»"RECREATING UTOPIA"

Interview with Fred Kelemen
Questions by Ivan Ivashkin - oppeople / Russia

"You have to know what is important to you, what you believe in. And this you have to protect. If you protect what you believe in, you are yourself protected."

Fred Kelemen, the cinematographer for the famous Hungarian director Béla Tarr ("The Man from London", "The Turin Horse"), has been making films as a director for a long time ("Fate", "Fallen"), and in the autumn of 2015 he started teaching at the Moscow School of New Cinema. We took the opportunity to ask Fred a few questions about the preparations for shooting long takes, his rehearsal method, and much more.
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Ivan Ivashkin: When, after studying, you appeared for first time on a set as an operator or as a director, was there a moment when you had to prove something: your professionalism or that you understood what you were doing? How did you do it?

Fred Kelemen: I wanted to learn, I had the desire to learn, the passion to learn when I was studying, and I still do. Of course, I am more experienced now, but I still try to do things I do not know. And I am still learning. There is nothing to prove to anybody. But there is the task of doing what you do in the best way.
When I made my first full length feature film "Fate", I worked with friends or people I knew. We did not have to prove our professionality, we just had to deal with the problems we naturally had. After I left the film school and made my first films outside, as a director on my own or as a cinematographer with other directors, there were also people around me I knew already, so I just tried to do my best to contribute to the work we did together, to the film. I really did not have the feeling that I had to prove anything to anybody. Only later there was a situation where the crew had certain expectations of my abilities. This was the case when shooting "The Man from London" with Béla Tarr. The crew wanted to see what I could do. In this situation, I think, I had to prove on the first shooting day that I was able to shoot the film's opening scene - that is what we shot first - and I felt that the crew wanted to see if it would work well with me or not. But I did not do what I did to prove anything, I just did it in the best way possible for me. But this kind of situation has been very rare in my life.
Generally I think, every day in your work - no matter if you are shooting a film or working with students - it is your responsibility to be able to do what you do in the best possible way and with the highest possible level of quality.

I. I.: Among the operator's responsibilities are not only the shooting process, but also choosing the shot, the locations, the lighting… For example the first shot of "The Man from London" is very long and detailed. How did you do it?

F. K.: When I was shooting "The Man from London", most of the locations had already been selected by the director Béla Tarr, his co-director Ágnes Hranitzky and the head of the art department. I only selected a few locations with Béla, because I jumped into the project a little later.
With "The Turin Horse" it was different. We prepared the film together for a long time before the shooting. We looked at different locations, landscapes, which had been pre-selected by Béla. We excluded some of them and kept two or three as options. Later we went to look at them again in a different season, in a different light and with the different appearance of the vegetation. Then we made the final choice together.
If you have a good relationship with the director and if you share the same vision, you decide everything together. Then it is a very close collaboration.
And this is one of the most beautiful things in filming – the collaboration between like-minded people.

I. I.: How do you prepare for difficult shoots? Do you draw every shot before? Do you imagine it at the table? I mean how do you develop such detailed long shots?

F. K.: F. K.: I never make a storyboard for example. First I read the script alone, meanwhile I have imaginations about the scenes, of course. I see images with my inner eye. Later I sit with the director and listen to his ideas, I share mine with him and we see if the visions we have are very different or similar.
Working with someone like Béla, who has visual ideas very close to mine, it was, for example, never a question of whether the film would be done in long or short shots, it was clear for us without even mentioning it. One day we sat down with the script and talked about every scene, envisaged all the movements, and fixed the choreography of the camera and the actors in a very concrete way.
For example, who moves from where to where and when, and what the camera is doing at the same time.
Having envisaged all the movements before the shoot, we check the locations. We check whether we can do all the movements there, or whether we have to look for some other place. Sometimes it happens that a location is very convincing, but does not fit some of the envisaged movements; then we may change the movements and adapt them to the place.
When I go onto the set, I know of course what I am going to do. I set the lighting according to the movements of the actors and the camera. All the movements already exist in my imagination and on the set we rehearse them according to the decisions we made before. It is the moment of turning what I have imagined into reality.
We try again and again. Until everything works perfectly.
It needs a lot of rehearsal, because it has to be perfect.
This is a strong part of the work – the choreography of the movements of the camera and the actors. Everything happens in time. The element of time is very important in such scenes, it’s different from shorter and, let’s say, more conventional shots, when you cut, cut, cut.
Time is itself like an actor. There is not only the reality of an actor, but there is also the reality of time. Time is a concrete reality in these scenes.
And every single moment has to be developed very precisely with its own necessary duration, atmosphere and breath.

I. I.: The camera in "The Man from London" becomes at a certain point the subjective view of the character, who noticed something, it shows this character in profile ...

F. K.: No, there are no subjective shots. The camera was always, let’s say, in the position of the author. The camera is the author of the scenes. The camera creates the filmic world.
Something like a "subjective shot" does not exist at all. Or what would be an "objective shot" then? There is only and always the life of the filmic world as it is created by the camera.

I. I.: But are the actors annoyed by this way of shooting, when they have a lot of rehearsals and need to play the scene many times?

F. K.: I do not know if they are annoyed. It is difficult for some actors, because it is unusual for them. It can be difficult for them to be so precise in their movements and positions. But these difficulties only exist at the beginning, because they are used to work differently on other shoots, and after a few days, they adopt and enjoy this way of working, and they understand its positive aspects.
To shoot a scene of, for example, ten minutes as a whole, without cuts, lets the actors build up an emotional level in one single scene without being disturbed by cuts.

I. I.: If a scene is complicated, the actors can get emotionally tired, because of the great number of repeats.

F. K.: Of course, this is possible. But it should not happen to them. The cinematographer could get tired of too many rehearsals of the same shot as well, but it should not happen to him or her either. It needs a certain professionalism and economical use of energy and concentration not to let this happen.

I. I.: A different question to change the topic: The Russian writer Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate" contains a scene where the Soviet scientist Professor Strum, the main hero, who ran a big institute, needs to make a choice. It takes place during the Stalinist repression, and people from the NKVD, the state police, offer him a paper and ask him to sign it in support of the state's repressive actions. It is a paper criticising some other scientists, saying that they are bad. So the professor is asked to sign the paper which could destroy the other scientists. He has to choose between signing it or not. He goes to the bathroom to think about it, comes back and signs, because he runs the institute, he has a family etc. For us this was history. But just one or two years ago it happened again. A lot of directors, scientists, actors had to put their signatures to letters and... I am not asking you how you would behave, because maybe you do not know, or maybe you do?

F. K: Sitting here now, not being in the situation described and trying to give my honest answer, I would say that I would not sign. I have had situations which, of course, were not quite like this, but when I had to decide to take my position. And I know, from my own experience, that I would not sign.
So, if the question is: would I sign the paper knowing that it is wrong, then I answer clearly that I would not sign. Because I think it is very important that you act in absolute accordance with your thinking. We should do what we believe in. And we should not do what we do not believe in. Because in the end it does not matter if, with your signature, you may for example save your institute, your career, if on the other hand you lose your soul. The soul is something more valuable than the career, I think.
You have to understand and to know what you are standing for, what your values are. You have to know what is important to you, what you believe in. And this you have to protect. If you protect what you believe in, you are yourself protected.
And you have to have the courage to say "no" to what is wrong in your understanding. I think we should not make ethical compromises. That is what I believe in.

I. I.: So you are ready to refuse, for example, to shoot a new film to avoid betraying yourself?

F. K.: If I knew that my behaviour would harm or destroy someone, if, for example, the opportunity to shoot a film was only given to me if I signed a paper destroying someone else's professional and personal life, I would not sign to shoot the film. If I was asked to shoot a film I do not believe in or which is even the opposite of what I believe in, I would not shoot it either. Of course not.
How can you be an artist, if you are corrupt? You can be a craftsman, you can make films, but if you are morally corrupt you are not a true artist. "Aesthetics without ethics are cosmetics", as Ulay, the performance artist, said.
Everyone worries about saving their own skin, but we have to worry about saving our souls. Even if our skin is hurt or destroyed.
You have to prove what your values are, to prove it to yourself and to the world, because everything we do has consequences on several levels.

I. I. But before this you have to find out?

F. K.: Yes, you have to find out, of course. You have to get to know. But this is a necessary part of a person's spiritual or mental growth. When you are younger, you do not know, maybe. But as you grow, you have to understand what is right and what is wrong.

I. I.: Have you found out?

F. K.: Of course.
(pause)
The question is, do you want to develop as a human being or not.
I think, that is the most important: To develop ourselves as real humans and to become human. We have to make our hearts grow. This is our aim on this earth.

I. I.: And how do you struggle with your fear?

F. K.: I am not afraid.
Maybe it sounds unbelievable, but I deeply believe that there is nothing we should be afraid of. We should just be aware of the dangers our fragile lives can be confronted with and we should be ready to deal with them.
Of course, some things can be very difficult, but then I start thinking about how to manage them.
When I decide to do something I am not afraid, I just try to be aware of the problems and try to solve them.
Let us imagine walking on a rope, for example. It is very difficult. But if you decide to do it, it makes no sense to be afraid, it makes sense to use all your knowledge, talent, concentration and skill to walk to the other side of the rope. Fear wouldn’t allow you to be successful. If you were afraid, you would have two problems; the fear and walking on the rope. But if you just concentrate on solving the difficulty of not falling, you can be successful.
The most dangerous things are our doubts. They are very destructive. We have to believe that we are able to walk on the rope. And then we have to do it.
I think there is nothing to be afraid of.

I. I.: As a director you staged the play "Fahrenheit 451," by Ray Bradbury, in a theatre. What was the message? F

. K.: It’s about the corruption of the soul. The main character is someone who works for the governing system that feeds the people with entertainment and propaganda and violates the individuals. He understands that the things he does are bad, destructive. And one day he asks himself the question of whether he can continue to do something that he knows is bad.
I made an adaptation of the novel, I made a completely new translation, because the German text was old-fashioned. It was a version from the 1950s. Then I transferred it to the stage, transformed it into scenes. And I changed a lot of elements to bring it closer to our reality and possible future. My play ended with the protagonists sitting on the avant-scene, at the edge of the stage ramp, the completely empty stage behind them, looking into the auditorium and facing a war which was going to happen soon. One of them asked what they should do now. Another one answered: "Wait." And then they waited a long time.
It is a very topical subject.

I. I.: Can an artistic work change anything?

F. K.: No, not if you mean an instant change. But an artistic work can create a certain sensibility for some topics or themes and aspects of our life. And in doing this it can change something. Not society or the world as a whole, but single persons. And with this, step by step, it can create consciousness.
It can help people to think about something in a different way or to have a stronger sensibility for certain things.
But it depends on the individual person. If a person is able to change and wants to change, it surely needs much more than a film to change anything. But it can be one part of somebody's way of changing. I know myself how films influenced my sensibility, how they, for example, evoked certain moods and thoughts, how they inspired certain thoughts. It is always a dialogue between the single person and the screen. The screen needs a person, a person needs something that is on the screen. The communicative aspect of art is very important. And you have to find ways of creating films which communicate to people. But this does not mean that they have to communicate with everyone.
Like in your ordinary life, you cannot communicate with everybody.
It was never my interest to make my films communicative to everyone. It is the interest of the commercial cinema to get as many viewers as possible to watch a film, to sell as many tickets as possible. But targeting the masses is not the idea of culture.
Art, I think, needs a creative viewer. It’s not like sitting and receiving a piece of art like a piece of chocolate which melts easily in the mouth and just has to be swallowed.
It also needs the viewer's creativity, it needs him or her as a creative partner. And this is important, because otherwise it would be propaganda. Propaganda doesn’t need anyone as a creative partner. It just puts simple messages in a simple way to people’s brains. That’s all. That’s not art. Art is a two-way street that both have to walk; artist and audience. They are partners. It is communication.
One thing an artist should do is communicate.
With a truly artistic work we create the poetic sense of our world.

I. I.: So do you make films for a special audience?

F. K.: No, for anyone who is interested, curious and open-minded for making an experience beyond standardised expectations. If this is the case, it is not difficult to understand and connect emotionally with my films.
For example, I once presented my film "Fate" at a film festival in Mexico at a Saturday afternoon screening and the cinema was visited by lots of fieldworkers. They were not cinematically educated film critics. But they watched the film and understood it very easily. And they did not ask me the typical question about the slow rhythm of the film, which I was always asked at that time. I asked them if they had a problem with the slow tempo of the film. They answered: "No. That’s like in life."
Films that do not follow the mainstream are not only for special people. It depends how open the audience is, how much the audience is able to perceive and embrace a film as a part of reality, how much it is able just to watch and try to understand.
Everyone decides for himself whether he wants to connect with a film or another piece of art or not, to face a new experience or not. I think art should be a new, unsettling experience. And not just the comfortably ritualised conformist repetition of what we already know.
And as long as people understand film as a search for a spiritual experience, the idea of film as an art will not die. It just depends on how many possibilities people get to educate themselves in cinema. From the ABC of cinema, for example, which goes from A to Z and even beyond - many letters have not even been invented yet - mainstream films use only the first letters. But it would be important to give people the chance to get to know the other letters, too. And that would enable them to enjoy other kinds of films. It is also a question of the cinematic experience as a viewer.
The form plays a very important role when we talk about the question of how easy or difficult the audience's intellectual and emotional access to a film is. I, for example, have certain ideas regarding the form, the look of the images, the composition of the film, its rhythm etc. And I try to follow these artistic aims and to preserve them during the shooting process. But I try as well in every single shot to take care with the understandability, the communicative level. I try to be sure that everything that is important to me and the understanding of the events, characters and the whole film, is visible to the audience, that it does not happen too quickly or without attracting attention. These are very concrete things to take care with. For example, I want to make everyone understand that a man who wrote a letter tries to put it in his jacket pocket, but accidentally misses the pocket, and the letter falls down. I have to take care that this is sufficiently visible, without destroying the visual style of the film, of course.
Almost everything has been said. All taboos have been broken. We cannot shock anyone anymore as regards content. The revolution in art will be formal - of course not without being linked to a content.

I. I.: You said that you rehearse a lot and do a lot of repeating. How do you make the selection during the editing? For example, if you have a take in which all the actors have done the scene really well, but there was a mistake in the camera movement or lighting, and you have another one where the choreography and the lighting were flawless, but the actors have performed the scene imprecisely. Which take would you choose? What is more important for you?

F. K.: I choose the take where every element is right.

I. I.: So you have a hundred takes?

F. K.: No, I do not shoot a hundred takes, of course. I rehearse very precisely, and start shooting only when I see that everything is going absolutely well. Only when this happens do I push the camera button, and then I shoot as long as necessary, which means until I have some perfect shots. It needs more than one perfect shot. Before I know that I have 2 or 3 perfect shots, I do not finish. And of course during the shooting I already know if I have them or not.

I. I.: Before postproduction?

F. K.: Yes, of course.

I. I.: When the Berlin Wall was destroyed you were 25 years old, do you remember this moment?

F. K.: I was at home that night preparing my shooting in film school the next day. When I went to school next morning I sensed a terrible smell. It was the smell of the East German cars' exhaust gases. Then I saw hundreds of them driving down the main road of my neighbourhood. I thought that something like the opening of the Wall must have happened and then I went to school and fellow students confirmed the news.
The weeks before I had spent a lot of time in Budapest, so I saw lots of people from East Germany escaping to Hungary. I witnessed a lot of situations these East German refugees experienced in Budapest.
After the so-called "unification" of Germany many people lost the lives they had lived in the former GDR, because their country simply disappeared. I saw a deep, I must say, sorrow, because no values from the East were preserved. The West simply subjugated the East. This was a unification in the way a shark unifies with a small fish by eating it.
The big chance historically was to preserve the good things from both sides and to integrate them in a newly created country, better than each part alone. But this did not happen. At least with the unification of the two German states in the way it happened, Utopia perished.

I. I.: And what was so good in East Germany?

F. K.: Of course, there were a lot of very problematic issues. But there was as well a more developed social life and a stronger solidarity was cultivated among the people. Some good social institutions existed for the people, a better social care. The equality of woman with men was realised there much earlier than in the West. And there was none of the dominance of the so-called "market" and the primacy of the capitalist greed for profit, which is now the priority even in the arts and in the field of culture.
But nothing of what could have been an enriching element for a more humanistic society was preserved. There was no respect from the West for the other side. Just prejudices. Everything was reduced to the economic question.
The West just destroyed the East, in particular economically and culturally, and I was very sceptical of a united Germany. I was not so sure it was good to unite it again. And I did not agree with those who argued that Germany should be treated like every other country in the world. Seeing it from an East European perspective due to my family background, I thought, after what Germans did in the not so distant past during the Nazi era - namely the Shoah (Holocaust) and the Second World War, of which the division of the country was a consequence - this country should maybe not yet be treated normally like other countries. That is what I thought in 1989. And I understood the provisos of countries like the Soviet Union.
Since then some decades have passed and now we are facing an economic absolutism worldwide. We have to recreate Utopia again.
We are living in the dark times of a painful and aggressive change. The old system is dying, the beast of capitalism is breaking down, because it does not live without being destructive, and it cannot last. Before it is completely finished off by self-destruction it wants to devour as much as possible. We need a lot of light and true beauty in these dark times. And we need a film art for the time after the end of the Third World War – which, by the way, has already started - when people will have a changed consciousness. The cinema of the 20th century with its dramaturgy of the novel of the 19th century is over. The post-apocalyptic cinema of the coming second part of the 21st century has to be created now.

I. I.: Do you remember a situation or a moment when you saw something extremely beautiful?

F. K.: (Laughs)
It could be a lot. It could be the light for example.

I. I.: The first you remember.

F. K.: The first I remember now is a certain light one late afternoon in Córdoba many years ago, which fell in a certain way through a window, touching a wall and a table and a glass on the table in a fading moment, creating a graphic of shadows and giving everything a deeply touching corporal presence and spiritual sublety in the shining colours of decaying light.
I have many memories of moments when the light was extremely beautiful. For example, of the beauty of a face radiating a certain light through the eyes and the skin, which can be very touching, because it connects us with the fragility of our corporal existence and the breathing eternity which makes it alive.

................................................................................................................................................................... Moscow, 2015 November 12

Published in Russian at OPPEOPLE / Russia 2016 March 1,
http://oppeople.ru/materials/105