“Every Day is an Occasion for a Revolution”

Interview with Fred Kelemen

by Liubov Shorina / Karelinforn,

2016 June / October, Moscow / Berlin

Fred Kelemen is very versatile in the field of the cinema – he is a film director, cinematographer, screenwriter and producer living in Germany. His filmography includes such thought-provoking, true-to-life and deep films as: Krisana/Fate (2005), Abendland/Nightfall (1999), Frost (1997/98), Verhängnis (1995), Kalyi - Zeit der Finsternis (1993) and the recently finished “Sarajevo Songs of Woe” (2016) which had its world premiere in the Free Spirit competition at the Warsaw Film Festival in October this year. He is a masterful teacher and working at the Moscow School of New Cinema.

Fred Kelemen teaches his students that every filmmaker should look for “true” images. He says that even most contemporary films are very old-fashioned and they follow the narrative form of the 19th century novel. They are far away from shaping a modern film art of the 21st Century. I was happy when this talented and hard-working film director agreed to give me an interview sharing his ideas about his creativity, his creative path in the cinema and many others things.

Liubov Shorina: What do you like in the Spanish culture? Do you like the Spanish cinema? Has anybody in the Spanish cinema been your teacher?

Fred Kelemen: I was in Spain regularly some years ago. I used to work in the film school in Barcelona so I was quite often in this area of Spain. Other occasions took me to the North and to the South of the country. Privately I travelled Andalusia which I like a lot. I felt home in the old part of Cordoba when I was there the first time. I definitely have emotional relations with the Spanish culture which I like very much. I love for example the Flamenco music. The Spanish culture has a strong element of archaism and severity, sensuality and eroticism which interests me.

The filmmaker who I always liked very much was Luis Buñuel. In generally I cannot say a lot about the contemporary Spanish cinema because I am not familiar enough with it as it is not present enough German cinemas. The release of the latest film of my friend Iciar Bollain, "El Olivo", is an exception.

It is a sad fact that the European cinema is not present enough in German film theatres.

L. S.: You have taught in different countries, as well as in Spain. What students are the best?

F. K.: I cannot answer your question. Everyone is an individual. I worked with more talented and with less talented students, less committed and more committed ones, no matter in which country. Talent, inspiration is not a national question.

L. S.: What do you think about the future of the cinema? Do you think it will change?

F. K.: The cinema will change. It has already changed and it is changing. Everyone who puts a camera somewhere and presses its button can change the cinema. Every day is an occasion for a revolution. A true art should change, because life changes and art is always responding to life and so carrying life inside, being alive.

If you look back some decades the cinema was different. There have been some aesthetic changes and technical changes.

If you observe the present and if you see how the past was you can imagine how it will continue developing and how the future will be. There will be a general development despite and because of the fact that there will be individuals who will add something unpredictable to the cinema.

L. S.: What topics are the most interesting for you? What would you like to shoot films about?

F. K.: It sounds very general maybe, but what I am interested in as a subject of my films is the complex human being. I try to make films about human beings. A film is not only to show something it is also a possibility to make a research, to detect, to find out something. I am still trying to understand what a human being is and I try to reflect about this in my films. My films are mirrors; but cinema mirrors which reflect something which is less or not visible otherwise.

L. S.: Why did you decide to become a film director?

F. K.: In life there is always a mix of decisions you do and energies which push or carry you somewhere. I had a great interest in films from a very young age. Before I made films I was involved in the other arts like painting (I had a teacher who was a student of Oskar Kokoschka for example), music, writing and even acting and dancing. There was a moment after the school when I had to decide what field to get education in. I decided to go to a film school because I had the feeling that film was a possibility to express most of my visions. Film is a possibility to express myself in a more complete way. I am not from a family of filmmakers. So this wish seemed to be far away from being realizable. I was in contact with some friends who started studying at the film school. So this possibility came closer to me. And then I made a decision and I applied for the film school and I was admitted. I started to study making films and it became a part of my life. I made films during my studies and continued doing it after school. I don’t know if I decided to be a filmmaker, and I think I am not, but I decided to create films I followed the creative flow very firmly, the films which appeared in my mind did not vanish and I did not stop shooting them and that is why I continue doing it.

L. S.: Why do you teach in different countries in the world? Do you want to study the world?

F. K.: It is interesting to travel, to move, to change, and to get deeper knowledge, to experience different cultures, which completes my connection with the reality and the human being as a whole. Everyone is just a sparkle, including me, and to connect with the different expressions of these sparkles in different cultures lets you see the whole fire. You understand a country for example more when you are working with students than when travelling it as a tourist. But that is not the main reason of course. I started teaching in 1995. It was an offer given to me by the director of the film school in Barcelona. I never did it before. I rejected the offer but he insisted very much, and finally I did it and it worked well. We continued our collaboration. Then other schools offered me to work there and I agreed. I just followed the flow. There were some open doors and I decided to walk through these open doors. I have been working with students for 21 years now, and I go where the opportunity exists. But I am not sitting, looking at the map and thinking – which is the place I have to go? I just try to flow with the stream of my life,

L. S.: You have made a new film “Sarajevo Songs of Woe”. What is it about?

F. K.: It is a filmic triptych. It consists of three parts flowing into each other creating one filmic organism. They are connected intellectually and emotionally. They refer to each other and reflect each ones light to each other. Together they create a fourth film which is not the one on the screen but metaphysically breezing above or inside or behind it.

The film talks about war. The war inside us and the war outside and how it destroys us, it talks about the tense relation between our desire for warmth and love and our barbaric civilization created by our egoistic actions. The essential question is how we can keep our dignity by being involved in everything that makes us fall. No human being can go through this life without falling, without being trapped in certain snares. And the question is how we can, even if we fall and we are trapped, we can stand up and walk our paths through our lives in a dignified way. That is a main question of the film.

L. S.: You have said that you are an optimist because you shoot films for people to watch them. Where do you usually show your films?

F. K.: All of my films were screened at film festivals and they most of them were theatrically released internationally, retrospectives of my films were presented world-wide till today since 1997 almost every year. The latest retrospective took place in Yerevan next month at the "Golden Apricot" film festival and the next ones are planned to be in Rome and Bologna this autumn and in London next February.

L. S.: They say actors can be people who are sensitive and like to exhibit themselves. What kind of people become directors?

F. K.: Firstly, a director must be a person who loves humans. If you don’t love them you cannot be a director. If you work with people you have to love them otherwise it does not work. Secondly, a film director must have cinematographic fantasy; he or she must have a scenic and visual imagination how to put something into the scene, and he or she needs a sense for cinema in general, the cinematic sense, "cinematographicality".

Thirdly, he or she needs to have something to say. If there is nothing to say it is better to be silent.

L. S.: Can the cinema influence people and change their lives?

F. K.: It depends on the film and the one who watches it.

I would make a difference between films and cinema. Both can influence people. The question is in which way.

Cinema, which is the films of the capitalistic entertainment industry, basically made out of economic interest and to lull the people, can give people fun or certain sentiments for a certain time. This is one way films can affect people and of course it can influence them. Mainly the aim is to make money with these films and to spread a conformist ideology. They can have even a strong educational and political effect.

There are also other films which are not part of the so-called cinema, the entertainment industry. They are not mainly made to make money and to entertain people, to give them fun but to create a certain consciousness, a sensibility for certain topics, to awake a certain compassion. They have a progressive, non-conformist aim. These films can also affect and influence people in a certain way. A film cannot change people but as any art or as any event in life it can give a strong impression and this impression can make you think, feel and it connects you with yourself and with certain questions. It can open up some doors in your mind and give us some insights.

Art, and film is the seventh art, forms the heart of our existence as intellectual, spiritual beings. This is what I am sure about.

L. S.: You have said that cinema is like music. How do you choose music? Who writes it? Who is your favorite composer or singer?

F. K.: I love music very much. I practice it since my childhood and I still do. I listen to music every day. I am surrounded by music. In films I almost never use music. I am not a big fan of a so called score. I use music in scenes situated in bars or when it sounds from a radio or when someone is singing. I rarely use score. A film does not need music, because a film itself has a musical structure. It works with and exists through time and rhythm. The music I am choosing for my films has to relate with the location and the situation. I am choosing not the music which I like but which is appropriate for the scene. For the new film I made a big exception. There is a long part where only score will be heard. The music and the images conflate and create an own universe. The music was composed especially for the film by a friend of mine, the outstanding Israeli composer and musician Zoe Polanski.

L. S.: You have said that you shoot a scene a lot of times till everything is perfect. How much time does it take you to shoot one film?

F. K.: It depends. I shot the new film in 6 days and 6 nights.

My first film “Fate” was shot in seven days, for example. “Frost” took longer. “Nightfall” had a shooting time of around 25 days, if I remember right. It depends on the project. In my case up to now it took from six days and six nights to 35 days to shoot a film. If you have a low budget you have to use a short amount of time. If you cannot pay your collaborators. You should not keep them busy for a long time. They have to pay their rents, their food, they have to make their living and it is not good to exploit people. I try to shoot fast if I have only a small budget. I know well what I want to do and how to do it. I am well prepared, I am very precise and I do not need much time. This is the only way to make a film when you are poor.

L. S.: You are a film director, a producer, a script writer and a cinematographer. You also acted in one film “Novak” where you played yourself. Did you enjoy being an actor?

F. K.: I never played myself. I don’t know the film “Novak” I have never acted in this film. I acted in 3 films when I was a student I performed small roles. A lot of information in the internet is not true. For example, for the film “Nightfall” there was information that the music was created by an Indian composer. I have never worked with an Indian composer.

L. S.: What is your favorite genre of films?

F. K.: I don’t have a favorite genre and I do not think in these categories.

L. S.: What methods or techniques of shooting a film do you resort to? They say that sometimes film directors shoot a film when an actor does not see that he is being shot. They say it is better. Do you use such a method?

F. K.: My way of shooting is very different, my films are choreographed and I am precise about what actors are doing and what the camera is doing. I don’t have such moments in my films where an actor did not know that he or she was shot. I have other methods of deblocking actors. I never use unrehearsed scenes.

L. S.: You are from Germany. German is said to be the language of philosophy. Have you studied philosophy? Who among German philosophers has influenced you?

F. K.: That is a very difficult question. No matter what you read, philosophy or novels or poems or whatever, all you read somehow influences you, but you never know which of the influences makes a real effect on you. I do not know which of the things I read or heard have influenced me and how big this influence has been. Everything enters my mind. Something has a bigger influence, something a smaller. All this creates a mix of all what I experienced in my life. I am not sure if I can answer your question in detail. There may be some philosophical thoughts which are closer to mine, which I find more credible, realistic and true and relevant. I am not so interested in theories; I am interested in cognisance, in knowledge about our world, our existence and beyond through experience. There is no one wiser than the experienced one.

I read the first text by Nietzsche at a very early age, I was 13 years old. Maybe this created traces in my mind. I am not sure. He was the first one I was reading. One of my favorite thinkers today is László F. Földényi.

L. S.: How do you choose actors for your films? Do you conduct castings? I heard that, for example, you have chosen a boy who was not a professional actor for the film “Frost” or one opera singer called you and asked for a role in your movie.

F. K.: I never make castings. It can happen that accidentally I meet actors, I observe them, their physical presence, their aura and personality. I watch actors, their eyes are important, as well as their face, their energy, and the way they move and what their face and the whole body tell me. I need to meet this person and spend some time with him or her. This has to do with the idea of incarnation, the flesh, the body. A body is the visualization of a character. It cannot be created by the actor. It has to do with the individual person itself. It is his or her reality he or she brings to the character. It is not about acting it is more about being. That is why I never carry out castings. Sometimes I see actors in theatres or on the screen. But you never see what this actor can do if you watch a film because when you see a film you only see the result of the connection between a director and an actor, not the abilities of an actor in relation with you. The reality a film actor gives to a character cannot be created by him or her. A forest for example cannot act being a desert. If you need a forest, you should choose a forest for your shooting. An actor is like a landscape.

L. S.: I have watched your film “Fallen”. In this film the heroine commits suicide and dies but at the end of the film she appears again. Does she really die? Or does the main character see some illusions or dreams because of his guilt?

F. K.: If she had died how could she have appeared again in the end of the film? The hero thought she died. And the audience thought it, too. But she obviously did not die, somehow she saved herself. And she had a good reason. Her son. We may have a number of reasons to kill ourselves, but if we have only one reason to live, we will stay alive.

Regarding the essential topic of the film concerning the male hero, it does not matter if the woman died or not. It is not important. It does not change the hero's guilt. The feeling of guilt is independent of the fact if this woman really died or not. For example, if someone shoots someone with a gun but accidentally does not hit him or her, it does not matter. His motive was to kill and even if he was not successful, potentially he is a killer. The result does not matter, our motives are important. The motives are the actions.

L. S.: You work a lot, and you do a lot of things, even translated Ray Bradbury’s works into German for your production. Do you have time for private life?

F. K.: I don’t separate work life or artistic life from private life. I only have one life. And life and art are one. Life is a poetic phenomenon. And all my time is private time. No matter what for I am using it. It is my life time. And it is limited as everyone's life time. So I try to use it meaningfully and not to waste it; not mine not the other ones'. And creating is a meaningful use of time in my eyes. There is no split in my life. All I do, I do as a complete human being. I am always private.