Tony Gatlif is one of the Europe’s most original film directors. An Algerian-born resident of France, he is, above all, the most celebrated Roma movie maker. Although succinct and almost without a linear and clear-cut plot, his films are poetic and musical. This is a striking feature of Gatlif’s cinema: one of his movies was awarded the French Cesar Award for best music. The director gained international recognition in 2004, when his drama Exils (Exiles) won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
This year Gatlif presided over the jury of the Kyiv Molodist festival. On the festival’s last day he met the press, including The Day’s journalist.
Who taught you what you can do now?
“There were no teachers. There were spiritual gurus who led me without being aware of this. Great authors, great directors. I was inspired by their oeuvres, but I never copied them.”
In your youth you had problems with the law. How did you manage to change?
“It seems to me we have a choice in life: to follow something bad or something good. I used to go with the flow and take in some positive things. Besides, contacts with some wonderful people who personified the state and the law had a positive effect on me — they confided in me and I confided in them. Those were educational contacts. Also very important for me was the dramatic art teacher.”
Did you have any special education before you made your first film?
“This will take too much time… In brief, I was a theatrical actor until I was 20 or 25 and worked at the Theatre National de Chaillot, France’s largest one, on Trocadero Square. I was even friends with Gerard Depardieu. Once I sat down to write a script. I made a lot of mistakes, for I didn’t know the way it should be done. I had seen a TV script out of the corner of my eye at a recording session, so I was trying to do something of the kind. In fact, I wrote a story that had happened to me — no concoctions at all.
“Depardieu said (of course, taunting me): ‘Oh, you are sure to make and even play a part in this film.’ It took me six months to finish the script, and I asked a retired lady accountant to typewrite it. She gave me the typewritten text two weeks later. Every page had sentences which had not been there before — especially in dialogues. She removed all the foul language, saying: ‘Monsieur, I can’t stand it.’ But I had planned to make a film about young people and, naturally, there were a lot of four-letter words there. So I had to write it by hand.
“I sent the script to a fairly well-known director whom I knew a little. He quickly answered that he agreed to shoot the film and assign me the main part. But he never placed the camera the way I imagined it. Sometimes you need to take a shot from a top or side angle, but he always kept the camera in one place. It was terrible! At a certain point, I lost interest in working with him. When he did it again, I turned my back on him. I rebelled. I think I became a film director at that moment, for I found an approach. This is the main thing, not the school.”
What did you feel when you first stood by the camera?
“It is a super-sensation. Looking into the camera’s eyepiece, you see an absolutely different world.”
Do you remember your debut as a director?
“I was 20. I will tell you frankly I used to steal film strips. My friends and I snitched some film, took a camera, although we had no right to do so, and made a short movie in the city. I had written the script in two hours. In the first scene I was to run with a pistol in hand, chasing somebody, because I played a villain. I wanted it to be like a documentary, so I hid the camera in a vegetable barrow so that nobody could see it. It was a crowded street. I motioned the cameraman to begin and ran away, firing blank shots, of course. I wanted to cause panic and I did it, which resulted in the best scene I could have ever dreamed of. Then I turned to the camera to ask if the scene was filmed and hear a cool metallic voice say: ‘Freeze!’
“I had a gun in hand, you see. I understood by sheer intuition that it was a stranger’s voice, for we usually feel violence before it comes around. I put up my hands and stood still. It was a policeman. He saw the camera, got white like a sheet, and said: ‘No, no!’ He nearly fell down, shocked that he could have killed me. Actually, I narrowly escaped death when the first scene was being shot. As a result, he was so glad that the situation remained under control that he took all four of us to the commissariat, where we were given almost a hero’s welcome, and then they guarded us so we could easily go on shooting the film. At the time, I also wanted to make films in order to seduce girls. But I soon dropped this intention.”
And then?
“I understood that cinema is a mighty power that enables one to speak about themselves and the likes of them. I began to take interest in Tarkovsky, Paradzhanov, Kieslowski, Forman, and Fellini. I turned to auteur cinema as an art. Then I started to regard art as an advocate and a protector; I took up the cinema which can tell about the others, about those who have no right of voice and are unable to speak. This kind of cinema is not aimed at tempting or diverting somebody from the world. For there still are so many films that make you want to commit suicide after you have watched them. And if you pay for watching a film and then commit suicide, it is abnormal.”
What do you do first when you start working on a film?
“When I begin thinking over the script, I do not reflect on what story I should write — if you go this way, you will have, on the contrary, nothing to say. I am seeking a story inside myself, and I already have one; this is how it comes out. I have a mad desire that borders on orgasm — to make a film. I exaggerate, of course, but the desire is really keen.
“The first shot and the first tune emerge concurrently. The music tells the same that the script does. I can give an example from a film soon to be released. It is about the deportation of French Gypsies during World War Two. The first shot is a close-up of barbed wire with empty spaces behind it. The wire looks likes strings that play in the wind, producing a tune. These wire strings are moving all at the same time, as if I were shooting a Gypsy guitar or fiddle. Thus the music is telling the story of what has happened here, all the more so that it is also the story of musicians.”
Does this mean there is no difference between the birth of music and the birth of a film?
“These are two concurrent directions, and neither element eats up the other. There is room for both music and footage. The film’s sound turns into music because the former is treated in the same way as the latter. For example, we pay special attention to the rhythm of horse hooves clattering. The sound is not intended just for the sake of sounding.”
Can we say you are a representative of French cinema?
“I am a film director without borders — not a French one, although I work in France and love the country. But I take interest in the whole world. I like Portugal, Spain, Romania, and many other countries, and in all of them I really feel at home. I feel good everywhere. I am an international director.”
It is quite logical that your latest film is titled Korkoro (Freedom). What does it mean to be free today?
“Freedom is being so much humiliated and stifled that it is my foremost concern today. Men and women were free 30 years ago. I can’t say what was here: you were apparently not free, but, for example, villages had some freedom. Earlier, people could say: I don’t wish this, I don’t know that. But nobody is free today — even somewhere in the Amazonian jungles there are televisions, computers, and cell phones. These are good things in themselves, but they can be a very powerful instrument of desire, envy, and division.
“In a Gypsy village, where there is no running water, heating or electricity, a 16-year-old boy asked me to present him with a computer. This was two years ago, and I am sure he now has a computer and access to the Internet. I am not saying that this is bad. Rather, the question is whether this is being turned to advantage.
“Another aspect is the freedom people have in their lives. In Paris, 500,000 people do not have a home to live in. It is one of the word’s most expensive cities, with people sleeping on the street. One can, of course, say they are free because they have nothing, but in reality they, on the contrary, are becoming slaves of the city and its dumps. The public and the government instill the feeling of guilt in the millions of French people for whom homeless people are a shame. They are not free in this.”
So you think freedom is a myth?
“Not yet, but it will become a myth. It is very good to be released from prison — it is called freedom, but it lasts for 24 hours.”
Suppose you’ve got an opportunity to change the world. What would you do?
“I played this game when I was five. This is a question to which I have no answer… Yet one must continue fighting against the idea that this is impossible. And the No.1 enemy of all this is capitalism which has triumphed in the world thanks to this approach. I feel ashamed to see young people who have not yet turned 30 but are already playing with money — millions and billions. This scares me a lot.”
You have taught at various cinema schools. What do you think of cinema beginners?
“I began to speak to them in Berlin and felt at a certain stage that I was in conflict with them. And I began to say to myself: ‘It’s cool!’ For I believe that young film directors must be in conflict with the cinema itself, too. Young people are not here to dish out compliments.
“On the other hand, I do not like it when young ones try, at a certain stage, to follow and match American film makers. They can see that US films make money, are discussed in all journals, and win Oscars — so they strive to make American-style films. But the Americans have a style of their own. Except for a few auteur films, all the rest do not have a special idea. It is a stage production, a spectacle. And when our beginners earn money, they implement all this, and the result is very bad because the culture is different.
“If I were a Ukrainian student, I would take a camera that one can buy in a store or even a cell phone with a camera, go out into the street, and make a film with whoever I come across. Maybe, somebody will attract me, so I will come up to him and say: ‘Monsieur, may I make a film about you?’ You can make thousands of films about your country, culture, and yourself. And such films are of interest at the Cannes, Toronto, Montreal, and Venice festivals. But one should not make films for festivals only. One should speak about oneself. Everybody should speak about himself.”
Do you also reflect your own sentiment in a film?
“The main thing is not to invent anything. The writer who crouches over a white sheet of paper and thinks of what novel he is going to write is not a writer in my opinion. The same applies to film directors.”
Speaking of directors — as far as I know, you are skeptical about Kusturica’s films. Why?
“I am not skeptical. Not at all. He has a style of his own. A director has no right to criticize another director. We may like or dislike somebody’s films, but we have no right to criticize or pass judgments. It is the job of critics.”
Do you like the way he portrays Roma?
“Yes. He has made a contribution to them being loved. But I would not like to speak on his behalf. It seems to me he was important in his time. He knows them well.”
And what kind of cinema do you like?
“About travels, international displacements, feelings, and intellect. I take a cautious approach to the cinema that resembles a show, a spectacle. I prefer a more delicate kind of cinema.”
To what extent do you accept the current trend to documentalize fictional cinema, use a hand-operated camera, and cast non-professional actors?
“I began to do precisely so 20 years ago. I was one of the first to begin this, Gadjo dilo (The Crazy Stranger) and Latcho drom (Safe Journey) were made in this very manner.”
Incidentally, about Gadjo dilo: can you say that Romain Duris, who starred in this and other your well-known films, is your alter ego?
“Yes, I liked him, especially when he was younger. He possessed what one should have to be able to appear in my movies. It seemed to me that he was me to some extent. Now he is better known, older, and somewhat different.”
Duris also played in Exils, your most successful film. Can we say that all the heroes of your films are exiles?
“Exactly. We make films about ourselves, to some extent, about our past, about what is inside us, in the stomach. Naturally, it is about what I am myself.”
So do you consider yourself a traveler and an exile, or have you at last found, after so many years, the inner feeling of being at home?
“No. I will only find peace of mind when I stop making films. When you have peace of mind, you do not need to make films, and cinema will drop away as an unnecessary thing. Can you fancy making a film if you feel inner peace? Nothing is taking place. I could just film a tree all day and night or watch clouds for hours on end. And the audience? It needs feelings, conflicts, and contradictions. All this runs counter to inner peace.”
Does this mean that cinema as such is related to exile?
“No, cinema is a different thing. People go to the movies because they need to communicate — by means of the body, not the language. Two hundred people are sitting in a cinema hall, and it is like church communion. Two hundred individuals will feel happy or sorrowful. This is a huge aggregate of feelings. This is what people seek in cinema. They go to a soccer game for this purpose, too. It is the funniest sport: one ball and many people who keep chasing it. In reality, there is no interest, but millions of people watch games and get overwhelmed with emotions. It is a very important feeling of belonging, which is also present in cinema.”
When I was speaking about exile, I also meant a person who is making a film…
“There is some resemblance. But we can make a movie without leaving the city, as Woody Allen does. And the famous films which Charlie Chaplin made at a 1,000-square-meter studio? Can you imagine that we have The Great Dictator, The Kid, and Modern Times at such an area? It is a nice journey. Just a mere 1,000 square meters!”
The above is based on the author’s interview and the press conference.
