18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival –
Images of the 21st Century
11-20 March, 2016
JON BANG CARLSEN MASTERCLASS
Images of the 21st Century
11-20 March, 2016
JON BANG CARLSEN MASTERCLASS
The Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen presented a masterclass on Tuesday March 15th, 2016, at Pavlos Zannas Theater, where he spoke about his special method of filmmaking relating to the way in which he approaches reality in his films as well as the “no man ’s land” between documentaries and reality, where he believes he belongs. The masterclass was held as part of the tribute to Carlsen’s work in the framework of the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
Dimitris Kerkinos, the tribute coordinator, opened the masterclass, briefly introducing Carlsen’s work, noting inter alia: “He is one of the most innovative Danish auteurs, whose role has been very important in the country’s cinema scene since the 80s and who has made more than 40 documentaries and fiction films. The characteristic feature in his work is his hybrid style, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction. It is Carlsen’s belief that there is no objective reality and that the presence of the camera affects the events themselves. His films express the truth as well his own view of the world”.
Taking the floor, Jon Bang Carlsen thanked the organizers of the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival for inviting him and said: “I have a special approach towards documentaries. I don’t exactly know what a documentary is. When I graduated from Film School – it might as well be… a hundred years ago – I wanted to look into the harmony offered by life in the countryside and so I started doing research on this story I had chosen. When I attempted to put together the shreds of the reality that I was trying to depict, I did so using free associations, but when we started shooting I got the feeling that I had destroyed the beauty of my character’s life. I came to realize that the only way to depict this story would involve a reconstruction of reality. What prevailed was the need to approach my heroine’s reality in the most honest way and as accurately as possible. From the start, I was taught by my teachers that documentaries are related to the truth, that you have to follow life through the camera and show the truth. This was not directly related to what I sought to do. In addition, because I also make fiction films, I don’t see such a big difference when I make documentaries. I believe that my documentaries are similar to the way someone paints a landscape. I don’t want to shoot inside a studio, but to look outside for shreds of reality and use them to narrate the story”.
There followed a screening of an extract from his film Before the Guests Arrive (1986), on which the director explained, inter alia: “Before I start making a film, I record everything; I do an extensive research. This way, before shooting starts, I already know what there is to be told and I do test shootings, which I don’t necessarily use from there on. Everything runs on a schedule and on plan. So, this film that was made many years ago is indicative of my style, the staged documentary”.
As the director himself stated, one thing he likes to do frequently, during shooting or not, is to reflect on reality but also on the nature of reality in the documentary genre. On this subject he remarked: “I constantly reflect on things, even at this moment while we are here, I reflect on how you see me: maybe as an old crazy-man or maybe a genius. I think that us all, the filmmakers, we have to be honest about how we perceive the world. We all create our own reality. The reality says that today there are this many dead people or refugees, but this is only a quantitative approach; each one of us perceives this reality in a different way. I believe that we need to define truth in documentaries, in a way that lies are not excluded. Most of all, the important thing is to be honest to our world-view”.
Answering a question by the audience as to whether the non-stage documentary actually exists, the Danish director said: “I am not a journalist, I don’t make films to save the world. I am just trying to interpret the world as I see it. This objectivity nonsense coming from all these people who stand in front of maps of Europe and pretend to state the truth, this is what I wanted to shatter. I see the journalists as poets who tell their own version of the story. In the end, everything is fiction”.
Carlsen is particularly preoccupied with the passing of time and its effect on the works of filmmaking. As he stressed: “I was 20 years old when I started out and now I am 65. My father was a sculptor and I was a little intimidated by him. In his studio there was often a sound of something resembling an explosion and then my mother would say “oh no, he did again”. Did what? He would break his sculptures, he destroyed them. I kept on wondering why he didn’t sell them to get us money. My mother tried to explain it to me, saying that sometimes you may become trapped by the form that you yourself have created. I can understand this now. In my work, I am used to employing both professional and non-professional actors, and at some point I felt trapped in this form. I was older and I felt that I had to find a new form, to be able to include all the doubts I had about life”.
The next extract shown was from the film How to Invent Reality (1996), which was eventually closer to that change he wanted to make, as Carlsen explained. “I was going through this crucial age and as a sculptor’s son I was preoccupied with this question: as you reach 50 years of age, does the clay become dry, are you finished or is there a way to change radically? Would the others get you then? So, I started making a fiction film in South Africa”, the director said. He then added: “Someone I met there told me that there was the Afrikaner culture, something I was not familiar with, a culture whose people focus on functionality and effectiveness instead of pleasure. There are three million Afrikaners and after Mandela was released they found themselves on the opposite side, not knowing to what extent they could trust the African culture. I lived there for eight years and ended up with the film Αddicted to Solitude (1999). In South Africa, my general view was that, in spite of the change in regime and black people in the parliament, on the outside it seemed as though nothing had changed, there were still white landlords and black workers. It was as if neither the stage nor the actors had changed. This was a very interesting drama setting, people seemed to be on hold, and they didn’t know how to decide. I made the film on my own, eight months with a small camera. Often when shooting, I keep notes, I write essays and I feel that my writing and filmmaking instincts intertwine. That way a new form was created, which I liked during that period”.
Asked whether it is sometimes necessary to re-stage reality, the Danish filmmaker said: “To me the only important thing is to be honest when telling a story. At the beginning of my career, I tried to be very precise in my artistic choices and I was criticized about it. Later on, I became more versatile, because I made myself part of the film, I used myself as part of the fiction. I often feel that I belong in a “no man’s land” because my films are neither fiction nor documentaries. In my latest film Deja vu (2015), I realized that all my works resemble paintings, which if put on the floor and seen from up above, I would find they are pieces of a larger puzzle, a painting made up from all these pieces put together”.
