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Wim
on Filmmaking Q: As a filmmaker, you have been an unshakable visionary through your entire career, making films as unique and original as they are enjoyable. It seems that you've truly "paved your own way" as an artist over the years. What advice would you give to young and aspiring filmmakers about how to learn the art, and remain true to their visions in the cutthroat world of modern cinema? A: Only tell stories that you really know something solid about and that you can believe in. It is so difficult to carry that candle through all these storms, that you want to make sure you can still trust in it and know its very core, even if all the shit hits the fan... ...And that normally happens once or twice during the long time from the conception of the film through the writing and the casting and the shooting and the editing and the scoring and mixing of it. If the story you're telling can become sort of arbitrary and random for you, well than you better make commercials. You're likely to make more money then, anyway.
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Q: As a director who has made films in many languages over the years, I'd like to ask you about the current state of foreign cinema in the United States. Specifically, what do you think is the general "perception" of foreign-language films amidst the general population of the U.S.? How does it compare with the attitude of American moviegoers over the past 25 years? In your eyes, has there been a change? If so, why do you think this is? A: Foreign language films never played an important part for Americans. MOVIES are so much the very notion and center of American Culture, that foreign films didn't really fit. And less so today than in the Seventies or Eighties when repertoire cinemas still existed everywhere. In the age of consumerism, foreign films only occupy a tiny part of the cake. Not so for cineasts, of course, but seriously: How many of that almost extinct species are still out there? Foreign films still play an important part inside the film community. There they are still influential, and contribute forming taste and trends. But not so much for the wide audience any more. Part of the reason for that is surely that subtitles don't work for many people in America, and while American films are almost exclusively seen in dubbed versions in Europe, especially in Germany, Italy and Spain, but also in France, that practice never had a chance in America. Foreign-language films just cannot be dubbed into English, that's like an iron rule for American distributors, even if they are the first to export nothing but dubbed films everywhere else. It is inconsequential, and ultimately utterly unfair. |
