» WE LOSE THE LIGHT

Interview: Politiken / Denmark
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Mads Mikkelsen: ’Fate’, ’Frost’ and ’Nightfall’ will be screening in Copenhagen in April. What do you expect from the spectators who will experience your films for the first time?

Fred Kelemen: I am not expecting anything but an open mind. Just watch. And see.

M. M. : All three films seem to take place in a world out of time, where actual locations are only ever partly defined. On the other hand, they make up a – somewhat apocalyptic – trilogy about contemporary Europe. How do you think their significance has changed along with the past decade since you made them? How would they reflect the European situation today?

F. K. : Nothing changed. It just went further on. A decade ago for many people the heroes of my films seemed to be outsiders belonging to a marginal minority at the edge of society, but today they are forming the centre and they are not a marginal minority any more. The quality of a society manifests in the way it treats its most fragile members. With an arrogant attitude which denies to treat and care for them with human dignity the society loses its human value and culture of humanity and it transforms into a more barbaric battlefield. Our so called Western civilization is based on the principles of exploitation, this is the destructive base of the capitalistic ambition for profit, and during the last decades this aim became not only the dominant but the only criteria of quality in all fields of our societies. The economic question dominates all cultural levels including the arts, the health system, the education system, the politics etc. Our humanity in general is hostage of the interest for profit, it is kidnapped by the demons of capitalism. The battle of these demons started a long time ago and their victory procession is going on. So nothing changed; it just progressed.

M. M. : You insist on screening your films exclusively in cinemas. What is the potential of the cinema space in the experience of a film?

F. K. : This topic is deeply linked to the one just before. The question is not the space, but the way of presentation. For sure a film shot on film should be presented in a cinema projected as a film on a big screen. Everything else spoils it. And talking about film not as an art form but as a craft, as a material, for sure the film material is the one with higher quality compared with the digital one. The depth of the image, the way the light moves and unfolds, the optical process, the “magic” of the way how 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 opposite 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, 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 stolen from us. We have to defend it. Again 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 is doing it in a more brilliant and more rich 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 is would not be an authentic artistic decision to build a plastic copy of a statue of marble and making it look like marble. We have to decide if we want the real or if we accept to be 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, analogical to “films” shot on film) just try to look like film.

M. M. :Your work seems to share a certain elemental quality with silent cinema on the one hand, and painting on the other. Lighting, movement, choreography, sound, and duration is the very matter your films are made of; likewise, you also often handle both the scriptwriting, directing, cinematography, lighting, and editing yourself. What emerges is an image of an artist in a quite romantic sense of the word. How do you see your own role and your duties as a director?

F. K. : The elements you list are the basic elements of the art of film. Film is a visual art and it moves in time. The element of time puts it much closer to the music than to the 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 the elements you list 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.

M. M. : Your work centres on people who are often emotionally and morally lost, and who find themselves in an essential state of ’being’ in the world. However, rather than resigning your films stand out as vital, defiant gestures born of resistance and a physical struggle that is almost tangible in the images. How does the act of filmmaking correspond to the ’hope-less’ world that you portray? Or in other words: if filmmaking is the answer, what is the question?

F K. : 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 would 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 its 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 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..

M. M. : To some, cinema as an art-form seems to be in a state of permanent crisis. Any bleak prospects aside, where do you see the future of cinema? Are we at the end or at a beginning?

F. K. : As I understand it, we are not at the end nor at the beginning, both are illusions. We are in a continuous flow. Everything simply is and continues to be. Cinema as an art-form will not end and there is no crisis of the arts, because humans will always look for ways of artistic expression, it is our essential ability and our treasure which makes us human – to create individually. From the cave paintings in the stone age to the digitals in our times this creative heartbeat of mankind never stopped. There is a crisis of he capitalist materialist system, and surely everything linked with it – like the capitalist film industry – is in danger to collapse together with it. But this is not the end of the arts and the artists and we should not believe the ones who want to make us believe that the crisis of their profits is a crisis of the world in general. A minority tries to implant their worries and problems into the minds and hearts of the others and make them afraid. We should not follow or believe their culture of destruction. We should resist and go on creating. Everything depends on us.

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Politiken DK, 12th April 2012