» Interview with Fred Kelemen about »KRISANA« (»FALLEN«) by Erika Richter
..............................................................................................................................................................

- How did it come about, that you, a Berlin film director and author, made your fourth full-length film in Riga?
I have known the city now for nine years. I was guest of the film festival several times and led in 2002 a two month and in 2004 a three month workshop with students from the Latvian Academy of Culture. For a number of years I had planned to make a film (Iron City), which is set partly in Riga, and for which there is a finished script. Unfortunately, the project failed a year and a half ago because of the German producers. But I still plan make the film. I made „Kris¹ana” („Fallen“) last year as a co-production with the co-producer of Iron City. I coupled my stay in Riga with the work on this film, which arose spontaneously. The idea for it was also of course a consequence of my intensive occupation with the city and its different worlds. It came out of the mood in which I was there. Afterwards the film was edited in Berlin, before I flew to a shoot in Armenia. I worked there as cameraman for a film of the Canadian-Armenian director Gariné Torossian.
I was aware from the moment I first thought about making „Fallen“ that there would be no point in taking the idea to Germany, writing a script, going through the mill of film support and television editors, which could possibly take years. The film would get cold and never be made. And I think a film should be made while it’s still hot. But the support system in Germany is not made for that. There’s a big waste of energy before you get to the really creative act. In the end, directors make a film because then at last the financing is there. But meanwhile your soul and your head are often already somewhere else, and the film is only made because it’s become possible; but then it’s not necessary, hot any more. Every longing of love, for which you have to wait too long for it to be satisfied, crumbles and pales. And here, in the case of film art, it’s obviously a love affair. A change in the support system, which offered directors, producers, everyone involved in the creative process the possibility of making a film in a state of creative heat, quickly, directly and shortly after the end of the scriptwriting or drafting, would unleash a current of energy which would drive wonderful films on the, let’s be honest, very wasted shore. I made this film in a state of creative passion, and the actors and the team shared this passion as well. Independently of how it is judged, I am at peace with it, because it was born out of love, without having been the object of any strategy or negotiation etc. There was a short, direct path between idea and reality, similar to the artistic creativity of a painter or a poet or to work in the theatre.

- Did the fact that you made it in a foreign country, whose atmosphere and political and historical background is different, and whose language you don’t speak, influence this film, perhaps contributing to the story’s uncluttered sparseness, clarity, concentration and poetic density? Or did this outer „strangeness“ play no part for you in the work on the film? How did the story develop?
I didn’t feel like a stranger. I don’t feel like a stranger in countries outside Germany. I feel like a stranger with some people. It doesn’t make any difference where they come from or where they meet me.
The film’s style has nothing to do with the place. It’s a consistent result of my previous work, a continuation. The events can happen anywhere. But naturally the place and its people gave their colour to the sound of the film, the sound of the noises and of the images.
The story developed from the characters all by itself. The people in the film do things, and as doers they spin stories. Stories or situations are natural spin-offs of our deeds; similar to a spider’s thread. I followed the possible and relevant behaviour of the characters. That let what happens arise logically.

- As in your earlier films, the main character’s walks through the area, in this case through Riga night and day, are of central importance to the „hero’s“ story and the film’s structure. What do these walks mean to you?
The walks don’t mean anything. We walk, we’re underway, we have to get our body from A to B, we’re not motionless beings, or plants, or angels, we’re underway, the restlessness drives us. There are no paths, there is only he who is moving. That’s man. We spin the paths by moving. We leave traces. Traces of doubt, violence, longing, love. We’re underway. We are nomads. We’re on the move. It doesn’t mean anything, other than that we’re moving.

- In your earlier films, passionate, painful relationships between two (or even three) people stood in the centre, which led to excesses and eruptions. In „KRIS¹ANA“ („FALLEN“) we experience the story of a man whose longings and yearnings are internal. This film’s intensity has nothing spectacular about it. Do you see this spiritual concentration as an expression of a new level in the development of your film thinking?
No, it’s not a new level. It does not exist anything new. Everything was always there. But not everything appears immediately. Particular conditions come together with particular circumstances let reality step forward, like in a chemical or alchemical reaction. And at this time, in this situation, in this place, with these people, it was possible to tell what the film shows in this way. But it’s not a new level. In a certain sense, fire is always present in wood. And under particular conditions it comes out and is visible.
I wanted to be stiller in this film, I did without the expressive excesses. They raged inside instead. I put the drama, that really always plays inside - it just manifests itself in the outside world – into the heads, into the imagination. For a long time I’ve had an uncomfortable feeling about the vulgar, related stories. The real drama takes place in our spirit. It’s like everything an illusion, and like every illusion, reality.

- Why did you choose black and white for the first time for this film?
I’ve always made black and white films, only in colour. This time I did without the colour.

- Do you believe that with this universal story about loneliness, failure, longing for love, guilt and hope of forgiveness, you can contribute something to how people cope with their lives in these hard, soulless times?
No. Nothing. It’s a very individual thing, what somebody makes of a film he has seen, what this film does to him, what sort of a life he has in it. And it’s like that with everything we encounter, everything that comes across our way.

- How do you see with this film, and also in general with your attitude towards the meaning of film art, your situation both in the film scene, which is more or less concerned with making a profit, and in society?
Each film can be the last one. It’s getting more and more difficult to make films which don’t subject themselves to the capitalist principles of moneymaking, which are not inherent in this or in any art. Unfortunately, each film has to be pushed through against the ruling ideology with great effort. Meanwhile our whole life is being attacked more and more from the commercialisation virus and the fear infection. It’s the same with film. The audiences are allowed fewer and fewer possibilities to be aware of other forms of cinema, which means they get an artificial narrowing of their view imposed on them from outside and an amputation of film art. An act of violence.

- Why have you now become a producer?
That has to do with what I just said. Every producer who, against his better judgement, doesn’t make a film which he knows to be good, because it doesn’t correspond to commercial, profit-orientated interests, is contributing to the death of film art.
And we, that means my partners and I, don’t judge the value of making a film according to profitability criteria, but according to original artistic und human communication criteria. That’s also a possibility to deal with this art form. Maybe it’s a chance. And something really has to change.

- Once you said that you don’t believe in hope and also you don’t think that any film could change a person. Why do you still keep making on films and teaching others to do so? What ‘s the purpose?
We are mortal creatures. We should not hope. We should create and lead our life as a human being wholly, including our fleeting physical existence and our transcendental essence. I did not say that I don’t believe in hope, I said that hope, as I understand it, is a passive attitude, which keeps us in the state of waiting. We sit and hope and wait and while we are waiting, life happens and others act and determine our reality. Hope is a very popular political instrument for keeping people calm and controlling them. It has become a kind of ideology. But hope should be based on something. This could be called vision. I would prefer to replace HOPE with VISION. A vision is charged with energy and passion, it’s not passive, it demands fulfilment. In a time in which the end of utopias is being proclaimed, it is extremely important to have the courage to think utopian, to open our minds, to be able to go beyond the very limited pragmatism which focuses our thinking and feeling on a very material level of our existence and ignores our intellectual, emotional and creative abilities and possibilities. To live without hope, to believe in life and its possibilities without hope or desperation, to move beyond these illusions and enter the space of reality where we can see with an unspoilt look what life is really like, to think the unthinkable without limiting ourselves, to act authentically, not to be afraid of Utopia even if there is no promise of fulfilment, to extend our mental and emotional boundaries, to love without expectations and reward, would be an act of human dignity and beauty. – Even though it is terribly difficult.
..............................................................................................................................................................
January 2005