Ism, Ism, Ism | Meta: Cinema Critiques Cinema

a good place to start would be this if you can talk about how much was land and how was the shooting of that on the Pueblo how much was improvised was there interaction yes the the the film is when we made the film we were not aware really of what the mockumentary was because that term came and fashioned I think more in the in the eighties we just said to ourselves let's make a a fiction film that looks like a documentary and the film goes full circle because the beginning scenes were all improvised they were based a little bit on on the concept of happening they were completely improvised but in some scenes like in the scene in the water fountain we had people a among the the people that were watching the scene we we put two provocateurs to to generate a a discussion and then when there's this scene in the hotel it's completely scripted but it was improvised many times at that time we didn't have like video assist so we we would rehearse with a Porter pack video camera until we got the rhythm of the scene and then we would improvise again and again I think we did that scene about 11 times because we had to stage it so that in with the two doors they come in and come out it was like a whole choreography we thought a lot about that scene of Marx Brothers movie where they people keep coming into the world into the room into a room then a after that scene all the all the scene in in the Rhind shock is completely scripted but of course my yolo i would improvise a lot and then at the end it's completely documentary the interview the interview with the the character is completely documentary so it goes full circle it's a film that navigates between fiction and film and fiction and documentary and it seems like you're making reference maybe more generally or maybe very specifically to certain moments in American cinema kind of representations of poverty yes that film responds to two different contexts one is a national context because at that time there was a film law that said that every American or foreign film should be preceded by a short film which was obligatory to show it I mean and that was supposed to promote national film production and in a country where there were only like a dozen film makers all of a sudden there were more than 100 filmmakers that profited from this a law and the cheapest way to make money was to make documentaries usually going out into the street and just shooting scenes of poverty and and stuff like that and then they would put a narrator and a little bit of classical music you know totally politically correct commentary but on a wider context there at that time during the late 60s and and the seventies when there were a proliferation of films coming from the third world or shot in the third world about the subject of poverty usually with a political agenda and there was a an avid nacelle fray the TV channel european TV channels and european film festivals that wanted films about poverty most of these films came from different theories that were at the time like the third cinema of savannas in a happy you know the imperfect cinema or garcía Espinosa and so on and so on so we decided we thought that many of these films were not very honest in some way that there was a lot of demagogy involved and that that's why we went way T from here the film in Paris where I edited the film we published a short manifesto called what is case la Pournami serie what is poverty porn by Pournami serie a we we intended to say that these poverty porn films were similar to porno films in porno film sex is used as merchandise and in Pournami Serie A poverty is used as merchandise and at that time many of these films were god prizes and it was in fashion more or less so this clear film came out and it really caused controversy among filmmakers and we were accused of making a entire crystal which it is because a and I thought that a through provocation we could arrive but to make people the reflector or or think through provocation one can make the audience think so it refers to those two contexts but what I think what it's very scary is when you say this film was made in 1777 and I think it's completely it's the present still of a third world now if you're the third world you're supposed to be like the big team the poverty poverty no they like all all sorts of of misery the poor no me sorry it's still these days no if you are from the third world and you have like like and you're not showing that it's it's what it sells until now that's why I was so amazed when I saw your film ten years ago it was like like so like disturbing to see that we haven't make like another step this critique at the film does it can be extended to other forms of artistic creation you know I mean to the visual art or to art in general because they expected there for us to do social films or were social characters to be filmed and what about the black and white and the color it's like The Wizard of Oz but you know like the film it's color that it's more real and the black and white it's like the reality it's on the other level of the reality not only black and white yes I think I'm not sure but I think the first film that I saw in my life was the Wizard of Oz and I was amazed about this different that the that he used black and white and in color but in this film with at that time the making of films were not the in fashion or were a custom like it is today so we decided this as to make this as a fake make enough so we we established that the black and white would be the documentary about the filmmakers in the world of the colour would be what the filmmakers were shooting because it seems like you're suggesting this conflation between and feel free to test any of these terms but sort of military imperialism on one hand the United States and then the Society of the spectacle the television the cinematic apparatus and cultural imperialism am I on the right track here yes absolutely during the right track well um seen the police I'm I started making like like a film about the culture and invasions not that tiny little and and it's funny because I was I was saying that it's 15 years ago and it was just the beginning of this Mexico where they started making and living in the answering machines they're bilingual best messages known so it was like the beginning of this to be so so visible or palpable that we were becoming the others like we're having these like cultural invasions but always in my work I have something very performative that I react to the to the everyday like the immediacy of of of life of the of how it develops so while I was doing the thing about the invasion of the images of the everyday life it's when the Iraq the Iraq war started so I was very well also from from the Twin Towers know from the the 1911 and it was it was it was very disturbing that you felt all the time you were in a film no so these like like boundaries between reality and fiction where they don't exist anymore like I don't know if that happened to all of us I think so no it was like we were watching on TV the the terrible scene of the Twin Towers and everybody felt it was like a film no it was like so impossible it was real so also in my work always there's like these levels of between no or no boundaries between fiction or reality no so it's like this invasion of the way we have to look the way we live and that there's no no limit between the one and the other and also like they found footage use for me well it's like like I think any of the arts we respond to our reality and the landscape of our of our reality we can call it reality to the landscape it's the medium see los medios conversation even it's like mmm it's completely natural the same to to show that myself or while it's the the reference of the of the already existed million and what the film is called see Nepalese and some people don't know what's in a police is it's a big distribution and exhibition company in Mexico so that has a double meaning right yes and yes it was like more like metropolis no like this place where that it's like a movie land no where you you inhabit a movie land and it was funny because when I show it the first time in Mexico City everybody was looking for them see Nepal is is like a big chain of movie theaters in Mexico and distribution not only Mexico I think they were like looking for their scene police of the open neighborhood no I see the no second polar because I haven't seen the police yours so how much changed in terms of the way that the circulation of the image between the Empire if you want so to call it or the way that this image or the democratization of film or the image works related to films are made and funded by European institutions or American institutions how that change as I said I think a Las Pinas film it's completely contemporary no no and also I think I think in in a way I would talk more about was Louis's film also like the freedom of the small cameras know that you see this these persons in the documentary with the boar legs that it's the same Liberty that we that now it's the everyday life it's like a huge journey because I feel like I'm not at the dinosaur award I'm only 55 and I have seen like the whole change for instance in Mexico and on TV when I started like my career I don't know at 20 years old it was forbidden on TV to to say English words no and now we are like completely globalized and and the media itself it has changed like no like the found forage is the mammoths I don't know how you call memories in English the memes is likely every day interpretation reconstruct recommend extravasation of the with regard to my film when it came out it was very much criticized by by the critics of the moment because both of those critics belong to like hey would you say that like a clique prefer a Lea subgroup mostly of leftist film a film critics and it came under a lot of attack and we had very disagreeable experience at film festivals at that time but 30 years later the film had like a revival and it's required like a second life and it's always shown in the context our way the ethics of filming the other it's a film that questions the ethics of filmmaking itself because filmmaking in a way is a way of vampire ization of your subject you know someone has this tendency of of turning the subject eatle to an object sometimes and they depends on the honesty of the filmmaker and for example to be to let yourself be filmed is one of the greatest acts of generosity that that a person could can make and I think the filmmaker has an obligation to be honest with that person example with this film nine years after I made it I bumped into one of the characters of a film of the film and he hadn't seen the film so I invited him to my house and decided to make a documentary in one day about him watching the film and what that provoked with him he always wonder what happens to my subjects after I stopped filming and that's not the case of our of many film makers or some filmmakers used the directors or their subjects sometimes for example it's very well known that in a Clockwork Orange a Kubrick was almost like a father figure of Malcom McDowel and as soon as they finished filming the film Kubrick never wrote to him never talked to him so there's this tendency of we're still in the soul of the person you're filming and that's why I think that many people are some Indian tribes don't let themselves be photographed or filmed because it has this tendency of taking your soul away I suppose another thing that might have changed in the forty or fifteen years between completing your films is I mean you mentioned that you know the mockumentary hadn't really emerged as a genre maybe we could say retrospectively that there's some precedents and something like Orson Welles yes the beginning you know Citizen Kane yes it's now sort of emerged as a genre and you make reference to reality television right which also could straddles this documentary fiction divided and in both of your cases you're making work before the sort of emergence of you know what first might have seemed like this kind of critical impulse within mockumentary to encourage viewers to view the material on the screen with these more skeptical eyes as to what's really documentary and what isn't what stage and then subsequently you know we emerged into a a moment of alternative facts and fake news where that whole distinction seems to throw away so I don't know if either of you want to talk about this kind of relationship of documentary and in fiction in the context of either the context in which you were working originally or in a contemporary context or what might have changed in in the time in between well when we made this film I think there was only one president in Latin America about a effect documentary it was at home by Arthur Omar a called tryst esto tropic was by I only saw it last year it was a mythical film but now you can see it on YouTube we did it intuitively and in all my films I try to question the mechanisms of truth and lies because I don't believe in the objectivity of documentary and for example a there was this tendency of thinking that the documentary was the truth from the beginning of films in fact when films were invented from historians and critics divided filmmaking between the Lumiere brothers and an Georges méliès Lumiere supposedly was strictly documentary maybe it was just imagination but now that all the rushes and and the whole work of the Lumiere brothers has been studied for example the famous shot of the workers coming out of the factory was shot several times in other words there was a staging in it you know they would tell the lady with a big heart to maybe cross the frame or there was some kind of manipulation and the the first time that's why I stick to the definition of documentary the foundation of the definition of documentary the first time that the word documentary was used to refer to film was when John Grierson saw Moana my clarity and he defined documentary as the creative interpretation of actuality and I think when he says creative interpretation that means that there's manipulation it goes through like a screen and I think that that's still the best definition of a documentary because there's you know when you film something there's something you put in the frame and something you put out of the frame yeah there's the angle where you film also if you like this or this it's different you know so and maybe there was this association of truth and documentary since the beginning since the cigarette of which is I think the director that really made me become a documentary filmmaker he he he said it was key no problem in cinema truth so the word documentary and truth has been used a lot there any difference had seen him every day so there's a confusion there in that they they think that a documentary is truth but documentary goes especially through editing and editing is a creative interpretation of raw footage I love him and why would I I absolutely agree and I adore him yes because from it it's a it's like a question that I think all of us who have a camera think of know from the moment you frame it's not real no it's like already it's not real you get into the geography of of to another geography you completely that even when you when you start anything I'm an editor be overall I think like my biggest office Yahoo so official professionalism it's the editing and it's funny how films start having like a life of their own no when you start like editing and you want to push something in and and under some moment that that it has like its own spirit and sorta like pushing out what I agree completely it's like why it's what it's really in the film in a way you could say there are all films or documentaries for example cuz of its you know he is documenting people's feelings in actors acting know if you film Robert DeNiro he's performing and you're you're recording his performance and there's this a the suspension of disbelief that has a fiction films you know it's Robert De Niro you know that but you believe in the character true but in the end because in the end what is cinema cinema is telling a lot of lies to arrive at the truth you say the other day about the so fiction and documentary about the chasing yes in that way I think that one of the differences between fiction and documentary is the same difference there that there is between hunting and and fishing when you make a fiction film you is going like you're going to hunt there's an objective okay you have to shoot let's say deer you have to have the proper equipment to do it the main objective whereas when you're a fishing you just throw in the the bait or the hook and you can get different things you know you can get a big fish a frog or just a tin can or whatever and another definition I heard it from Rijo said with Kareem have a famous documentary filmmaker from Spain and he says that the difference between a fictional documentary is the difference between control and Assad chance hey that's why I quit making fiction films because a fiction films a depart from a script I always felt I was being like an architect trying to construct something that already existed on paper in a way filmmaking in architecture have a lot of things in common because they require a plan ahead of time they require a lot of money and it's a collective experience and they all deal with space and time do you think we should open it up for questions from the audience thank you very much for this fascinating introduction I agree with everything you said and I'm particularly intrigued by that point let's say that cinema is most poetic it's the lie that tells the truth I mean that is a phrase we can agree to if the aim is to really dwell between the last sentence yeah that I'm interesting this idea that cinema is most poetic is the lie that tells the truth and I I as a as a writer I write about cinema from a method cinematic perspective my my background is mainly people like Pasolini Tarkovsky you know early early biscotti you know there's a certain moment in cinema particularly after World War 2 where that question of how to translate reality into fiction while maintaining complete respect of reality was something aspired by most great poets of the cinema and of course that moment bazaine was a voice of that moment and Reba Zen and Krakauer of course all of that they generated is quickly by the 70s and the 80s into precisely what you're talking about and announcing which is a mercy dication of of this pornographic representation of the poor you know as a code of the real of the real real which then became encrusted with the defended they didn't hardly click you talk about it the critics from the left and all of that yes we can fantasize it to something you could sell the ultimate result of that today is from Latin America and southern Italy where I'm from is to the biggest market I mean when we look at Netflix what is produced by our respective territories are crime you know my case come on gum order in your case narcos franchise yeah yeah exactly which are very well made products by the way as far as our honor is concerned but there is a problem I'm haunted by it so how comes about the great production of cinema coming from Latin America or from southern Italy which is an area study in particular does it make it at all to the to the land of visibility you know let alone the Oscars because what we really are selling in case our own countries are very complicit unfortunately in that market and providing more and more stuff that can be sold on Netflix or through the other festivals I mean this versification of poverty or or crime and all of that and and and I I really take your comment very seriously there is a line between reality and fiction that was at once respected at one point if we take past World War two as a moment globally that line was something people were video directors were profoundly aware of I particularly think of Pasolini or you know because that's my particular passion but there are many many others but that line that is really where the cinematic recited at that moment the cinematic water space between say the destroyed city and the cinema there was a line in between the question then was where the cinema come from and is a question that needs to be brought up again where the cinema come from and who makes those decisions who frames what's outside the frame what cannot even be filmed but I noticed that in the program tonight the emphasis was more on satire for good reason very excellent reasons but I'm sure from what you're saying that there is a longing in your you know in the back of your mind something that is coming from your words it has to do with there is another kind not another mode of responding to reality including poverty you know that would not be just an exploitative approach and I'm sorry for this long intervention which is more a comment than a question but I'm very engaged and very touch them interested in what you are basically critiquing here but what would be the alternative the satire of course and then there is probably also something else well you spoke about Pasolini and in the 60s he tried to make a division of cinema into cinema frozen cinema and poetic cinema there was a lot of discussion about them against his theory and in favor with his theory you know Pasolini comes from the tradition of Italian Neorealism really no he goes a little bit further I think that the Italian Neorealism part of the war because they neo-realism went through a development some people try a stayed or failed to develop and they became miner and directors but other Italian directors surpassed that initial neo-realism for example Rossellini when he makes a jew in italia avoids to italy he is going beyond that and Pasolini also with his films I think when beyond that I mean near risen realism is it's not Sabatini it went beyond Sabatini so Sabatini sort of got stuck where he would with his theories you know other people that went further with with the treatment of reality silo's are always they cinematographic harakiri I think that it's the film of a dead man what could he do after that film no because he went from the trilogy or of life and he with sallow wanted to start like a trilogy update and unfortunately death cut him it's a film that I associate very much with a garage has last film like daddy that era it's calling English doesn't films that it's difficult to make another film after those those are films that destroy the cinema in a way a scaled also him and I was curious about the footage of shot and McDonald's and the other footage that was the few films versus what was found the footage of McDonald's and what the a forming the commercial and anything else that you recorded versus footage that you found or the other people shot yes the the scene of mock no notes I did sure it's I think it's like 80 80 percent is found footage and then the 20 percent is is where I shot and the scene of McDonald yes I I shot it myself I was working as a script supervisor in there commercial and just by knowing that Pedro Fernandez who is a very famous singer in Mexico was going to be the Mariachi teen McDonald's I took my camera with me yeah but it was like beyond listen was like I showed the sequences of the woman of older like the woman with the Mexicans that the American teaching in in the English that's myself and again it's like this performative thing of of reacting to the editing those who know like I edit and I keep like like doing well the Macdonald scene yes I did have it and it was already there in the heart right no it was like yes it was something that I was going to use bored the ones that they have the products face like with the faces I also show that it was in the concert that they use these like like commissary same like periscopes and I thought it was very like scary not to see the people like that with the products the boxes the thing is that before on those days I was with my camera all the time and of course when when you have a camera on your hands all the time it's like um it was more like I was like turning on the camera when there's something that I was interested with no on I wasn't like shooting everything no but like I turn it on all the time when he was things about fiction and reality or these I was already making these so she wasn't she's my American friend Patsy who I she's like my sister and we were at the beach and it was like the scene was that no also when she goes on the car with the Mexican and she's asking like what do you grow the corn and what he was like again it was like up informatic reaction of the editing that I was doing about putting these films together you said they were all sad tires but I also think they they have humor in them and for me humor can be very subversive yes I think I I think I can talking about but here we are in the Billy Wilder theater you know with his masterpiece Sunset Boulevard and I was very disturbed with the film of there were none there's the one of can note that suddenly with this camera Mastroianni becomes like a person he's human and also Tony Curtis how he kills the myth of the big festival applause so in did you see these are people with no they are like part of the of the other things like he breaks completely I've never seen it talking about Billy Wilder in can't I have an anecdote in 1978 I went to come with a bunch of Colombians and in the blue bar which is mentioned in Thailand this is film I spotted Billy Wilder and I couldn't believe it everybody good that was with me you heard the only one that speaks English why don't you ask him if he could take a picture with us and I went to Billy Wilder and told him mr. Wilder do you mind if we're if you take up if you have your picture taken we're from Colombia and he said the studio or the country if it's the campus to do know if it's a country yes so we took thank you for this lovely session I just wanted to go back to a comment you made about how humor is subversive and earlier you also talked about the influence of Dziga Vertov on your practice now say God where talk is a figure who kind of you know with a man with a movie camera in a sense inaugurates the idea of reflexivity so between that moment where reflexivity was revealing the apparatus at work to now where humour plays the function with reflexivity could you elaborate a little bit more on you know a the shift that has happened in what counts as reflexive and why and also why you think humor is subversive well what you say is true that first a really recent reflexive film was that the man with a movie camera in that film all the techniques of filmmaking are used slow motion put in motion backwards dividing the screen having subliminal edits freeze frames everything is in that film you you see the editing table you see the camera it's the first film that does it hide the fact that the film is being made and in my work I always try to incorporate that that it's always a film that's why you see the microphone sometimes or what you're not supposed to see in the film my films they are films many of them are films about filmmaking itself and with regards to humor when I grew up documentary and this was in the 50s and 60s documentaries were very solid and very boring it was just images the voice-over and some music and then documentaries really changed when the sync sound came in because they did the thing one of the things that has advanced more the documentary language is technique itself when sync sound started being used in in the 50s you finally had its small cameras in smaller tape recorders although they were not very small I had to carry an agro many years they were heavy but now it's just taken for granted you have a telephone or just a bit of camera it has sound and image that go together no and and with that a synchronization of an image and sound the the the whole discussion about truth began it was retaken no people like the Maysles brothers or back frederick wiseman said that they were recording life as it is together - it's all fake time you had filmmakers like John Roshan William Greaves that were using that same technology to create something that reflected on the process of filmmaking incorporating subjects responses yes yes for me a very important film it was a give me shelter by the Maysles brothers because there he has his subjects the Rolling Stones watching themselves in this crucial scene of the documentary you know way that's what I try to do and I've come up with these days to get my subject to see the film and comment on the images so constantly my word people watching image they commented and we should point out that this evening we suppose be know we'll be returning what the program of his early shorts where you see some of this reflexivity very early shirts put on the table thank you so much for coming good I see yes thank you [Applause]