From Auguste and Louis Lumière onwards, filmmaking partnerships with last names like Coen, Duplass, Hughes, Maysles, Polish, Quay, Wachowski, Taviani, Zellner and Zucker – just to name a few – have been proving that siblings and cinema go well together, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are certainly no exceptions. The Belgian filmmakers, born in Liège in 1951 and 1954 respectively, have been making films as a duo since 1975, when they formed the production company Dérives. After a decade of making documentaries, they shifted to doc-style fiction filmmaking with Falsch (1986), but it was not until La Promesse, about a slum landlord, his son and an illegal immigrant tenant, that they became widely known. The film, starring Dardenne regulars Olivier Gourmet and Jérémie Renier, won prizes worldwide and established the brothers as gifted social realists. Their 1999 follow-up about a struggling teen, Rosetta, consolidated their standing within world cinema when it won the Palme D'Or, as well as Best Actress for its lead Emilie Dequenne. Since then, they have regularly appeared every three years at Cannes with a new film: The Son played there in 2002, winning Best Actor for Gourmet, and in 2005 L'Enfant won them their second Palme D'Or, putting them in an elite group of auteurs who have been awarded Cannes' main prize twice.

Their 2008 Cannes entry Lorna's Silence, which is released this week, is a return to their preferred territory, stories of young outsiders, crime and poverty in contemporary Belgium. The movie's central character is Albanian immigrant Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), who is in a fraudulent marriage to junkie Claudy (Jérémie Renier) that has gained her Belgian citizenship. Her ultimate aim is to start a snack bar with her boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj), however the men who paid Claudy to marry her now want her to marry a Russian gangster to grant him citizenship – which means getting Claudy out of the picture. Lorna's Silence shows the Dardennes at their best, creating realistic situations with true dramatic and emotional intensity. Lorna and Claudy's relationship provides the dramatic core of the film, and the performances from Dobroshi and Renier are poignant and painfully honest. While with this film the Dardennes have stepped away from their usual documentary-style handheld photography, this does nothing to lessen the power they wield as dramatic storytellers and or their ability to bring the best out of their actors.

Filmmaker sat down with the Dardennes during their recent visit to New York for a career retrospective and spoke to them about how they find their subjects, their long working relationship, and punishing young offenders by showing them La Promesse.



Filmmaker: What was your starting point for this movie?

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: It's a story we were told in the early part of the year 2000. There was a woman who told us the story of her brother, and in fact that's Claudy's story. Except in reality, the brother does not marry and does not get killed. Our intention was to make a film with a woman as a main character. We wanted to have a woman immigrant as the central character of the film and see if she would be an accomplice upfront to a plan that would lead to the death of a man, and as the film unfolded we wanted to see if she would continue to be an accomplice. Or not.

Filmmaker: Is there a process of how you find the stories that inform your movies?

Luc Dardenne: We don't really have a set way or process. Sometimes we go from reality and sometimes we invent everything, but because our stories come from reality we trust reality as much as our imagination. For example, in Lorna's Silence we know exactly what the police look for when they're checking up on people who they suspect of being a fake couple, so we set up the whole apartment accordingly because we had that information. We thought about it all. There's a scene that was cut out of the film where the police comes to check up on all this, and we knew exactly what kinds of things they look for, like the double mattress.

Filmmaker: How much of what you write is based on research and how much on emotional instinct?

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: 50-50. [laughs] No, it's difficult to answer. Even if part of what we do is based on reality and part of it is based on what or who we are, the division is not very clear. Things sort of move back and forth.

Filmmaker: You often use young and relatively inexperienced actors, but always get really incredible performances from them. What do you put these successes down to?

Luc Dardenne: This is general, this is with all actors. We watch them, we film them walking or sitting. Not talking. Gestures are important. She'll sit on a bench and we'll film for a long time. And then afterwards when we look at the footage, we were are able to see if the camera likes her or not, if she's there, if there's a presence on the images. After that, we do some small scenes. We act out a small scene with him or her, depending on who it is, and generally it's always the same scene: it revolves around a lie. I know the truth and we tell them, “You have to resist my questions. You don't necessarily have to talk, but we have to feel in the scene that you don't want to tell us the truth.” What we find is that if the actor or actress is able to resist by doing very little and sort of prevent us from going in and staying opaque, then we say, “Ah, there's something there.” And then, of course, we work a lot more after that.

Filmmaker: You used to be documentary filmmakers and there's a great sense of realism in your films, so how much freedom do you give your actors?

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: No freedom. Freedom doesn't exist for the actors. We rehearse for something like two and a half months with the actors before we start working, and we explore a whole number of different, concrete things. For instance, in the case of Lorna, when she comes into the apartment she has the errands that she just bought and she puts the stuff on the bed near Claudy and then she comes back to where the coats are hanging and then she takes her bag and wallet in her bag... All these gestures, we spent almost a day on rehearsing this and it's really about the rhythm and the succession of the gestures, and that's really the key of how we work. In terms of freedom, I'm not really sure what that means. If the question is “Is there improvisation?,” that doesn't exist. The dialogue may evolve in the rehearsals, but there's no improvisation. But when the shots are set up and we're actually starting to shoot, because we work with very long takes, the rhythm of the movement and trajectory from one place to the other within the shot may change a little bit from the rehearsal to the shot and even between takes. It's almost like the shot will be inhabited differently because of the present time and how things unfold.

Filmmaker: I want to ask you about your working process, because you've been making films together for a very long time.

Luc Dardenne: 34 years... [They both laugh] We've always worked together. We've never worked alone in film, so I'm incapable of comparing what it would mean to work alone. I think when you're two and when you don't work in a narcissistic way obviously – you don't have one or the other saying, “You're great!” or always agreeing – when you have the two of us on a shoot, we're really ruthless with each other. If we're not happy, if we're not satisfied, it's like a machine that allows us to go much, much further. On a set, for instance, with the crew or the actors, when one of us isn't satisfied with the result, we do it again. We do it again and again and again. And it's a little bit like madness going back and doing it differently and just pushing it further, but the fact that we're two allows us to go this much further.

Filmmaker: You have a core group of people you work with regularly, like the actors Olivier Gourmet and Jérémie Renier, plus your cinematographer Alain Marcoen and editor Marie-Hélène Dozo. Is it now something like a family unit? Can you work with them as easily as you do with each other?

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: I want to make a distinction, and I want to talk first about the technical crew. The people we've been working with we started working with on La Promesse, and for the most part it was their first feature. Some of them had done documentaries and shorts before. All the key people on the crew are friends and still are friends. It's true, there could have been problems, but nobody is there to do just their job. The sound person doesn't just do sound, the DP doesn't just do image, they're all really there for the same reason, which is to make characters come to life. Nobody is there to do their part on their own. As for the actors, it's true that you find them coming back through several films, but the only time that we knew who we were going to work with was with Olivier Gourmet in The Son. But it's true that Jérémie comes back, a little but like a ghost.

Luc Dardenne: He comes to beg for his role. [laughs] So this time we killed him – maybe he'll leave us alone. [laughs] But precisely because we killed him he's going to come back!

Filmmaker: You're in town now for a retrospective at Lincoln Center. Looking back on your work, what progressions and shifts do you see from La Promesse to the present moment? How do you view the arc of those films? And where do you see yourselves going as filmmakers?

Luc Dardenne: I don't have much to say to this. What we've done, what we do, where we're going to – I don't really have an answer. There's some mistakes. We watched a film recently and there were some things we thought were not so great, but I can't really tell you which way we're going. The only thing I know that I can say is that I know when we felt that we were free, that we weren't trying to copy something we'd done before or obey certain rules. We felt free, we felt like we had the daring to invent and find new things and that's the sense I've had since La Promesse: we've been free. Every time. I don't think there's anything that could be sadder than to come to a set and work like a contractor, building the same wall with the same concrete every time.

Filmmaker: So do you look at those “old walls,” do you watch your previous films?

Luc Dardenne: No, generally we don't watch our films. We just did, but we haven't done it before. We just did it with La Promesse because we went to show it in a juvenile delinquents' facility – the worst punishment you can give them is to watch this film. We watched it with them before having the discussion.

Filmmaker: Some people have said that there's a religious bent to your recent films, that they deal with redemption, are increasingly spiritual, etc. I don't personally see this, but I wanted to ask you if such a reading is correct.

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: Oh, that's a question for you...

Luc Dardenne: No, it's for you!

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: Why do you say that? No, it doesn't interest me. It's interesting – in fact, it's a little bizarre – because we're telling stories of people who are eventually at some point find themselves guilty, and it's like you can't tell a story in our society where you imagine that someone is guilty without immediately thinking about God. I do ask why this question comes back over and over again. And then you start talking about redemption. What we're telling is stories of people who, little by little – even almost without realizing it – start feeling guilty. And, as a result, become more human. And I think it tells a lot more about the people who ask this question than about us.

Luc Dardenne: Amen!

Filmmaker: What's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Luc Dardenne: My advice is, if one cannot find outside financing, make a film with one’s available means, e.g. a small digital camera and friends. Another piece of advice is never to complain about being unappreciated or misunderstood.

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: It is difficult to give advice. To me the most important thing is to discover one’s own working method, and luckily, and one can only discover it through the work. However, here are two small pieces of advice: first, come up with a working plan which has to do with the nature of the film itself and not from the availability of the technicians or actors who very often have other things scheduled. The second small piece of advice is simply to be present in the moment in order to let life reveal itself.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Luc Dardenne: The 10 Commandments (1956). I saw it in 1959 or 1960, I was 5 years old. My memory of it is that it scared me.

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: I must have been about 8 years old. A friend of my parents, an amateur filmmaker, had gone to the US for his work on construction sites of factories. A few days after his return, he organized a screening in his home of images of the sites and landscapes he had filmed, along with slapstick short films for the kids. One of those shorts is my first movie memory. It’s the story of a guy who crashes a posh party, refuses to leave when asked to and gets chased around. He hides in a closet behinds the coats.. Of course, a moment later, he gets discovered and the chase goes on... Unlike this protagonist, I was very afraid to get locked in in a closet, afraid of the dark and of suffocating... It is also my first memory of a nightmare. After such fear, my night was very agitated.

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

Luc Dardenne: It was about a year ago. I saw Splendor in the Grass again (with my students). It was the final scene, Kazan’s most beautiful one, and one of the most beautiful scenes in the history of cinema, which made me cry.

Jean-Pierre Dardenne: It was a while ago. It was at the Churchill in Liege, a theater run by my friends, at a screening of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby. It’s impossible to explain why one cries at the movies. The emotion is too strong, that’s it... And it feels good.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/31/2009 03:17:00 PM Comments (0)

Scottish writer-director Armando Iannucci has made a slow and steady progression toward becoming a film director. The Glasgow-born Italian Scot originally was planning to become a priest (like Martin Scorsese) but the lure of the entertainment world won out over the less glamorous prospect of a life of piety and celibacy. Iannucci attended the University of Glasgow then studied English at Oxford University, where he discovered his passion for comedy. He next got a job as a radio producer on comedy shows for the BBC, and by the early 90s he was working on the iconic sketch show Week Ending and had created both the edgy faux newscast On the Hour (with Chris Morris) and Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge, starring Steve Coogan. The latter two shows then graduated to television (On The Hour became The Day Today), where they were highly acclaimed by both viewers and critics. In the late 90s, Iannucci progressed from writer and producer to director also, helming a segment of the movie Tube Tales (1999) as well as his first longer form political satire, Clinton: His Struggle with Dirt (1998). In 2001, he wrote, directed and starred in the series The Armando Iannucci Shows, and the following year he teamed up with Coogan again to co-write and direct episodes of I'm Alan Partridge. In 2005, he created The Thick of It, a vérité mockumentary series that depicted the farcical goings on in the lower echelons of the British government. After getting rave reviews for its first series, the show returned two years later with three one-hour specials.

Iannucci's first feature, In the Loop, sees him adapting The Thick of It for the big screen, though only one character - the merciless, insult-hurling spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) - makes through the transition intact. Fittingly, the scope is much greater here, as it swaps the idiocies of small government for the farce of international politics and global warfare. The film's central figure is hapless government minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), who becomes a political pawn as the US and the UK ponder invading a certain Middle Eastern country. After making the comment that war is "unforseeable," he goes to Washington, D.C., where everyone (including James Gandolfini's anti-war general and Mimi Kennedy's minister) is jostling to get on the all-important war committee. Fast-paced, smart, and very, very funny, In the Loop is easily the best political satire in recent memory, its acidic, dry take recalling Dr. Strangelove. Iannucci and his writing team brilliantly capture the power dynamics of politics in a way that is hilarious but also resonantly realistic. It's a particular pleasure to see The Thick of It's boogieman Malcolm Tucker (played with virtuousic venom by Capaldi) transplanted from Whitehall to Washington, where his no-nonsense "problem-solving" techniques are somewhat culturally alien, if no less effective. On the basis of In the Loop, it's clear that Iannucci's comedic talents are as well-suited to features as they are to television, and we can but hope that he will have the opportunity to make more films as cutting and unrelentingly funny in the future.

Filmmaker spoke to Iannucci about making the jump from TV to film, accurately depicting the ridiculousness of politics, and his plans to make a sci-fi movie he describes as "Ken Loach in space."



Filmmaker: How long had you been thinking of doing this as a movie? Was it in your head when you created the series that you wanted to do this?

Iannucci: No, I had absolutely no intention of doing a film [of this], but I've always wanted to do a funny film. Fast, sparky, like a screwball comedy. I've been attached to various projects, but I wanted to wait until I found the right story. Then when I read more and more about the stupid sort of "office politics" that went on in the lead up to the Iraq War, I thought, "That's the story!" And then, "Well, I've got this model here of how The Thick of It works, so why don't we take that but not have the same minister and staff, because this is international and that's domestic?" And I knew the "special relationship" meant we were going to have a U.S. cast of characters and a U.K. cast of characters, but I wanted Malcolm [Tucker] to be there.

Filmmaker: Stylistically there's a shift between this and The Thick of It, as the shaky camera is replaced by much glossier visuals. What was the rationale behind that?

Iannucci: I thought the shaky thing on a big screen would just be intolerable. I don't know if I could watch that. What we do now - and it's just subliminal and surreptitious - is more zooms to get the fluidity. I still wanted a raw feel to it rather than the glossed, package sheen of other moviemakers, I still wanted it to feel raw and energetic and a bit messy and unfinished in a way. I found myself trying to resist the temptation to play with the big box of tricks. If a shot looked quite nicely composed, I'd not go for it and try to mess it up so that there's no sense of someone telling you the story.

Filmmaker: So did you have instructions for your D.P. about what kind of look and feel you wanted for the film?

Iannucci: For a start, I wanted to keep the fluidity. Also, the technique is just a function of how we go about the performances, because the performances are always [fluid too]. We always shoot what's in the script, but then I ask them to put it to one side and do it again. There's nothing worse than someone who improvises some great thing and then you say, "Can you do it one more time? This time we'll do it in a tight shot." What we do is have two cameras at all times because I want the actors to feel they can wander anywhere. There are no marks. So that actually then dictates the style, and because we keep moving it just allows you to cut in the edit. For some reason we don't notice the jump cuts because there's just that rhythm in the cut anyway that your mind gets used to.

Filmmaker: Is that how you've always directed? Have you always let actors improvise after they've got a take from the script in the can?

Iannucci: Yes, and sometimes I'll say to both cameras, "Don't show me anyone speaking, just show me people listening this time." Or I'll do a "drifting two," which is basically four or five people in a room and you're just catching two people in a shot. So we just build up all those components so in the edit we have the flexibility to go anywhere and not worry about continuity.

Filmmaker: There's always a big deal made about a director who moves from TV to the big screen. Did it feel like a step up for you? Were you at all daunted?

Iannucci: The biggest challenge for me was keeping the whole story in my head, keeping the rhythm, the pace at which the story was told as new elements and new characters were introduced into it. In an episode, you really have to have all your balls in the air in the first five minutes because you've not got much time, whereas in the film I knew I wanted to hold people back. So trying to hold all that in your head logistically - because of the bigger spread of characters and locations - was more difficult because we didn't get to shoot things in story order.

Filmmaker: As a writer, you've mostly done half-hour television, so did you find yourself having to switch gears to write a feature length comedy? How did it feel to have that change of pace?

Iannucci: Well, it was great because it means you're not having to do everything in shorthand all the time. And also that relentless pace can get [draining]. I also had in my head a duration, and I felt it couldn't be longer than an hour and three quarters. The worst bit was in the last stages of the edit, trying to get it down from two hours. I just felt that's as much as you can take. There's too many comedies where you've felt, "It's two and a half hours!" - because they need half an hour to wrap up the love interest or learn their lesson. [laughs] The films I like are all quite punchy and don't outstay their welcome. But, interestingly, with The Thick of It, for the last couple of years we've done these hour-long specials, which allowed me start playing with pacing and so on. It was after the second of the hour-long specials that I thought, "Maybe there's something here. We've seen that this can sustain an hour, let's try and think of a way of doing something [longer]."

Filmmaker: I remember an interview you gave a few years previously where you said that people in UK government said The Thick of It got it absolutely right - even though you were just trying to be funny, rather than accurate, about the idiocies of politics.

Iannucci: And that's actually been happening with this film in the UK, in that Gordon Brown's spin doctor resigned the week of the release. That was just perfect timing. Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's spin doctor, watched the film and said, "It's boring. None of that happens." He said, "In America, the scene where the committee goes out of control and they have to shut it down, that's just caricature." And that was actually based on something that Cheney did: he set up a committee called something like Neutral Strategy. It was basically all about looking into whether they could invade Iran and Syria, and then 50 senators wanted on it so it got too big and he had to shut it down. Then he opened it up a few corridors down. So that happened, the spin doctor resigned, the Home Secretary's husband listed on her expenses some adult movies that he'd watched, and then reports came out about Gordon Brown smashing up a laser printer in his office. [laughs] I don't think there's any mystique to it. If you meet enough of these people, you can sort of work out what they must be like to work for.

Filmmaker: With this film, how much of it was research and how much was instinct?

Iannucci: Part of the research is to get the authenticity right just in the detail. From all that research we established that a lot of Washington is run by 23-year-olds. They do spend a lot of time hanging around more senior people offices in the hope of being spotted, which means they do all their work at night. And there's that thing about if you leave the meeting, you leave the power, so you must never leave a meeting. Madeleine Albright used to teach her staff "bladder diplomacy," which was how to last up to 6 hours without going to the toilet. You sip. It's interesting that maybe some wars were decided because somebody had to go the bathroom and couldn't wait any longer. [laughs] You know, Colin Powell left the room to go to the toilet and that's when they decided to invade Iraq.

Filmmaker: Your work always has a sense of the absurb and this does too, but that absurdity seems to be grounded in events and situations that actually happened. What was the balance between your created absurdity and reality?

Iannucci: I don't know because sometimes I dismiss certain storylines as being too silly - only to find that they happened. And that's a sort of strange thing, because you think in the world of politics that you can't be too absurd.

Filmmaker: So are you always trying to raise the level of ridiculousness just a little bit?

Iannucci: Just a little bit, but not to the extent that it becomes a raised eyebrow situation. Also, there is an element of knowing there is an artificiality about it. I mentioned screwball comedy, and I knew for the last 20 minutes there was going to be [a lot of that]. The scene in the meditation room is really the Marx brothers, but you sublimate it all under realism and detail. The detail is there as a distraction: it lulls you into thinking it's all real when it's highly, highly artificial.

Filmmaker: You worked with Peter Capaldi and Chris Addison on the TV series, but how did the new additions to the cast take to your improvisation process? Was it a very new way of working for them?

Iannucci: Well, I think it was for Tom [Hollander]. I'm not sure about James [Gandolfini]. I always think the American style is very naturalistic anyway so I think they're used to the notion of seeing a script and just dirtying it up slightly to make it feel more real and conversational. But James did his own research, went off to the Pentagon for two days. He got his haircut at the barbers with four-star generals, so he was able to bring back all that to us.

Filmmaker: You also filmed at No. 10 Downing Street. How did that happen?

Iannucci: Well, we wrote to them, fully expecting them to say, "No, we just don't do that sort of thing. Go away." But they wrote back saying, "Yeah, why not?" It coincided with a week when it was quiet because the Prime Minister was up in Blackpool for some party conference. They were really quite excited when Peter turned up. All the Malcolms [i.e. spin doctors] in No. 10 had brought their cameras and we had to do a big group shot. We had tea with the Chancellor's wife in their flat upstairs, and we were taken on a tour. It was like the full works - it was great!

Filmmaker: So I assume that the people at No. 10 are fans of The Thick of It.

Iannucci: I don't know if Gordon Brown is, but "the machine" is well aware of it. It's strange, isn't it? You think, "That's quite interesting." Then you think, "But don't they see how it shows them?" But I think that it's such a contained, inward-looking world that they're just relieved that anyone from the outside world cares. I remember when we were doing research and I met Joe Biden's chief of staff. He was youngish, mid-30s, good-looking, clearly a powerful job. He said "It's always exciting to have people from the media here. Last week I was at a reception and Bradley Whitford (Josh from The West Wing) was there!" I was thinking, "But you're him, you're the real one!" But you don't say that. Also, because they can't impress other people in politics by saying, "Oh yeah, I had tea with the Foreign Secretary," they like to be able to say that to people from the outside.

Filmmaker: You talked about the Marx brothers and screwball as being influences here. Was that your taste in movies growing up?

Iannucci: I loved Woody Allen - Bananas, Love and Death. I'm a big Woody Allen fan. Airplane. Films with lots of gags in them. I really like Buster Keaton. And then things like Brazil and Dr. Strangelove, The Great Dictator by Chaplin. I like those comedies that actually have big subjects attached to them but somehow don't belittle the subject by being a comedy, they give you the chance to really come at it from all angles. I mean, The Great Dictator, made in the middle of the Second World War, is a satire on Hitler and the Jews. I can't believe what that must have been like watching that.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Iannucci: I remember my mum taking me to the strange double bill of The Student Prince and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I think it was because she wanted to see them. I thought it was terrible. It was just lots of singing. But fortunately the cinema was only two blocks from our house, so I just left. Went home. I thought it was just pointless.

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

Iannucci: I think it was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. At the very end. It's very sad.

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

Iannucci: I'd want to make a big sci-fi movie that was terrifying. I don't really think about the cast until I've got the story. I kind of like the idea of a sci-fi movie that's very naturalistic, like Ken Loach in space.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/24/2009 03:16:00 PM Comments (1)

Eileen Yaghoobian, as she puts it, loves making pictures, and over the years, the Iranian-born, Canadian-based artist and filmmaker has put her energies into doing that in a number of different ways. She first discovered her creative impulse as a fresh-faced teenager when she saw Antonioni's Blow Up and was inspired to take up photography. She then earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she gained experience in filmmaking, 3D animation and theatre as well as photography. For many years, she was best known for her photography, particularly her grid pieces which composited thematically linked images, and had her work in the permanent collections of such esteemed institutions as George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Paris' Bibliothèque Nationale. Parallel with her career as a still photographer, she worked in U.S. and Canadian films in roles such as costume designer on Rock 'n' Roll Frankenstein (1999) and set decorator on Boricua's Bond. Not long ago, Yaghoobian also began working in theater: she recently directed a Boston production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana and in 2008 participated in the Lincoln Center Director's Lab.

Yaghoobian's first feature, the documentary Died Young, Stayed Pretty, arose out of tragedy, as she began making it after the death of one of her brothers. The film is about the indie rock poster community that exists around gigposters.com (a website that Yaghoobian discovered during her period of mourning), a group of artists who make inspired, idiosyncratic work for one-off gigs, for little or no money. What's most distinctive about Died Young, Stayed Pretty is the way in which it completely eschews traditional documentary conventions: there is no narrator, no introduction or exposition, no clear form. The film is a work of art similar to the posters it features, impressionistic rather than formal, with Yaghoobian placing images and interview footage together to create an overall ambience rather than an informative narrative thread. Its looseness is starkly in contrast to a film like last year's Beautiful Losers - a doc which also portrayed rock-influenced art movement - yet the poster art, and stories told by its makers (such as Art Chantry and Brian Chippendale), render this a strange but strangely compelling viewing experience.

Filmmaker spoke to Yaghoobian about the trauma behind her film's genesis, the unusual approach she took in arranging her footage, and her desire to go back in time in order to learn to surf.



Filmmaker: What initially prompted the decision to make this film?

Yaghoobian: This is my first feature film, but I've been a shooter for 20 years. I've been a photographer, I've been making shorts, I've done 3D animation, I've worked in theatre, so I've done many different things. My base was photography – I've had shows and I'm known as a photographer – but meanwhile I was also making films, like short video art projects or Super 8 films. I had this grant to live in my van for eight months and travel the States, and I made 20 short films out of that with my Super 8 camera. They were about this alien that had landed on earth that was this useless superhero. [laughs] This is the first time I went for it and made a feature. The transition for me was in 2004, when I had two things happen to me. First, that Yippi Yaghoooooo alien piece got into the Phoenix Film Festival, which was crazy and ridiculous at the same time. I went to a screening there and I just loved the immediacy of the audience and the response they had. It was like a comic piece, a hurrah to the silent movie era, so people were responding to it. Secondly, I had a solo show in Tribeca at the same time, so I flew from Phoenix to New York for my show. I just decided that my audience is the film people because I related more to them than to the art community. At that point, I decided that I wanted to be making films.

Filmmaker: There's a pullquote that describes the film as an outlaw movie about outlaw artists. Did you feel very much outside of the filmmaking community?

Yaghoobian: Outsider, yes. I made this without any kind of rules that I was supposed to follow as far as waiting for financing, [laughs] which is what most people do. I did this out of my pocket and I traveled solo: I was completely alone shooting for three years on location. I did the sound, I did the filming, and the deal was that I would show up to the artists' towns if they'd put me up. I slept on their floors, I slept on their couches, sometimes I was drunk when I was shooting, and basically I was there all the time at all times. With some people, I spent 10 days with them and I was there 24/7, some people I was there for 20 days. It wasn't like I went to the town and showed up at the studio and talked to them for three hours, I was actually living with them in their house. It was a more personal film for me in that way. I didn't want to make a film where I said, "Here are these artists and they're just pimping themselves." I wanted to really be transparent. It's a representation of you as a director, and you can tell when someone's bullshitting on the screen – it's called bad acting! [laughs] And it's the same with real people exactly the same as it does with actors.

Filmmaker: Were you able to devote your time fully to the film, or did you have to take breaks to make money to keep yourself going?

Yaghoobian: It was a back and forth, but it was a back and forth with no breaks. It's not like I went away and wasn't on the project; I went away and was dealing with the footage. [laughs] It was like 250 hours of footage, I went to 20 or 30 states – it was the real deal. It wasn't like I went on vacation or anything, I didn't have a single break. I didn't have a Christmas or a holiday for four years. I was constantly on location filming, and I was alone, which made it harder. It makes it fully harder when you're on your own.

Filmmaker: With so many hours of footage, and with the unconventional approach you took to presenting the material, it must have almost felt like there was more than just one movie you could have made from what you had.

Yaghoobian: Oh, yeah, oh God, yeah. There were five movies I could have made out of this film, because I covered my ass. I covered myself while I was filming so I could have the film that is the history of rock posters, so that I could have the film that has that battle between two big rock poster dudes. [laughs] I covered all of those angles, but this is the film I wanted to make. What connected me on a deep, gut, instinctual level was the dialogue that lives in the posters and the posters themselves. I did this all very planned and clear, knowing exactly what I wanted. I was very well prepared. I had a shot list of every person I interviewed and I knew exactly what they made and what they said. I really did a lot of my research on gigposters.com, I'd read pretty much everything each one of them had said and written and I knew the conversation within that community. So when I went to talk to each person in their locations, I was very prepared for them and what I wanted from them.

Filmmaker: What would you say your conception of the film was going in? Did you have any specific structural ideas about how you wanted to approach the material?

Yaghoobian: When you talk about "outlaw," I really did cut this to the antithesis of that pace and tone that most documentaries have. Most documentaries, they ease you in, they prepare you, they teach you. [laughs] I wasn't interested in that. Maybe because I come from a heavily art-oriented background, I really felt like I had to serve the material and give up to it. At the time I started filming, my second brother had died and my friend had sent me a link to gigposters.com. I instantly related to the imagery, the twisted irony and the satire and the dark humor, and on a gut level that was what drove my craziness to do what I did. It has been five years of my life, but that's what drove my interest. Structurally, I wanted to cut it like a rock poster, I wanted to make it like I was cutting and pasting a rock poster.

Filmmaker: When people ask you what your movie's about what do you tell them? To me, it's a lot more complex than just being about rock posters.

Yaghoobian: I say it's about the community of rock posters, about the cultural dialogue that lives in the posters and the community. Of course, these documentary people watch the movie and say, "Where's the narration?" And then people are like, "How come we didn't see more process?" I'm not making a movie to teach you how to make a silkscreen poster – go pick up a book. That's not what I'm interested in. Sometimes people get irritated when artists are telling their views, saying they're blabbering on about what they think. It's like, "Why shouldn't they? Isn't that the whole point that they're supposed to be doing that?" They come from this punk angst background, so of course punk is anti-narrative. It's supposed to deconstruct narrative, so my movie has to serve that. I had to serve it. How could I make a movie about punk and about that feeling of music and then create a narrative around it? It would have just been not truthful.

Filmmaker: Did you ever have pressure from anybody to take a conventional approach? To have a voiceover, to guide the viewer gently into the movie?

Yaghoobian: Oh yeah, I've had that. One guy was like, "Yaghoobian couldn't organize her material into a viable structure." [laughs] I'm like, "What are you talking about?! I edited for an entire year. I definitely knew what I was going for." "Viable structure" means what? The movies that person liked would have bored the hell out of me, but they think it's a "mess." It's a conversation: you either follow it or you don't, you're either with it or you're not.

Filmmaker: Some of your photographic art is all about grids of images, so rigid structure and form is something that you actually know very well in your work. Except that here you chose to go for an organic, punk feel.

Yaghoobian: It looks organic, but that thing is cut to a T. [laughs] I cut this movie to the most I could cut it. Oh my God. I think as a photographer and as a director – I've worked in theatre as well – I've come to really trust my gut. Being an artist (I've never liked calling myself that...), you really have to trust yourself in your choices. When I was making this film, there were some amazing things that happened that are just the gifts of documentary filmmaking, and that's just what happens when you do location filming. I know that from photography, that certain things just happen and it's about that moment. It's those little moments that drive you to make a movie for five years.

Filmmaker: You talked about the death of your second brother occurring just prior to you starting this movie. Did that event prompt you to make Died Young, Stayed Pretty? And to give it that title?

Yaghoobian: OK, the title means three different things. And that's another criticism: "The title has nothing to do with the movie..." I'm like, "What is rock 'n' roll?" The whole idea of stars like Elvis dying young is a cliché of rock, but the title in fact comes from me reading Julie Lasky's book called Some People Can't Surf about Art Chantry. When I was reading that book researching Chantry five years ago, there was a part where Chantry had made a poster of Marilyn Monroe that read "Marilyn Monroe: She died young, stayed pretty." Of course, I instantly connected on many levels to the title, and I was like "That's it, that's the title of my movie," so I actually had the title before I shot it. Also, at the time I was in my brother's apartment, I was grieving and it was my second brother who had died. He was 26, and my first brother, my oldest brother, was 28 when he died. It was like a double blow and I was really not very happy, [laughs] I was grieving in my brother's apartment. I dedicate the film to my brothers, mainly because of the craziness of my state of mind was the only reason I had no life for five years, and three years of filming alone.

Filmmaker: Did you feel this was particularly challenging for a first feature?

Yaghoobian: Making a film like this, you can easily screw it up. It can maybe sustain itself in a short, but really to make a feature film like this without narration, without teaching people anything, is really difficult. To keep it entertaining and moving from one thing to another, the pace needed to be at a certain level. It was really hard to do that. I sweated over this thing, I really did. I had scientists and aerospace engineer guys come into my apartment – I'd find them on the beach or the street and I'd bring them back. I'd get them to watch the movie – you know, the unlikely audience – and I was happily surprised at how the unexpected audience actually related to the film. A lot of them thought the guys in my movie were actors, they thought they were funny characters. It was wonderful to have that, because that was a big test for me. Now I'm distributing the film, people are saying it's niche and that only art people will like it, but I think it can transcend that.

Filmmaker: What's the worst (or weirdest) job you've ever had?

Yaghoobian: That's a bad question! [laughs] I don't like that question. Making movies. [laughs] No. Actually, honestly, cutting this film. It was horrible. [laughs] It was so hard! Cutting the 250 hours was hell, and doing it all alone was hell. With no help.

Filmmaker: What was your dream job as a kid?

Yaghoobian: I'm so bad with pointed questions! [laughs] I guess I always wanted to make films, because when I was 15 I saw Antonioni's Blow-Up. I'd miss school because the good movies were at 1 or 2 in the morning. I'd show up late and get my parents to write me a note, or just watch movies all night. I saw Blow-Up and I was fascinated by that whole detective thing. The next day I picked up a camera, and I haven't stopped since then. That film was awe-inspiring to me, but it wasn't just me. When that film came out in the 60s, all these guys who wanted to be photographers because they thought that they'd be like photographing these hot girls and having orgies with them.

Filmmaker: Finally, if you could do it all over again, what would you change?

Yaghoobian: I would like to get into surfing. I played soccer for 12 years and was really athletic as a soccer player when I was younger, but I wish I was a surfer. [laughs] I think they've got it made. They're happy and they're on the water. I just don't know how to surf. So if I could, I would change it all that way. I missed out before, but now if I could go back that would be the first thing I'd take up.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/17/2009 03:54:00 PM Comments (0)

You only have to look at the work of a director like Fernando Eimbcke to see that there is a lot more to get excited about in Mexican cinema than just the so-called “Three Amigos,” Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu & Alfonso Cuarón. Born in Mexico City in 1970, Eimbcke studied film direction at the University Centre of Cinematographic Studies at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). During his time there, he made a handful of shorts, including the fiction films Sorry for the Inconvenience and Excuse Me? (both 1994) and two non-fiction titles, Reaching a Star (1993) and Not everything is Permanent (1996), the latter of which was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the Ariels, the Mexican Academy Awards. Following his graduation, he began directing music videos, as well as more shorts, such as Weightwatch (2002) and The Look of Love (2003). In 2004, he co-wrote and directed his feature debut, Duck Season, a black-and-white comedy drama about two teenage boys left alone for the day who must entertain themselves after the power cuts out. The movie premiered at Cannes in the Critics Week sidebar, was programmed at numerous film festivals worldwide, and won no less than 11 Ariels, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

With his sophomore effort, Lake Tahoe, Eimbcke reunites with his co-writer on Duck Season, as well as one of the lead actors from that film, Diego Cataño, however in tone and texture the two films could not be more different. The movie begins with the downbeat Juan (Cataño) crashing his car into a lamppost – how and why this happened is unclear – and the film chronicles his efforts to get it back on the road. Helping him (or not) are a distrustful old man (Hector Herrera), a kung-fu obsessed mechanic (Juan Carlos Lara II), and the pretty girl who works with him in the repair shop (Daniela Valentine). As Lake Tahoe progresses, we become aware that driving the minimal narrative of Juan's quest is a much more profound event, hinted at from the very start by Eimbcke's empty and quietly mournful shots of the movie's deserted town. A slow, ethereal piece of filmmaking, Lake Tahoe uses cinematic means – its expansive 35mm frame and frequent cuts to black – to convey a pervasive sense of loss and absence. Occupying a space between the real and the absurdly surreal, Eimbcke's movie pointedly downplays its emotional aspects, keeping them as subtext until its poignant climax.

Filmmaker interviewed Eimbcke over email and asked him about the personal nature of his new film, the influence of Jim Jarmusch on his work, and his first movie memories.



Filmmaker: How did you get the idea for the film? What was your initial inspiration?

Eimbcke: I crashed my family’s car a few months after the death of my father. I told this story to Paula Markovitch, the co-author of the script, who also lost her father and we began to construct the story. Both of us needed to tell this story. I’m the director of the film but the story is a Paula’s and Fernando’s personal story.

Filmmaker: What was your reason behind making the film so sparse and minimal?

Eimbcke: When I finish the script, the shooting, the editing, every process of the film, I like to think, "Can I make it more simple? Can I express what the character needs in one sentence? Or without dialogue?" I’m obsessed with the simplest way.

Filmmaker: The film uses many cuts to black, which is relatively unusual in contemporary films. Why were you drawn to use this approach?

Eimbcke: Cut to black is a transition tool but is also a narrative tool. In cinema when you put two images together you have a new meaning. It is the same with cuts to black. Following a scene or preceding a scene, a black frame is not anymore a black frame. There’s a lot of people who only see a black frame, an empty frame, I don’t.

Filmmaker: Stranger Than Paradise is probably the most famous film of recent times to use cuts to black as an editorial method. Was it a specific inspiration in this instance?

Eimbcke: Of course. When I saw Stranger Than Paradise I fell in love with the film. Something caught me. Maybe in the cuts to black I found that certain meaning I talked about in the previous answer.

Filmmaker: Duck Season was also a film which was compared to the work of Jim Jarmusch. Has he been a big influence on you?

Eimbcke: Yes, I fell in love with the simplicity and complexity of Jarmusch’s films, particularly with Stranger Than Paradise. Thanks to Jarmsuch and Kaurismäki, who also is a big influence, I discovered Ozu. And Ozu’s work influenced and will continue to influence a lot of filmmakers. Ozu is the Master.

Filmmaker: The film's narrative is very linear, but all the relationships are broken up and staccato, stopping and then starting up again later. Can you talk about why it is like that.

Eimbcke: The character wants to escape. He spends all the story trying to avoid all possible relations, but at the same time he needs all those relations. I remember Paula Markovitch laughing about the idea of a frustrated road movie.

Filmmaker: The film feels very natural and spontaneous. Did you allow your actors to improvise?

Eimbcke: It depended on the scene. Sometimes I felt the scene needed improvisation and sometimes I didn’t.

Filmmaker: Both Duck Season and Lake Tahoe are about young people dealing with situations where things they take for granted (electrical power, a car) stop working. Was this a conscious exploration of similar territory?

Eimbcke: It wasn’t a conscious decision. What happened is that Paula and I enjoy a lot to work with simple and absurd situations.

Filmmaker: Both of your films are also about a world where parents are absent, most poignantly so in Lake Tahoe. Is this another theme that continues to interest you?

Eimbcke: Yes, I’m sure I’ll continue exploring the same theme but with different angles. If someday I make a love story, I’m sure the theme of parents' absence will be there.

Filmmaker: Can you explain the significance of the film's title? It reminded me a little of Chinatown.

Eimbcke: Juan's brother spends all the film collecting memories. Some of them are real, some of them are fantasies. He needs to believe that all of them went to Lake Tahoe. At the end of the film when Juan returns to his home, he finally accepts the fact that his father died. When he says to his brother “We never went to Lake Tahoe” he’s saying “Our father is dead, that’s the reality”.

Filmmaker: Lake Tahoe is beautifully shot in 35mm. How important was it for you to shoot on film rather than digital? (Are you interested in shooting on digital in the future?)

Eimbcke: There’s one reason I want to shot in 35mm. It is beautiful. I’m sure one day I must shoot on digital, but I’ll be very sad looking at the image.

Filmmaker: Mexican cinema is going through a golden period at the moment. What do you think are the reasons for this happening?

Eimbcke: All the Mexican directors I admire the most have in common a profound love to cinema.

Filmmaker: Is there a sense of community among Mexican directors? Who of your contemporaries are you friends with and discuss your work with?

Eimbcke: Carlos Cuarón works very near my workplace so we talk a lot about our work, and I learned a lot from him. Alfonso Cuarón distributed Duck Season, read Lake Tahoe and saw the film in the editing room. I sent the work print of Lake Tahoe to Alejandro González Iñárritu and he gave me very good advice. I have a very good relationship with Rodrigo Plá, Gerardo Naranjo, Julián Hernández, etc. There’s a sense of community.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Eimbcke: It was Laurel and Hardy’s short films on television.

Filmmaker: Should a director always take risks?

Eimbcke: Yes, always. Shooting with no risks is boring.

Filmmaker: What's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Eimbcke: Don’t aspire, be.

Filmmaker: Finally, if the world ended tomorrow, what (if anything) would you be sad about that you hadn't achieved?

Eimbcke: I would be very sad about not having shot the story I’m writing right now.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/10/2009 08:41:00 PM Comments (0)

A member of the Nouvelle Vague as well as the Rive Gauche, iconic filmmaker Agnès Varda has built a 50-year career on her refusal to repeat herself or to be pigeon-holed. Born in 1928 of Greek and French parents in Brussels, Belgium, Varda was an Art History student at the Ecole de Louvre before becoming the official photographer for the prestigious Parisian theatre company Théâtre National Populaire. In 1954, she transitioned from photography into cinema with her first feature, La Pointe-courte, which placed Faulkner’s The Wild Palms in the context of a French fishing village, and consciously blurred the line between documentary and fiction. Varda married fellow French New Wave director Jacques Demy in 1962, and the same year had a breakthrough hit with Cleo From 5 to 7, a groundbreaking real-time drama about a singer waiting for medical results. Varda would return to explore the different ways in which fiction and documentary can be combined in Le Bonheur (1965), a romantic drama which starred actor Jean-Claude Druout and his real family, the US-made hippie movie Lions Love (1968) which featured a raft of 60s icons playing themselves, the semi-autobiographical Documenteur (1981), and the vérité-style narrative Vagabond (1985), with Sandrine Bonnaire as a young homeless woman. In 1990, Varda paid tribute to the late Demy in a film depicting his childhood, Jacquot de Nantes, and a decade later had an unexpected hit with her personal documentary The Gleaners and I, an example of cinécriture (or “writing with film”), Varda’s particular take on the cinematic essay.

Varda’s latest film sees the veteran writer-director marking her 80th birthday by looking back over her long and eventful life. The Beaches of Agnes is so titled because beaches have a special emotional resonance for Varda, and here she takes an unconventional and decidedly non-linear approach to revisiting – both literally and figuratively – places in her past. This subjective, contemplative film uses Varda’s patented cinécriture technique as she examines her life principally through her relationships with friends, family and creative contemporaries, while bringing her body of work into focus at the same time. The diminutive Varda is charming and self-effacing as an on-camera subject, but this sweet-looking grandmother nevertheless is unflinchingly honest as she discusses such topics as her rocky relationship with the late Demy. Inventive, sprightly and delightful, The Beaches of Agnes is the kind of coda to a career most filmmakers would dream of making, except that – judging by the energy she still displays both in front of and behind the camera – Varda is far from finished as a creative force.

During Varda’s visit to New York in March, Filmmaker talked to the legendary autrice about turning the camera on herself, her continuing drive to make films, and her fascination with Film Forum’s restroom patrons.



Filmmaker: How did you come up with the idea for the film? Were you on a beach?

Varda: Have you got the press notes? In there I tell how it happened, so I can't say anything... I wasn't on a beach. I'm on beaches very often; it's more related to my age. I was 79, and maybe the zero was very strong, you now? Maybe you'll be very soon 20? Or 30? 29 is not so much more than 30. And then 31, no matter. But 30, 40 50... When I was about to be 80, I thought I should do a film to have my 80th marked by something. Did you see the birthday with the brooms? In France, you don't say that you're 80 years old, you say that you're 80 brooms old. Remember that? When I do that scene with the brooms, I said something I really believe, I said, "I remember while I'm alive." The whole thing is about bringing memories into the today life. This is not going back so much with nostalgia or good or bad memories, it's more how can these memories, these stories, these things that happen in my memory be integrated into my day? This is how the film is built. I go back and forth when the opportunity [arises], [with] things that happen,with what my mood brings me to also. I hope you appreciated that. It was not very organized, but keeping a lot of freedom to go back and forth in my own little history that crosses a lot of the history of the second half of the 20th Century.

Filmmaker: How fluid was your idea for the film? How much room did you leave yourself to be surprised? How tightly scripted was it?

Varda: I was ready for all surprises. Like this one with my emotions was a surprise. I gave an example: I go to the flea market. I find a plate of a Belgian city and I say, "I'll give it to the Dardenne brothers." Then I go and see these film files; they exist in France. So I was not set up, but there is a file of Jacques Demy, Jean Cocteau and me. I don't think we are in the right place, but I think we are about there. And so, I throw Jean Cocteau and I end up with Jacques. This is at that precise moment, I think "My God, is that how people see us? A couple of pieces of paper?" That gave me the idea that there should be something more sexual about our relationship, and I made up the scene in the old remade courtyard: the couple goes back and the man has a hat on and she is naked. She is in a fabric like a Magritte painting – did you notice? Remember the scene? While I was editing, sometimes I would have these free associations, so maybe I would not have had that shot of the naked people if I had not found the files. I allowed myself that things would happen in the film, even though I had organized my trip in the boat and to rebuild the courtyard, and all this. Sometimes some things would come out of my mind and I would suddenly feel something. Here, all my memories are like flies surrounding me, sometimes disturbing me, sometimes nice flies.

Filmmaker: Did you go through photos and look at old letters, or did you only want to put things in the film that were in the forefront of your memory?

Varda: I had to go through some photos, childhood photos, which I had not looked at for years. Although my childhood is not that important, I had to have some of my family, had to find one where I could say that I was the smallest of the three first ones, and the biggest of the three last ones. I could make a film of six hours, but my aim is to make a real film which has a shape, which has a style, which has what I call cinécriture. Always choose the cinematic set-up to tell something, not just to tell. When I made tests for La Pointe-courte with a couple of my friends, [one of the actors] died after the tests. So I made the film with Philippe Noiret – you know who is Philippe Noiret? – and I copied the tests that I had done: arriving into the village, the fishermen watching them going into an alley. But I realized that the children of that man and that woman, grown-up now, 50 years old, had never seen these tests. I could just show them the whole movie and say, "This is your father," but I thought, "I have to make something, I have to make cinema in cinema." I've been telling that scene very often because for me it's very important. [We got] that carriage from La Pointe-courte: we put that screen and the 16mm projector and the real film and even the electricity, and then we did the traveling shots, very complicated shots, and they pushed the carriage with images of their father. For me, this is cinema in cinema, and memory into an action. It's like a funeral, like any other funeral, to push memory like a corpse itself into the night. I don't know if you saw that scene the way I see it. It's a very strong scene in terms of cinema because it's like showing that cinema was moving, the man was moving, and the carriage was moving and the traveling was moving. It's like, "How can we investigate what is movement, what is cinema?" So in many places of that film, I did try to invent a cinematic language for these memories.

Filmmaker: You say at the start of the film that you want to focus on other people, not yourself...

Varda: And I do. You don't see me that much... You see me a lot, but there is much more of other stories, other people, other names. You know, there is that famous book of Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Everybody. Remember that title? Everybody has been me, which is not true, but yes and no.

Filmmaker: How was it for you to be so much in the focus of the film? Was it easy to be yourself, or did you end up playing a version of yourself, a persona?

Varda: I started very honestly, saying "I'm too short, I'm different of the rest. I'm on the beach. I'm very plump and I want to tell my story." But I think that other people intrigue me more, and it ended up being about the landscape we all have inside us. It allows me to be the one telling the story. You see me a lot in the film, but I think I'm [focusing on] so many other people that I can't see it as a narcissistic self-portrait at all, because otherwise I wouldn't have waited until I was so old. I would have done it when I was in better shape. ...I cannot believe the number of people who go to the toilet [at Film Forum]. Incredible! You should calculate this – three per minute!

Filmmaker: You have invented this idea of cinécriture, the film essay. Was there a conflict between that and the very personal, intimate aspect of the movie?

Varda: There was no conflict, because I think the parts that were intimate were needed because... You know, being here is very interesting because I can calculate the rhythm of people going to the toilet. ...No, I was feeling that I had to show myself. Not too much, though. Talking about other people, naming them. They're around me – they're me, you know? The figure of Jacques Demy is really at the center, since I met him years ago and had so many years with him, with some ups and downs. We came together wishing to age together – and then he died! But life is not finished and I'm still working, and all this is mixed in a way that I hope makes sense. He has been very important in my life, is still very important, but making film has also been very important, before him and after him. I don't hide that. As much as I'm alive, I'm a filmmaker.

Filmmaker: You seem to be driven to still be constantly creating, and there's a real diversity in the kind of projects you take on. Do you have a constant hunger or need to challenge yourself?

Varda: It's not a hunger to challenge myself, it's more an artistic desire. I try not to repeat myself, which means challenging myself. I remember after Le Bonheur, I was offered at least five films with the same kind of story. And after Cléo, somebody else wanted me to make a film about a singer where something should happen to her... I mean, I hate to repeat myself, I hate it! So all of my films have been different. When I did The Gleaners, I was investigating the new cameras and how we can handle that to approach people who are so socially fragile. I was really trying to push the aim further. I've never made a career, I've made films. It was almost a mistake that Vagabond did so well, and the others did well. Like The Gleaners did well in the States, but it was discreet. I'm not complaining, it was seen by people who love it, and this one may be the same story. That's where I feel good, where I make films in total freedom that are appreciated as free. You would believe that this film is only seen by old people – not true! Because the young people love freedom. They love the idea that a film can be whatever you feel, and it gives them a lot of energy to believe that an old lady can be so free, so we have a new audience of young people.

Filmmaker: I'm interested in the process you went through on this film, where you filmed in two or three week periods over the course of two years. What was it like to revisit all these places and, as you say, to remember while you lived?

Varda: What do you mean "all" these places? I told you, at the house of my childhood I found a girl and was very touched by the girl and then I bumped into all these people and became a documentarist again. I forgot about that. Many things happened that I had not expected and sometimes I had a tale I needed to tell, sometimes I went back in the middle of editing to shoot because something was missing, feeling very free to film what I needed. [Varda wanders off to look at the popcorn machine in action in the Film Forum lobby] Come with me – we are going to the popcorn area! We are together traveling, you know? Oh, I feel good here – much better!

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

Varda: It never happened. It's just a more beautiful way of living, it's not a job for me. It's way of leading a life in which artistic desire becomes the way you feel.

Filmmaker: What was your dream job as a child?

Varda: I have to make connection with my childhood... Did I have a dream job? I'm not sure. I remember making a little, two-page magazine like kids do, but I never intended to do that as a job, I just thought it was a way having a parallel life to school, doing something different. But I never had that in mind. I remember that my mother would say that the most beautiful job for a woman was to be a mother, and I thought "Bullshit! It's certainly not enough." I thought, "How could she say that? This is not a job. This is work, but this is not a job to desire." I remember I was shocked, but I didn't have an answer to that. As for myself, I don't think I had a desire to become something specific. All my life I've been very much here and now.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Varda: I think it was Snow White [and the Seven Dwarves] in a huge cinema called the Metropole in Brussels. Our family never took us to the movies, but they took us kids to see this. I didn't like the film. Everybody thought it was wonderful, but I reacted badly to it. The witch was totally scary and I found the prince so stupid and ugly, ugly, ugly! Bizarre to say it of a child, but I didn't like the design of it. I hated it, even though the midgets were interesting characters. This I remember. In a way, I thought it was ridiculous that she served them but they were nice. In a way I liked them, the small ones.

Filmmaker: Should a director always take risks?

Varda: Sure. How could the film be interesting if the director doesn't put himself or herself at risk? That's the only interesting challenge of being a filmmaker. The Beaches of Agnes is a risk. The risk was, "Can I find fluidity in a bunch of puzzle-like pieces?" The risk was that people would say, "Oh, my God, this is a flea market..." So it took me nine months of editing and a lot of good thoughts to really find what I needed. It came from the freedom I gave myself to bring a Picasso painting, to show something that I liked, to exploit the fact that when it started to rain, we'd use the rain. When I met crazy people, I grabbed the people. I was always enjoying what I was doing in the moment.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/01/2009 03:13:00 PM Comments (1)