10
EFA Conference
The EFA Conference 2003 was dedicated to the importance of
a film's content, bringing together film school directors and
teachers, established filmmakers and film students from all
over Europe. Searching for a new approach to a film's content,
one of the panels concentrated on "Expectations and Reality".
Chaired by film journalist Peter Cowie, the panel included
Patrice Chéreau (director, France), Andreas Dresen (director,
Germany), Dick Ross (script writer/ lecturer, UK), and
Vibeke Windeløv (producer, Denmark).
Here is an excerpt of their discussion:
Patrice, you've worked on adaptations of
novels but you've also worked from original screenplays.
Which are easier to handle?
I have a very simple problem. I'm not
writing myself, so I have a huge admiration for filmmakers
who can write their own scripts like Bergman or Antonioni a
long time ago. I'm not able to write, so I read books, or news-
papers and I take notes on my own and try to find a subject, to
have a spark and find the subject. Sometimes, I can find the
subject in my own experience and in a novel. I think both are
difficult because when you're writing your own story, it's exact-
ly as difficult as working on a novel. You cannot just adapt
because the rules of the narration are totally different between
the film and the novel. They are two different arts with totally
different rules.
Andreas,
H A L B E T R E P P E
was an original film,
in the real sense, did it begin in your mind with just one of
the characters or with all four of them?
It started with the idea of working with
a very small crew. We didn't want to have a script. Usually, you
have a script and then you create a reality in front of the camera.
Most of the time, I develop scripts over several years together
with screenwriters, but here the idea was to go into the reali-
ty, see what happens there, what we can create if we pick up
things we see. Of course, nobody will give you money if you
don't have a script. But we had a film prize for a former pro-
duction and we decided to use the money for this kind of
experience to experiment. We went through the city and saw
how people live there for example, the character of Uwe who
sells sausages in the film was inspired by a real man. We were
hungry and we found this man and we were inspired by him.
I agree entirely great example of the sausage
seller you know, stories don't arrive, people don't get up in
the morning and say "Oh my God, I must get it on paper, it'll
be all over by lunchtime," it's not like that at all. Years ago
here in Berlin I said this to students, I said you could look out
of the window and you will see a story. And, of course, the
one thing I didn't want to happen, happened. A student said,
"why don't we all go look out of the window and look for
some stories." And so we looked out of the window and it was
one of those days when everybody in Berlin must have been
somewhere else because they said "is it possible to have a
D I C K R O S S
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story with no characters?" And I said "somebody will come
eventually." And around the corner came a very big African
woman, dressed in the most fabulous clothes I have ever seen.
She had yards of material orange, purple, green it was
magnificent. And on top of her head, she had a huge bundle
tied up in a sheet and under one arm she had an ironing
board and in the other hand she had two electric irons, and I
promised the God of teachers that I would light several candles
that night because I couldn't have designed a better event.
The students stood there completely open-mouthed and I said
"well, what's the first question?" And they said "I've never
seen that in Berlin before," "That's not the point!," I said, "she-
's carrying two electric irons and why is she carrying two elec-
tric irons?" And you wouldn't believe it, the students are so
practical they said "well, it is possible that the first one will
break down, so she's got a spare," and I thought God
Almighty, have you got no imagination. And then we worked
out that she was taking her ironing to go to a friend's house
and they were going to iron together, and we had this marvel-
lous idea of trying to iron quickly, by two people ironing the
same shirt at the same time that's what I'm talking about.
The subtitle of this discussion is `How can
we remain faithful to our aims?' Vibeke, you've worked with a
number of directors in Denmark, are they similar, do they cling
to their aims, do they fight for their aims?
If we talk about Lars [von Trier], he def-
initely fights for his right to do exactly what he wants to do,
but he's also very engaged in that people actually understand
what he's trying to say. I think there is a big difference between
trying to please an audience and to reach an audience, and I
think it's very important that you want to reach your audience
and tell them the story you really have in your mind.
Patrice, one of the big handicaps of Euro-
pean cinema, many people would say, is that we're a number
of countries with a number of languages and economic reality
dictates that very often we have to shoot in another language.
You shot
INTIMACY
in English, did that create a barrier between
your original vision and what you created on the screen? Did
you have problems when you were shooting in English?
I wanted to do the film in England be-
cause I didn't want to change the story. I felt that transposing
the story to France would be another story. It wasn't so diffi-
cult, but we had to accept that the script needed to be
changed. I worked with a British writer who re-wrote all the
dialogues because you cannot ask an actor to act a transla-
tion. I had to accept that somebody tells me that that would
never be said by English people. I'm interested in learning
something, I'm doing a film in order to learn how to make it
better, in order to learn more about how to tell a story and
the English actors helped me.
Of course, all the time when you work,
you have to adjust. When I'm making a film, I'm searching for
something and I'm changing all the time. Somebody comes
when I'm sitting in the editing room, we have discussions and
I'm interested in his opinion. Most of the time, I'm working in
this so-called independent scene with not so high budgets and
that's not the problem, it's only the problem of yourself are
you strong enough to follow your vision and to create what
you wanted. But that's always a process of discussion with
other people, and then you have to find your own way because,
sometimes, one person says one thing and another says some-
thing completely different. And then you have to find your
own way out.
A film like
HALBE TREPPE
, although it's made
obviously with a German audience in mind, transcends that
national barrier and can have equal success when shown abroad.
Dick, have you found that filmmakers in smaller countries,
tend to have a greater concern about reaching the outside
world than those in the big countries?
I think that the local quality becomes their
strength. If the localness is merely the location or the style of
the person, but what they're doing and what they're feeling is
broader, then the film travels.
D I C K R O S S
P E T E R C O W I E
A N D R E A S D R E S E N
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V I B E K E W I N D E LO
/ V
P E T E R C O W I E
Pictures: Andreas B
ö
hmig
D I C K R O S S AT T H E E F A C O N F E R E N C E
P AT R I C E C H É R E A U , V I B E K E W I N D E L Ø V, P E T E R C O W I E , D I C K R O S S , A N D R E A S D R E S E N (left to right)
L E T ' S T A L K
A B O U T C O N T E N T !
