»FOCUSED ON THE HORIZON

Interview with Fred Kelemen by Giovanni Marchini Camia (Fireflies - film zine)
................................................................................................................................................................... Anyone who's watched Fred Kelemen's four features as a director - "Fate" (1994), "Frost" (1997), "Nightfall" (1999) and "Fallen" (2005) - with their dour, existential thematics and predilection for moving long takes, will immediately recognise Kelemen as a kindred artist to Béla Tarr. Indeed, Tarr's oft-quoted champion Susan Sontag was also a great admirer of Kelemen's films. In her 1995 essay "A Century of Cinema", Sontag identified the emerging German filmmaker as a precious exception to cinema's "ignominious, irreversible decline." It's therefore no surprise that Kelemen, now fifty-one, served as cinematographer on Tarr's short film "Journey on the Plain" and his last two features "The Man from London" and "The Turin Horse".

For our interview, Kelemen suggests we meet at Café Einstein in Schöneberg, a neighbourhood in former West Berlin. Film buffs will recognise the café as the setting of the memorable scene from Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession" in which the protagonist runs riot, overturning tables and chairs before a group of chefs pin him to the ground. Needles to say, our interview transpired in a more decorous manner. As answer to my opening question of how he and Tarr first met, Kelemen preferred I quote a passage from "The Last Dance", an essay be wrote for the June 2012 issue of "Sight & Sound" (the same text is cited by Michael Guarneri in this issue):

"The friendship between me and Béla Tarr began with a glance. We sat by chance, not knowing each other, in the same café at different tables, but we noticed each other and our glances met. A few days later we saw each other by chance again in the office of the Berlin film academy (dffb). We spoke with each other. That was the beginning of our acquaintance, which became a friendship and a working partnership. This first moment is now twenty-two years ago and a long road led us to the last film "The Turin Horse".

Giovanni Marchini Camia: After collaborating with Béla Tarr for many years, he invited you to teach at his new school, The Film Factory in Sarajevo.
You teach cinematography?

Fred Kelemen: At the Film Factory, yes, and at other film schools I also teach directing. But I’m not a teacher, I’m a researcher. I invite the students to accompany me and enter certain spaces to find out something about what this art can be, to discover its richness and to refine the use of its tools. It’s not about teaching but about giving a certain orientation, provoking an experience and letting each individual choose what is good or bad in his or her own way.

G. M. C.: Have you worked with digital?

F. K.: Not in my own films, though I have worked with video - for example on "Fate". But of course I’m forced, let’s say, to use digital when I work with students because they mainly use digital cameras.

G. M. C.: That was going to be my next question, because I know Tarr isn’t a fan of digital. F. K.: I wouldn’t say so. Béla, like me, is very open. Digital is a fact and it’s very interesting to deal with it, the question is just about how. If you use digital, it shouldn’t be to just imitate film, to try and have it look as close as possible to film. For example, it makes no sense to create a sculpture out of plastic and make it look like marble, which has a different reality. The material itself brings its own reality into the artefact. I’m not against digital, only the fake use of digital, using it without letting anyone know that it’s digital – and I think Béla is, too.

G. M. C.: You obviously share a strong affinity with Tarr in terms of aesthetics. Does this affinity extend to the personal, the political and the philosophical – are these dimensions necessary for an artistic collaboration such as filmmaking?

F. K.: Of course we have different ideas about some things and even as directors our ways of working differ in certain aspects.
But you cannot distinguish the aesthetic question from the question of content and attitude. If you separate them, you have an empty form – it’s dead. A film should be like a living organism. The aesthetic appearance is an expression of what’s inherent in the form. It’s an expression of spirit. If the spirits of two individuals harmonise, the result can be much stronger. When you're not connected, you create something that is incoherent. A mutual understanding of what has to be expressed - of what a film talks about, for example - and a mutual feeling for the atmosphere to be created are very, very important.
Every film starts with the dream of one person, who then has to find the people around him to share this dream and make it a part of reality. It’s very important for directors to choose the right people, their partners in crime. If you choose people who are connected with you and your ideas, then everybody will naturally have enormous freedom. I’m very free because we agree on most things and there is no need for discussion – our work is mostly silent. We talk about it before and I listen to what Béla has in his mind - not just to his words but to his whole being - and I add my part.

G. M. C.: To what extent are the famously complicated tracking shots planned in advance? Is there any improvisation on set?

F. K.: Everything is planned. Some time before the shooting we sit down, go through the script scene by scene and fix the choreography: “How can we go from there to there? If the character sits at the table and ends up at the window, how can he walk and how do we move the camera?” We talk about it very precisely, and once it’s fixed, we shoot it.
It’s like going on a journey: if we decide to go from Berlin to Rome, then it’s clear, we go from Berlin to Rome and not to Paris, for example. Of course, on the way we might make a detour through a little village. It can happen when shooting that a certain movement doesn’t work because the walls are too narrow or whatever, then we change it. But we stay faithful to the content, to the tone of the scene. That’s most important: to have a very clear vision about the atmosphere and the tone – the soul, let’s say – of the film. Any little changes that might be necessary must be faithful to the heartbeat of the film. Béla and I, we know exactly what this heartbeat is and we don’t hurt it.

G. M. C.: The opening from "The Man From London" – is that two shots? Is there a cut when the camera goes through the floor?

F. K.: I know Béla hates to reveal secrets but I wouldn’t know any reason not to tell it: yes, there is one invisible cut, which was necessary because of the length of the reels, since the scene is longer than ten minutes.

G. M. C.: The second shot must have been really challenging: there is so much going on, so many timed elements and the camera is at such a great distance from the action. Is that one of the more difficult shots you’ve done together?

F. K.: Yes, we had a lot of rehearsals. We rehearsed for more than one night. The rhythm of the scene, the choreography - who is walking when and how fast - it's like a dance. The camera movement is really complex – it wasn’t easy to create the flow, the magic, which only exists when you forget to be focused on the mileposts on the way. It’s again like a journey: if you’re aware of every kilometre you drive then it gets very heavy, but when you forget the driving and you just enjoy the landscape, the wind, the flow of the journey, then something magical happens. You should be focused on the horizon but not on the crash barrier.

G. M. C.: "The Turin Horse" is an extremely minimalist film. Dialogue, for instance, is kept as sparse as possible, which places a lot more emphasis on the expressivity of the images. Can you describe the increased challenge this entails for you?

F. K.: One thing that Béla and I certainly share is that we both know that film is a visual art. Film should talk in images and dialogue is just the last thing to use. I never miss dialogues – even this film with such few dialogues, I think it could still work with less. For me, it’s very natural: film should talk in images. Words are not so important for understanding.

G. M. C.: Even beyond dialogue, every element is minimised: the narrative, the performances, the production design, and so forth.

F. K.: Yes, but if you watch a film and ask yourself what is necessary for it to remain a film – you can take the dialogues out; it’s still a film. You can take the music out, take the sound out; it’s still a film. You can even take the actors out; it would still be a film. There’s only one thing you can’t take out: the image. The image is the nucleus of a film and this you cannot minimise; you can’t take the picture away. Then you would have a radio play, maybe, or what Derek Jarman did in "Blue": he had a blue screen and then he worked with sounds, but that’s something different. It’s the same with music: you can take the melody away; it’s still music. Music doesn’t need melodies, but what you can’t take out is the tone. Every art has a nucleus that cannot be reduced any further without destroying the art completely. When you focus on this nucleus, when you let it flourish, then you come closer and closer to the pure form of this art. That’s what "The Turin Horse" comes close to – it’s based on the language of the image, so it’s more, cinegraphic, let’s say.

G. M. C.: You and Tarr used Vincent van Gogh’s "The Potato Eaters" as a reference in planning "The Turin Horse". I’m interested in the way directors and cinematographers draw inspiration from paintings. Could you describe this process?

F. K.: It doesn’t happen in a direct way: we weren’t sitting there looking at the painting, saying, “We have to have a scene that looks exactly like this.” It wasn’t about the painting itself; it was something in the painting. It was about the essence, which lies beyond the painting.
I’m very inspired by paintings. If you look at [Edvard] Munch, for example, the composition of his paintings are very filmic. Many of them look like film stills: how the figures are positioned, how they are cut by the edges of the frame, and so on. What you can definitely learn from painting – what can really nourish you – is the use of lighting. It’s a beautiful adventure to watch paintings for a long time, to stand in front of a painting and really enter it with your mind and watch the movement of the light. Even though it’s a painting, it’s not a stiff thing; it’s got a movement inside. It’s definitely inspiring.

G. M. C.: In Jean-Marc Lamoure’s documentary about the making of "The Turin Horse", I saw that the film’s soundtrack music was often played on set. What was the role of the music – did it guide you in your camera movements?

F. K.: Béla liked to work this way. The music creates a certain atmosphere, a certain feeling for the rhythm of the scene. It’s mainly important for everybody else, the actors and so on.
In my case, honestly, I don’t need it. Sometimes it disturbs me, actually. After listening to the same music for fifteen hours every day, I’m so fed up with this music, it starts to be a kind of ‘psycho-terror’. I don’t take the rhythm from the music. But Béla is right, it’s very good for the whole: the guy who pushes the dolly, the actors, everybody who’s involved becomes part of this atmosphere – it creates this dance.

G. M. C.: A very peculiar humour runs through "The Turin Horse". For me, it’s encapsulated in that extreme long shot depicting the characters’ attempt at escaping their situation. They disappear over the hill and then, after a minute or so, they simply return the way they came – their big departure was for nothing. How do you interpret the film’s comic dimension?

F. K.: You can find very humorous moments in all Béla’s films. They’re humorous because they’re absurd. They’re so tragic that you have to laugh about them. Going away, trying to leave a disastrous place and coming back after a few moments because there is no other place, nowhere to go, is on the one hand terribly sad, terribly tragic, but also terribly funny. Somehow it’s the irony of our destiny.

G. M. C.: To infuse such tragedy with humour without degenerating into farce requires a very careful balancing act.

F. K.: The balance results from the awareness of how sad it is at the same time. If you are aware of the hidden yet obvious sadness of the whole thing, then the balance will be there, and it will prevent it from becoming stupidly funny or slapstick. The “funny” appeal is grounded, or deepened, because of the sadness that is contained in it. It is "funny", but because it’s so sad it can never be stupid, it can never be a joke – it’s funny without being a joke, it is serious.
Of course, it also depends on your view. I can imagine there are people who watch the film – especially this scene – and would not say it’s humorous. They would just say it’s sad and tragic because the characters have no place to go. If you watch Charles Chaplin's films, they’re "funny" at the same moment that they’re sad. The unlucky moments, when somebody tries hard and fails, they can be "funny", somehow. Maybe the humorous aspect is a way for us to respond to the tragedy.

G. M. C.: The respect and dignity of the individual is always very important for Tarr. Maybe that’s what makes the difference, the humanity. If it were lacking, then perhaps these moments would be purely tragic.

F. K.: It’s a very complex topic. It’s about what is absurd in life and it also has to do with desperation. There is a level of desperation that can only be answered through absurdity. This awareness of the absurdity is maybe what makes us laugh. Maybe that’s really the human aspect. I think humour is how human beings respond to something that is so tragic, that if you didn’t have the humour, it would kill you. It’s a way of surviving. It’s also important because humour prevents you from taking things too seriously – it puts things into a more appropriate relation. I think this is the point.

G. M. C.: When you were working on "The Turin Horse", did everyone know it would be his last film?

F. K.: Yes. After the shooting of "The Man From London", Béla had already declared openly that his next film would be his last, so it was clear to everybody.

G. M. C.: How do you view his decision to retire?

F. K.: I follow his own idea about it. When he says it’s his last film, he’s absolutely serious. If somebody is so aware, it’s a very good step to do it like this. There are many filmmakers who don’t stop, who make one bad film after another. Or many people, when they die, sadly feel they are taken away from something that was unfinished, that death breaks it away, finishes it.
When you know, by yourself, that you’ve completed something, it’s a wonderful thing, because then you’re free to do something else. I wouldn’t see it as tragic – it’s a very rare, lucky example of accomplishing something while you’re alive.

................................................................................................................................................................... (Fireflies - film zine, Issue #2, Mai 2015)