»“AS A PESSIMIST I WOULDN'T CREATE FILMS”

An interview with Fred Kelemen
by Mateusz Demski
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“I think that until a certain age we imprint our stigma on ourselves. An influence is therefore a mutual reaction - it can be bigger or smaller but it always consists of a unique exchange of ideas or point of view. It operates light and shadow, a metaphor of the frame and a subtle emotionalisation of the message,” says Fred Kelemen, director, cinematographer and master of the long shot.

This year, one can view Kelemen’s work in his retrospective at New Horizons Festival.

Mateusz Demski: We are meeting in Wrocław because of your retrospective. That is a good moment to look back in time to your hometown, Berlin. What influence has the city had on you?

Fred Kelemen: I don't know. Of course, the city influenced me. Every environment has an influence on the people or animals living in it. But it's very difficult to judge the way of this influence from the perspective of where you were born.

M.D.: Despite that, I have the impression that Berlin has influenced your perception of the world. When did cinema become of particular interest to you?

F.K.: It was just after graduating grammar school. At that time, I was occupying myself with various disciplines of art like music and painting but I kept asking myself, ‘which path should I follow?’
At a certain moment, I felt a natural need to express myself through moving and not through static images. Film language seemed the most appropriate in realising that goal. I was aware that creating my own film projects is connected with gathering finances, hiring people as crew and renting equipment, so that's why I decided to apply for the Film School. There I was given a chance to follow my dream.

M.D.: What memories do you have from the years you spent in film school? Did it open the eyes of a young, aspiring artist?

F.K.: First of all, it was very creative time for me. Maybe I didn’t make the closest connections with a lot of my class mates but I discovered a very liberal attitude, which gave students a chance for a growth. It wasn't a place where teachers forced a creative direction from the outset, we experimented with what direction our creative path will take. We could develop in an individual way, which included the individual fight for the freedom of individual artistic expression.

M.D.: You mention a lack of close acquaintances, however during your studies you encountered Béla Tarr, who one could say is your creative soul mate.

F.K.: We met in January 1990 when Béla presented his retrospective in Berlin then. I remember that we first saw each other in a café on a Saturday evening, sitting at separate tables without knowing of each other who we were. On the next Monday he came to the film school and remembered me from the café. After finding out I was a student there, he offered me the chance to take part in his three-day workshop reserved, usually, for my older colleagues. I agreed. Since then we stayed in touch and met every time I visited my family in Hungary. In 1995 he offered me to shoot his film ‘Journey on the Plain’ as the cinematographer. That's how our collaboration started.

M.D.: In the same year, you encountered another unique person. What did the first meeting with Susan Sontag look like?

F.K.: In 1995 I came to New York to promote my debut film, ‘Fate.’ Susan knew about my stay in New York and decided to contact me. We met a few days later in her apartment. We talked for a very long time about the subjects affecting us, which concerned not only the cinema. After that first appointment we decided to keep in touch and corresponded over numerous emails and talked by phone occasionally during many years. Later, in 2003, we met again in New York, this time because of my retrospective at Jonas Mekas' Anthology Film Archives. Susan came to the cinema every evening, she watched my films and after we usually ended up in a restaurant nearby eating soup and talking. Then we shared a taxi first dropping her off, then me. In the same month we celebrated her birthday together in Berlin. We have the same star.

M.D.: It seems to me that there was a special relationship between you and Susan Sontag. Was she your friend?

F.K.: We were allies. And her death was a great loss.

M.D.: Those meetings must have had an enormous influence on the way you perceive the cinema.

F.K.: That's the second time you are asking me about a specific influence and unfortunately, I don't have a one, unambiguous answer. I think there is some reason why we meet certain people on our way. Meeting Susan, or Béla, who has an identical approach towards the art of film, was something extraordinary and nevertheless consequential.
Béla's work, for example, turned out to be similar to my work when it comes down to the concentration on images, reflection on specific scenes or selection of the locations.
Béla helped me concentrate on what was crucial for me. Of course, throughout all of the years spent on a set or university I met many people but with no one did I form a remarkable artistic relationship. Susan and me shared a certain world view and sensibility and analytic and synthetic thinking and humanistic values. She is a never fading guiding star, a measure of quality.
On the other hand, I do believe that we all imprint our stigma on ourselves, and every moment of our life leaves a permanent trace. Influence is therefore a mutual reaction, a bigger or smaller one but it always consists of a certain exchange of ideas or points of view.

M.D.: As we are talking about points of view, I have got an impression that yours changed in the moment you touched the camera. In your debut film ‘Fate,’ you moved from your hometown West Berlin to the other side of the fallen Wall. You then explored degradation and alienation in post-totalitarian world.

F.K.: I wouldn't say I ever changed my view or perspective. Part of my family came from Hungary or still lives there, so I always had an insight of what is happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Apart from that, I was always free from the divisions of looking at the Western world from the Eastern world perspective and vice versa. I would never call myself a director rooted in national tradition, I would rather call myself a European director. I was always interested in portraying every nook of our continent in the most realistic way. Therefore, I have never created artificial filmic worlds by myself, I just portrayed the world as it is - at least according to my understanding - , even though in a stylised, artistic way. I was showing the places, where the wounds of society remain open and visible.

M.D.: Your protagonists are often homeless, abandoned by the system as individuals. It seems to me that you are a pessimist.

F.K.: If I would be a pessimist, I wouldn't have created films. To create is basically an act of giving, art is an act of generosity which includes the believe in communication, mutual understanding, meaning and even love. I am not a pessimist but actually a realist.
By the way, the protagonists of my films are not homeless, but they are lonely drifters in the deserts of our godforsaken civilisation.

M.D.: You suspended your directing activity for more than ten years, between ‘Fallen’ and ‘Sarajevo Songs of Woe,’ did the sadness mentioned above affect you?

F.K.: It was rather the excess of other obligations. In 2005 when I ended the work on ‘Fallen,’ Béla and I started shooting for ‘The Man from London.’ It took some years - including some breaks - and immediately after we focused on our next project, ‘The Turin Horse.’ It was all very time consuming and we couldn't have accelerated it. Shooting is the most important part of every film because it comes down to the moment of taking decision, creating a film world, regardless of what we have written before. Don't forget that at the same time I worked on a film in Israel as the cinematographer, wrote scripts and also was teaching classes. I only had the occasion to begin working on my filmic triptych "Sarajevo Songs of Woe" in 2014.

M.D.: Is it difficult to reconcile such different experiences?

F.K.: It doesn't appear to me that it's reconciling completely different experiences. Both work on set and conversations with students are consideration of the essence of cinema and therefore film research. I don't notice opposite poles, it's rather a coherent integrity. You can discover the same in my films. I worked as a director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and sometimes, I also took on the responsibility of sound. I think that from the very beginning I wanted to have full knowledge about this art and full control of the shape of my work. I treat cinema in a holistic way, for me, it's a comprehensive, artistic relationship; and a way of being in this material world where the only thing that really matters are acts of love and creativity, and everything else is more or less crap and nonsense.

M.D.: Do you think that this 25-year artistic relationship can in some way influence the reality we live in?

F.K.: A film cannot directly and immediately influence the world for sure, but it can stimulate and move people. It can point out something. It is a language and as such it communicates and, of course, can create or stimulate consciousness.
Even though a film cannot change the world, everyone, who installs a camera and pushes its button, should have the urgent desire to change it and the belief that he is able to do it. Otherwise all the necessary efforts to make a film are meaningless. Art does not tolerate conformism.

M.D.: Are you saying this from your own experience?

F.K.: Yes, because there are films which marked me deeply, which influenced my spirit and opened certain channels of thinking and feeling. And these filns were the unsettling ones, the agitating ones and the honestly, baldly, radically humanistic ones.
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Interview by Mateusz Demski, 10 August 2017, New Horizons 17 International Film Festival, Wrocław