Viennale 2016: Inimi Cicatrizate

  • Rainer, you complained about the woman sighing at a screening of Inimi Cicatrizate. I watched the film alternating between sighing and holding my breath. I experienced voluptuous pain when reading each of the excerpts from Blecher’s work quotes presented as intertitles and was at each moment mesmerized by Jude’s mastery of mise en scène. It is a film of odd beauty, one easily gets lost in its richness. There is absurdity in Inimi Cicatrizate, but it is another kind of absurdity, one that has choked on itself (Patricks review of the film).
  • Further moments of bliss with Peter Hutton: two men walking up the suspension cable of a bridge in Three Landscapes.
  • After so many festival days, the Viennale feels just like the merry-go-round-roundabout traffic-jam scene in Tati’s Playtime. In (the negligible) O Cinema, Manoel de Oliveira e Eu, João Botelho claims that the secrets to de Oliveira’s health were drinking whiskey and eating toasted bread with pure olive oil. I guess that having Playtime for breakfast in Gartenbaukino might work in the same way for all of us.
  • Six years after Meek’s Cutoff Kelly Reichardt makes a discreet-feeling and great film about people meeting people and almost every decision in it seems to come out of necessity.
  • Luc Dardenne confesses that in La fille inconnue he and Jean-Pierre have tried to create a charater with a sort of consciousness which they feel has dissappeared from society. I wish I could feel less like I’m being preached to.
  • Having to sit in a box in the Historischer Saal of the Metro Kino and watching the film with the view blocked by (beautiful perhaps) sculpted wood makes one think about the Eric Pleskow Saal with a feeling that almost resembles fondness.
  • Hans Hurch awards the Meteor(ite) Prize to Jem Cohen but we all suspect him of having betrayed the filmmaker by giving him not a piece of meteorite but something he brought from his trip to Greece.
  • For all those who have, like me, always wondered if filmmaker use special effects in order to make Emmanuel Salinger’s eyes appear bigger – no, they don’t. I’ve seen him in the lobby of Metro Kino.

Viennale Notiz: Retrospektiv

„If Einstein taught us that light falls like any other body, Bazin taught us that light leaves a track like any other body, an imprint the camera makes into an image. But the camera is not the only machine that makes the film image. The projector, the magic lantern, animates the track of light with its own light, brings the imprint of life to new life on the screen.“  (Gilberto Perez)

„The moviegoer watches the images on the screen in a dreamlike state. So he can be supposed to apprehend physical reality in its concreteness“ (Siegfried Kracauer)

Jacques Rivette auf 35mm: L‘amour fou, einer von zwei Filmen von Rivette, in denen man das Geräusch von Kratzen hören kann wie eine Narbe in der Seele. Es ist beinahe Nacht. Niemand bemerkt es. Eine junge Frau spricht uns im Foyer an. Sie wäre nicht bereit für vier Stunden heute, ob wir ihre Karten wollten. Ein Freund, der beinahe nicht gekommen wäre, sagt: Warum hast du mir nicht gesagt, dass das so selten ist? Diesen Film auf 35mm. Die Kopie ist in schlechtem Zustand. Jedes Licht, dass zwischen den 16mm und 35mm Aufnahmen auf die Leinwand geworfen wird, wirkt wie das letzte einer sterbenden Liebe, einer kämpfenden Liebe, jeder Liebe, keiner Liebe, dieser Liebe. Die Geschichte dieser Kopie trägt sich mit in den Film. Als wären wir die letzten, die diese Kopien sehen könnten. Als würden wir die Erinnerungen behalten müssen, an etwas, das es nicht mehr geben wird.

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Es fällt auf. Wir – ich glaube es sind „wir“ als eine Gruppe von Menschen, die noch wirklich nach dem Kino sucht, aber ich weiß, dass das falsch verstanden werden kann – gehen oft lieber in Retrospektiven als in „neue Filme“. Wir suchen nach den raren Screenings, die noch auf Film gezeigt werden. Wir sind dort. Von Rivette werden nur L‘amour fou und Hurlevent nicht digital gezeigt auf der diesjährigen Viennale. Wir müssen das wohl akzeptieren (Analogue Pleasures are not supposed to be something special).

Wir gehen nicht aus Purismus vermehrt in diese Vorstellungen. Wir gehen auch in DCP-Screenings, wenn uns die Filme interessieren, wir können diese Filme ebenso genießen. Aber vermehrt finden wir uns in Retrospektiven. Warum? Zum einen vielleicht, weil diese Filme seltener sind, weil sie dadurch frischer sind, weil es uns so vorkommt, als wäre es die einzige, die letzte Chance. Es gibt sicherlich etwas auratisches an dieser Erfahrung. Wir haben das Gefühl, dass die Filme mit uns wirklich da sind, dass wir mit diesen Filmen da sind. Sie sind zu uns gekommen, wir zu ihnen. Es werden einmalige Dinge passieren bei jedem dieser Screenings. Playtime von Jacques Tati wird in der Kopie von 1967 gezeigt. Eine sehr rotstichige faded 70mm-Kopie, in der dreimal so viele Filme zu erkennen sind, wie in allen digitalen Kopien, die ich von diesem Film bislang gesehen habe. Als würde man denken, dass man weiß, wer Tati ist und ihn dann in den Ecken der Bilder anders, schärfer, virtuoser sehen. Weil man sein Medium unterschätzte.

Ich glaube wir gehen auch in diese Screenings, weil wir den Mumien der Leinwand gerne beim Sterben zusehen. Dem Kino, was wir noch gerade so erahnten, als es begann zu sterben. Der Übergang, den wir nicht wahrhaben wollen. Etwas, das wir noch verstehen, erfahren wollen bevor es zu spät ist. Etwas, dass wir erhalten müssen. Wie das Kind am Bett des sterbenden, flüsternden Vaters. Wir verstehen nicht mehr alles, aber hören genau zu. Was machen wir mit dem, was uns diese Erfahrungen sagen?

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Wir sehen etwas zwischen den Bildern, weil es nur analog wirklich etwas zwischen den Bildern gibt. Und dieses Medium in seiner inhärenten Fragmentierung, seiner Magie der Dazwischenheit spricht intuitiv sehr viel stärker mit den Erfahrungen, die wir im Alltag machen. Denn das Digitale ist zwar in unserem Alltag dominant, aber in seinem Treffen auf der physische Realität, in dieser Kombination aus dem Digitalen und dem Physischen ist der große Platz für das Kino. Dieser Idee, von Dingen aus Licht, die uns bewegen, die sich bewegen. Es ist so, dass diese Filme mehr mit unserer Welt sprechen als diese Files. Vielleicht auch, weil sie Filme noch immer eine Antwort sind auf die Welt statt einer Konsequenz aus dieser Welt. In ihnen steckt bereits der Widerstand, den wir suchen, wogegen die DCPs kaum Widerstand kennen.

Es bricht auseinander, denn wenn eine junge Generation von Cinephilen sich schwer tut, den Wechsel der Sprache zu umarmen, dann bleibt nur das Bedauern. Wird sich daraus eine Filmkultur entwickeln, eine Filmästhetik? Das Bedauern ist nicht unser Antrieb, nein. Wir glauben ja an manches im neuen Kino. Die Viennale zeigt auch dieses Jahr, dass unglaubliche, wunderbare Dinge möglich sind von Sergei Loznitsa, Wang Bing über Cristi Puiu hin zu Damien Manivel. Es gibt sowieso keine Vergangenheit eines Kinos, das gezeigt wird.

L‘amour fou ist zusammen mit Pont du Nord der modernste Film des Festivals. Filme, die von unserer Erfahrung sprechen, unserer Art zu leben, zu fühlen und zu imaginieren. Filme, in denen es um Überwachung geht. Um Paranoia, um unsichtbare Schmerzen, um Ängste. Filme, in denen es um eine digitale Welt geht. Vielleicht ist es naiv zu glauben, dass sich so vieles verändert hat in den letzten 50 Jahren. Vielleicht ist die technologische Entwicklung deutlich schneller als jene der Emotionen. Das würde erklären, warum das Kino, in dessen Motor immer die Emotion und die Technik arbeiteten so auseinander bricht.  Dieses Gefühl eines Brechens entsteht auch deshalb, weil wir allein sind. Ein großer Teil von kinobegeisterten Menschen jagt letztlich hauptsächlich das Neue. Als wäre das Kino Apple und würde regelmäßig neue Produkte präsentieren. Interessant ist es doch eigentlich im Dialog zwischen heute und gestern, dem Kino und mir. Die Viennale bietet diesen Dialog sehr bewusst an. 

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Es ist vielleicht auch ein Teil unserer Faszination mit dem Kino, das Vergangene zu sehen. Jeder Film ist vergangen und gegenwärtig zugleich, aber wenn sich etwas vor uns bewegt, was vor 100 Jahren aufgezeichnet wurde, dann spürt man die Magie um so stärker.

Also schreiben wir auf, was wir dort sehen in dieser Fremdheit eines Mediums, das als ganzes faded – nicht nur in einzelnen Kopien. Dessen analoge Existenz längst zum cinephilen Event wird. Die Chance, die darin liegt, ist die fehlende Selbstverständlichkeit. Kino ist nicht mehr selbstverständlich. So entsteht wieder ein Staunen vor dem Licht, eine Ehrfurcht, ein Respekt, der niemals wirklich der Respekt vor einem Sterbenden sein kann, weil dieses Medium selbst im Totenbett aus Licht besteht und vor uns, mit uns tanzt. Es erzählt die traurigste Geschichte der Menschheit: Jene des Vergessens, jene der Erinnerung, der lebenden Toten, der sterbenden Lebenden. Ein Kratzen auf einem Streifen, der in unserer Welt existiert.

Viennale Notiz: Störungen

Die Viennale ist ein Festival, über das fast alle ins Schwärmen geraten. Ein wenig das Gegenteil der meisten anderen Festivals, zum Teil sehr berechtigt, zum Teil auch etwas problematisch, weil der Genuss vieler hier letztlich auch mit der fehlenden Dringlichkeit des Berichtens im Vergleich zu anderen Festivals hängt. Natürlich ist die Viennale ein großartiges Filmfest mit einer tollen (der besten) Programmierung (trotz eines unverzeihlichen Auslassens von Angela Schanelecs Der traumhafte Weg) und einem fühlbaren Respekt für den einzelnen Film und Künstler. Man kann sich hier verlieren wie auf keinem anderen Festival, das ich kenne.

Dennoch gibt es einige Kleinigkeiten, die verwundern, stören. Die erste Störung ist durchaus ambivalent. Es handelt sich um die Dragee Keksi und den durch sie verursachten Raschelterror, der oftmals zu Beginn der Vorstellungen über das Kino hereinbricht. Eine Unsitte. Es ist nicht so, dass es prinzipiell etwas gegen die Möglichkeit, diese Kekse umsonst zu bekommen, zu sagen gibt. Ich habe durch sie schon manche Festivalstunde überlebt, in der ich sonst mit verkrampften Gesten zu Boden gegangen wäre, aber es muss hier eine Grenze geben zwischen dem Kinosaal und dem Foyer. Das mag wie eine recht belanglose, beinahe humoristische Beschwerde klingen, aber sie ist sehr ernst gemeint. Denn diese Kekse und ihre furchtbaren Verpackungen sind nur die Spitze einer Rein-Raus-Kultur, die nichts mit A Clockwork Orange zu tun hat. Das beginnt natürlich bei den zahlreichen Mobiltelefonen, die immer wieder aufleuchten, geht über Menschen, die es scheinbar für wertvoll erachten, wenn sie Fotos von der Leinwand während des Films machen, bis zum großen Feind des Kinos auf dem Festival: Der nur leicht kinotaugliche Eric Pleskow Saal. Nun ist es so, dass dieser Saal so etwas wie ein politisches Kuriosum in der Wiener Filmkultur ist. Es wurde genug darüber geschrieben und eigentlich ist das auch ziemlich egal. Das alles hat nichts damit zu tun, dass dieser Saal wie auch der historische Saal im Metrokino mit großen Problemen behaftet sind, die ein Sehen und Hören der Filme beeinträchtigen.. Da kann es noch so nett aussehen wie manche vielleicht finden, wenn sie eine Sache haben für Protz oder weiße, leere Flächen.

Metrokino, @Alexander Tuma

Metrokino, @Alexander Tuma

In diesem Eric Pleskow Saal gibt es nicht eine Saalregie, nein. Es gibt mindestens zwei davon. Und wie im normalen Spielbetrieb des Metrokinos ist es diesen auch während der Viennale scheinbar zu anstrengend, einen ganzen Film im Kino zu verbringen. Und so wechseln sie sich ab. Das wäre an sich nicht schlimm, wenn ein Reinkommen und Rausgehen in diesem Kino nicht derart stören würde. Sitzt man weiter hinten hört man alles, wenn die Tür aufgeht. Sitzt man weiter vorne, rückt plötzlich die Saalregie ins Bild und setzt sich, weil diese Saalregie es für nötig erachtet immer, wirklich immer, etwas zu Trinken bei sich zu haben unter dem Geräusch krachender Plastikflaschen oder zitternder Tassen (jene, die dem Publikum verboten werden) auf den Sitz. Das ist nicht respektlos gemeint. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass diese Arbeit während des Festivals sehr anstrengend ist. Das Problem ist nur, dass irgendetwas nicht stimmt, wenn die Saalregie Screenings stört. Im Historischen Saal dagegen – und wir reden in beiden Fällen von Kinos, in denen Peter Hutton programmiert wurde, also ein Filmemacher, der von Stille lebt -, hört man immer noch sehr, sehr vieles von außerhalb des Kinosaals. Nun weiß man ja auch vom Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus, dass das Geräusch der vorbei donnernden Straßenbahn irgendwie zum Wien-Flair gehört und sowieso ist dieser Purismus vielleicht fehl am Platz, diese Art der Kinokultur gehört dann halt irgendwie zum Festival, zu Wien dazu. Aber wenn man sich schon die edle Mühe macht, Filme möglichst in ihren Originalformaten zu zeigen, dann sollte man auch zumindest versuchen den Lärm zu beruhigen, der sich dann zum Beispiel über die grandios programmierte Erinnerung und Vergegenwärtigung von Danièle Huillet legt wie ein furchtbarer Sturm der Ignoranz. Es ist klar, dass das mit Straßenbahnen schwerer zu bewerkstelligen ist, als mit Mitarbeitern, die während eines Films durch das Kino spazieren oder Keksen, die man direkt am Eingang in Plastikverpackungen anbietet.

Zu den überall wo ich sie sehen kann, sehr hilfsbereiten, freundlichen und fachkundigen Mitarbeitern der Viennale gehören auch die Moderatoren der Publikumsgespräche. Man hat hier ein wenig das Gefühl – die Diagonale oder auch ein Festival wie das New Horizons machen zum Beispiel vor wie es besser geht -, dass viele Moderatoren mehr wegen ihrer Sprachkenntnisse eingesetzt werden, als wegen ihres Interesses, ihres Verständnisses der Filme. Das gilt natürlich nicht für alle Fälle, aber wenn ich zum Teil das Gefühl habe (und so ging es mir zum Beispiel nach dem Screening von Sergei Loznitsas Austerlitz), dass der Moderator den Film erst in diesem Moment zum ersten Mal gesehen hat und dann in der Folge zehn Minuten seine eigenen Gedanken und Verwirrungen in sehr schwache Fragen kleidet, sodass der Filmemacher durchaus irritiert darüber wirkt, dann ist das problematisch. Mal abgesehen davon, dass mir die Übersetzungen zum Teil sehr hilflos und schlicht falsch vorkommen. Solche Dinge gibt es wohl auf allen Festivals, aber sie gehören trotzdem angesprochen, weil eine Verbesserung hierbei nun wirklich nicht im Bereich des Unmöglichen liegt,

Time to Spend: A Conversation with Bertrand Bonello

There was a nocturnal vibe to this early talk with Bertrand Bonello in a silent hotel room in Vienna. Outside it was foggy and quiet. After watching his latest feature Nocturama which had started at 11:30 pm the night before, I had around eight hours to prepare for a tired interview somewhere between feeling very awake and very much asleep. The same must have been true for Mr. Bonello who was talking to an attentive audience at 2am about his film which, how he rightfully claims, has “nocturnal“ qualities to it.

But I didn‘t recognize any tiredness in a filmmaker obsessed with something we can call “the contemporary“. Mr. Bonello, drinking Kombucha was talking like there was no sleep necessary to love and discuss cinema. 

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Patrick Holzapfel: If I wasn‘t interviewing you right now, I would watch Le veilleur by Claire Denis about Jacques Rivette, a film I like very much. I thought I should just begin our conversation with that because I somehow feel that in Nocturama and in your cinema in general, there is a connection to Rivette. The labyrinths, the movements, the spaces. Your films, like his, are very hard to categorize. I just wanted to ask you if Rivette is an influence, if you like him?

Bertrand Bonello: I like Rivette, yes. I like his films. He has never been someone I am thinking of when making a film though. Probably as a French director the New Wave filmmakers, Rivette, Godard, are always there. The connections come by just being there. It allows us to live this idea of freedom in movies. So, even if he is not a direct influence, it is so much part of our French environment as directors that it has an influence, of course. Especially concerning freedom.

PH: But is it really only liberating for you or is it sometimes like: „Ah, well, again, Nouvelle Vague…“?

BB: No, for my generation it began to be liberating. Maybe for directors who were just a bit older than me, people that are now 55 or 60, it might have been heavy. They were just coming after…but for me it is very easy to be influenced by either Rivette or Dario Argento or Dreyer. It‘s all the same, you are allowed to take influences from anywhere. I think for younger filmmakers it is even easier.

PH: Yes, that might be true. Concerning Nocturama I want to avoid talking too much about the parallels between the film and terrorist attacks in Paris because, of course, we can not watch certain images in it without thinking about what we have seen during the last year, but the film stands for itself, I think. So, I want to start by asking you about the structure of the film. Obviously there are two parts, the day with the bomb attack and lots of movement through Paris, and the night in the department store. What was first?

BB: It came at the same time. For me there is not one without the other. I wrote down the idea for the film on one piece of paper, it was all there, it took me about two or three hours to figure it out. So the idea of a political action without any words, the idea of the two parts one being more direct, the other being more abstract, the idea of the mall…So, it was all on this piece of paper and I knew that I had the film. Of course, I had to write it and so on.

PH: The second part is much more like a genre film, right? As far as I remember genre was not much of a thing in your films so far.

BB: No, it wasn‘t.

PH: Was that something you always wanted to do?

BB: I have always liked genre movies a lot. It is very difficult to do it in France and in French without being ridiculous. But then, when I had this idea of making a political film, I really was thinking about some American films that are genre movies but at the same time they are political movies. Mostly in the cinema at the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s. I was trying to go in this direction. I was telling myself that the first half will be like an action movie, the second half will be much more like a genre film. So, for example I said to myself the first half could be influenced by Alan Clarke‘s Elephant, the second part by John Carpenter‘s Assault on Precinct 13. You just think about those things very briefly and then you start to put your own stuff in it.

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PH: For me, your film is very much about expectation. One is always wondering: What is happening next. There is something in the air, you cannot really grasp it but you feel something might come around the corner anytime. Then you really have something close to even a jump scare one or two times, for example with the boy and the golden mask. That surprised me in a film by Bertrand Bonello. Can you say something about it?

BB: Obviously, when the film starts you basically know what is going to happen. So, this is difficult when you write the script. It‘s like what Hitchcock said: If you know what is going to happen, the only question is “When?“ and “How?“. So you know when they are going to the metro, they are going to put some bombs somewhere. You have to be always surprising. Then in the mall, they have to wait for something. So how do you create some tension without anything? Just with the time they spend. Of course, the mall is a fantastic location. It has many floors, you can lose people inside the floors. First they are a little bit scared, then they try to have fun and during the fun you can have some scares. I was thinking about this film Rio Bravo. In this film they are waiting. You know that something is going to happen, an attack. But they have time to spend. So, how to create tension, some life, some time to spend with the characters without being boring? So, that is the work in writing for me. I have to be logical but also a little bit illogical to surprise, you know? It is the same for the ending. You know that they cannot get out of this place. So, how can you make the last thirty minutes with having some tension? It‘s just solutions that you find because of problems.

PH: Yes, that‘s good. You talk a lot about writing but I also feel there are some very interesting choices concerning the editing. For example, there are some moments in which you cut away very early or exactly in the moment we see something. I am thinking about something like the scene with the light balloons. And there are also moments where we go back to a scene we have seen before and so on. How did this approach develop?

BB: It‘s the same as with the writing: How to create tension with little things? It‘s like music in a way. How long has a note to be in order to sound nice and to keep you listening? And the next note has to be logical and surprising. I don‘t really edit films in a narrative way. It‘s more like a sensitive way. And I can do that because the story is very simple. No one tells me: I don‘t understand. So, we have two parts but also three acts and they are very, very simple. So, when things are very simple you can make them very complex in the inside in terms of editing.

PH: Also in terms of time, right? I think it is amazing how in all of your work or at least the last three features with L‘apollonide and Saint Laurent you move through time with flashbacks and little jumps to the future.

BB: For me it is like a damaged record player. So sometimes it goes TSCHUNG and back or TSCHUNG and forward, you know? But basically you have the whole song.

PH: Nocturama is also a step into the contemporary for you, isn‘t it? Your last two features are set in the past though I have to say they very much talk about our time.

BB: Yes, I hope so…but when you make a period film you are always scared that it doesn‘t ring the bell with the contemporary world. You can see the locations and costumes and it‘s very nice but it can be a little bit like a museum.

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PH: It‘s not only contemporary though. I think in all of your latest work there is some spirit of youth, about living in today‘s world as a young person. Is this something you are interested in? I don‘t mean a cinema about young people but rather a cinema with young people, about the feelings, insecurities of our world today?

BB: On the first piece of paper I told you about, I put a note that said how I would like the film to be like a punk band in England 1977.  This is a very strong idea of youth for me. Maybe because I have been dreaming about it. I am a little bit too young to have lived it but I really dreamed about it. Of course, there is a strong idea of youth in these notions of revolution, resurrection and energy. And I wanted the film to talk to young people in a much more physical way than a father talking to a son, for example.

PH: But still, this political rage in the film…it‘s not the rage of the 1970s, I think. It seems to be more ambivalent, more insecure…

BB: Yes, because 40 years have passed. The world is very different, so the youth is very different. It was very easy in 1968 or 1972 to have strong ideological ideas. Today this is much more difficult because of those ambiguities, ambivalences you have been talking about. It‘s not only the youth, it‘s the world. In this sense the film, for me, is very contemporary. There are these two parts, also a bit clashing parts. I think, 40 years ago, I might have made only the first part.

PH: And then we can also see in your film a visual or lets say formalistic approach on I wouldn‘t say social media but maybe the way we perceive images today. I am talking about your use of split-screens, frames in frames or how you put short messages on the screen. There is also the line in the film where one character says: “We should have destroyed Facebook“. Do you try to put the language of this world into cinema?

BB: Yes, and I think when you spend time with young people aged 20 or 25…they are so quick. The way they put things together. All this stuff…series, internet, twitter, snapchat…they are so quick. In my opinion you have to think about this when you make a film.

PH: Connected with this and at the same time completely different is also your use of music. It‘s maybe a basic question for a musician/filmmaker but for me it is always astonishing not only how you compose your own score but also how who choose other songs. I wonder not only when you decide on the music but if in the editing the rhythm follows the music or the other way around?

BB: In fact I decide very, very early when I do the first draft of the script. I decide on the original music and the non-original music. Everything is written down in the script. So it goes like: He walks in the metro, we hear this or that music. Then I go to my little studio and I think about the color of music, what textures, you know? Usually when the first draft is finished I have all the music outlined. I also work a lot with this music during the preparation and the during the sooting because it‘s all there. I give the music to the actors or the set decorators or the DOP. So everyone has the feeling, the color, the tempo, the rhythm…and when you go to the editing room afterwards it is very easy because you have been working with this music for a long time by then.

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PH: And it‘s not only the rhythm. I think the music also has a narrative, autonomous quality to it. It‘s not there to just accompany the images…

BB: Yes, a very difficult work is the dubbing, the mixing. It is very easy to put music over your frames, it‘s like a clip, it‘s very sexy but I think you kill your scene. So for example inside the mall it took us a long time to find a good mixing, to find out when it has to be loud, when it is not loud. There you could kill the scenes. We have this very loud music and we could have easily just had it run over our images. But this would destroy the scenes because nobody would see the film anymore, everyone would just be listening. So I spend a lot of time in the mixing to find the right balance.

PH: Also the whole idea of what‘s inside and outside…so if you cut outside we don‘t hear the music anymore, we hear police car sirens…

BB: Those are the little details that distinguish a film from a video clip for me.

PH: Let‘s switch to the actors and non-actors in the film. Did you have the feeling that those you casted had already the feelings, this insecurity, this rage we have been talking about or was this something you had to work on with them?

BB: I have to say I was pretty surprised because I wrote the script alone and I have my age which is not the same age as them. I also wrote it with my fantasies. I was meeting like a hundred young actors and they were all telling me, not in a violent way, that they lack the courage but they feel like they could do such a thing. It was very easy to bring them into the film politically. Yet, there was a lot of work to bring them in cinematographically. I made them talk a lot, not only about politics but just about anything. What kind of music they listen to, where they go out at night and stuff like that, what do they read and so on.

PH: What about the group dynamics we can feel in the picture? You can feel certain people are closer to each other and this is not only as part of the narrative, I think. You can also feel it in their bodies or when they talk, dance in the same room.

BB: When I found the ten actors we rent a big house in a suburb of Paris and during the shoot they were all living there. Someone was coming at night to cook pasta and stuff. It was important to me that they spend time together not only on the set but also outside of the film.

PH: Speaking of the outside of the film…I imagine this whole situation with what happened in Paris and the relationship your film has with it…that must have been or even be very frustrating?

BB: Well, I was very scared before the release of it because I knew I would have to give twice as many interviews, explain a lot. But then, this is not so much a problem for people who have seen the film. If you have seen the film you see the difference. It‘s more a problem for those who haven‘t seen it yet. Because on the net you see the words like attack, bombs, Paris, terrorists, so I knew I would have a lot of work to do and be very careful what to say, very precise and give long and dedicated explanations because people are very tense in France. Sometimes when I was doing Q&As and debates I was feeling a lot of tension in the air

PH: People are now talking about a trilogy in your work, something like a modernistic trilogy with L‘apollonide, Saint Laurent and now Nocturama. All three films about something that is about to end, to explode. But I would also call it a Dress-Up-Trilogy as all three films are concerned with people switching identities and literally dressing-up…is there are connection?

BB: When I started this film I really wanted to do something very, very different from what I had done before. I had made six features and after Saint Laurent I started to read some texts by critics finding the same stuff in all my movies and so on. Like retrospectively. But it is difficult to make completely different films because a lot of things come back. Obsessions…you try to destroy the house to build another and sometimes you destroy the house and build the same house again.

PH: It‘s like when Fassbinder said that he wants to build a house with his films. So maybe you cannot avoid building a house in the end. Let‘s talk quickly about the title. I think at first the film was called like the Hemingway novel Paris est une fête and then it was changed to Nocturama. Was it changed because of what happened in Paris?

BB: Yes, the film was always called Paris est une fête but after November 13th, like two or three days after this book by Hemingway became a huge symbol of people getting together after the attacks. So, everybody was buying the book to put it in a bar, to put it into the streets, to offer it just everywhere. Of course, it was impossible for me to keep the title. I didn‘t want to propose a strong relationship between the attacks and my film. It took me quite a while to find something. Nocturama is also the title of an album by Nick Cave. For me the title gives an impression of fiction, I like. I asked him for authorization and he told me that he didn‘t invent the word. It is the house you build for nocturnal animals in a zoo.

PH: So, you are building a house again because in your first feature Quelque chose d’organique a zoo plays an important role, doesn‘t it?

BB: Yes. (smiles in agreement)

Viennale 2016: Woody Allen’s Fury

Is Austerlitz a look at how the present looks at the past or does the film simulate a look from the past on the present? I am not sure that these are two completely different things. But through choices concerning where to place the camera and through its use of sound, the film keeps both these slightly different possibilities open at all times. What I mean by a simulation of the past looking at the present is, that the possibility of the camera’s perspective belonging to the spirit of one of the many killed there is kept open (a visible one, if the tourists watch closely). In that same line of thought, the film’s use of sound (Andrey writes about „intensifications of a meticulously composed soundtrack“) with its distance enhancing distortions undergirds such a (not reading but) way of perceiving Austerlitz, as a ghost looking at the present. (I also vaguely remember reading that the film makes use of sound material from the time.) As does the fact that Austerlitz is shot in black and white. This is all not new to Loznitsa, of course, but there seems to have been an increase in the implications of his chosen means. Perhaps this comes over as an attempt to impose a simplistic interpretation of the film, though what I am trying to stress out is the incredible complexity of Loznitsa’s film. Austerlitz deals with and raises very delicate questions concerning film ethics, what is disturbing about the film lays (of course) not only in what it shows, but also in its way of showing it (here I mean disturbing as something positive). It is not seldom that Loznitsa’s films are discussed as refined exercises in observation and little more. I find them rather scandalous, in a very positive way. I would like to hear Cristi Puiu speaking about Austerlitz. He and Loznitsa move on the same slippery cinematic territory.

Yourself and Yours von Hong Sang-soo

A secret award ceremony of the Viennale took place today at 5 a.m. at Gartenbaukino. Hans Hurch awarded the prize for brutality in film to Hong Sang-soo’s Yourself and Yours – irreproachable in (paradoxically) dealing with all kinds of reproaches (you can find Patrick’s review of the film here). A man looking like Hong Sang-soo walked up onto the stage to receive the prize but he swore he was actually the filmmaker’s twin brother. Or sister. It was too early in the morning, I couldn’t pay enough attention to what was happening. Woody Allen got furious and accused the South Korean filmmaker’s twin of having made only a tasteless remake of his film Everything you never wanted to know about relationships. The rivalry between Allen and Sang-soo has been much discussed in the press in the past few years seeing that two filmmakers compete yearly against each other for the title of “fastest working European film director”. (I heard that there are negative comments about the film making use of only a few locations. But that comes with an increase in intensity. Once again, Hong Sang-soo delivers one of the very best films of the year.)

It is odd. With actual human presence in the frame kept to a minimum, it feels at times as if Peter Hutton’s Budapest Portrait (Memories of a City) and Lodz Symphony bear the weight of the entire history of humanity. The absence of people draws attention to people. Yet what we see are streets and buildings at the crack of dawn, shapes and structures, textures and shades, wonderful details of all sorts. I remember the connection between motion and emotion coming up as a topic in Robert Gardner’s Screening Room with Peter Hutton. It is interesting to think about that again after seeing the two films.