» THE MAESTRO OF BLACK AND WHITE SILENCE. Interview by Toni Dimkov, Gragjanski
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Fred Kelemen, winner of the Golden Camera 300 of the 32nd “Manaki Brothers”, is this year’s president of the jury for the main festival awards.

The cinematic vision of Fred Kelemen wins our hearts at first glance. The cadres in the films which he made together with the Hungarian director Béla Tarr simply offer a strong appeal. Their last joint effort, “The Turin Horse”, displaced the limits of film putting the right values in their place. What is necessary in order to uncompromisingly search for the perfect expression – is that desire, love, talent? Accurately, plastically and very sincerely, Kelemen answers these always open questions.


Toni Dimkov:
“The Turin Horse” still causes fascination in the cinema. Your work with the camera was also awarded the Golden Camera 300 at the International Cinematographer's film festival Manaki Brothers last year. What kind of feeling grows up after all the work is done and there are a lot of awards for your work on that film?
Fred Kelemen:
It is a momentary but beautiful feeling of a silent, deep joy about the work being recognized by colleagues as e. g. members of juries in festivals and the audience. But the awards are not the most important, the most important is the act of creation.

T. D.:
Do you have some specific methods in building up the composition of the takes. Does the long take mean only extension of action, or of feeling, or maybe more things?
F. K.:
I have no method. I just enter the space of imagination. I try to see the film in my mind, scene by scene, before shooting it, to imagine it precisely as if it is a film I just have seen; I try to remember a film which still does not exist.
The most mysterious and important key to the heart of the art of film is the relation between time and light.
The work with time and light – and as its part with darkness - is essential. The long takes do not extend the action, but the space in which the action happens. Llike the space between two stars or planets, the time weaves the background fabric on which the patterns or shapes of the momentary presence of the concrete physical bodies of actors, objects, animals, shadows, lights etc. are embroidered.
The time weaves the silence from which a cry sounds, the darkness from which a light flashes, the death from which a life springs up and into which it all falls back.

T. D.:
Making movies is complex artwork that includes a big film crew. Do you have your own way of communication with the director and the actors? What do you expect from them?
F. K.:
I very simply communicate from human being to human being. Nothing special. And I do not expect anything special, just to agree about the will and the passion to create together and to respect and support each other, and to build up a fearless, generous and serious atmosphere where the impossible and miracles can become real.

T. D.:
Film and digital technology is growing up very fast. What do you prefer - film tape or digital format? Do you have your favourite camera?
F. K.:
I prefer the film material because it is simply the material of better quality. And I love to shoot with a film camera. Its mechanical technique works perfectly, it resists heat and cold and the photo-chemical process of exposing film material instead of producing datas, and it is the only way to capture and mirror the light. A digital camera is a computer with a whole which only simulates the light. The depth of the image, the way the light moves and unfolds, the optical process, the “magic” of the way the picture is banned to the material by the light touching the material, all this and much more results in the unique and predominant quality of the film material in contrast to the digital one. The material question is deeply connected with the metaphysical question. With losing the film, we will lose more than just a material, we lose knowledge, imagination, an approach to the world, we lose the heart of the seventh art, and somehow we lose our eyes because we lose the light. In our days the seventh art is slowly being stolen from us. We have to defend it. It is the dominance of the economic question which annihilates all the other qualities. But as long as possible we should shoot on film. There is a difference between a real diamond and a fake diamond. The light is reflected in a different way. The real diamond does it in a more brilliant and richer way. The same difference exists comparing the film material with the digital one. The material matters. There is a difference between e. g. a sculpture made of marble and a sculpture made of plastic. Both materials can be the right decision for a certain piece of art. But it would not be an authentic artistic decision to build a plastic copy of a statue of marble and make it look like marble. We have to decide if we want the real or if we accept being satisfied with the fake. The more we accept the fake the more we transform our lives and our selves into fake ones. We are losing step by step. And suddenly all is lost. A digital image should look like a digital image, but not like an image almost like shot on film. We should not look for something “almost like”, we should look for something authentic, we should not live “almost”, in an “almost like” world, we should live an authentic life in the real world. This demands our human dignity. And it is as well a question of dignity, it is an ethical question not to use the digital technique to produce images looking almost like film, but to find a new aesthetic for the digital image, a new language and a new form and new way of looking and showing. But at the moment the “digitals” (I do not call them digital films, but “digitals”, because they are shot digitally, analogicaly to “films” shot on film) just try to look like film.

T. D.:
At the beginning of your career your interests were philosophy, religious science, music, theatre. You were directing your own movies. How much is personal knowledge and experience important in making art works?
F. K.:
The only real and powerful and authentic source for an art work is personal experience and the magic of inspiration.
The other arts, especially painting and music, told me a lot about the art of film.
Film is a visual art and it moves in time. The element of time puts it much closer to music than to literature. Of a film you can take the words away, you can take the score away, you can take the soundtrack away, you can take the story away, you can take the actors away, but you cannot take the image away. So for me the image is the dominating element, the language is visual, the image is the cinematic world and the camera narrates the film like e.g. the brush paints the painting. The brush moves. The way it moves matters. The way the camera moves matter. Moving, dancing with the world around the camera creates the cinematic world. From the beginning I understood film as a whole of all the cinematic elements and when a film starts to rise in my mind urging to be realized, I see it as a whole. When I write a script, the pictures are already there, the camera movements, the light, the whole mood and atmosphere are there. I never defined myself as a director or any other kind of professional specialist, I just wanted to do films and I understand myself as a film artist. I cannot separate the elements from each other. A film is an organism. Everything interacts and belongs together kept alive by one heart which is the vision.

T. D.:
What is your personal feeling – can art give the answers for the meaning of life? What is your personal sense of meaning of your life?
F. K.:
Art is not obliged to give answers but it can ask questions, preferably the right ones. The answers have to be given by each of us by our own lives. We all know that we will die one day. But still we leave our beds, we drink, we eat, we fall in love, we care for ourselves and for others, we struggle every day, we even build up several things, we give birth to children, which will grow and die one day like us. Is all this senseless? We will get lost one day in the endless stream of time, but still we fight not to drown, just to gain some time. And within this time we can create beauty, we can generate knowledge, we can give what we received, we are maybe part of a long chain which is connected to a far obscure beginning and to a far obscure end and maybe these points meet and create a circle, which would break if we were to stop fighting. We are surely part of a big secret and maybe part of the creation of a big texture or weave in which every thread matters like in a big orchestra, where everyone has their importance, and no voice, no single instrument and appearance can be given up. Facing our mortality and fragility and our dependence on the material life, the question, which can be asked as well by the arts, is how to live a dignified human life, how to love and how to create sense, or – as Nietzsche wrote – how to give birth to a dancing star.

T. D.:
If Gus Van Sant often cites Tarr as a huge influence on his later work, which influence is important for your work?
F. K.:
The most important influence for my work is life as I experience it. The most important is to watch, to recognize with open eyes and an open heart and mind. Let’s forget “cinema” and be first aware of the instants of our lives and venture to get in touch with at least a spark of the real beauty and sorrow of our fragile physical and spiritual existence in a moment which might unfurl into eternity in a truly compassionate human encounter or in a piece of film art.
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Weekly newspaper “Gragjanski”, Macedonia, 8th September 2012