»"SAD SONGS FOR SURVIVORS"

Interview with Fred Kelemen
by Ben Shalev for the article "ZOE POLANSKI IS THE SECRET WEAPON OF ISRAELI MUSIC", HA'ARETZ, Israel, 31 March 2017
................................................................................................................................................................... Ben Shalev:
How did you meet Zoe?

Fred Kelemen: An Israeli student of mine at the German Film & TV Academy (dffb) met Zoe by chance in the same summer of 2012 in Tel Aviv when I was there, too.
Zoe, who knew and liked some of Béla Tarr's films, understood in her conversation with the student that I was the cinematographer of Béla's last films. The student told me about Zoe and sent me a link to one of the songs of her project / band "Bela Tar". I immediately liked it a lot. And it was more than just liking the music. Something deeper inside me resonated to it, to its melancholy, to Zoe's voice, to the soul within this music. I contacted Zoe and we agreed to meet. More meetings followed then and over the years. I followed her artistic path and we became friends and collaborators.

B. S.:
What did you think/feel about her music? About her way of expressing herself artistically?

F. K.:
There was a certain melancholy in the music of her project/band "Bela Tar", a fragility, mood, firmness which touched me and interested me, and I detected an affinity of temperament between the music / her and me.

B. S.:
Why did you choose her for this specific film?

F. K.:
After shooting and editing "Sarajevo Songs of Woe", I asked Zoe if she would be interested in trying to compose and perform one long piece of music for the film. From the beginning it was my intention to use only music for this part of the film, and no other sounds.
I told Zoe about the film and especially the part I imagined her music for. This part's title is "Blue Psalm for Wolves". I asked her, because I had confidence in her sensibility, intuition, artistic skills and approach and in the congeniality of our natures.

B. S.:
Can you tell me a little bit about the "dogs section" in "Sarajevo Songs of Woe"? How did it come about? What was the motivation behind it? How did you do it? And why did you decide to put it in between the other sections of the film?

F. K.:
The stray dogs of Sarajevo are the descendants of the once tame domestic dogs who were abandoned because their owners were killed or wounded or for other reasons during the war and siege of Sarajevo from 1992 till 1996.
Many of them are injured, harmed and traumatised.
Like the characters in the other two parts of this filmic triptych, the stray dogs in this part connect the present with the past. They mirror our human life. And when we observe them and look into their open eyes, we see our own destiny - stripped to the bone, pure, bare, unfeigned.
Filming the stray dogs night for night, spending so much time with them, I clearly realised that we still do not understand the significance of the souls of the stray dogs - anywhere in this world - for us and our lives.
This documentary part, which I shot alone in six nights, connects the two fictional parts, builds a kind of mirror axis, and creates together with the two other parts or films a fourth film which exists invisibly in the metaphysical space beyond the visible film, where the true reality is. It is the film behind the images, it hovers over the surface of the screen.

B. S.:
What were your guidelines for Zoe?

F. K.:
After finishing the editing of part II of "Sarajevo Songs of Woe" with the title "Blue Psalm for Wolves", I sent the complete part to her. I asked her to watch it and to let me know if it resonated inside her, if it inspired her and if she would like to do the music for it. She was touched by the film and her response was positive.
As some additional inspiration I asked her to read the Book of Jeremiah (Lamentations) - in Hebrew אֵיכָה - in the Tanakh and to have in mind the atmosphere, the aura of night.
And I asked Zoe to bear in mind that most of the Bosnians are Muslims now, acoustically present through the sound of the singing of the mosques' muezzins. This element of the town's soundscape appears in all parts of the film.
Zoe created a wonderful piece of music.

B. S.:
She told me she tried not to convey emotions in the usual sense, but rather just to be spontaneous and intuitive and to deal less with emotions. Was it your idea or hers?

F. K.:
It is very important that the score of a film does not illustrate or comment on the images. Every sentimentalism and kitsch has to be avoided. The score should be an element which opens an additional level behind or within the images. The images and the music should enter a kind of alchemistical connection creating a third reality beyond the images and the music, which is not revealed in the same way by the images or the music alone. The music should have a kind of subtle, invoking force.
Because the art of film and music are very closely related - film is much closer to music than to literature - music should be treated very delicately and carefully in a film. Usually I do not integrate score into my films. But this time I wanted to and in a pretty excessive, extreme way. The piece of music has a length of more than half an hour.
It was important that the music does not cover the atmosphere, the metaphysical radiation of the images, its inner, silent, inaudible sound, that the music does not soften it or spoil it. To avoid this it was helpful to remember that the dogs always walk with their noses to the ground, they are orientated to the earth, not to the sky.
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Ben Shalev: "ZOE POLANSKI IS THE SECRET WEAPON OF ISRAELI MUSIC",
HA'ARETZ, Israel, 31 March 2017 http://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/music/.premium-1.3955563