Writer-director Milcho Manchevski has only made three features over the course of his 15-year film career, yet the multi-talented Macedonian rarely allows himself a moment to catch his breath. Born in 1959 in the Macedonian capital of Skopje, Manchevski studied History of Art and Archeology at his hometown university before going to film school at Southern Illinois University on a scholarship. Following his graduation, he relocated to New York and began making commercials, music videos, documentaries, shorts and experimental films. In 1992, he won several major awards for his video for Arrested Development's “Tennessee,” which is considered one of the great pop promos of the period. With the release of his debut feature, Before the Rain (1994), Manchevski shot from relative obscurity to international prominence as the film, a triptych of overlapping, ill-fated love stories, won the Golden Lion at Venice and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Manchevski did not immediately capitalize on his success, and it was not until 2001 that he returned with his sophomore feature, Dust, a century-spanning double narrative encompassing a Macedonian western and an NYC crime story. In addition to his cinematic activities, Manchevski continues to make commercials and music videos, has directed an episode of HBO's The Wire, teaches film at NYU, and is also an acclaimed photographer, performance artist, and writer of short fiction, essays and journalism.

Manchevski's previous films have both been set in multiple countries but in his latest feature, Shadows, the action is entirely set in Macedonia. The film begins with Lazar “Lucky” Perkov (Borce Nacev), a handsome surgeon with a gorgeous wife and young son, getting into a near-fatal car crash. A year later, his rehabilitation is complete but his marriage is disintegrating, he sees strange people in his apartment building – including an ancient woman spouting a warning in an obscure dialect – and he is becoming drawn to the mysterious and alluring Menka (Vesna Stanojevska). Shadows is a curious patchwork of genres, organically mixing together ghost story, film noir, romance, social allegory, folk tale, psychological horror and erotic thriller, and its visual style owes as much to Hollywood as it does to arthouse cinema. Manchevski's idiosyncratic approach, though, is oddly charming and rich in cinephilic pleasures. The cinematography is particularly outstanding, as Shadows has a bold, distinctive palette and cinematographer Fabio Cianchetti skillfully uses reflections and foregrounded objects throughout to create striking and original compositions.

Filmmaker spoke to Manchevski about the unusual genre collisions in Shadows, the problems of working with Harvey Weinstein, and how Mick Jagger nearly made him retire.



Filmmaker: What was the initial inspiration for Shadows?

Manchevski: I wanted to do a scary film, a visceral kind of film. Part of it is because I like watching scary films, but I'm talking about a really interesting scary film and that varies from person to person. When I was growing up, it would have been vampires and then when I went to film school, I thought Halloween was one of the most effective films made – not the best but the most effective. I really like The Tenant. It was really making the kind of film that I would like to see, and then as I started working on it, it became a little more complicated, a little denser than just a scary film, because just to manipulate somebody into getting scared is a little easy. As I started investing of myself into it, it became more about trying to find some peace with death, and that for me was the personal aspect of the film. And then everything else like the social and the political aspects sort of happened later, and to me they're relatively minor in the film.

Filmmaker: You wrote somewhere that people got confused about Shadows, that just because it was set in Macedonia did not mean that it was a film about Macedonia.

Manchevski: I keep going back to shoot there, even though I don't want to, [laughs] and I don't want to for several reasons. One, everybody is trying to watch it as a film about Macedonia, and all these films are partly about Macedonia but I believe their essence is not about the place, it's about people anywhere. Another reason why it's difficult to go back is that things are relatively inefficient and that makes it difficult. But, at the same time, it's a major joy for me to go back and probably has to do with being with people I've known since I was a child and the recognition element – recognizing places, the language, ways of behavior. It somehow puts you at ease and helps make it comfortable. So I end up going there, and on this one, if you ignore the fact that it's in Macedonian, I'm convinced you could set it anywhere. It looks closer to a film set in the States, but that's also because cities are so similar to each other anywhere in the world, more similar than the countryside of the country they belong to, so it's kind of cosmopolitan.

Filmmaker: Yes, Shadows is stylistically more like an American film. Were you intentionally trying to alter the usual visual vocabulary of the “foreign arthouse movie”?

Manchevski: It's my big picture fight against the windmills of clichés. I hate clichés because they're a sign of intellectual oppression, but I have also felt them on my skin and I think clichés are very dangerous. They're the first step into racism and a lot of other bullshit. I consciously wanted to say, “Look, that's the vocabulary you can use anywhere in the world.” But I didn't invent it: you see Asian films that look like they could have been made in Hollywood. In a good sense. There are some really good things about Hollywood. One is that it's very legible – there's no fudging what the writer wanted to say, so it's very viewer friendly. The problem is that it usually has nothing to say – it says it beautifully, but it has nothing to say. [laughs] The other reason why it's done this way is that's my style, that's who I am. I cannot make a film out of mimicry, trying to make it Eastern European or whatnot. I did have somebody in France object to me about Before the Rain not looking Eastern European enough – him being French, he probably had a good idea of what an Eastern European country looked like... [laughs]

Filmmaker: One thing I loved about the film was how it brought together so many different genre elements into one place. Was it very instinctive how these things came together?

Manchevski: I had the fortune of working in a system where the [financiers] do not impose themselves on what you're doing, so it became more complex and more like a collage that fits together in a synchronous way, like a Robert Rauschenberg painting fits together. It's a collage, but it's not about just putting things together, it comes from inside. It was really about following what the film itself wants to say and not what the genre parameters are. I know that makes it more difficult to sell, and for some people to watch, but if you just repeat the genre parameters it just becomes sort of boring. It becomes an exercise. There's a little bit of lots of different films that I've liked in this one, some on purpose, some not on purpose: Oshima and Polanski and Bergman. I mean, Bergman makes scary films! [laughs]

Filmmaker: You've said that this is the most personal of your films so far, that you “feel personally connected to Lazar's hypnotic nightmarish journey.” In what way exactly?

Manchevski: It's personal only in that it deals with death, and I've had periods in my life when I was strongly influenced by that. Not by choice. Also this idea of how one works within society, and person responsibility. It's something I'm interested in in all my films, but here's it sort of more blunt. There are also some funny parallels that are not essential, like that my mother was a doctor.

Filmmaker: And, like Lucky, you love watermelon.

Manchevski: [laughs] Yes. We actually have a watermelon club in Macedonia; there are only two of us so far. Two and a half. We haven't officially accepted [the third member], but have T-shirts for the rest of us.

Filmmaker: The film's cinematography is fantastic, not only because of the rich palette that you use but because each shot is carefully composed and so many of them employ reflections, often shooting through glass to create more layered and interesting shots.

Manchevski: I try to handcraft everything I make, to be involved in every aspect of the development of the visualization and obviously the story, and I get involved in the editing all the way through to the last. In the end, it takes a long time and that's why I don't shoot so often, but on the upside, I do achieve exactly what you've described. Everything there is handcrafted and hopefully it works – but if it doesn't, it's my fault and no one else's. And I prepare and do a lot of homework: I still carry the burden of having been a straight-A student.

Filmmaker: You're also a photographer, so does that mindset affect the way you see each shot and its composition?

Manchevski: It's does, but my interest in and knowledge of photography came after I started to make films. At first I was purely a narrative-driven filmmaker and as I started doing films, I had to educate myself in photography. I had a background in writing and a little bit in art, but once I started doing films, I picked up on photography and now I'm liking it more and more, almost more than film, because it's instantaneous, you don't need the money and the other people, and you don't need the story, which is really interesting. It's almost like music – there is no story, which is what makes it so free.

Filmmaker: In addition to film and photography, you direct commercials, experimental shorts and music videos, write essays, short fiction and journalism, and are a performance artist. How do differing those creative facets fit together ultimately?

Manchevski: Well, I don't know. The way that film fits in with these other things is that it's the pragmatic, practical face of doing something creative, because a lot of people see it. As opposed to performance art or the kind stuff that I would write. And it's more regimented, so that's the practical side of the split personality. In the other, photography and performance art could be that instinct of the “real” art. In a way, I believe that film is a bastard art form, like opera: not pure enough, compromised by story and money. Writing, to me, is just very simple, very warm, and I can feel it like music, when parts of a sentence are right or wrong, and I have absolutely no need to publish any of that. I can write it and just keep it. Or, to answer your question another way, I could easily just not do one of those more pragmatic things, I could easily go without making films.

Filmmaker: When Before the Rain came out, I remember reading that you were already in pre-production on Dust, with Robert Redford producing. Why did it take another seven years or so before the film came out?

Manchevski: Redford was producing and Miramax was financing and distributing. I wrote the script in a few months, it was greenlit by Harvey [Weinstein], and then he reneged on the budget. He basically lied to me, and I didn't want to work with someone who had lied to me. In the end, it took me another five and a half or six years to get that financing. It's just difficult to finance ambitious personal films, and I'm very bad at compromising, and where there's a lot of money and egos involved, you just sort of need to do it. It was basically a blessing in disguise because I could have imagined there would have been fights down the road about the casting and the editing of the film. Harvey's so controlling about his films. I got final cut in the contract, but he said, “Just don't tell anybody.” [laughs]

Filmmaker: I'm a big fan of The Wire and you directed an episode in the show's first season, “Game Day.” What was that experience like, and why do you think the show was so exceptional?

Manchevski: Well, The Wire is just fantastic writing and the way it was being produced by Bob Colesberry and his people was just really good. What was also great was that it was the first season so we could all leave a couple of fingerprints about how it was going to continue looking and developing. Some of the people I cast in that episode were still on the show until the end. Just in terms of craft, it's a great exercise because you've got to shoot the whole thing in nine days and then the editor cuts it in four days, then you as the director get three days. It's a one hour film, so it's really fast. It's like the old days of Hollywood.

Filmmaker: How was that for you as a self-professed perfectionist to have such a rapid turnaround?

Manchevski: It was refreshing. [laughs] You sort of build it into the process, build it into what you're doing. And it helps. The goal is different, the medium is different, they work off the same sort of pacing in each show so a lot of the stuff is already built in. It's like working on frescoes in medieval Europe – you know where the Virgin is and the baby is. [laughs]

Filmmaker: If you could travel back in time and be able to make movies in a time and place of your choice, where and when would it be?

Manchevski: Either the beginning of the French New Wave, so in around 1960 in Paris, or the early 70s in Hollywood, which feels sort of closer to home, both in terms of the films they produced and how they were produced. I'm a lifetime victim of the 60s, even though I never really experienced them. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Which classic film are you most ashamed to admit you've never seen?

Manchevski: 2001: A Space Odyssey. I keep on missing it, which is a lame excuse because you can just rent it and watch it. What might be underlying is the fact that I really don't like Kubrick. I find his stuff overlong and unfocused and pretentious.

Filmmaker: Finally, what's the strangest experience you've had during your time in the film industry?

Manchevski: At one point, I would send a script to producers and they would send them back unopened, saying “We cannot read them because you do not have an agent.” And then a few months after that, I was in receptions for the President of Italy and at Mick Jagger's birthday party and Robert Redford giving me script notes. At one point, I was at Mick Jagger's birthday party, I was introduced to him and he said “Oh, Before the Rain, yeah!” and turns to his producer, Don Was, and starts telling him the story of Before the Rain. I thought, “Here I am listening to Mick Jagger describe my film to his producer, it's probably time to retire.” [laughs]

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 1/30/2009 10:58:00 PM Comments (2)

Lynn Shelton has worked in a variety of creative forms for most of her life, but seems to have found her true voice in the role of writer-director. A Seattle native, Shelton spent her formative years immersed in painting, writing poetry, taking pictures and acting. She was a stage actress for ten years (and was told she was destined to work in film), and subsequently studied for an MFA in Photography at NYC's School of Visual Arts. She then began working in film, both as an editor on movies such as The Outpatient (2002) and Hedda Gabler (2004) and as the creator of experimental and documentary projects The Clouds That Touch Us Out of Clear Skies (2000) and The Fruits of Our Labors (2005). Shelton made her feature debut as a writer-director with We Go Way Back, a poignant film centered on a twentysomething actress reflecting on her teenage life, which won the Grand Prize at Slamdance in 2006. She followed this up with the fantastically funny My Effortless Brilliance, about two old friends whose paths in life have diverged, which was released last year by IFC.

Humpday, Shelton's third feature, is in many ways a companion piece to My Effortless Brilliance, as it revisits the idea of two college buddies who attempt to reignite their friendship after a period apart. This film, however, has a killer hook, as early on in the movie its two “bromantic” leads, devoted husband Ben (mumblecore director Mark Duplass) and wild adventurer Andrew (The Blair Witch Project's Josh Leonard), pledge to have sex with each other. During a night of debauchery, the pair decide to make a film for Hump, Seattle's amateur porn festival, which will have the novelty of featuring non-gay intercourse between two very heterosexual men, and what begins as a drunken dare becomes a promise neither is willing to back down from. Humpday is a true crowdpleaser, and certainly fulfills the rich comic potential of its outrageous premise, but it is more than simply an absurd tale of one-upmanship. Whereas the Apatow model for such movies might have settled for superficial laughs, Shelton delves deeper into the unease behind the laughs and dares to ask more serious questions about her characters’ lives and their motivations for pursuing this folly to its illogical conclusion. As on her previous films, Shelton uses an improvisational approach that blurs the line between the role of actor and writer, demonstrating a rare ability to elicit from her cast naturalistic performances within rich and interesting narratives.

A few days before Humpday's world premiere at Sundance, Filmmaker spoke to Shelton about her use of structured improvisation, Joe Swanberg's fascination with gay porn, and her brother vomiting during The Blair Witch Project.



Filmmaker: Where did the initial idea for the film come from?

Shelton: The starting point for me were that I knew I wanted to work with Mark Duplass, really bad. We met on the set of True Adolescents, which was shooting in Seattle in the summer of '07, which I was a still photographer on. We'd known of each other, mostly through Joe Swanberg and other people in that world, but had never actually physically met. By the time that we met we were primed to meet each other, it was just a giant hug and it was like we'd known each other for years and we had a great, great bonding experience, just talking about films and comparing notes on how we approached making movies ourselves. We just had a lot to talk about and knew we wanted to work with each other in some capacity. And then watching him act on that set was just completely inspiring – I just loved the way he worked as an actor. Not only was he tremendously talented but the specific style that he worked in and the generous he was with the other actors and how he seemed to bring the best out of everybody and make everybody go deeper than they might have gone otherwise. He got me thinking, “What would be some interesting scenarios of a movie that would be appropriate for him?” My original idea was actually two guys who were good friends: one was this kind of crazy guy who had a philosophy of life that was “I have to do everything in this world – you only have one life to live, so you've got to experience everything at least once. Literally everything!” Then his friend was more tame and domesticated and less adventurous, and there would be a Svengali-like hold of the one guy over the other, who would almost be living vicariously through these adventurous ideas. They would go to this amateur porn festival together and they would see gay porn there and the adventurous guy would be like, “Oh, my God, I've never been with a man! I have to do that! I have to open myself to that experience because I open myself to every experience and I'm that kind of guy.”

Filmmaker: And Joe Swanberg was somehow part of the inspiration for this?

Shelton: Yeah, he came to Seattle and stayed with us on our couch for about 10 days. Hump was happening then and he went to it and literally for a couple of days talked all the time about how fascinating it was. He said that long ago he'd become completely desensitized to straight porn – growing up in the age of the internet, a young guy just watching it all the time – and had never sought out gay porn before, so here he was sitting in this theater being forced to watch gay porn and he just found it absolutely compelling. He could never describe exactly why. He kept saying, “I wasn't turned on by it – it wasn't a sexual thing,” but at one point I remember him saying that he found it “sculptural.” It did something to his brain and he was just thinking about it a lot. And I just found it kind of funny! [laughs] It wasn't as if Joe was like, “I need to have sex with a man!” but it was fascinating that this very straight guy was just like, “Boy, that was really an interesting sight to see!” Some little switch was flipped for him, and at that point I thought, “Well, this just seems very amusing to me that this straight guy is so interested in gay porn,” and that was what got me going in that direction of straight guys and gay porn and gay sex.

Filmmaker: Did you ever consider casting Joe as one of the leads?

Shelton: Well, I was chatting with Joe and said, “So what about this idea of two straight guys having sex with each other?” and Joe immediately volunteered to be the one to have sex with Mark Duplass! [laughs] But when I started talking about it to Mark, we realized that the two characters needed to be the same age. I originally imagined Mark as being the Josh Leonard role, charismatic, crazy guy, but Mark immediately said, “I need to play the domesticated dude.” Then I needed someone else to play that role – it just didn't seem like the right casting choice because of the age thing.

Filmmaker: Did you know Josh Leonard before you embarked on this project? Did you know him before?

Shelton: No. In fact, when Mark was adamant that he needed to play the domesticated guy, I said, “Well, you're going to have to help me cast this part, because I need this part to be somebody who is as charismatic – if not more so – than you, and I don't personally know any actor who is more charismatic than you, [laughs] so I'm going to need some help here.” Josh was actually the first person that Mark thought of. They had met at the Woodstock Film Festival, when Mark had Puffy Chair there and Josh was there with a short, The Youth in Us, and they became good friends. When Mark called Josh and threw the idea at him, vouched for me and said it was going to be an interesting project, he was interested right away. I remember we met on the phone, I pitched the movie to him – which was hard enough to pitch to Mark, who I already knew – and sent him my first two films. He really liked and responded well to both of them, and after that he was on board. I think he understood what I was trying to do and understood Mark's way of making movies as well, so knew what he was in for.

Filmmaker: Were you aware of Josh as an actor, particularly in The Blair Witch Project?

Shelton: I'd never seen that film, and then I felt like I had to see it... I'm not a horror fan at all – I'm a total weakling and just don't have the stomach for horror and so had no desire to see it. Also, I get really motion sick at the drop of a hat and that movie is terrible for that. My brother saw it in the theater and he had to run to the bathroom and vomit, so there was no way I was going to see it in the theater. People were telling me how incredibly scary it was and I was just like, “No, not for me...” Mark warned me, “You're going to be really creeped out,” so when I watched it I ended up barely being able to look at the screen, I was so sick watching it on my little TV. I had to look at it peripherally, sideways on the couch, and I would be listening and glancing at the movie in the second half because I got so sick.

Filmmaker: Both Humpday and My Effortless Brilliance have an incredible feeling of spontaneity. How much free rein did you give Mark and Josh in order to achieve that sense of immediacy and naturalism?

Shelton: It's very similar to a Mike Leigh paradigm, the only difference is that he actually writes down [workshopped dialogue] and submits the script before they go into production, but all those words came out of the actors' mouths originally, because he uses improv to come up with the script. Even though he's got it written down and can put his name on it and can say, “These are the lines I ultimately decided on using,” he takes the screenplay credit even though the actors are the ones who were very actively participating in the writing process.

Filmmaker: So he writes the film before shooting begins, whereas you essentially write in in the editing room.

Shelton: I write it in the edit suite – exactly. So I let them go on and on for a 40-minute take, and we've got two cameras, so they just play out the entire scene. And there were some scenes that were very different every time, like with the fight in the kitchen scene, for instance, we tried out a number of different things. Or the three-way scene – good lord, that scene had so many different colors to it! We really shaped it and wrote it in the edit room, and it's very similar to a documentary where you're the fly on the wall and you're just gathering footage, and you could make a thousand really different movies from that raw material. I think about it as the idea of sculpting in marble: you have this big block of material, and you're just carving and tweaking and tweaking. It's just fascinating, because the core of some of the scenes are the same as when we were on set, but a lot of them are constructed after the fact. Sometimes you'd finish shooting a scene and I knew I had the elements to put it together, but a lot of the time the actors were like, “I don't think we got it.” Like Mark and Josh didn't think we had an ending.

Filmmaker: Had you planned the ending out at all?

Shelton: We got to the hotel room and we didn't know what was going to happen when we got there – that was the agreement that we'd made. We had some ideas and some starting points, but Mark was adamant that nobody in the cast or crew would know what was going to be the ending of the movie. We were there for 12 hours and we tried a number of different things out through the night, but when we left in the morning Mark and Josh were both pretty convinced that we didn't have it and that I was going to have to come to L.A. to shoot some more. I was pretty exhausted and they were pretty adamant, but I knew that it was there. I didn't know exactly which takes we would use or how we would put it together, but I was about 95% certain that we had it. It's an interesting way of directing because, going back to the screenplay, I have everything in place: I know what the movie is going to be, except for the exact words that are going to be spoken. Especially with this movie, because I wanted every point in time to make people feel like “What's going to happen next? I want to know what's going to happen next!” In order to have that strong narrative drive, I had to have it all planned out and it was the opposite of “Oh, let's just make a movie and improvise the whole plot.” It wasn't like that at all. There was a lot of planning and a really strong blueprint. And, at the same time, we shot the whole thing in order so there was enough flexibility to evolve and adjust as we shot.

Filmmaker: Something that's very evident from this and also Brilliance is your uncanny knack of capturing male relationships and the way that men talk to each other. How have you managed to do that so well?

Shelton: I think I credit my background as an actor, a photographer and a documentary maker. I've always loved people-watching. I remember in high school, I was a photographer and had a telephoto lens and could take these photographs safely and anonymously, just there watching and observing people and zoning in. I was teaching myself to be a close observer, and then I expanded that when I started doing interviews with people and trying to elicit people's real self and draw them out and show their authentic selves. As an actor, it was the same thing – you have to be a close observer of people if you want to get to the heart of the character that you're playing and my initial impulse has always been to go to the truth of something. With We Go Way Back, I found it painfully difficult to write a line on a page and then try to help somebody turn that into something that would sound like it would come out of their actual mouths. It just wasn't the way I was going to find naturalism, but for me I just really enjoy working this way. It's so organic and so collaborative. With both Brilliance and Humpday, I brought the actors in right at the very beginning before I had anything plotted out; I have this very loose idea, but before I can nail down the plot, I need to know who the characters are. And I can't nail that down until I have the characters cast, because I want the actors to be a huge part of the development of their own characters. It's really easy when they're coming in at the beginning, because then can embody those characters and own them, and it's fun.

Filmmaker: From a practical point of view, how have you managed to combine the demands of teaching and motherhood with pursuing your own career as an independent film director and making two films in the last two years?

Shelton: It's helpful for me to see how much work I've been able to accomplish, because I think of myself as a really lazy person! [laughs] I'm somebody who, if I had a choice, would probably just stare out the window for hours at a time given the opportunity. Firstly, I have to say that I would not be able to do this if I didn't have an incredibly supportive husband. He's just so great about letting me check out from the family; in production, I have to just totally pass the child and all responsibility off to him and he's just unbelievably wonderful about being willing to do that. It's been a bit of a struggle, and I've had to learn how to create the work-life balance. With my first film, I'd never been on a set before and I was constantly trying to absorb new information because I didn't know anything. I slept on average four hours a night for nine months and I went on vacation from my family. I was still sleeping here at night, but that was it. It was tough on us, but now with Humpday and Brilliance, we had much more compact production time and and the development process took place over months it was not too crazy. And the whole time I was teaching a day and a half, even during production, because I can't afford not to. It's a constant balancing act, but I've somehow figured out how to make it happen.

Filmmaker: Finally, with your Independent Spirit nomination, all the Sundance buzz around Humpday and your career clearly gathering momentum, what are your aims or goals Sundance and the next few years?

Shelton: Well, I'd love to sell Humpday, mainly because I paid the crew and cast either nothing or less than their worth and they all have a share in the film so I want to make sure that everybody who made the film possible gets something back. I would love for this film to be in theaters, and I know that that's harder and harder these days but I'd sure love that too. I really envision it. Aside from doing right by this film and hoping it gets out into the world, I just want to keep making movies. It's really as simple as that. I don't have any specific goals – I don't want to leap into the studio system, I just want to be able to stay in Seattle and keep making movies and not bankrupt my family. If it provides me with a broader range of options for budgets and a broader range of people, that would be a lovely side effect. Frankly, I'm a very actor-centric director, so my biggest fantasy would be for actors that I respect to see this film and want to work with me.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 1/17/2009 11:49:00 AM Comments (0)

Though little known outside her home country, Doris Dörrie is arguably one of the most important cultural voices in Germany, both in film and across several other cultural forms. Born in Hanover in 1955, she spent two years in the U.S. in the mid 70s studying drama, philosophy and psychology at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, and the New School in NYC. She then returned to Germany to attend the School of Television and Film in Munich, during which time she also worked as a film critic. Dörrie directed a series of shorts and worked on television prior to making her feature debut with Straight Through the Heart in 1983, which was followed a year later by her first hit, the comedy Men. In the 25 years since, Dörrie has established herself as one of the most distinctive and interesting voices in German cinema, working both in documentaries (such as 2007's How To Cook Your Life) and fiction films. Despite having been a single mother since the sudden death of her husband, cinematographer Helge Weindler, in 1996 (while he was shooting Dörrie's Am I Beautiful?), she has been prolific not only in film but as a director of opera and as a highly successful, award-winning author of novels, short stories and children's books.

Dörrie's latest film, Cherry Blossoms, was partly inspired by Yasujiro Ozu's seminal Tokyo Story and is a profoundly poignant tale of loss and grief in which the director draws on her own experiences of bereavement. The plot centers on a retired German couple, Trudi (Hannelore Elsner) and Rudi (Elmar Wepper), whose ungrateful children have become tired of them in their old age; when Trudi suddenly dies, a shocked Rudi decides to fulfill his late wife's dream to go to Japan. In Tokyo, he meets a young Butoh dancer, Yu (Aya Irizuki), who helps him come to terms with the loss of his wife. The film's original title is Kirschblüten – Hanami (which mean “cherry blossoms in German and Japanese, respectively), and Dörrie skilfully utilizes doubling and dual perspectives throughout, whether it is structurally, thematically or geographically. Shot on digital, Cherry Blossoms is a strangely compelling film that engages the viewer both emotionally with its intimate feel and moving narrative, and aesthetically as a visually striking and sometimes almost experimental viewing experience.

Filmmaker spoke to Dörrie about the influence of Ozu's masterpiece, female directors' place in cinema's ancestry, and playing with her daughter's Barbie dolls after a long day on set.



Filmmaker: Did the film originally stem from Tokyo Story?

Dörrie: No, that came much later. It all began with my own very personal experiences with loss and grief, death and dying, because I lost my husband 12 years ago. He died on the set of a movie we were doing together, Am I Beautiful? You have to be really careful not to use film as your own therapy, so I didn't really do that in film until now. (I wrote a novel that dealt with it, called The Blue Dress.) Now, 12 years later, I think I do know what it feels like when you overcome grief, when you come out of the other side of this process, so that's why I wanted to talk about it now.

Filmmaker: And when do the Ozu influence come in?

Dörrie: I've been living with Ozu films for 30 years now. I first saw his films in film school and found them incredibly boring. I couldn't be bothered, they were just too slow for me, the whole subject matter didn't really interest me at all at the age of 21 or so. Then I saw the films again when I first had my child and was a mother and could see how his perception of the family was kind of interesting. Then I traveled to Japan maybe 15 times and I saw that a lot of what I thought was Ozu was really Japan. Then I wondered what would happen to the couple from Tokyo Monogatari if you placed them in the 21st Century in the West, which is something that Ozu did backwards, because his film is based on an American movie [Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow]. That I found interesting, because it was not so Japanese, and in the end it was something that came from the West, traveled to the East, and I took it from the East to the West – but made the main character go to the East, to Japan.

Filmmaker: The thing that I remember being most striking about Tokyo Story is Ozu's stationary camera, but your camera is incredibly fluid and vibrant. Why did you change that aspect so much?

Dörrie: That's a long discussion about form and content and the male relationship to form, which I have thought about a great deal. When I went to film school, there were people there like Wim Wenders who were older than me. He had already made his first film and kept saying, “I use shots by John Ford and I set up the camera exactly the same way,” and he saw himself as such a direct heir to that tradition of filmmaking. As a woman, I could never see myself in a direct ancestry; it's something you don't do because you don't feel part of that heritage.

Filmmaker: Was that because there are not nearly so many women film directors to look back to?

Dörrie: It's not even that. It's something that just don't do as a woman because it's so completely out there to be making films at all that you don't dare put yourself in this line of famous ancestors. It took me about 20 or 30 years and then I said, “OK, what is my connection to film history?” I don't connect through style and form, I connect through content and theme. That is where it brings me very close to Ozu and his themes, his sensibility of how to talk about relationships. And I would never dare to adopt his style; I have to come up with my own style. I have to find of portraying this world through my eyes.

Filmmaker: And part of that way of seeing the film is it being shot on digital.

Dörrie: To me, one of the great developments has been digital filmmaking. I did a film about eight years back called Enlightenment Guaranteed in a monastery in Japan; I shot that with five people in the crew. It was a feature film and it turned out to be a huge hit in Germany, so I knew it was possible. That's something that connects me to the Nouvelle Vague, to Godard, and also to Dziga Vertov, cinéma vérité: taking the camera into the street. So we shot Cherry Blossoms with only 10 people. Maybe it's my advantage as a woman filmmaker: I'm so used to not being taken seriously that I love not being recognised as a film director on the set. I love just behaving like a tourist with a video camera and nobody pays any attention to me. That's my sandbox to play around with.

Filmmaker: I believe that you were very loose in how you shot the film, that your lead actor Elmar Wepper was at times on the Tokyo subway and didn't know where he was going...

Dörrie: He had to take care of his own costumes, iron and wash them. But, at the same time, I had a very fixed screenplay and the trick was to stay very close to the screenplay and simultaneously be completely open. That was something that we rehearsed, that there were no guarantees.

Filmmaker: The film feels very fluid and spontaneous, so it surprises me that you say that the script was so locked down. How did you achieve that feeling of immediacy?

Dörrie: By going with the flow and by not trying to control the sets, by not letting the story meander but by letting reality come in and serve the story. For instance, the “free hug” scene was not in the script but Elmar Wepper would always be in character from morning to night. And, of course, we didn't have trailers, we didn't have official lunch breaks, so we were always together, which is a great relief for a director to really have your actor be there all the time. So when we would saw the “free hug” people, and we stopped and got out the car and I asked Elmar to just walk up to them and see what happened. Because he was always in character, it turned out to be a very nice miniature scene to illustrate that a total stranger is the only person who gives him a hug, when it should be his son doing that. But we could only do this because we were so sure what we wanted to talk about and how to tell the story.

Filmmaker: The German title of the film is Kirschblüten – Hanami, which is the German and Japanese words for “cherry blossoms.” Can you explain the reason for the double title?

Dörrie: Well, I wanted to have “Hanami” in the title in Germany because it means “to watch the cherry blossoms,” which is an active way of remembering impermanence. It's really the exact translation of “memento mori,” which means “remember dying;” it's an activity, it's something that you do, which in the West we don't do much anymore. In the West, our goal is to consolidate things and make them impermanent, like plastic surgery, and not wanting anything to change. We don't want things to change, we want them to stay the same – that's our credo – which is very different training to the East, where they're taught that everything is imperfect and everything changes all the time. So that's why we have these two sides, two titles, two languages, two countries, two color gradings. It's very different in Japan and Germany, the mountains, the sea.

Filmmaker: Talking of the mountains, I'd love to hear about the challenge of shooting at Mount Fuji, which is only visible very infrequently because it's usually shrouded in fog.

Dörrie: Kurosawa nearly hung himself because of Mount Fuji – he waited and waited for weeks – and because of that famous story of Kurosawa who almost gave up on Mount Fuji, and because I had never been able to see it in 25 years – not once – I knew that you cannot make 100 people in the crew and then wait for Mount Fuji. No producer in the world would allow you to do that, so I knew I had to work very differently, be very flexible, and the second we saw a little sun on top of Mount Fuji on the weather forecast, we just hopped on the train and went and that was the whole style [of shooting]. We had also to catch the cherry blossoms – which are impossible to catch – and shoot zillions of other scenes, so it was a different way of approaching things. Whenever the weather was calling to us, we would shoot the scene.

Filmmaker: In addition to your work as a filmmaker, you've been prolific as a novelist, short story writer, opera director, etc.

Dörrie: Well, first of all, don't be fooled and don't be intimidated by this seemingly big body of work. I've been around for quite some time and because I'm a mother and, so not used to having very much time for myself and for my work (which is the same thing, really), I'm just used to being very fast. I work faster than most people because my time is so limited, but I'm also a very lazy person and I insist on being lazy, because boredom is one of the great sources of creativity. If you allow yourself to get to the point where nothing happens anymore, then things start happening. My great teacher, was my child because she taught me to be very fast because I didn't have childcare and I was a single parent for a while and I had to just use these tiny pockets of time. So I had to sit down and write while the cake was baking in the oven and I had to use one hour in the mornings when she was still asleep and waking up any minute, and that trained me to be very disciplined and also to not stick my concepts, because the second I thought “Oh, today I will have all day to myself,” she'd come down with a cold. I think that was really important for me, to try and do what I wanted along with everything else on my plate.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Dörrie: Winnetou, based on the books by this crazy German, Karl May. He wrote stories about American Indians in the 19th Century, had never been to America, and he made it all up. Every German child knows these stories and to this day a lot of Germans travel to Indian reservations in this country and they feel very linked to the American Indians because of these stories by this crazy man, who spent most of his time in jail. My father would always go with me to see these movies and for the third part I knew that Winnetou had to die and I had written out little notes for my father when to blindfold me because I knew that I was not going to be able to survive Winnetou's death.

Filmmaker: What's the most embarrassing film you watched the whole of on a plane?

Dörrie: I don't know. On planes, I don't plug in my earphones, I watch them without sound, which I really like. A lot of films translate quite well without sounds. [laughs] But I'm never embarrassed to watch bad films. I love bad TV, I love bad movies. A lot of the time, they make me feel better. Especially when I'm about to start shooting, I try to stay away from really great films. [laughs]

Filmmaker: What's the strangest experience you've had during your time in the film industry?

Dörrie: I think one of the strangest periods was when I shot a film called Happy Birthday! in Frankfurt and my daughter was a year and a half. The entire crew would go out and have a beer at the end of the day, and I had to go home and play with Barbie dolls. It was such an interesting switch that I had to do everyday, that I came from this big world of filmmaking to playing with these Barbie dolls. But I did enjoy that, and I really think it was very important to me as an artist to always have that reality check at the end of the day. If Barbie dolls are reality... I had to try and get those damn little high-heeled shoes onto Barbie's feet!

Filmmaker: Finally, should a director always take risks?

Dörrie: Always, always – there is no other way, I think. Oh God, no, to not take a risk, hoe boring would that be?! It's exhausting to bring yourself to get up at three in the morning to shoot sunrise – why bother if you're not taking a risk?

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 1/16/2009 04:04:00 PM Comments (0)

From his eclectic resumé, it's clear that Ole Bornedal likes to challenge himself so (almost always) refuses to return to familiar territory. The Danish writer-director was born in the small town of Nørresundby in 1959, and became a director of Danish radio plays in the 1980s after failing to get into film school. In the early 90s, he moved into television, where he wrote and directed sketch comedy and political satire as well as the colorfully titled TV movie Masturbator (1993). Bornedal made his feature film debut in 1994 with Nightwatch, a thriller about a law student who moonlights as a morgue worker, and returned to the small screen for the television drama series Charlot and Charlotte (1996). When his Hollywood remake of Nightwatch (1997), starring Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette and Nick Nolte, was not a success, Bornedal waited five years before making his next feature, the period melodrama I Am Dina. He then spent the following four years on a sabbatical from film, writing and directing plays at the Aveny Teatret theater company in Copenhagen, and returned to cinematic ventures in 2007 with the children's comedy horror The Substitute.

Just Another Love Story, Bornedal's latest movie, finds him in a darkly playful mood: Jonas (Anders W. Bertelsen) is a middle-aged crime scene photographer who is restless in his role as a dutiful husband and father. However, he is offered a chance to escape his familiar existence when he is mistaken for the boyfriend of Julia (Rebecka Hemse), a beautiful, young woman who ends up comatose after a car crash Jonas inadvertently caused. In Just Another Love Story, Bornedal riffs on film noir tropes – the femme fatale figure is pure and innocent, while the antihero is the willing architect of his own downfall – and seems to be enjoying himself greatly as he creates a tantalizing web of deceit and then allows it to slowly and messily unravel. Handsomely shot and tightly edited, Bornedal's movie offers a highly entertaining take on well-worn themes that adeptly balances old-fashioned storytelling with modern, meta inventiveness.

Filmmaker interviewed Bornedal by email and discussed genre filmmaking, his ideas about the modern musical, and why he says filmmaking is “just rough sex on the nearest toilet.”



Filmmaker: Where did the idea for Just Another Love Story come from?

Bornedal: I invented the title - liked it - then I saw a poster in my mind: the close up of a tormented sweaty, bloody man looking straight at us. The poster and the title: Just Another Love Story – I liked that. Then I started writing the screenplay.

Filmmaker: How instinctive was it for you to write the screenplay? (Are you usually a quick or fluent writer?)

Bornedal: Depends. I wrote Deliver us from Evil [Bornedal's next film] while shooting Just Another Love Story. It's a story about an illegal immigrant being accused for a murder he did not commit and crazy drunk racist villagers who wants to lynch him. A sort of modern mix between Peckinpah and Bergman going berserk. It's very brutal and very violent and was quite honestly very easy to write. Human brutality does not have to be described with "finesse". But Just Another Love Story was a long journey. The complexity of the intrigue – people playing many different identities and lots of lies – that is very difficult. It's like mathematics – and one should avoid that...

Filmmaker: What were your aims for the film? The title seems to be ironic and playfully misleading.

Bornedal: All films have to deal with some sort of discussion of honesty. I guess the honesty that my film tries to awake amongst the audience is that everybody carries a dream and everybody (more or less) carries the need for a fulfillment in life - that life very rarely offers. It's a very provocative and dangerous discussion to open – especially when sitting next to your loved one – but I guess it's better to face it than lie about it. At least the movie can offer you two hours of good entertainment – at no cost – except for the ticket. Of course the title is a little bit cynical – but not as cynical as thousands of hollow Hollywood films showing love in slow motion with thick butter on the lens and shallow actors fighting for their lives in stupid screenplays about man, woman, flowers, violins and Lassie.

Filmmaker: What were your stylistic and narrative influences on this project?

Bornedal: My own, I guess. My film style is choreographed and every camera move has its meaning in a dance together with the actor. It's like trying to use the entire palette of the media. I do not fancy the handheld shaky-making-you-seasick cinematography. Or letting actors sit around a table by themselves and let them improvise until they die – AND the audience dies too. I believe in Francis Ford Coppola and David Lean, Bergman and Polanski – who know about style and shadows – and all that is hidden in the magnitude of feelings between the lines of the aesthetics.

Filmmaker: Do you see the film as ant-romantic or pessimistic about the existence of pure or long-lasting love?

Bornedal: No. the film is not cynical like that. That would be a pity if it carried that message. I guess my protagonist is just suffering from the lack of courage to really speak up and tell his wonderful wife what he really misses in this life. Perhaps he is not even able to tell himself what it is. Many marriages could have been saved if honest communication was a part of the daily routine. But I guess a lot of us is really afraid of taking the chance. Instead we carry secrets, carry them straight into loneliness.

Filmmaker: The film seems very aware of genre rules and plays with them. Do you enjoy working within a genre framework?

Bornedal: No. I really don't care about that. Every film has its own demand. It creates its own set of rules, and I basically just have to follow. Whether it becomes a thriller, a sci-fi-action, a romantic noir or a comedy doesn’t really interest me until a long time after when interviewers starts asking me questions about genre. The straight and honest answer is: I don’t know, I just make movies.

Filmmaker: Is the film's use of locations in Denmark and Cambodia somehow an expression of how international you feel as a filmmaker?

Bornedal: I don't care about where I film my stories. I feel I'm part of a community of storytellers that produces stories to the people of this world. I have the privilege that almost all of my stories have reached a wide audience in the world. All my Danish films are being remade in the US – some by other directors – but they are still MY stories. I could just as easily work in France or the US, Japan, Australia or Germany. It doesn't really matter to me.

Filmmaker: Do you consider yourself part of the recent new wave of Danish filmmakers? Is there a sense of community or shared aesthetics or ideas amongst you?

Bornedal: Well... that's a difficult question to answer. Some people claim that my first film, Nightwatch, actually set off the "Danish new wave". But I'm not sure about that. I know, however, for sure that it was the first film for a generation of filmmakers that told them that you could actually tell BOTH entertaining AND clever, serious stories in European film, and that it was allowed! Later on, the whole Dogma wave started, which really never interested me. However The Celebration is still one of the best Danish films ever made – but then again it would also have been if it has been made outside the Dogma-rules. Dogma also means celibacy, and I don't like that. Its not sensual, it's not passionate, it's not wild, it's very Scandinavian and Ibsen and Strindberg. I guess I'm more Jewish or Italian. Expressionistic and high tempered – but in this sort of very charming low-key sort of way.......

Filmmaker: Why do you think that Denmark has produced so many exciting filmmakers recently?

Bornedal: Because of me and Trier and other respectless anti-authoritative egos. And a film institute with subsidies, two national supported TV-channels and a country that celebrates good and clever stories, not always just entertainment.

Filmmaker: You took four years away from making movies to run a theater company. How was that experience, and did it affect the way you now perceive cinema?

Bornedal: I'm one of the very few filmmakers who has both written for film and for the stage - as well as being both a film director AND a stage director. I believe it has taught me how to work with actors in the most sensitive and profound meaning of the word. Doing theater is a very intimate thing compared to making film. You spend weeks searching for the right answer for the right feeling. If I should compare it to making love (which is always very funny to do), then doing theater is the longest foreplay you can imagine with a great orgasm on opening night; doing film is just rough sex on the nearest toilet!

Filmmaker: Do you see yourself as someone primarily working in film, or are your theater and television projects just as central to your artistic identity?

Bornedal: I'm only doing films from now on. Theater is an old mistress and one day perhaps I will return to her. But I'm a busy man, I do not have time for the foreplay. (Talking about films, that is!)

Filmmaker: After your breakthrough success with (the original version of) Nightwatch, you went to remake it in the U.S. How do you feel looking back on that time? Was working in Hollywood – and the consequences of working there – different to what you expected?

Bornedal: Not really. But Bob and Harvey were tough bosses. Then again, everything in filmmaking is tough. Hollywood has its expression of "toughness" as Scandinavia has its definition. But of course it's easier for me to move in Scandinavian waters: from idea to actually filming the story, it's not a very long road. I have the feeling that in Hollywood, you need to have endless discussions before you come to some sort of reality at the end of the tunnel. These days I have conference calls over the Atlantic with me in the one end being examined by four of five executives on the other end trying to be convinced that I can make a movie. That's pretty tough, knowing for sure that I can actually do that...

Filmmaker: You have been working on diverse projects recently – what position do you wish to have as a filmmaker? Who do you look up to as people whose careers inspire you?

Bornedal: I still want to do my two best films, as I mentioned. And hopefully I can create some really great international stories in the future. I think I have a golden goal in mixing the best of my psychological knowledge of character work on the European continent with my knowledge AND love for the classic American ability to simply tell good stories. That mix is the juice that creates big movies. And the masterpieces we remember carry that: strong character and strong storytelling.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you wished you had a different job?

Bornedal: When I was twelve and helped the milkman carry out milk in the neighborhood for five dollars a day.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you cried in a film, and which film was it?

Bornedal: I always cry when the feeling is there and its well performed, and the last time was a few hours ago. I watched Finding Neverland with my kids and seeing Freddie Highmore in that movie made me cry my heart out. I tried to hide it, though. I find it a little embarrassing to cry in front of my kids. They start laughing at me.

Filmmaker: If you had an unlimited budget and could cast whoever you wanted (alive or dead), what film would you make?

Bornedal: I do not need unlimited budgets in order to create a big movie. But I'm developing a musical right now, Beat. It's to be shot in the US, it's a modern version of West Side Story, except very brutal: lots of hip-hop, lots of music, lots of blood, love, sensuality and action, beautiful without being sentimental, brutal without being cynical. It needs modern daredevil-ish actors. Or a modern version of Sound of Music – that could be really interesting. The story is terrific, the drama is strong. Taking the musical into modern days of the extreme, that's a real challenge.

Filmmaker: What's the most embarrassing film you watched the whole of on a plane?

Bornedal: Never happened. How stupid would that be? Watching the WHOLE of an embarrassing film? No way – but I know they are there! I'm afraid it's very often American love stories or wannabe comedies; I see them on the lists and then I go to the games instead. And how embarrassing is THAT for the producers: being out-matched by an electronic game of solitaire??

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 1/09/2009 12:19:00 AM Comments (0)

Though he only decided he wanted to be a filmmaker in his late twenties, Alexei Balabanov has made up for lost time by creating a body of work that has made him both Russia's most interesting auteur and one of its most commercially successful directors. Born in Sverdlovsk in 1959, Balabanov studied translation at the Gorky Pedagogical University and then spent a few years working as an interpreter for the Russian Army in the Middle East and Africa. It was only at the age of 28 that he signed on to attend the Advanced Course for Screenwriters and Directors in Moscow, where he studied auteurist cinema. Graduating in 1990 with a couple of student documentaries to his name, Balabanov made his feature debut as writer-director with Happy Days (1991), and next brought to the screen an adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Castle (1994). He had his breakthrough in 1997 with the crime drama Brother, which was a phenomenal success in Russia and internationally, but he surprised many by following it up with an arty, black-and-white depiction of the roots of pornography in pre-revolution era Russia, Of Freaks and Men (1998). After thus reasserting his auteur status, he satisfied the masses with Brother 2 (2000) – once again a monster hit – and then made a return to more profound works with War (2002), a drama about prisoners in the Chechen conflict. His two subsequent films, the raucous gangster comedy Dead Man's Bluff (2006) and romantic melodrama It Doesn't Hurt (2006), were the first efforts of his career that he did not write as well as direct.

Cargo 200, Balabanov's new film, is possibly his most personal yet. Set in provincial Russia in 1984 – when the USSR, at war in Afghanistan, was crumbling as the Communist era came to an end – it is partly based on the director's own experiences at the time. The title refers to the dead soldiers sent back from Afghanistan, and death and decay are everywhere as Balabanov uses the story of the abduction of a local politician's daughter to give a panoramic view of a country slowly rotting, inside and out. Cargo 200 is an extreme vision, a scathing allegorical satire which starkly depicts the corruption and depravity of its subjects, yet Balabanov presents these grim lives with a stealthy relish that makes the film unexpectedly enjoyable to those who can tap into his sinister, deadpan humor. A grotesque modern farce fueled by vodka, depravity and dodgy 80s pop music, Cargo 200 features one of the most memorable closing shots in recent memory and is the audacious and brilliantly realized vision of a director at the very height of his powers.

Filmmaker interviewed the typically concise Balabanov over email and asked him about his depiction of the Soviet Union in decline, his personal take on cinema, and what he thinks about his status as a “genius.”



Filmmaker: At the start of Cargo 200, it says the movie is based on real events. How did you find out about these events, and how closely do you stick to the truth?

Balabanov: In 1983 I served in the army in transport aviation and we were attached to the landing force division who went to Afghanistan and came from there. I flew to Afghanistan myself. We took soldiers there and also brought dead bodies back. I lived in the barracks with a man who had a lot of war experience and he told me a lot of stories. For example that dead bodies very often disappeared and there was no real control about their transportation back home. That is how the image of the stolen dead soldier's body came to my mind.

In 1984 when I came back from the army I started working at Sverdlovsk Film Studios as a
director's assistant and I was assigned to the film crew of the film The Way to the Sunrise about Russia conquering Alaska. I traveled through a big part of Russia looking for locations. I met a lot of Yakut people. Germans. I lived with them, listened to their stories. There is a lot of my imagination in the film but real stories are the base of the film.

Filmmaker: How personal is this film to you? What are your recollections of that period of the 1980s influenced the film? How much did they creep into the film?

Balabanov: In 1984 it was the end of Soviet Union: Chernenko, the old sick leader died, Gorbachev came to power, new era started. The film is very personal. I wanted to tell the story which I was the witness of.

Filmmaker: What was your impetus for writing the film? Was it to counteract nostalgia for Communist era? (If so, do you feel Putin is responsible for the fond feelings of this period?)

Balabanov: I am 49 years old. I was born in the Soviet Union. There is no nostalgia for that time. And Putin has nothing to do with it. I just showed the life of people how I remember it.

Filmmaker: How easy was it for you to recreate the look of the 1980s in the film?

Balabanov: I remember the people, the events very clearly. I work with the same crew all the time, the art director, the costume designer (my wife) are very professional not young people, who also remember that time. Besides we shot the film in the province, here the atmosphere has not changed much. We did not have to build anything special, we shot in a communal apartment (home of the policeman in the film) which did not require special decoration.

Filmmaker: Your actors have a very deadpan style. Do you have particular methods to get them to act in such a way?

Balabanov: I give very exact instructions to the actors, I ask them to be very natural. I very often prefer non professionals. For example the mother of the policeman is played by a common woman who lived in the communal apartment where we shot these scenes.

Filmmaker: How do you describe Cargo 200 to people? Is it a comedy? A melodrama? A thriller?

Balabanov: I cannot define the genre of the film, I do not think you can place it in a certain genre.

Filmmaker: The film has a very dark sense of humor. Do you feel you are more able to make a point with a joke?

Balabanov: I have a sense of humor and I use it very often, but I do not think there is any humor in this film.

Filmmaker: How does the content of the film relate to contemporary Russia? Is there a lesson you hope people will take from it?

Balabanov: I did not think about the present contemporary Russia when making this film, but critics and audience saw allusions to today's situation. It was not my intention. But films give space to interpretation, which sometimes surprise me. I am not a teacher and it is not my task to teach people any lessons.

One of my favourite films is Old People Do Not Live Here Anymore [the Russian title of No Country for Old Men] by the Coen brothers. What lesson does it teach people? Evil wins at the end and is not punished. Directors who are artists just tell stories, sometimes people make conclusions and interpret the films in their own way. Especially if films make an emotional impact on the audience.

Filmmaker: Is there are a certain group of people you were trying to reach with this film?
Do you think of yourself as an international filmmaker when you are making your movies?

Balabanov: I do not make films for myself. I make them for people and I want people to like my films. I do not make films for any group of people or only for Russians.

Filmmaker: Are audiences meant to enjoy Cargo 200? Or would you prefer that it disturbs them and gets under their skin?

Balabanov: I make shocking films and usually my films are either liked or hated. There are no indifferent viewers.

Filmmaker: How important is this film in terms of your career as a whole?

Balabanov: Each film I make is important for me, I do not do anything else beside making films. It is my life.

Filmmaker: After the huge success of Brother, you made Of Freaks and Men, which was a vastly different film. Did you feel a need to respond to that success on your own terms?

Balabanov: Of Freaks and Men was conceived and written before Brother, but it was the more expensive project so I made Brother, which cost very little ($300,000) before the producer was ready to finance Of Freaks and Men.

Filmmaker: You seem to enjoy confounding people's expectations and constantly redefining yourself. Do you think that's a duty of the filmmaker?

Balabanov: I make different films because people like different films.

Filmmaker: Violence is a big part of some of your films. How important is it in your cinematic vocabulary?

Balabanov: Violence is a big part of life in our country, especially in the 90s. Look at Russian TV series now, all the channels show violent criminal sagas, a lot of programs are about murder, maniacs, criminal dividing of business. I do not invent is, I show the portrait of time the way I see it.

Filmmaker: How much freedom do you have to make your films? Do you have to try to think of how much money the film will make, or can you always do things on your own terms?

Balabanov: I am absolutely free in my work, I am happy as my producer and friend Sergey Seljanov (CTB Film Company) with whom I made all my films gives me absolute freedom in choosing subjects, and absolute freedom in my creativity. He trusts me and I hope likes what I do. It is a rare stroke of luck when a director finds a producer who loves cinema, who is professional and who shares the director's ideas and supports him in such a devoted way.

Filmmaker: How political are you in your intentions when you make a film?

Balabanov: I am very far from politics and never think about it when I make my films.

Filmmaker: What’s the biggest compliment you’ve ever received?

Balabanov: Once a critic told me that I am a genius, but I did not take it seriously.

Filmmaker: What’s the smartest decision you ever made?

Balabanov: I have to take decisions very often during shooting or editing my films. I never feel sorry for them and I am sure I took the smartest possible decisions.

Filmmaker: Finally, what was your dream job as a kid?

Balabanov: I trained as a swimmer in my childhood and wanted to work at a swimming station saving people, then dreamed about being a cosmonaut. I never thought about being a filmmaker.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 1/02/2009 12:04:00 PM Comments (0)