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9 posts tagged Interview
![INGMAR BERGMAN INTERVIEWS INGMAR BERGMAN
once upon a time there was a Swedish publicity magazine called Filmnyheter, issued by production company Svensk Filmindustri to promote their pictures. when Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika came out in 1953, the accompanying issue of Filmnyheter included an interview between Ingmar Bergman and… Ingmar Bergman. you can read the entire thing in the booklet that Criterion has included inside their Summer With Monika release, but i’ve included some of my favorite snippets below. Bergman’s droll sense of humor is evident throughout his work, but between all the doom and despair it can be easy to forget just how hilarious the dude really was.
Bergman: What was it like making Summer With Monika?
Bergman: I didn’t *make* Monika. [source novel author and co-screenwriter Per Anders] Fogelström bred her in me and then, like an elephant, I was pregnant for three years, and last summer she was born with a big ballyhoo. Today, she is a beautiful and naughty child. I hope she will cause an emotional uproar and all sorts of reactions. I shall challenge any indifferent person to a duel!
Bergman: From what I’ve heard, Summer With Monika includes the obligatory Swedish nude swimming.
Bergman: I haven’t heard that nude swimming has become obligatory in Swedish filmmaking. But I think it should be.
Bergman: So do you want to say anything with this film?
Bergman: “Get out! But return!”
Bergman: Any beautiful moment from the shooting of the film?
Bergman: As always, one forgets the hard work and remembers the fun. In this case, the skerries. We—
Bergman: MAKE IT SHORT!
Bergman: One morning at six o’clock, we were on our way to location, the engine of our little boat thumping across the still waters. The horizon at sea fused with the sky, the islets stood like floating octopuses in all that soft white. Up above, the fiery button of the sun was burning. It was warm and unusually still; there wasn’t even a swell, not a ripple. It was like eternity itself. It was like being in eternity. The smell of the sea, the quivering in the hull, the murmur around the stem, and the high silence — the summer of eternity.
Bergman: And then what happened?
Bergman: Nothing. That was it.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4higayhlX1qebry0o1_r2_1280.jpg)
INGMAR BERGMAN INTERVIEWS INGMAR BERGMAN
once upon a time there was a Swedish publicity magazine called Filmnyheter, issued by production company Svensk Filmindustri to promote their pictures. when Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika came out in 1953, the accompanying issue of Filmnyheter included an interview between Ingmar Bergman and… Ingmar Bergman. you can read the entire thing in the booklet that Criterion has included inside their Summer With Monika release, but i’ve included some of my favorite snippets below. Bergman’s droll sense of humor is evident throughout his work, but between all the doom and despair it can be easy to forget just how hilarious the dude really was.
Bergman: What was it like making Summer With Monika?
Bergman: I didn’t *make* Monika. [source novel author and co-screenwriter Per Anders] Fogelström bred her in me and then, like an elephant, I was pregnant for three years, and last summer she was born with a big ballyhoo. Today, she is a beautiful and naughty child. I hope she will cause an emotional uproar and all sorts of reactions. I shall challenge any indifferent person to a duel!
Bergman: From what I’ve heard, Summer With Monika includes the obligatory Swedish nude swimming.
Bergman: I haven’t heard that nude swimming has become obligatory in Swedish filmmaking. But I think it should be.
Bergman: So do you want to say anything with this film?
Bergman: “Get out! But return!”
Bergman: Any beautiful moment from the shooting of the film?
Bergman: As always, one forgets the hard work and remembers the fun. In this case, the skerries. We—
Bergman: MAKE IT SHORT!
Bergman: One morning at six o’clock, we were on our way to location, the engine of our little boat thumping across the still waters. The horizon at sea fused with the sky, the islets stood like floating octopuses in all that soft white. Up above, the fiery button of the sun was burning. It was warm and unusually still; there wasn’t even a swell, not a ripple. It was like eternity itself. It was like being in eternity. The smell of the sea, the quivering in the hull, the murmur around the stem, and the high silence — the summer of eternity.
Bergman: And then what happened?
Bergman: Nothing. That was it.
Getting to Know Hollis Frampton
April has come and gone and my reviews of April’s Criterion releases… haven’t. blame the tribeca film festival, grad school, the nhl playoffs, the ancient indian caste system, whatever. the long and short of it is that A Hollis Frampton Odyssey is far and away the most essential blu-ray of the last month, at least so far as those titles new to the Collection are concerned (and my review of it will shortly be up on movies.com). but if you’ve yet to dive in and get personal with one of the most pivotal experimental filmmakers of the American cinema, this 1977 interview — not included on the Criterion release — is an excellent place to start. by this point Frampton looks like acid dropped him, but the video gives a good idea as to who he was and the world in which he operated (keep an ear out for a casual Les Blank reference).
Orson Welles’ Last Interview, 2 Hours Before His Death
only the morbidly curious need apply. actually, i take that back, this is pretty fascinating stuff even when divorced from its context — orson welles could always elevate an interview into the realm of high entertainment, and that held true until the very end. here, Welles chats about being 70, loving Rita Hayworth, and disparages the soap operas of the 1980s. it was 9 days before my 1st birthday.
- “old age is a shipwreck.”
“but you feel wonderful, don’t you?”
- “oh, sure.”
Orson Welles’ last interview, two hours before passed away.
(submitted by theesps)
A 77-minute Wim Wenders Interview at The 2011 New York Film Festival
the folks at NYFF were gracious enough to record all of their directors dialogue sessions, which were free and candid pow-wows with some of the most accomplished filmmakers on earth. here’s the chat between Wim Wenders and Scott Foundas, in which they talk about PINA and, um, a lot of other stuff.
THE 5 BEST QUOTES FROM THE AMAZING NEW JEAN-LUC GODARD INTERVIEW
so everyone’s favorite crotchety auteur / eternal rapscallion / visual socialist isn’t too much for interviews, but he recently granted a rare one to German website Zeit Online in order to hype his most recent feature, Film Socialisme. or maybe he was just using Film Socialisme as an excuse to preach via outlets like Zeit Online… whatever.
anyway, the interview is every bit as provocative as you would expect, every bit as kooky as you would hope. it was exclusively published in German and so what you see below passages translated to the best of my ability, just a few of my favorite excerpts from a conversation that goes all over the place (including a critical but quickly dismissed KUNG-FU PANDA reference).
on the future of cinema:
“If you’re really looking for it, then you can find something on the net… in FILM SOCIALISME there is a recording that I copied from the Internet: two cats purring, creating a dialogue. The people who filmed this is achieved a pretty picture. But they go no further. There are too many shots on the net, and maybe three of 100,000 make something mildly interesting…
… I have no Internet connection. But if someone says something is on there, then I’m going to have a friend help me to look at it… The network remains a democracy with much information but without much sense. It is dominated by high priests, called servers, which are themselves controlled by corporations.”
on technology:
“We are very dominated by what one might call simply ‘the technology.’ I have no mobile phone. People think the buttons or the display of their phone are there to control. But they are the buttons that control us. (Godard types on his old phone) when I select a number on this old machine, I do not feel that he knows me. Maybe a little. But I do not feel forced, it entlangzustreichen (“sweeps?”) on the thing. This is the same relationship as between a dog and his owner, which have a line between them. In this respect there are two masters or two slaves. In any case, the dog just like his master ruled that it reversed. This also applies to airplanes, cars, everything. Sometimes the technique seems obscene.”
on the capitalization of cinema:
“Well, there are great exhibitions of famous painters, attended en masse. One would think that people no longer go there because they satisfy the pictures of the ZDF, one of TV or CNN. But they have the desire to see something that does not speak in connection with language. They want to see pictures. But it shows them in buildings that look like mausoleums or churches that they attended in procession, as if walking into a temple. In the temple of profit. In this regard, I have a socialist approach to the art.”
TIME: The cinema has its temples.
“The multiplexes. Yes, the popcorn is a temple where the cinema is only an accessory. I wonder how there can be a cultural critique of capitalism, when the culture itself has long been capitalized.”
on progress and the diversification of objects:
“I’m not against democracy or progress. I criticize only way we deal with it. I buy my cameras in ordinary photo discounters. But man has invented so many things that he cannot control it. You know so much more about the technology, but think so much less. And this concerns not only the technology. Look at this ashtray, he still looks all right. Why do we need thousands of additional models? Earlier saw the car from different brands, today they are all equal. A single company would do. Everyone wants to invent a little, everyone wants to create. So you have thousands created to satisfy the desire for creation.”
on contemporary filmmakers (both amateur and professional) fundamentally misusing the camera:
“Three quarters of the people who make movies today need no camera to see something… The people ultimately do not shoot, they write. And then copy to the camera what they have written. You [should] use the camera to see something that would remain invisible without a camera. Something that needs a camera to exist at all.”
Federico Fellini Talks About Tripping On LSD
so here’s an interview Fellini gave to the BBC in 1965 on the heels of JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. the interviewer asks the filmmaker about his experiences on LSD, and… well, just watch it (the good stuff starts at 2:10)
“i had for the first time the feeling of the presence of the color in a detached way. reality becomes objective, so reality is innocence, is pure, a divine beauty… in the same moment there is also the other side. reality is just a divine beauty because we don’t give any meaning to it, but… *things get totally unintelligible for a few seconds*… you can become a saint or you can become a crazy man.” uh… whatever you say, federico.
presented without comment, here’s a few of the films Fellini made before his experiments with LSD:
I VITELLONI, LA STRADA, LA DOLCE VITA…
and after the drugs:
I CLOWN, SATYRICON, AMARCORD, JULIET OF THE SPIRITS…
Interview: Abbas Kiarostami On His Love for Quentin Tarantino
today is Abbas Kiarostami’s birthday! dude is 71 (and totally cool with me calling him “dude”) and firmly entrenched in a fresh and exhilarating new chapter of his career.
celebrate his continued wonderfulness by watching this old interview in which Kiarostami praises Quentin Tarantino for his appreciation of the cinema and his re-appropriation of cinematic violence. or, ya know, you can just honor him by watching an actual Kiarostami film. or both, really. the choice is yours.
Video: Ingmar Bergman talking about THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE
as i mentioned earlier, Victor Sjostrom’s 1920 silent is what first inspired Bergman to become a filmmaker. here’s an interview in which Bergman, um, says that. and then - after some footage - elaborates a bit. it’s a neat little watch, and the clips are enough to get you plenty jazzed for September.
Werner Herzog baffles Steven Colbert.
Herzog doesn’t need much of an excuse to be featured here, but Les Blank’s Herzog-centric doc BURDEN OF DREAMS provides me one just in case.
anyhoo, this interview is going to play best to those unfamiliar with Herzog’s glorious schtick, as the speech he delivers here is classic party-line material, having been delivered ver batim during interviews for years now. that being said, it’s always deeply entertaining, and Colbert really lets him get into to… a lovely surprise, this was.
go see CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS and do it in 3D (it’s the only film to truly validate the gimmick)
