalleria rusticana. The fights are the big arias, elaborately staged. That's Jake's theatre.
Q: DID YOU KNOW THE FAMOUS BOXING FILMS. We did, and that's where we got the black-and-whiteness. Boxing was a b&w sport, like in Life, and Look. Boxing was far more important then. It was a big deal. On television they had Friday night fight. I knew nothing about b&w. Q: THE BOXING MATCHES ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE REST OF THE MOVIE. That's Marty, not me. In the ring, it is entirely Marty, the very elaborate coverage.
Q: THERE IS A NEARNESS TO THE CAMERA, BUT TODAY DIRECTORS DIRECT VIA MONITORS. That business of watching through a monitor... if I were an actor, I'd be furious. All directors are isolated now. We were all there then. I don't even think there was a monitor.
Q: THE EDITING TOOK PLACE IN AN ARTISANAL WAY ON THE EDITING TABLE. I think there is a quality in touching the film. It affects the cutting. Ask Thelma. - There is an intensity about everything about Raging Bull. Why, I don't know. Screening the first cut I was disappointed, it didn't add up. Ten years ago, I saw it again and realized I'd been utterly mistaken. It is a horribly sad movie, hideously so, about how everything you do accumulates. Paul had a similar reaction.
Q: MICHAEL JACKSON'S BAD. Poor Marty. [Michael Chapman burst into a very, very long laugh.]
Q: IS MUSIC AN INSPIRATION FOR YOU? Marty can get started first when he knows the music. - The home movies in Raging Bull were inspired by Jake La Motta's actual home movies. They are the only footage in colour in the movie. Me and Marty could not make them dumb enough, so we asked the teamsters to do them.
Q: YOU HAVE COMMENTED SOMEWHERE ABOUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE INSTINCT IN ACTING AND CAMERAWORK. There are several ways in which you can see a similarity. You go with what you have, you have to trust yourself. Trust your gut and do it. Actors are brave, they may even be stupid. But once you hit that switch, there you go. It is an instinctual act, a gut act. But in digital, can you be quite as committed?
Q: DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE OLD CAMERAMAN? James Wong Howe. It was more of a formula back then. Boris Kaufman was not necessarily Hollywood, he was a New York guy. It was an industry, studios had a staff. It must have been wonderful to work in the great church of the 20th century. Q: IT IS A HEAVY RESPONSIBILITY. It is a big industry, and the camera is a machine to capture time. But James Wong Howe had an individual touch.
Q: WHICH FILM WOULD YOU TAKE TO THE DESERT ISLAND? Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Rio Bravo, and À bout de souffle.
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