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

Both your cinema and theatre experience have a European breadth, as they are not centred solely on Germany. In the light of this, what is your impression of the situation of European cinema and, more generally, of the European cinematographic culture in this historical moment?

First of all we need to make a distinction between the so-called mainstream cinema and the
so-called independent cinema, as they both exist, they both have a possibility of being produced and distributed.
In every Western European country, cinema as industry is supported and carried on all the same.
But, in the meantime, we lose cinema as art, conceived as art, without necessarily making a profit from it.
If we look at cinema only as a commercial value we forget another category of values that cinema can have. That’s why I think that cinema as art, as artistic value, is very weak. And this applies not only to cinema, this is a general problem, it is about the whole society.
We are completely obsessed by the idea of commercial profit, and, as long as this is the prevailing idea, cinema as art will be something marginal.

You refer to cinema as art: what are, in your opinion, the most important elements from an artistic point of view, that would be enhanced, and not penalised, by the logic of profit?

The idea of cinema I refer to is certainly orientated towards a cinema made up of many languages not of a single one; all this would certainly contribute to the expression of a great variety of cultures. This could be an important aspect of European cinematography to carry on.

You said that European cinema should combine several languages. You are also a theatre director [in fact in your film many aspects of the script and the editing are much more typical of theatre than cinema). What can be the contribution of theatre in cinema?
How does the language of theatre mingles with that of cinema? Are they exchangeable or is it always cinema that takes the best from theatre?

From an historic point of view it is cinema that ‘takes’ from theatre, simply because theatre is older; at the same time, cinema is a form of art in itself, so the best cinema should be independent from theatre. Moreover, cinema is something new, original and autonomous, and the best cinema does not originate from a mixture of the other arts, but started up in the 20th century, thanks to modern technologies.
As far as we talk about fiction film, there are obviously also similarities, as for example the necessity to organise the succession of the events in time or the actors among them, to find ‘reasons’ for such organisation, and so from this point of view the two arts are certainly linked. But I find more similarities between cinema and music than between cinema and theatre. When I worked in the theatre, I used cinematographic effects on the stage; in my opinion, the two languages are linked, but they should not be mingled. Moreover there is an element which deeply distinguishes cinema from theatre and is very important, that is the use of camera: while in theatre there is a fixed scene for two hours for example, whereas in cinema there is the movement of the camera that changes the perspectives completely. And the camera itself is a narrative element, as important as the actors.

Let’s talk about your film "Fallen" now, certainly one of the most beautiful from the stylistic point of view and one of the richest in content of this Festival. Beyond the most authentic, straightforward message dealing with an interior guilt of the individual (towards a woman), can there be a further message involving society, dealing with a more generalised sense of responsibility towards the others? Something that makes us feel responsible for all those situations in which we haven’t helped the others, like for the woman on the bridge in your film…

I think that the central idea is that of an individual guilt, but, as society is made up of individuals, this has certainly to do with a more general guilt. If society has to be changed, it is necessary to start with the individual; that is why the basis is always that of an individual guilt that involves society and from which we have to start if we want to change something.
Society as a concept is something quite abstract; society cannot be responsible for something, the responsibility is always on the single persons.
But as we live in a society, every person has to choose the way he or she wants to live with respect to the others, and act consequently, starting from this perspective.
In other words the responsibility of society comes from the responsibility of every individual. The individual should not hide behind or inside the society. Because finally it is the individual what matters; his or her decision and acting creates the whole.

We would like to ask you how much of Kafka is there in your film?

Consciously there is nothing of Kafka in my film, but the question could be: how much of Kafka is there in our society?

The main character of the film – as he defines himself at some point – is a ‘little clerk’ of the archive in Riga, and this is a fundamental element, because as he perceives himself as a ‘little clerk’, he thinks that if he had had the least possibility to love the woman who is throwing herself from the bridge, he would have certainly loved her of such a great love that this would have never happened. Could great love never given, but always thought and conscious be the way to free himself from the alienating condition of ‘little clerk’?

This is not a film about a hero, but about ordinary people. As it is said in the film, the main character is a person working from 9h to 5h, leading a regular life, and the event of the woman is probably the greatest that may have happened in his life. We have to consider that an ordinary archive clerk has not much to do with people but only with papers, he arranges them, he has, in other words, a very abstract relation with life. At least he may have to do with people only indirectly, because in fact he has to do only with the documents of people that is why he has a very ‘abstract’ attitude towards life. The moment in which he has to do with the real destiny of a person, he doesn’t know what to do and is incapable of acting. All that happens after this event is, again, something abstract but real, taking place only in his mind. Also the fact that he thinks he has a relation with that woman is only an illusion, something happening only in his mind; but there it has a reality. In general our perception of life is a mix of reality and illusions or concepts, it is a creation of our mind. The question is how close we can come to the real, how strong we can get into contact, into touch with the real; and how much we want it. The real is never leaving us. It is us who are responsible for the distance to the real. It is us who are responsible for the amount of pain we have to experience in the endless repetition of clashes we are faced with the real moving through life in our capsule of illusions and concepts.

Could we say that European cinema – and this typically European film would prove it – is an anti-heroic cinema, made up of anti-heroes, in opposition to American cinema that always needs a heroic character and is more and more populated by ‘heroes’?

In my opinion the main character of my film is a hero, in his own way, as he is a normal person living his life 24 hours a day in order to survive: these are for me the real heroes. And he is far more heroic as he tries to survive to his own consciousness. There is, however, a big difference between American and European cinema, but this has to do with the histories of these two realities: up to some years ago America hadn’t had any experience of war at home, at its own territory while in Europe this had already happened: Europe has had its experience – and it had not been a good one – with the heroes of the past; while in Europe we have had heroes since Greek and Roman mythology and before, in America this had not happened yet. For this reason they had to create their heroes quite recently. We could say that American cinema is still creating its myths, while in Europe they had existed for a long time. I must say that Hollywood is a great factory of myths. The history of the United States is quite ‘recent’, not so old as the European one, and so they keep on creating stories, or rather History. Also the way Bush often expresses himself, with his famous contraposition between good and evil, has to do with the lack of History: everything is turned into a mythological vision of History, inside which they need to create a positive and a negative side. This sense of war, of pain is felt differently in America and in Europe: in the latter the need was felt to create in a way ‘anti-heroic’ myths or characters, normal ‘heroes’, much more human, embodied by common people. Probably this is not true for all the American cinema, but most of it has a tendency to appear as a myth factory.
My challenge is to look at ordinary people; if we take a film such as ‘Ladri di biciclette’, it portrays ordinary people. That’s why I prefer to work on little stories and on characters which are normal people. It was not by chance that neo-realism originated after the 2nd World War, following an experience of war, of pain and also of heroes…It was from there that started the need and the necessity to look at ordinary people.

Does this mean that in Europe we are at the ‘end of history’….?!

No, because as long as people exist, as long as the fighting for a possible better way of living continues, there are new stories and new myths are created and history goes on. What may change is the way of telling history and telling stories. Or maybe not. Basically, history is always a look back and a story, told to manipulate the presence idea of past events. I think, history is never free of ideology and interest. This will not change.

..............................................................................................................................................................
JGCinema - Paola Persano, Illario Belloni, Lecce April 2005