For Lee Isaac Chung, filmmaking is linked to tackling challenges and obstacles above and beyond those inherent to the cinematic process. The son of Korean immigrants, Chung was born in Denver in 1978 and grew up on a farm in rural Arkansas. He attended Yale and was studying biology, on track to become a doctor, when he discovered arthouse movies. Rather than continue on his path to a medical career, Chung took a filmmaking class given by Michael Roemer and went on to earn an MFA in film from the University of Utah in 2004. A classmate at Utah, Yohei Kawamata, became the star of Chung's first two shorts, Highway (2004) and Sex and Coffee (2005). In his work, Chung has been attracted to projects in other languages: in 2005, he made the Spanish language short Los Coyotes about immigrant smuggling, and in 2007 he completed his long gestating documentary about Chinese Christian preachers, Six Days – despite the fact that he speaks neither Spanish nor Chinese. He is currently in post-production on his first English language feature, Lucky Life, which was chosen as one of the participants in the Cannes L'Atelier du Festival initiative in 2008.

Chung's debut feature, Munyurangabo, continues the writer-director's exploration of cinema beyond the boundaries of language. It was shot in Rwanda in just eleven days, and represents the fruits of a filmmaking course for aspiring Rwandan natives conducted by Chung. The film, the first in the Kinyarwanda tongue, tells the story of two young friends, Sangwa (Eric Ndorunkundiye) and Ngabo (Josef "Jeff" Rutagengwa), a Hutu and a Tutsi respectively, who leave the Rwandan capital of Kigali to go and kill the man who murdered Ngabo's father during the genocide of 1994. On the way, they visit Sangwa's family, and the bond of friendship between the two is tested by the intolerance and prejudice rooted in age-old ethnic divisions. Mostly improvised, and shot in a documentary style, Munyurangabo has a feeling of total authenticity and Chung and his actors imbue the fable-like story with deep emotional resonance. The film examines the repercussions of the genocide – and how to move forward from them – with a rare perceptiveness and compassion. Chung's coupling of stylistic spareness with an emotionally complex narrative is highly effective, and this accomplished film leads us to hope for much more from him in the future.

Filmmaker spoke to Chung about his attraction to making movies in foreign languages, his role in bringing film culture to Rwanda, and how Chungking Express and Days of Heaven changed his life.



Filmmaker: What was the genesis of Munyurangabo? Did it start when you went to Rwanda in 2006, or prior to that?

Chung: My wife and I got married in 2005, right after she got back from a trip to Rwanda. Before the wedding she said, “Next summer I want to go back,” so I basically I needed to figure out something I could do while I was there. I thought, “Maybe teaching cinema would be interesting,” and then the only way that I think you can learn is to make a film.

Filmmaker: So was the film conceived more as a community educational project, or as a feature that you would make?

Chung: Initially I didn't know if it was just going to be a short film or just some quick video project, so it was focused on the class. But when I started watching or reading up on certain films that had come out of Rwanda, I realized that maybe the greatest honor to do for them would be actually to treat the project very seriously and make a film that very much could be considered part of their national cinema.

Filmmaker: There's been much made of the fact that you, as a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, made a very authentic film about Rwanda, its people and its culture. How did you go about doing that?

Chung: I guess it's no different from making a documentary, if we were successful. After graduate school, I went to China and shot a documentary in Chinese – I don't speak Chinese either. I did this and found that you can make a film by simply listening and observing and trying to interpret what you are seeing and looking for some sort of universal connection between you and another person, and using that as a starting point for how to shape a portrait of them. I didn't have the audience in mind: I didn't concern myself with “How is a Westerner going to look at this?” but I wanted it to be very true to a Rwanda person. The most important question was how do you truly present this individual or this subject matter in as honest of a way as possible? It's a constant search and listening while you're there.

Filmmaker: You had this group of Rwandan students, so how long was it before they were ready to make the film with you? Presumably you had to start from scratch with them.

Chung: It was six intensive weeks, then one week of production preparation, and then a week and a half of shooting – and then half a week to celebrate when it was done! [laughs] That was basically the breakdown of the schedule.

Filmmaker: Language was obviously a big factor in making the film. Did you have a translator with you?

Chung: Of the people I taught, two of them were very fluent in English, and then most of them were able to understand quite a bit. The actors I worked with didn't speak English, so actually directing the actors took a long time, getting things translated back to them and to me. For the rest of the crew, I could just speak English and someone would translate here or there if they didn't understand.

Filmmaker: How secure did you feel in that situation? What was it like not knowing what the actors were saying or when to tell them to cut, and not being able to rely on the usual processes of making films?

Chung: To be honest, Lucky Life was my first English language film in a long time. During graduate school I made a native film in Spanish – and I don't speak Spanish – and then I shot the Chinese documentary, and then Munyurangabo, so I kind of got used to this process of working with a lot of language barriers. I grew up with Korean parents who don't speak English perfectly and I don't speak Korean very well either, so we got along quite well with limited communication. In filmmaking, it was actually a nice challenge and it's nice to find certain cooperation and work together through language barriers. I feel like it's a beautiful thing.

Filmmaker: On the surface, the challenges that you faced making this film seem incredibly daunting, but you seem to be saying that that's what makes the who process worthwhile.

Chung: That's exactly what I would say. I love traveling, especially to places where there are very few people who speak English. I've just always enjoyed that, so to work in that environment was just the next level. When I'm in Rwanda, I feel like I'm thriving in that environment. Some friends will come and visit and while we're there they'll find it very funny that I'm driving all around the country in this truck and hanging out with people who don't speak English, stuff like that. I enjoy that quite a bit.

Filmmaker: I want to ask you about the writing of the script. Did you have a treatment and then had the actors improvise around it?

Chung: Yeah, we worked out maybe a 10 -page basic outline of the story and from there we had to find all the dialogue, all the details of the story, and that came about working with the crew and the actors improvising. It was an outline with numbered scenes, and some of those scenes were very sparse in the details, and would just say “Ngabo feels threatened,” We'd have to figure out how to do that.

Filmmaker: How easy was it to create those scenes through improvisation and rehearsal given that these weren't actors with any experience or training?

Chung: It was much easier than I anticipated. We shot it in 11 days, and that just shows how quickly we were able to move. We were improvising during those 11 days, and the way in which I like to work is to have a rehearsal, and if I think it's almost there then we shoot it. By the end, we would shoot without any rehearsals and it would be perfect. Of course, there were times that I would have to tell them to weed out certain parts of the dialogue if it didn't make sense to the story, or if it didn't work, just to scrap the idea and find another scene.

Filmmaker: It seems remarkable that with improvisation, with the language barrier and with such inexperienced actors and crew that you shot a feature in just 11 days.

Chung: I don't know what it was, it just came together pretty well, and the crew and the actors were professional, and they were very clear about what they thought should go into the film and what was truly Rwandan, so it was able to rely on that quite a bit. Because of those limitations, they knew that they had to bring a lot more what they were doing in order to help me in what I was doing. There was an urgent sense of having a creative endeavor, mainly because they don't have any other opportunities to make a film.

Filmmaker: You've gone back to Rwanda since to teach film again. What kind of a responsibility do you feel to the people who you worked with on Munyurangabo?

Chung: After making the film, I realized just how important it is to give them all the resources to make their own films. They often ask if I would come and direct another film, but I've been refusing and trying to put it onto other people. I've gone back two times since and I plan to keep going and teach these same students. The focus has definitely shifted to teaching and equipping them to be completely independent of me, and they're doing quite well now. One of the students, Edouard [B Uwayo], the poet in the film, just made a feature film that played at their national mourning ceremony for the genocide in front of the president at the big stadium. Apparently it was a big success and [Paul] Kagame, the president, said that it's his favorite film in the world. [laughs] He also got a grant from Focus Features to make this film, so it definitely feels like we're on the right path to success.

Filmmaker: The film employs a simple documentary style a lot of the time, but you use slow motion and jump cuts interestingly as well in addition to using both indigenous African music and modern jazz.

Chung: I'm a believer in shaping the style around the subject. I think Lucky Life's style is very different from Munyurangabo. A lot of the long takes, for instance, were necessary to preserve the performances because it's hard to improvise scenes using lots of cuts, and it was also to show the pace of life and the way time progresses. A lot of those choices come very intuitively, and at the same time there are multiple influences within the film. I think watching Kiarostami was quite important, and the way in which he filmed when he went into the countryside in films such as The Wind Will Carry Us. That was a very important film. Bresson, for instance, was influence too. It's hard to pinpoint exactly. There's no real theory behind why I use certain stylistic elements. There's always some reason that goes into it.

Filmmaker: When you were at Yale, you were on course for a medical career when you discovered you wanted to make movies. What was your moment of realization?

Chung: Somehow, by chance I just watched Chungking Express, and growing up in Arkansas there is no such thing as arthouse cinema. You don't get it at all. I also saw Days of Heaven. I remember thinking that both were such interesting films that I decided to read up on the directors. I noticed that Wong Kar-wai talked a lot about the French New Wave, and I thought, “Well, what's that?” so I started exploring that, and watched The 400 Blows, Breathless. It was decided for me at that moment what I wanted to do. [laughs] Filmmaking seemed like a very impractical decision when I made it, but it just felt right.

Filmmaker: How did the people around you – and in particular your parents – react to such a radical change?

Chung: I think it was very difficult for my parents all the way until Munyurangabo got in Cannes. It showed up in a lot of Korean papers and I think they started thinking that maybe it was OK. [laughs] That was the turning point with them.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you burst out laughing on set?

Chung: That's easy. I worked with this guy Yohei [Kawamata], who I went to grad school with, who has a small role in Lucky Life. He's a stand-up comic so I had him improvise, and we have many out takes where he's just saying things that I can't repeat. That was the biggest laugh I've had in a long time.

Filmmaker: What keeps you awake at night?

Chung: [laughs] I'm always awake at night. I'm a very late sleeper. My temperament keeps me awake at night and I'm just unable to sleep.

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

Chung: [laughs] That's a funny question. I've never entertained these questions in my head. Maybe if it's now, I'd want to make something with Jérémie Renier. I really like him, he's a great actor. I'd love to make a film with him.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/29/2009 11:37:00 AM Comments (0)

Danish cinema currently has numerous talented fiction directors – everybody from Lars von Trier, Christopher Boe, Ole Bornedal, and Susanne Bier to Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, Nicolas Winding Refn and Lone Scherfig – and now Anders Østergaard is bringing attention to the country's documentary output. Born in Copenhagen in 1965, Østergaard studied at the Danish School of Journalism, graduating in 1991, before deciding to eschew a career as a journalist to become a documentarian. Throughout his career, he has been concerned with the boundaries of non-fiction and with the idea of documentary itself. Østergaard's debut film, Gensyn med Johannesburg (1996), was about filmmaker Henning Carlsen's return to the eponymous South African city, where 35 years earlier he had shot the docudrama Dilemma. Since then, Østergaard has become particularly interested in documentary reenactments: he recreated the death of Swedish jazz musician Jan Johansson in Troldkarlen (1999), and in Tintin et Moi (2003) he used 3D animation to explore the previously two-dimensional world of Hergé's cartoons. In 2006, he scored a big hit in his home country with Gasolin', a portrait of the Danish 70s rock band of the same name, and in 2008 followed it up with Så kort og mærkeligt livet er, about Danish poet Dan Turéll.

Østergaard's latest film, Burma VJ, once again grapples with how and why we capture the world on film. It was initially meant to be a small-scale film about “Joshua,” a junior video reporter living in Rangoon, the largest city in Burma, who is part of the Democratic Voice of Burma (or DVB). Though any journalistic activity is banned under the current Burmese junta, the DVB risk their lives and freedom to secretly document government suppression in the country so that its own citizens, as well as the international community, can see. However the project changed radically in 2007, when, after 19 years of relative quiet, the Saffron Revolution – an uprising of the country's Buddhist monks – took place, turning the film into a document of the Burmese people's attempt to fight back. Narrated by “Joshua” and featuring reenactments that depict his role in these tumultuous events, Burma VJ brings out the powerful dramatic aspects of this true story in a way that rivals any fiction film. However, it is ultimately the purer documentary elements – the immediate, electric footage shot by the DVB video reporters – which make Burma VJ a compelling and important piece of cinema.

Filmmaker spoke to Østergaard about his penchant for reenactment, the blurring of the line between fiction and documentary cinema, and why he wishes he'd directed 2001: A Space Odyssey.



Filmmaker: You studied journalism rather than film, so did that background give you a different perspective on the way that you approach filmmaking?

Østergaard: That's very likely. Of course I'm in documentary, which is related to journalism and there's a lot of method that is shared with journalism. Also, I'm very keen on research – understanding an issue before I describing it – and I would less on intuitive or subjective understanding. But on the other hand I've deliberately chosen not to work in journalism; I take liberties in my films which you can not take in journalistic. There's an element of reenactment in this film, for example, which defines it as something different.

Filmmaker: Reenactment has been a part of your work for some time now. What particularly attracts you to using it in your films?

Østergaard: It's a great science to recreate the past, to make the past come alive, to be there as much as possible. This leads me to do a lot of reenactments, but I'm always happiest when there is some authentic or original element to the reenactment, like a sound bite which I can then build the texture around. Basically I want to tell stories which have the full cinematic flow, the feeling of being there as a cinemagoer, just like any feature film. And in order to achieve that narrative flow, you need reenactment.

Filmmaker: With this film, were the phone conversations one of the original elements that you built the reenactments around?

Østergaard: Some of them are original, others are reenacted but on the highest level of factuality. I would call them “self-constructions,” in the sense that it was the real protagonists who relived their conversations some months after they took place.

Filmmaker: How did those subjects feel about acting out those conversations again?

Østergaard: I think it was therapeutic for them to relive these dramatic, sometimes traumatic, experiences, as a way of letting the steam out, so to speak. They had build up stories and experiences individually, but they didn't have much chance to discuss it between them because of security reasons, because of the chaos of the aftermath of this uprising. Most of them hadn't been in a situation like this before: they had been growing up in a country where absolutely nothing was happening, and all of a sudden they were thrown into revolution. I think it was an opportunity for them to digest what they'd been through. I could feel that very often in the conversations, that the whole emotional energy was completely intact.

Filmmaker: Did they feel as if they were acting?

Østergaard: Yeah, acting, but of course we were often very successful in getting back to those feelings. I started off by getting them to talk about what they'd been through and looked for keywords or phrases in their accounts, things I recognized as emotional triggers in their conversations, and I then reminded them to use this or that keyword. I learned that this was something that would lead back to those original emotions. Like “I escaped death twice today”; it's very important to keep to that expression, because that's the emotional trigger for everything. It's a very powerful statement.

Filmmaker: You said that what you were aiming for was something similar to narrative cinema. Do you feel as if the line between documentary and fiction filmmaking is blurring?

Østergaard: To some extent. When you have this narrative ambition, you will of course get closer to the language of fiction films. I've been working with this for quite some years now and a lot of my colleagues are doing that as well. It's not that we want to tell lies, it's not that we want to fictionalize the world. It doesn't allow us to make up stories that never happened. What we're trying to do is take factual events and represent them as richly and as directly as we can; that's why we resort to reenact.

Filmmaker: Can you tell me about the initial idea you had for Burma VJ and how that then evolved into the film that you actually made?

Østergaard: We started off with quite a small project about Joshua's daily life as a street reporter and the difficulties of getting any interesting material at all because of the obvious hazards and risks of bringing out a camera on the streets of Rangoon. We were going to have quite modest footage from his side and then add his own world to it in his own narration. It was going to be a little 30 minute festival thing. In the midst of this, there was this incredible coincidence [of the Saffron Revolution happening]. At the time that we met him, Joshua was a junior member of the group and not high profile or experienced. Suddenly, he was thrown into events in the way the film recounts, and he became a catalyst for bringing news in and out of Burma to the world media, which was an incredible rite of passage for him.

Filmmaker: How did you initially make contact with him?

Østergaard: It was fairly straightforward, in that we contacted the Democratic Voice of Burma in Oslo and from the beginning they were extremely trustful and inviting about us doing the film. They brought us to Bangkok, where we were able to meet 10 or 12 of those supporters at the time – this was already early '07 – and among them was Joshua. I slowly figured out that he might be our protagonist, because of his many qualities.

Filmmaker: How easy was it for you to get Joshua to agree to appear in the film?

Østergaard: I think at first he was apprehensive about having to take on this. He did it for the cause, but I don't think he was so keen about sharing a life that was already nerve wracking. How would he know that we would take care of his information? But instinctively he was keen to talk about that and to share his life and experience with the outside world. He had this drive in himself, and this was very much the reason he was a good protagonist and why the film feels personal and rooted in something. It's because he has his own desire to communicate with the outside world.

Filmmaker: How did you work out the way to frame the footage you got from the Burmese video reporters?

Østergaard: I think one important lesson was not to be slaves to the footage, that the footage was not going to decide the story, even if it was very exciting or unique or dramatic. The footage must serve the story, the one that I organized out of my understanding of the narrative of that uprising, the different emotional stages. Basically, the film is about battling and conquering your own fear; that's a situation that goes on every day inside a Burmese person. In order to have the psychological stages [of the Saffron Revolution] clear and well narrated, you can't say “Oh, we must have this scene also, because it's very interesting footage...” You have to direct a lot to have that clear story, and that's where the phone conversations were very helpful in giving you that psychological lens to what was really going on and how it felt.

Filmmaker: The film is narrated by Joshua, so did he write the narration himself? And was he involved in postproduction at all?

Østergaard: It is a mix of original, spontaneous interviews, with the good old technique of cutting out my questions and asking him to give independent answers. That accounts for maybe 60% of the narration. Of course, we had to rewrite passages for the sake of clarity or legibility of language. He's got a very rich vocabulary but he's self-taught, and sometimes he achieved a poetic idiom, a poetic way of putting things which I deliberately kept for the feel of it, because the film is extremely expressive. “We have no more people to die,” for instance. This is grammatically completely incorrect, but very beautiful. As he was exiled, he was at hand to work with us after the uprising, so he was often almost an assistant director to me in the reenactments, making sure that all the facts were correct, or that people looked like they did. I was keen that it would be his story, truly and fully his perspective on things.

Filmmaker: Once you were nearing the end of postproduction, what were your hopes for what the film might achieve in terms of a real world impact?

Østergaard: To be honest, there was a lot of pressure to get the film done in time, it was a very complicated to make, and we were very focused on that. You don't know how a film will work until it's out there. Not really. But, of course, we told each other this was going to be big, and the drama of the happy times and the miserable crackdown was very powerful, and that it would give a second life to this footage. It had already been broadcast as news, but this context we were able to offer to it gives it a new perspective.

Filmmaker: Do you see the film as a political statement?

Østergaard: In fact, I'm not sure it's really political, [laughs] because the level of evil and the level of goodness on either side is so great. Of course, it has political purpose, it has a political function to raise awareness about the Burmese issue, but the film isn't really political because it isn't debating anything. How can you debate the Burmese regime? It's a bunch of gangsters. How can you defend them? There's no two angles to the story – believe me, I've looked. It's almost a mythological investigation of good will and bad will. I didn't think much of politics when I was making it. I tried to look into the almost existential questions about why you would take such a risk without being rewarded, how you keep faith and how you conquer your fear.

Filmmaker: How do you view this film in the context of your other work?

Østergaard: It's certainly different. You could say it's something that just happened to me. To be involved in an issue with this kind of political energy or urgency was entirely unexpected and so I'm trying to understand what a film can be, how functional it can actually be out in the world. That's of course a very rich, privileged experience.

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

Østergaard: I'm sure the last stages of editing. You're sick. I was under a lot of pressure: I was stuck in the editing room all summer, I could hear people having fun downstairs in a restaurant on the street, it was boiling, and we were panicking as always about how to open the film.

Filmmaker: Which film do you wish you had directed?

Østergaard: 2001 is to me such an ultimate exercise. It's an incredible film, but the idea of me making it is pretty absurd. [laughs] But a film that becomes a universe in itself where you actually build a space lab in order to make it... The production story is quite amazing, and the level of research too. The ability to simply transcend the norms of the genre, to make a computer the main character and those kind of very daring moves still astounds me.

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?

Østergaard: The 18th century, for its expressiveness. I would do a documentary on Bach when he was still alive. [laughs] He was a magician, an extraordinary talent, and I'd just need to follow his frenzied production.

Filmmaker: Finally, What's the thing you keep on forgetting to do?

Østergaard: Take notes on my ideas. I have this stupid idea that if an idea's strong enough, I'll remember it. Which I won't.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/20/2009 02:53:00 PM Comments (0)

When his first film was released in 2005, Rian Johnson became an overnight sensation; but, as is so often the case, that “overnight” success took many years of work to achieve. Johnson was born in 1973 in Silver Spring, Maryland, and grew up in Denver, Colorado, and San Clemente, California. He came from a family of film lovers and by the time he was in seventh grade he was making movies, taking his Super 8 camera with him whenever he could. When he graduated from high school in 1992, he had made close to 100 shorts. Johnson went to university at USC, first attending as a general studies major then transferring to its prestigious School of Cinema-Television. During his time there, he made a number of shorts including the comedy horror Evil Demon Golfball From Hell!!!, which he wrote and directed in 1996, the year of his graduation. Though he is now acknowledged as one of the most exciting filmmakers to emerge recently, it took Johnson fully nine years to make his first feature, during time which he kept himself afloat making promos for kids' TV shows and instructional videos for deaf children, as well as working as an editor. His patience and persistence paid off, however, when he finally directed his self-penned Brick (2005), a brilliant neo-noir which reimagined a contemporary high school as the setting for a hardboiled Dashiell Hammett-style mystery. The movie, which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt and was shot at Johnson's old high school in San Clemente, won a Special Jury Prize for Originality at Sundance and was one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year.

Johnson's new film, The Brothers Bloom, adds another entry to the con movie canon as it tells the tale of swindling siblings Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody). Since their childhood, the brothers have gotten by as partners in deception, however, after the introspective Bloom decides he wants to retire, Stephen brings him back for one more job. The “mark” is the pretty but reclusive New Jersey heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz), who the conflicted Bloom must draw into an international art scam despite his growing attraction to her. On the surface, The Brothers Bloom is a colorful, lighthearted caper in the mold of the classic con movie (The Sting, for example), with a starry cast and an enjoyably tricksy plot. In terms of entertainment value, Johnson certainly delivers, but beyond the surface playfulness he examines the role and nature of storytelling, with everything from the film's intricate cons within cons to the enjoyably anachronistic setting pointing out to us that everything is artifice – yet an emotionally engaging artifice which we desperately want to be true.

Filmmaker spoke to Johnson about his playful directorial style, his nerves about following up Brick, and his prominent online identity.



Filmmaker: When did you first start thinking about this movie? Are you someone who has a lot of scripts already written and ready to go?

Johnson: [laughs] I wish, oh I desperately wish! I would love to be that guy. That would mean that it wouldn't be four years in between movies, which would be a wonderful thing, but I'm barely scraping the next one together after I finish one. I'm living the equivalent of hand to mouth with scripts. I wish I had a drawer full of them, but I'm way too lazy.

Filmmaker: So you started writing The Brothers Bloom right after Brick?

Johnson: Well, I had been planning it for a while. I'm really, really lucky to be a writer-director because I'd never make a living just as a professional writer, because I generally plan it out for four years. I came up with the idea years and years ago, before I even made Brick and it was there in the back of my head for a long, long while. It very, very slowly percolated and then at a certain point I had to actually sit down and hammer it out. So it was right after we showed Brick at Sundance in '05 that I wrote the script. It actually wasn't that long until we were shooting it – it felt like it came together fairly fast – but then postproduction ended up being a while. And then after postproduction we premiered it in Toronto and now we're coming out. It's been a long process. [laughs]

Filmmaker: What were your influences on this film?

Johnson: It started not with a very specific inspiration other than wanting to take a crack at a con man movie. The first film I did, Brick, had something very specific – Dashiell Hammett's novels – as the place I was coming from, but with this it was just the notion of doing a con man movie. And then the real hook, the real thing that got me started, was using that to explore the connection between storytelling and real life. Not as it applies to people who tell stories for a living, but for human beings in general. I got very into the idea that being a good storyteller was a part of living a good life for anybody: we as humans is take in this ridiculous, huge amount of raw information from the outside world and then we make sense of it by telling it back to ourselves, in a way, as a story. I think narrative is very much a part of the way that we build our sense of the world, our sense of ourself, so becoming good at that is essential to living a good life. I was coming at it more as a fable, as the con man as a storyteller.

Filmmaker: You use Ricky Jay as the narrator, which is seemingly a nod to David Mamet. However you go beyond Mamet's twist-driven plots to explore, as you said, ideas of storytelling and also the way in which we get emotionally involved despite knowing something is artifice.

Johnson: You still get hooked into it, absolutely. I'm happy that's there in the finished product. It's funny, because you engage with a lot of that stuff when you're writing and then you just pray to God that it ends up being there at the end of the process, that it filters through. I think that aspect of the mark looking to be conned also very much does apply to movies: every time you sit down to see a movie, you're giving up the price of a ticket and hoping to have the wool pulled over your eyes. [laughs] It's actually a real phenomenon that happens in the con game of marks being taken for a ton of money and then cut loose in such a way that they don't realize that it was all a con, and the marks coming back and seeking out the con men. That happens over and over and over again in some instances. I think there is a human instinct to place yourself in the arms of a good storyteller, and the healthier and much more affordable way to do that is to go and see a movie.

Filmmaker: I assume based on your two films so far that you like playing with genre.

Johnson: Well, I guess I do. I like working in genre. I don't see it as playing with genre, I don't see it as messing with genre or subverting genre, I see it more as just getting to play in the sandbox of that specific genre. Inevitably every time someone takes a crack at a genre, it ends up being it's own thing, so it's probably more a reflection of how I write stories. You should take this with a huge grain of salt considering that the thing I'm writing now is a science fiction film, but I feel like the fact that all the movies I've been able to make so far have been genre pieces, it's definitely not a conscious choice. In a weird way, these things just happen to grab me. Maybe I'll get to make a few more genres and then you'll never hear from me again.

Filmmaker: You strike me as a cinephile, somebody who's steeped in movie history.

Johnson: Yeah, my family are mostly in the home building business, but they're huge film buffs. When I was growing up, my grandfather got me into Fellini movies and my dad got me into Scorsese and there was always this reverence for movies in my family. I also went to film school and basically spent four years watching everything I could. This is less about film literacy, but when I was growing up I was one of those annoying kids who always had a video camera and was always shooting stuff. It's been fun for me to actually get to do this for a living, to get my family involved in it.

Filmmaker: Who would you say you align yourself with in a cinematic sense? Who do you feel some kinship with as a filmmaker? In this film, you have music from Fellini's 8½.

Johnson: I love Fellini's films and 8½ in particular. If I had to have a favorite movie, that would probably be it. There's just so much about it: Fellini has that ability to stylistically blow everything up bigger than life and yet it hit, for me anyway, on a very real and personal emotional level. My favorite filmmakers are people who can go for something that seems like the antithesis of realism and yet it's all focused down to this one singular point that strikes at a very real place. And then when you can pull that off, having this huge, stylized machine coming down to that one point makes it all the more powerful and really drives it home. In terms of aligning myself with anybody, all the filmmakers I love seem more interesting people than I could ever be. [laughs] I admire their films and am in awe of them as these grand personalities who made these ridiculously huge movies. I'm happy to keep my head down, keep my nose to the grindstone and just keep trying to get better at this stuff.

Filmmaker: Let's go back to 2005, right after the release of Brick. How did you feel about following that film, particularly as The Brothers Bloom is a bigger movie?

Johnson: I was terrified, really terrified. I was mostly terrified because Brick had been on such a small scale in terms of production and it didn't feel that much different than the way I'd shorts up until then. With this – with the scale of the production and the fact that it was bigger movie stars and all this stuff – my fear was, “Will it still feel like group of friends getting together to make a movie?” But the old adage is that the scariest part of a rollercoaster is waiting in line, and that really applies: once you start actually doing the work, all the nonsense goes away, it just vanishes, and it's exactly the same thing as making Brick or making short films with your friends. It's the same tools and you're trying to achieve the same basic thing. I got lucky that we had a great crew and cast who were there to make the best movie. But I'm not sure if I've learned anything, I'm sure I'll be terrified going into the next one for totally different reasons. [laughs] I guess it's a healthy thing.

Filmmaker: Talking of Brick, Nora Zehetner has a cameo in Bloom and I swore I saw Joseph Gordon Levitt in the party scene at the start of the movie also.

Johnson: Yeah, he came out to visit us in Belgrade for a few weeks and we snuck him in that scene. And Noah Segan, who plays Dode in Brick, is the guy at the table with Mark Ruffalo. The vague idea was that this was supposed to be like the wrap party for the previous con, so I put all the Brick people in there, basically. It was fun to have a place to fit them all in. [laughs]

Filmmaker: That's one of the reasons I see you as a playful director.

Johnson: I do love planting stuff in there that no one will probably ever get. [laughs] This is the kind of thing you have to be careful about when you're talking about because you can come off like a real horse's ass, but I do definitely layer in – really just for myself – a thread of symbolism, whether it's connecting to another story, connecting to a myth, connecting to a visual idea, and then weave that into the deep, deep background of all the scenes. There's lot of tiny hidden things in Bloom. I think as long as the main throughline of the movie is emotionally honest, I really enjoy being playful with the stuff in the periphery. I love Terry Gilliam's films, for example, and I love that you can watch them over and over and they are kind of like puzzles. 8½ is definitely the same way: every time I see that movie I pick out something different, I see a different gear grinding that I didn't see the last time.

Filmmaker: I wanted to talk about the “I collect hobbies” montage. It's only about a minute of screen time, but I presume it must have been very lengthy to both prep and shoot.

Johnson: That's a very perceptive comment. [laughs] It felt like forever. I remember when we finally did the final shot of the hobby montage it felt like we could all take a breath and we had completed the movie.

Filmmaker: Did you have a hobby montage wrap party?

Johnson: No, we should have. But that's what it felt like, it really did. Though it's such a quick little thing, Rachel actually learned the proper fingering for how to play each of those instruments and then the logistics of getting the wirework up on the thing... Rachel really dove into it and it was important to her to get those things down. No fakin'. We actually shot the interior stuff in one location in Serbia and the exterior stuff of the mansion in Romania, so it was spread out over a long period of the shoot. [laughs]

Filmmaker: I really enjoyed how you blurred the time period of the movie and embraced anachronisms or inconsistencies.

Johnson: In general, the time period isn't anything I'm ever really worried about. The focus, in terms of the style of the thing, was mainly coming from the place where we have to believe that everything we're seeing was created by Stephen; essentially, we have to believe we're encased in this story that Stephen's telling. To that end, it makes sense to have everything be a little anachronistic and bigger than life and not quite feel like the real world and feel a little inflated. You get this sense that, along with Bloom, your head is encased in this other world, Stephen's world. In terms of the time setting, I like that it's ambiguous and that it's a mashup. I look at fashion or design trends today, and everything is a mashup, everything is anachronistic. It's a little more inflated in this movie, but it's something that I see around us everyday.

Filmmaker: One of the reasons that I said you weren't lazy before was that I've been on your website, I follow your Twitter stream, and you have a blog, a tumblr, a forum.

Johnson: That's all wasting time on the internet. That's the procrastination stuff. [laughs]

Filmmaker: But it's becoming increasingly important for directors – as well as their films – to have a web presence. How integral or important do you feel your online visibility is to your identity as a filmmaker, and also to your continuing success?

Johnson: It seems like there's lots of filmmakers who are much more successful than me who aren't on the internet the way that I am. I don't think it's something that adds to – and I hope it's not something that takes away from – my career. It's something I think I would be doing if I wasn't doing this for a living, it's something I just enjoy engaging with. If this were something that was foisted on a filmmaker to do that was like a job to work, it would be a real pain in the ass. [laughs]

Filmmaker: There may be more famous filmmakers who are not on the internet, but this gives people a sense of intimacy and connection with you which makes going to see The Brothers Bloom like supporting a friend's movie.

Johnson: I can see that element. When I was growing up in San Clemente making movies, I would have loved to have felt like I had some kind of feedback from the filmmakers that I enjoyed watching. But I get quite a lot out of it myself: it feels really good. We spend so much time making these movies – the writing, the production, the editing – that when you finally get them out there, to have direct connections with people who are seeing them and enjoying them is really food for the soul. To have one-on-one from moviegoers is pretty invaluable, so I feel like I get as much out of it as anybody else.

Filmmaker: What's the thing you keep on forgetting to do?

Johnson: The thing I consistently keep forgetting to do is to buy a set of thank you cards and a packet of stamps and get in the habit of writing thank you letters to people. Every time I'm at something nice, I think, “I'm going to do it this time. I'm going get those thank you cards and those stamps and the rest of my life I'll be the guy that sends the thank you card.”

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Johnson: The first film I can remember seeing is The Wizard of Oz on TV at our neighbor's house. I remember it being a very primal, very magical thing. It wasn't like watching a movie or reading a storybook, it felt like this window into this world that existed.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you burst into tears on set?

Johnson: On set?! I've never burst into tears on set, I'm ridiculously calm. That's a questions for actors and actresses. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Finally, what matters more to you, that a film is successful, or that you're happy with the finished product?

Johnson: Happy with the finished product. I would love to meet the person who answers otherwise on that question. [laughs]

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/15/2009 09:17:00 PM Comments (0)

Whether his subjects have been small and personal or large and institutional, documentarian Kirby Dick has always dedicated himself to telling important and often provocative stories. Dick was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1952, graduated from the Film and Video Program at the California Institute of the Arts and subsequently did postgraduate studies at the American Film Institute. He made his directorial debut in 1986 with Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate, but afterwards segued into television work, taking eleven years before he returned with his sophomore film. However that movie, Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, made a huge impact on the festival circuit and on its release with its graphic and compelling depiction of the eponymous performance artist. (In 1997, Dick also wrote the script for Michael Lindsay Hogg's Guy, a fiction film about documentary filmmaking.) Dick followed up this success with a cinematic take on the chain letter Chain Camera (2001), and a portrait of the father of deconstructionism, Derrida (2002), co-directed with Amy Ziering. In 2004, he made both The End, a TV documentary on terminally ill cancer patients, and Twist of Faith, about a victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, with the latter being nominated for Best Documentary at the Oscars. Most recently, This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), Dick's most high-profile and accessible movie, scandalously lifted the lid on the clandestine inner workings of the MPAA, the movie industry's ratings body.

Audiences who liked Dick's irreverent attack on the MPAA will definitely appreciate his new film, in which the director takes aim at another sacred cow: closeted politicians. Outrage specifically puts the spotlight on secretly gay political figures whose homophobic stances have had a detrimental effect on the homosexual community which, as the film points out, they are a part of and expect to protect them. Dick's movie is certainly scandalous – it names names, dishes dirt, treats nothing and no one as exempt from scrutiny – and adopts an accessible style of pop journalism, utilizing sly humor and smart editing, to tackle its subject. However, Outrage is not frivolous in its revelations; though Dick outs gay politicians past and present, he does so not to spread gossip but with the intention of revealing the hypocrisy of their anti-gay actions. In a way, Outrage, like This Film Is Not Yet Rated, goes beyond the usual parameters of a documentary as it sets out not only to reveal taboo truths but also to have a direct and positive effect on the world it depicts.

Filmmaker spoke to Dick about his role as an activist filmmaker, the impact he hopes Outrage will have, and the future of documentaries.



Filmmaker: Recently you made a shift from telling personal, smaller stories to focusing on bigger problems with large organizations, which seemed to begin with This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Why did you change your focus?

Dick: It probably started with Twist of Faith. That was transitional because obviously the psychological experience of the survivors of clergy sexual abuse was foregrounded, but behind that was the culpability of the Catholic Church. I went in thinking it was going to be a very intense psychological examination, but when it was finished I also realized that it also was having an impact on the issue as a whole. That was my seventh film and I realized I had this tool of documentary filmmaking that I really felt like I wanted to engage in society... Let me back up. I feel like I had an opportunity to use my skill to enter the national debate on some very important issues, and it also just adds another level of complexity to the filmmaking. Even in Outrage, I'm very interested in the psychological aspect of these closeted politicians, but I like my subject matter to be as complex as possible, dealing with as many issues as possible, oftentimes moving into difficult psychological terrain or even ethically grey areas, because it stimulates me to work and it also stimulates people who are working on the film as well.

Filmmaker: With This Film Is Not Yet Rated, there was really a real world response to the film. Is that why you have made a film that once again so directly addresses a big issue?

Dick: It's a part of the reason. I mean, yes, without doubt I want my films to make an impact, but there's also something formally interesting to me as a filmmaker. For example, with Outrage, it's the first time I've ever had to deal with making a film for two audiences. Everything up until now had been an entertainment audience, a film audience, a festival audience, but I knew that this was going to be seen and evaluated first by the political press corps, and rightfully so. In another situation, I might have made it more entertaining, but here there's a different approach, which I respect. Oftentimes we'd say, “Well, this will appeal to this audience but will be a problem for this audience, so how do we thread the needle on it?”

Filmmaker: What did you see as your aims for this film?

Dick: Well, I think they were threefold. First and foremost, I wanted to advance the cause of gay rights, which I think is the most important human rights issue in this country at this time. Secondly, I wanted to report on this hypocrisy, which is an incredibly under-reported story. One of the things I find is that audiences, if they don't follow politics closely, are stunned by the revelations in this film, even though they've been out there, even though this has been reported by the gay press. It has just not got a national debate and I wanted a national debate. And, finally, I wanted this film to contribute to the demise the closet in American politics, because the closet does consort the American political system. Because this issue isn't reported on, young people going into politics – early in their career before they even are elected to public office, often in their late teens or early twenties – make a decision to go into the closet because they see that it's not getting discussed and they can kind of skate through it and maybe get through thirty or forty years of a career without ever having to come out. In part because of the discussion around this film, I'm hopeful that these young people will look around and realize it's the best decision for them personally and politically to come out and run as gay politicians. I think that's the most important thing to helping to change the closet.

Filmmaker: Would you characterize this as an activist film?

Dick: Well, I don't see myself as an activist per se. Maybe I'm trending that way because one of the projects that I can't discuss is incredibly activist. Oh my God! [laughs] It's just fun to try and destabilize people who have so much power and use that power in ways that are not good for society. There is a certain fun in doing that, although it's very serious at the same time. I guess it is [an activist film]. I am an activist filmmaker.

Filmmaker: There's a comment in the film where someone says that the activist movement is always motivated by anger. Was this film motivated by anger?

Dick: Well, anger is certainly one of the motivations. I just don't understand why in this country we can't just say “All citizens have equal rights.” I mean, it's so basic and I think any attempt by anybody, Republican or Democrat, to waffle on this issue is deplorable and appalling. And yes, that is a motivation for this film. It's also an examination of journalism, of politics and in some ways is dispassionate and analytical, and I really want it to be an investigation of the psychology. In one aspect or factor, the film is activist.

Filmmaker: The film remained below the radar until only a few months ago. You already had Magnolia on board as a distributor, you opted to only play one festival, but now there's been a lot of press on it and it seems like you've orchestrated the film to have maximum impact on its release.

Dick: Yes, early on we discussed the fact that [I wanted to] go very quickly from a festival into wide release. The whole issue of long leads these days, for this kind of film, is not nearly as important as it was a few years ago. So yes, that was the intent in the strategy from the very beginning. In fact, even before Magnolia came on, I wanted to do that. And then Magnolia of course is the pioneer of that release strategy anyway.

Filmmaker: With this being a political film about a major issue, is any coverage good coverage?

Dick: This Film Is Not Yet Rated and Outrage are really a revelation for audiences, and the one thing that upsets me is when people are saying, “We knew about this already.” Yes, you did. If you follow all of the political blogs very closely, you will know all this stuff. [But] there is some stuff that's new, and also it's never been put together like this before. Most of the people in this country don't even know who the Governor of Florida is, so it comes as a real revelation. But overall it's been received very positively, I'm very happy. I would welcome a discussion of this, even if people take issue with the issue of outing, even if they take issue with other aspects of the film. Unfortunately the discussion of this issue has not happened – and that's why everybody's so stunned.

Filmmaker: You just mentioned the issue of outing. Though the sexuality of some of the politicians has been discussed in blogs and the like, you are essentially outing them for the first time in a very accessible mainstream medium. How did you feel about outing these individuals?

Dick: I'm not just going out and outing gay politicians or closeted politicians, really essentially what I'm doing is reporting on closeted politicians and reporting on their hypocrisy when they vote anti-gay. You know, I think that's the responsibility of journalists and documentary filmmakers to report on that hypocrisy. Journalists report on hypocrisy in many different kinds of situations, oftentimes their reporting is hurtful or hurts the political careers of people, but that's their job. If people don't do this, this society will be much worse off for it, and I think you're seeing this with the demise of the investigative reporting departments in newspapers. This is going to really impact society.

Filmmaker: You make the case in the film that stories about homosexual politicians' sexuality seldom get written, because it's just not done. Are you trying to redress the balance or set a new precedent?

Dick: The gay press has been reporting on this for years, but I hope that this platforms this in such a way that people say “Yes, this hypocrisy needs to be reported on!” If it's not, the closet stays in place and the damage that it does continues for decades. By getting this out into the mainstream to some degree and having this discussion happen, I hope that [things will change]. It's like Barney Frank says, they'll write everything about his personal life except for the fact that he's gay. What is the underlying message of that? There's something wrong with being gay. That message gets out there and permeates the culture and contributes to the continuation of homophobia.

Filmmaker: How challenging was it for you to get find people who would talk to you and convince them to go on the record and on film?

Dick: What I found was that many sources were very afraid. You would contact them, they would be sympathetic to what I was trying to achieve and seeming like they would perhaps speak to me on the record, and then the next time I talked to them [they would have changed their mind]. They would be candid and say, “Look, I live in this district, this representative is very powerful in this district. All my business relationships are here, all my personal relationships are here. I don't know what he'll do. He could so something, and I can't take the risk.” I was somewhat surprised at that. It made sense afterwards, but it did happen on quite a few occasions.

Filmmaker: So there's a lot that you know about that's not in this film.

Dick: Yes.

Filmmaker: And how do you feel about that?

Dick: You know, the one thing I didn't want to do was to focus on a politician and not make sure I had all the correct information. People sometimes politically will gay bash people – even if they're straight – and I had to be very careful about that. So there are people, yes, that I think are gay, who are very powerful, who are definitely hypocrites, but I just didn't have enough to say with certainty that they were.

Filmmaker: How much of the picture are we seeing in the film?

Dick: [laughs] A substantial part. There was a lot of other work that was done, there were a lot of other politicians that were focused on, but the closet is really protected and in politics people get to a position of power by creating extensive networks of alliances and it can be very difficult to maneuver through those alliances to get to a source who has the information. And even if you get to one, you have to be very careful because there could be reasons they are putting out this information. That would happen often where I would have someone who I believed talking about a politician with information that I thought should be out, but I really felt like I needed a corroboration of them.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Dick: Jesus, it was a Western but I don't remember the name. It was a classic story about a guy who hung up his guns and, in the very end, this guy had to come back and have a gunfight with somebody. It would been in the 50s.

Filmmaker: Will the current boom in documentaries last?

Dick: I think it's around to stay. I personally think that the medium's pressures are dramatic and I sense a lot of creative energy moving out of that into the internet, not to say that there aren't great filmmakers or great films still being made. But I think documentaries seem more suited to the internet in many ways and the wide openness of documentaries sort of parallels the wide openness of the internet. I think it could take all kinds of forms and survive.

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

Dick: Oh, I can't tell you that... [laughs] I can't let you know. I can't, [laughs] but I was in some very strange situations. One was... No, I'll just leave it at that.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/08/2009 09:54:00 PM Comments (0)

Contemporary Austrian cinema has been dominated by the works of its two best known names, Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl, but now the name of the prodigiously talented Götz Spielmann can be added to that list. Spielmann was born in 1961 in the town of Wels, but grew up in the country's capital, Vienna. As a child he was drawn to film and he began writing and directing in his teens; when he was just 17, he had his first film shown on television. Between 1980 and 1987, he studied film at the Vienna Film Academy, part of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where his professors included the directors Harald Zusanek and Axel Corti. Having already made a number of award-winning student shorts, Spielmann made his feature debut in 1990 with Erwin und Julia, a tale of Vienna's disaffected youth, which he followed up with 1993's Der Nachbar. In 2000, he returned with The Stranger, a gritty depiction of the darker side of Vienna, which was chosen as Austria's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Oscars. That same honor was also bestowed on his next film, Antares (2004), a triptych of interlinking stories set in a Viennese apartment building. In addition to periodically making films for TV, Spielmann has recently also begun writing and directing plays at the Linzer Kammerspiele in Linz, Austria.

Revanche, Spielmann's latest film, is his third consecutive feature to be submitted by Austria to the Academy Awards and was one of the five nominees for Best Foreign Language Film this year. The set-up for the film is simple and familiar: Alex (Johannes Krisch), an ex-con minder at a Vienna sex club, is secretly having an affair with Tamara (Irina Potapenko), one of the Eastern European prostitutes under his care. To pay off both their debts so that they can escape to a new life together in Spain, he plans to rob a small town bank near his grandfather's farm outside the city. Though its title and relatively conventional film noir beginning suggest a straight-up thriller, Revanche is in fact an incredibly nuanced and thought-provoking film which takes us to unexpected places in its profound examination of the themes of guilt, love and revenge. Spielmann weaves together elements of noir, Greek tragedy and pastoral in a perfectly paced and structured film which feels utterly real and organic. It is a beguiling piece of cinema, and it is unlikely that a better film than this will be released this year.

Filmmaker spoke to Spielmann about his writing process, the film's organic nature, and his take on Hollywood cinema.



Filmmaker: What was the starting point for the film, and how did you first get interested in exploring these ideas?

Spielmann: I must admit that for me it's always quite difficult to really analyze what the starting point was. Finding stories and ideas in which I really believe is such a complex and somehow chaotic process that I never can say where one story started and another ended. In this case, I found a sketch of the plot which I had written some years before but had put away because at that time it didn't interest me anymore. It was one of those ideas that you're interested in and you try out: you makes notes and make a sketch of it for a few days, but then it doesn't feel interesting enough and you put it away and go somewhere else. When I read it, I was thrilled because I felt that there was something which has a lot to do with ancient tragedy in that plot, and that made it really rich and interesting and full, and then I started to work. Of course, there are other routes and sources for that: one is that about a year previously, I made a 10-day trek through the landscape where we then shot the movie, walking alone and thinking about stories and what I wanted to do. Another, for sure, is that I did a lot of research about prostitution some years before, which led me to the Ukraine. I researched that in Vienna and Eastern Europe, where a lot of the women come from. There are always a lot of sources that have to come together so that the river of the story can be filled up with energy and material.

Filmmaker: Once you've managed to tap in that river, do you write quite spontaneously?

Spielmann: I would say it's a hard struggle to get to a point where I write spontaneously, and at that point it's easy. But every day, it's a struggle to get to that point because, in my opinion, real or honest creativity has to do with an empty mind, and the work and the struggle is to get there every day. Sometimes it takes half an hour, sometimes it takes three hours when writing a script, but when I've found that point it's very easy and very refreshing to write. So it's half a struggle and half a holiday. [laughs]

Filmmaker: So when you're in that mode of having an empty mind, is what you write is coming from somewhere subliminal?

Spielmann: I think that “subliminal” is a good word, yeah. Let me say it this way: I think we have two energies or two intelligences. We have a small one that's consciousness, and a big one – an enormous one, very precise, knowing many things much more than our consciousness could dream of – which is maybe below our consciousness or above our consciousness. Maybe it's around it – I don't know. And I think that the really important things in life happen in the big intelligence and not in the small intelligence of intellectuality.

Filmmaker: Revanche is so beautifully paced and structured, so can you tell me about the process of achieving that?

Spielmann: It was not easy. It was quite complicated because there was the danger that the movie would fall into two pieces, so it was a lot of work. In this case, the process of writing means to analyze the problem, to know what has to be solved, and then wait until the solution comes. So part of the work is conscious and analysis and intellectual; I have nothing against that because it's a perfect tool, but it's not more than a tool. It has nothing to do with the truth or real things, so it was quite hard work to find the structure. It was tricky, but I'm happy that the audience don't realize that it had to be tricky, because I think that the real, beautiful things seem to be very easy – and it's a hard struggle to get to that simplicity.

Filmmaker: The opening image of the film is of ripples breaking on a placid lake, and the film itself seems to be about the ripples caused by a single event. Is that the reason you used it?

Spielmann: Yes, and no. Yes, because that sounds a very useful and truthful thought to me, and no, because it's a picture not an idea, and a thought or an idea followed. The picture came first and I somehow felt that this was the beginning. It was an instinct. I would lie if I say that I write calculatedly; I don't.

Filmmaker: It seems like Revanche plays with the conventions of film noir, so I'm interested to know your feelings on the genre.

Spielmann: I like it, I would say. By the way, it was quite influenced by Austrian and German directors, and the basic root of film noir is the so-called German Expressionism which was very strongly influenced by Austrian artists, so film noir seems to be something that has its roots in Austria and Austrian culture. But, on the other hand, I never think in genres when I work because I just try to make personal movies as good as I can. Certainly I'm influenced by everything I've seen and everything I've read, but I don't care about that. I have no problem in being influenced. I don't feel any need to be something outside the world; I'm part of it, so I'm influenced, but my working process and my goals never have to do with genre. So that influence just happens.

Filmmaker: My reaction to the film was that it begins with a classic film noir setup, but then takes us in an unexpected direction. Even the title seems to give us expectations of a more conventional revenge film.

Spielmann: I didn't think about that, not really, but then maybe I just started simple. My mind is simple at the beginning and during the process of working it's getting more complex. Maybe it's so easy that maybe clichés are in my head, but when you look with care and with concentration at a cliché it shows its hidden truth. So maybe that happened, but I never thought to to manipulate the spectator.

Filmmaker: “Manipulate” is a much stronger word than I would use.

Spielmann: You know, of course, there is a lot of conscious and unconscious trickiness in telling stories. There's structure and you work with tension and you work with expectations when you tell a story. Everybody does that, and I am not an un-tricky writer. So, on the surface, that's part of the work, but what I'm trying to say is that the profound importance is to get over that, to go deeper than that and be more exact than the manipulating methods cinema allows. By the way, one of the basic longings for the style in which the movie was made was not to manipulate. That's the reason there are so few cuts, why there is no film music at all to give the spectator his or her own freedom in being touched or not and not to manipulate the emotions. That can be very easy if you know how to make movies but which, in my opinion and from my personal experience as a spectator myself, doesn't create emotions that last. Those emotions that are evoked from manipulation don't lead to a need, they don't make a big experience, and my longing and my goal is to create experiences for the audience, not manipulations.

Filmmaker: The film does feel incredibly organic...

Spielmann: A beautiful word.

Filmmaker: ...And spontaneous and unforced. How did you achieve that effect?

Spielmann: [laughs] Yes, that's a very big question, my dear, [laughs] because it has to do with a lot of things. It first of all has to do with writing the script, especially dialogue, it has to do with the work with actors, it has to do with the work with the camera, with the pictures. All that has to come together to find that organic (I like that word very much) form, finally. I would say in general I work with a very precise knowledge of what I want from each single scene and each sentence an actor says and of each single picture, and on the other hand I wait as long as possible to reach that goal. That means when I shoot a scene, I know what feeling and energy and emotions should be in that scene, but I decide at the very last moment how we'll do it and how I'll shoot it. That allows me to stay inspired by everything that happens, by the actors, by the people I work with, by the locations, by the weather, by the light, by the noises I hear – by everything.

Filmmaker: Does that mean that you encourage your actors to improvise?

Spielmann: I work with improvisation in the rehearsals. I rehearse a lot. I rehearse about two weeks with the actors before we shoot. In that process, I sometimes change some dialogue. When I see in rehearsal that an actor can not do it in the way I want it, then I change the dialogue, or if there is an improvisation that makes it more interesting then I put it into the script. But that's not needed: if that doesn't happen, there's still an idea in the script and a scene that works. When I shoot, I very seldom work with improvisation, only in situations of a high emotional energy level, for example the bank robbery. When I shoot, it's very precise.

Filmmaker: Has the rehearsal process, and other aspects of your filmmaking practice, been influenced by your theater work?

Spielmann: Not at all, not at all. Theater refreshes me very much, it makes me fresh and full of energy. It's something I love to do. If you have a really good play, a masterpiece, it's just refreshing to work with that, to understand it better and better during the process of rehearsing it. I like to work with actors and I like work that vanishes very quickly afterwards. When you make something for the theater, three months after the opening, it's gone, it's away most of the time. I like that. It's something which is a good opposite to the writing process, which has a lot to do with being alone, and sometimes being lonely, and working on theater is the opposite, it's working together. It's really a kind of fun which I do with a lot of passion and seriousness. So fun not in an un-profound way.

Filmmaker: If you like how theater disappears, does the permanence of films make you feel pressured? Do you not like that permanence so much?

Spielmann: I like it very much and wouldn't say that it's pressure, but another kind of responsibility. I like that responsibility as well. I like both. I like the lightness and I like the responsible things.

Filmmaker: Do you see Revanche as a typically Austrian film? How do you view it in the context of a national cinema?

Spielmann: For me, that's hard for me to say because I'm Chinese and I more see the differences between us Chinese. [laughs] I don't look at us from outside so I don't think we're all the same. [laughs] I don't know, I really don't know. I like some filmmakers here very much, in some aspects I'm influenced by Austrian culture and Austrian tradition. But, on the other hand, I don't feel like an Austrian artist, I feel more like a citizen of the world, or maybe of Europe. Austria's a very small country, so for an artist's self consciousness or self definition, a country alone is too little to define yourself by.

Filmmaker: You said you're a citizen of the world, so does that mean that you might consider doing a film outside of Austria? Have you considered doing a film in the U.S.?

Spielmann: That might happen, yes, but I cannot say. It depends. If the project, the script and the circumstances of working give me the impression I could make something beautiful, then I would do it, yes.

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?

Spielmann: It would be between 1950 and 1965 in Europe, maybe Italy, with what emerged from the neorealists. For me, the mid 50s to the late 60s in European cinema is the most interesting part of film history.

Filmmaker: Is Hollywood going in the right direction?

Spielmann: I have the impression, yes. In my opinion, it opens itself more and more to a cinema which is not a kind of commercial easy listening.

Filmmaker: Finally, what's the smartest decision you ever made?

Spielmann: To get born.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/01/2009 08:14:00 PM Comments (0)