» THE SHADOW OF MAN
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Marton Csillag : You have mentioned that one of your aims is to show the flow of
images and happenings and that is why you chose to be a filmmaker
instead of being a painter or philosopher. In your opinion do moving
images have a bigger impact on human thinking than paintings, drawings
or sentences?

Fred Kelemen : For sure it depends on the individual person who is the recipient. But nevertheless the moving image, accompanied by the sound, has a strong, unique magic. As music does. The ways of access to paintings or drawings on one hand and to sentences on the other hand are quite different ones. But it depends as well on the use of moving images, paintings or drawings and words. As we know, words can be used in very different ways. The use of words in a novel are pretty different from their use in a poem or in a philosophical text or in a code of law or in a scientific treatise or in a prayer for example. As well the elements of a painting - colours, shapes, textures etc. – are used in different ways in a naturalistic or in an abstract painting, in an expressionist or in an impressionist painting, in a painting by Rembrandt or Van Gogh or Bacon or Rothko for example. And so is the use of the elements of the moving image different in a TV series, in a music video clip, in a news show or in the cinema films by different directors like Carl Theodor Dreyer, Zoltán Fábri, Roberto Rosselini, Andreij Tarkowskij or Rainer Werner Fassbinder for example. A moving image is not just a moving image similar to other moving images. That would be a profound misunderstanding. Film is not a media, film is an art. Even though it uses moving images as a news clip does. In the arts the media is the human being, the artist. Through him or her something is expressed, something finds its way into reality, finds its way to be reality itself – a piece of art.

For sure a moving image has a very direct way into our mind and soul. As a moment in life has. As life moves around and inside us and we move within.

The art of film consists of the physical and metaphysical elements of our reality – bodies, objects, beings, light, darkness, spaces, time, narration, abstraction, rhythm, sound, silence, memory etc. And all this is captured and transformed in photography in motion. And it is made visible through light and speed. It is, as László Moholy-Nagy said, vision in motion. The art of film is really the most physical and concrete and in the same time the most metaphysical and spiritual of the arts. A wonderful way of human expression.

M. C . : Your movies show a mostly dark and sometimes inhuman way of life.
Or is darkness human nowadays? Are you presenting the darker side of
our world or just being objective?

F. K. : In my films I try to show human beings and the worlds they are living in. And if you take the human being serious, if you respect it instead of using it like a puppet in an amusement park, and if you look deep inside it, then you cannot avoid to be connected with its darkness. The darkness is part of us. And it is necessary. To negate the darkness would eliminate a dimension of our being. To understand the other ones and ourselves we have to be open for the darkness, too. We should not reject and cut away what is deeply connected with us. We first should take it serious, we should be aware of it and understand it. Even though it hurts. A human being never acts inhuman, it always only can act as a human being. And for sure this can be terribly cruel. But it is part of our being. We should not palliate the impressions we have of ourselves. We should have the courage to really watch what we are. The shadow of a ball for example gives us an idea of its three dimensional existence. If the ball would be shown without shadows it would appear like being a disc. Without the shadows we would miss the reality of the ball. Without the awareness of our darkness we would miss the real dimension of our existence.

But for sure there is as well a lot of light in a human being. But this lies beyond the darkness through which we have to go before we reach the point of light. We will never see the light if we close our eyes in front of the darkness. In the darkness the eyes start to see if we are patient, if we look. Then we can see the hidden beauty which lies in and behind the darkness.

Trying to show human beings, I try to show as well the worlds we are living in. And these worlds are in fact quite dark and they darken a lot of the light we may have inside. We can be terribly forlorn. We are not living in Paradise, as everyone knows. This is a lost area. But again and again we struggle to regain a little part of it. Somehow we remember what we lost. And that's as well what I try to show in my films.

M. C. : Memories and past times are always important in the lives and
thinking of your heroes. You said that memories are and will be always
present in our lives. Could your movies be described as invented
memories? As stories that are already encoded in our thoughts even
without having ever happened?

F. K. : What happened never stops happening. Everything is and continues to be. The ways we walked are still the ways we walked. And sometimes we suddenly realize that we walk them again. Essentially there is no difference if something happens, will happen or happened already. The words we heard, the words we spoke, the pain we suffered, the pain we caused, the love we felt, the images we saw, the moments we experienced are still with us. We are always on the way. From one experience to another, and every experience accompanies us. Every miracle and every disappointment is circulating in our blood. We are what we live. And for sure the memories are an important part of our presence, they are moments that happened retold to ourselves. Even though they remind us of all what is lost. But what is lost is not gone, it is just belonging to another part of the same world, it is belonging to the area of what is lost and there the lost moments have a present existence. And we exist with them.

For sure, it could be possible to forget all of it, everything. But then we would loose an important dimension of our live - our existence in time.

The art of film is as well the art of memories, and by being this it is profoundly melancholic. But in this melancholy is captured its beauty; and the beauty of us and our lives.

M. C. : Are you dependent on filmmaking, on telling stories, on showing
moving images born in your head?

F. K. : Yes. Because I love it. And I will be as long as I will love it. And we depend on what or who we love. Right?

M. C. : Even the tiles of your movies (e.g. Kalyi, Abendland) indicate that we live in a dark age and our civilization is on its way to its end.
Is it the task of a filmmaker to look at our existence globally?

Do you as a writer and director take time to show the small and almost unimportant things of life?

F. K. : Above I said already something concerning the darkness. I think it is obvious that our civilization is a dark one with not much serious reason for hope. The principles of our civilization are destructive. They are based on all kinds of exploitation. We are living in a civilization of death. The hope lies beyond the system we are living in. But we have to have courage to have visions, to think in alternative ways, to imagine a different way of dealing with ourselves, each other and our surrounding, to find a different attitude to our life. We should discover the beauty of acting creative not only in the arts but concerning our reality. I do not know if our civilization is on its way to its end. This would be a pretty optimistic view. Maybe the end is an illusion. But for sure this civilization is on a declining way. And it will change.

The task of every filmmaker is to talk about what is important for him – no matter if it is small or big - and to do it in the way he believes in if he does not want to be a conformist coward. He has to go his way. Even though it would be the most lonely way in the world. He has to be authentic. Otherwise he looses himself and his soul goes to hell.

M. C. : Do you have a sense a humour?

F. K. : Is this a serious question?

M. C. : Your first three movies form a trilogy about relationships. Your
latest, Krisana is about the Lonely Man. You are planning to shoot two
more movies on this subject. Don't you think that being lonely is just
another way of being in a relationship (with nobody to be exact)?

F. K. : My films “Verhängnis” (“Fate”), “Frost” and “Abendland” (“Nightfall”) were not conceived as a trilogy and they are not films about relationships. Maybe accidentally they appear as a trilogy. It is true that the “heroes” are people in relationships and the relationships are part of their realities and part of the problems to be solved or part of their battlefield. But their relationships or partnerships are not the central topics of the films. The lonely individual and his attempts to break his loneliness in front of the background of our civilization's realties are in the focus of the films. Nevertheless relationships are important parts of our reality. We are not living in a vacuum. We are related to people, objects, the whole life around. And for sure in our relationships we define the world we want to live in and they show the whole spectrum of our human existence, they are microcosmic reflections of our society. In relationships you can find the whole exploitation, violence, loneliness, rebellion, hope, dependence, tenderness, desire and love you can find in our society. But every relationship can every day be a chance to make life better and to set a different kind of living against the common one, to break the common rules and to replace fear by confidence, indifference by compassion and care, pedantry by generosity etc. It could be a chance to understand how terrible fragile our lives are and to act out of love. Mostly we miss this chance and we repeat the same violence, egoism, ignorance, separation, pain, loneliness. But some times we succeed. For sure, we have to have the courage to accept our vulnerability and to be ready to be wounded. If you are not ready to be wounded you will not progress. You will get paralysed in fear. In the open readiness to be wounded lies the possibility of salvation or liberation. A relationship has a real value if we are willing to really face each other and to be devoted to each other without a safe distance and a protecting egocentrism. A good relationship of love can help us to become better persons. Even though we carry of course a deep individual loneliness inside us.

M. C. : When you work in Hungary do you regard yourself as a Hungarian filmmaker?

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Filmvilag, Budapest 2009