Documentary film

BERLINALE 2024: I’m Not Everything I Want to Be – Photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková Reveals Why her Life in Berlin Was her Toughest Challenge

One of the most intriguing documentaries that had its premiere at Berlinale 2024 was the Czech title I’m (Not) Everything I Want to Be, a film composed entirely of black and white photographs in a dynamic montage that resembles a photo novel. 

It’s the story of a fascinating artist, Libuše Jarcovjáková, who was only recently discovered, and spans many decades from the 60s to the present day durig which time Libuše obsessively documented almost every aspect of her life, capturing what was happening around and within her. Her life journey is composed of many personal chapters that see the artist travel and challenge herself in various settings and cultures, such as Tokyo and Berlin in the 80s. 

The filmmaker Klára Tasovská did a great job of weaving together thousands of snapshots from Libuše’s daily life, creating an intimate and sometimes extremely evocative narrative that brings to mind Chris Marker’s work.

In addition to photographs, the filmmaker had access to tens of thousands of diary pages that detail Libuše unique female perspective on gender, the female body, sex, relationships through an unusual photographic style that can be slightly disturbing at times but no less fascinating. Her style is not self-conscious, it is raw, the opposite of how people take photos on social media today. She does not seek beauty or glamour in her subjects, on the contrary, there’s often a touch of the grotesque. And she definitely does not follow classic conventions conducive to technically perfect photographs. In her own words: “If something surprises me, it’s the unorthodox visuality that I’ve never let anyone dissuade me from. And perhaps that’s what could resonate with today’s audiences”. 

Something that vividly captured my imagination and allowed me to time-travel several decades in the past, was Libuše’s Berlin chapter. 

The following interview taken on Monday the 19th of February 2024 at the Palast Lounge at Berlinale is mainly about the artist’s life in Berlin. Listening to this relentlessly captivating storyteller, I could almost see Libuše’s younger self getting off the train at Friedrichstraße and bravely venturing into the chaotic underbelly of West Berlin life…

Dana Knight: What are your very first images and memories of Berlin when you came here in 1985?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: I came to Berlin with the night train from Prague and I had no idea how it works with East Berlin so I got off at Friedrichstraße and I saw this huge row of people who were going to East Berlin, it was a lot of old people and pretty young people too. The seniors could go for one day to West Berlin, and also disabled people. I didn’t know about this, so I went through this row which was like a maize and suddenly I was in West Berlin. It was actually very difficult to tell East and West Berlin apart, but then I saw this kiosk with Western goods so I knew I arrived in West Berlin… I had only 8 Deutsche marks in my pocket and a small place where to sleep.

Dana Knight: How did you find a place to sleep?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: I had some friends who used to live in Berlin but because I had to wait for the papers, a process that took 2-3 years, they all moved away. My husband also moved to Hamburg. So at the beginning, I had some promise for a job from people who were living in Berlin, but after this period of waiting, suddenly, it was nothing, no job, only the possibility of having an apartment, thank God for that. 

And it was cold. And I had no money to buy tram tickets or get a coffee. The first apartment was in a very old and destroyed building in Bergmannstraße. It wasn’t a squat but almost like a squat. And suddenly I realised the economical level of West Berliners was lower than ours in Prague. At least judging by my flat, the lack of heating, I had the toilet in the corridor, only cold water. No devices like radio or TV. People were living very simple lives. 

But I told myself, “I didn’t come here for economical reasons”. Just that I saw an  absolutely other world, a different universe. 

Dana Knight:  You must have had certain expectations before coming to Berlin, how did that compare to the reality you found here?

Libuše Jarcovjáková:  At the beginning I was supposed to meet this group of people and have a job in Kino Yorck. But that was all gone, the waiting period was too long and they moved away, in India, Peru. So I didn’t really have any expectations and also I didn’t know where to start, where to find a job, how to make money, what I could do. 

Dana Knight: I remember from the film that you had just one contact person in Berlin. ..

Libuše Jarcovjáková: Yes and even that disappeared somehow. At the beginning I had one friend who worked as a cleaner in Kino Yorck and he drank a lot. So when he was drunk he would call me to ask if I could do his job, which would bring me something like 20 marks, enough to live for a few days. But I was happy I was here, I was happy I had this huge challenge. I had almost no German or spoke very bad German,  I had no connections, no friends, I was alone, no social background and I didn’t understand the system at all. 

Dana Knight: The film tells an incredible story, it makes one wonder how you managed to survive. Did you have the same impression when putting the film together?

Klára Tasovská: I had access to Libuše’s diaries, I read all the diaries she wrote throughout her life. The Berlin chapter, there were a lot of things there. When Libuše came to Berlin, she had a lot of thoughts, she wrote a lot, more than before. 

Libuše Jarcovjáková: Yes because I knew for sure I  wanted to have this experience but I did not know how hard it would be. 

Dana Knight: Yet you stayed for seven years, from 1985 to 1992. 

Libuše Jarcovjáková: Yes. The last two years I was always between Prague and Berlin but these 5 years were very intense, I learnt how to deal with Berlin step by step. At the end I had my own apartment in Bermannstr., I had a job, I had some money, I had friends, I spoke German at the end…

Dana Knight: Quite the success story…

Libuše Jarcovjáková:  The thing is I knew from the very beginning that this would be a process just for collecting experiences. I did not want to be here forever, I wanted to go somewhere to learn something hard, I wanted to have some challenges. Because living in Prague before was pretty easy. 

Dana Knight: You basically wanted to get out of your comfort zone…This is also reflected in your work, throughout the film there is a gradual progression of your style…

Klára Tasovská: I think so too.

Libuše Jarcovjáková: My plan was to document my life in Berlin. 

Dana Knight: How did you find the art world in Berlin in the 80s, did you feel more understood here?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: It’s also a question of money and self-confidence, and I had very low self-confidence at the beginning. I knew nobody, I did not have any contacts in the art world, I did not try any gallery. I saw some very important exhibitions here, for example Joseph Beuys at Martin Gropius Bau, I saw this exhibition five times! Also the exhibition of Robert Frank who for me was absolutely important. 

And I was very poor, if I wanted to go somewhere I had to walk there as I did not have money…it was a really hard experience. 

Dana Knight: Would you say your Berlin chapter was the toughest challenge you gave yourself?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: Yes, without a doubt. But it was really my choice, no one pushed me to do this. The first Christmas, I was here alone sitting in a cold apartment because I did not have money for coal. and I was thinking to myself, “Are you crazy, what have you done?” And then I had an accident…but this struggle brought me something new every month, I first learnt English and German in the streets, from TV.  Slowly I built a community of friends, people I was connected to. 

I had one very special experience, someone arranged for me an appointment with someone from the Berlin Senate for Culture. And I went to this meeting and showed the man my work. He told me something which I totally forgot for years. And then I discovered it in my diary. He said: “OK, it’s excellent work but I need to see something from Berlin”. When you have some new work from Berlin, come back and I’ll have a look at it”. But I only remember he refused my work and I forgot he gave me this opportunity to come again. I only remembered that he refused me, that was all I remembered. 

Dana Knight: Regarding the art world, you had other important meetings with curators in Tokio for instance and you made some pertinent and ironic remarks on this subject…

Libuše Jarcovjáková: Yes in Tokio I had some great opportunities to work for the fashion industry, I could build a career there. But it was in Tokio and I also did not want to be part of the fashion business. But in Berlin I did not even try, I only had this opportunity but I did not take it, I could have gone back in 3 months and shown him what I had done, maybe he would have changed his mind…

Dana Knight: How often have you returned to Berlin after 1992?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: After 2-3 years. Now I am coming regularly, at least three times per year. I am hoping to spend more time here, I am taking pictures. 

Dana Knight: You were called the Nan Goldin of the former Czechoslovakia, do you like that comparison?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: It doesn’t bother me but I only became familiar with her work ten years ago for the first time. 

Dana Knight: So you were not inspired by her work?

Libuše Jarcovjáková: I knew the name but did not know her work. But when I heard of this comparison, I checked a bit deeper what she is doing and I am not against this comparison. The thing is, we lived in the same period, we have the same age, it is only logical  that there are some similarities. But she had a completely different career, she was discovered when she was young, she had success from the beginning, she could show her work. But it’s no surprise for me that we had the same attitude and mindset. 

DK: Who would you say inspired you more?

Libuše Jarcovjáková:  I feel more connected with the Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama who had an exhibition in Berlin a few months ago. His work is more raw and his visual style is more inspiring for me. Comparing my work to that of Nan Goldin is easy, but why not. 

DocsLisboa 2023: Chutzpah. Something about Modesty. An Interview with Monica Stambrini

Chutzpah. Something about Modesty by Monica Stambrini was one of the most daring films I saw at DocLisboa 2023.

At its core, the film tackles the theme of the fragility of identity. The filmmaker is trying to piece together her old identity with her need for change. In the process she reviews her multiple roles as a daughter, as a mother, as a partner. The ambition to become a filmmaker is left aside early in life or postponed for later. We become privy to her everyday life, the obstacles she encounters. The opening scene also talks about the fragility of cinema itself, the camera being threatened from the very beginning: “Mum, turn the camera off or I’ll smash it”. And these two fragilities come together in an interesting way in the film.

The concept itself is extremely intriguing. In the filmmaker’s own words: “In the midst of a personal and work crisis, I begin to film everything obsessively: my parents, grandparents, children, friends and lovers, myself and psychotherapy. Some footage is consensual, some is ‘stolen’. This way my personal-intimate becomes narrative: the recent separation, the pain of my children’s distance, my parents’ separation, my inadequacy as a mother and as a filmmaker.”

The following interview with Monica Stambrini was conducted via Zoom in November 2023. 

Dana Knight: I loved the concept of your film. The title is an oxymoron, Chutzpah means audacity while pudore is translated as modesty but is something more akin to “shyness”. There is a “forward going” movement in Chutzpah and something holding back in pudore. That is an interesting tension and the film seems to be born out of it. Maybe you could tell me more about how this personal film came about …

Monica Stambrini : I was in a very big crisis, mainly the one that’s in the film, a crisis usually happens when several things come together. I was both in a professional crisis and a sentimental one, I wasn’t happy. 

But something that’s not in the film, actually it is in the film, it’s the fact that I was having problems finding work as a film director. The ideas I suggested to agents and producers were not considered, it was a big crisis. At some point, not knowing what to do, I started thinking “I have this footage”, nothing professional, it’s amateur, I filmed these images in the time before Instagram. The film started 10 years ago, that’s when I split up. So I spoke about it to my film editor, we are friends and we always work together. And I started writing down the voice-over and collecting all these images and together we started building the film. And what was funny and exciting is that I started filming everything. So at that point my life became a film. So I was very excited, like any film director, when he gets to shoot a movie, he can kill to get what he wants…

So I had this fantastic energy but also a bit of a moral question: what am I allowed to show regarding other people. I am careless about myself, I don’t care about shame or being naked. It was therapeutical.

There is something very daring about the way you show yourself on screen…

I did quite a bit of thinking about this…there is something about women especially, either Chutzpah or modesty, and you’re right, it’s not the right translation of pudore. Maybe women were taught to keep their private lives private for so long, first of all their sexual desire. Men can go around saying “I like you, I like you”, but women aren’t allowed to do that. Now women are getting their voices out more, and wanting to be naked. I think there is a genre coming out.

There are moments of humour and lightness in the film which could have otherwise become quite heavy. Your kids are very funny. What comes to mind is the counting scene on the loo… 

(Laughing) Also because I’m wrong in all the answers I give him…Symbolic of how parents teach kids the wrong things, we give them the wrong answers.

You filmed one of your therapy sessions by hiding the camera under your coat apparently…and confronted your therapist by saying that therapy is immoral, what happened there?

What happened with the psychotherapist in the film is what happened in life. She put me in front of a decision, “Either we do a therapy or you do your film, the two things can’t go on together”. She didn’t like the idea of me filming the sessions, she didn’t want to be part of the film, she wanted me to go into a deeper therapy. As my father says in the film, the two things couldn’t go together. 

To me it wasn’t immediately obvious: “I’m talking about myself, where is your privacy involved?”But it’s like a rule of therapy, you break a certain law by filming the sessions. So I stopped filming and went into proper Freudian therapy, three times a week. 

Would you like to share something about your experience of psychotherapy that is not in the film?

I could have moved to yoga, meditation, ayahuasca, religion, one can find many alternatives to lean on to when you’re in need. But somehow therapy was my thing, my father is a psychotherapist, I grew up with it so I decided to go into proper Freudian therapy, three times a week. I believe it helped me. Of course it did not solve all my problems.

You had mixed feelings about psychotherapy at the beginning of the film but do you feel you gained some insight through making this film?

Definitely. In real life, I actually went on with my therapy because I decided I wasn’t ready to make this film public. Because at the time I was really suffering. 

When I finished the film, 6 months ago, I had the chance to record my voice with a proper microphone, in a proper studio, but I decided to keep that old recording because I’m not an actress and that voice I had at the time, you can tell I was really feeling it. 

When I was making the film, I wasn’t very objective because I was so involved. But when I watched it again after eight years, when my therapy finished, I started laughing, the whole time. All of a sudden, I thought: ”This girl who’s suffering so much, she isn’t going through anything dramatic really, it’s stuff that everyone goes through, at least once in their life so what’s the drama? Instead I was laughing about myself. And I was benevolent towards myself, finally. The “me” suffering, the “me” separating, the “me” in crisis…I was laughing at myself and this gave me the strength to make it public. 

You saw yourself with detachment …

Yes, and that’s what’s fascinating about human life, at some point you look back and you’re more benevolent.

Psychoanalysis is a lot about the relationship with the parents, that’s probably why they occupy such a big chunk of the film. They are both very interesting figures and complete opposites, a bit like the oxymoron in the title. 

Absolutely. And that is the tragedy of every child with separated parents, your biggest wish is to see them back together. But that’s not possible. You are the sum of those two people. And to be honest I don’t know any couples with kids who are still together after 15 years. So we should probably start asking ourselves…

If marriage is a lifetime endeavour?;)

Yes, what’s it going to be like in 15 years. 

Would you say that psychoanalysis makes you feel like you’re a bit doomed, like in a Greek tragedy?

What I understood after all these years, what Freudian analysis says is that we are all doomed, we all live through traumas that parents probably don’t even remember but for us were terrible events. And those traumas will always be there, there is no way to get over them. 

Actually there is a way to get over them, and it’s to recognise them, to see them, to make peace with them. As long as you don’t leave them unconscious…This is how Freudian therapy can heal you, by looking back at your traumas as an adult, you put them in a different context, they looked enormous but now they are small and not so big anymore. 

It’s like a change in perspective. The traumas are there, just get over it. As to what cognitive behavioural therapy does, instead of drinking, do exercise, instead of smoking, go out for a walk. 

But I like Freudian analysis, I like to go deep to the root and I like the darkness, I am attracted to what is unsaid, unspoken, to what isn’t meant to be shown. 

Before this film I did two porn films. The whole topic of showing what is not supposed to be shown is very dear to me. I like cinema when it provokes. I like chutzpah in films, things that are not easy. 

They were also shown at DocsLisboa a few years ago…

Yes. 

And while on this topic, do you feel you revealed as much as you wanted or you held something back in your new film?

Well, as you could see, there was a masturbation scene and there was some censorship involved, a veil. So I did hold back a bit. But I did film everything at the time, including me having sex with my partners. But I decided not to show that. For my kids more than my parents. I didn’t want to end up doing what I accused my father of in the film: “How could you expose me to your sex life?”. Otherwise I would have ended up doing to my kids what my father did to me…

But in the case of your children, that experience would have been mediated through cinema…which is different than experiencing something directly. 

Absolutely. 

Also, another instance of mediation is a letter your mother wrote to you. 

When I was splitting up from my husband, she wrote me a very passionate letter, putting me in guard, telling me “I understand your decision, I went through this suffering myself so if I can spare you anything…” It was a beautiful letter. Because mainly she shared her experience. But in the end she was happy that I split up. 

And you’re also happy with your decision now.

Yes, I had to do it. I think couples, families, it’s very difficult to change in a couple. It requires a big love and maturity. And I needed to change and wasn’t able to do it within the couple. But a separation is full of sorrow, especially when you have kids. 

It’s a topic we all relate to. We don’t see a lot of your husband in the film though. And definitely not nearly enough of your lovers… 

I was very scared that he would say “No, you can’t do this film”. Due to privacy issues of course.  Because you can’t film someone and stick them in a film without them giving you their approval. That’s why he’s more of a voice in the background. And also the separation wasn’t his fault, it was all about me. And I quite like the fact that the only time you see him, we are always in a car, the metaphor of a family, all stuck together, getting lost. 

Actually he saw the film and he liked it. 

Where will the film travel to next?

In Milan, there is going to be a screening at the end of November, it’s an old independent film festival, it’s going to be the closing night film. 

Possibly at Film Madrid next year. 

And on the platform IndiePix, it’s an independent platform, like Netflix for independent films. 

THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER – MORE PARANOID, MORE FASCINATING THAN A BOND THRILLER!

russian woodpecker poster

The real life protagonist of The Russian Woodpecker, Chad Gracia’s  astonishing documentary feature, the winner of World Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2015, is the most fascinating ideas man you can imagine.

His name is Fedor Alexandrovich and he is an Ukrainian artist with a traumatic past: his ancestors were murdered by the Soviets, sent to gulags or forced to renounce their family, and he was only four years old in 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown happened, an event that forced him to leave his home due to the toxic effects of irradiation. Now 33, he is a “radioactive man” with strontium in his bones and a singular obsession with the earth-changing catastrophe – why did it actually happen?

fedor1-638x600

Fedor Alexandrovich

Chad met Fedor on the set of a play he was putting on in Kiev where Fedor worked as a set designer. Fedor kept whispering to Chad about the “Russian woodpecker,” a giant, mysterious antenna nicknamed such for the strange, constant clicking radio frequencies that it emitted during the Cold War and which had been terrorising the radio frequencies in Europe and America during that time, so much so that many Americans believed it to be a Soviet mind-control device.

For Fedor, this strange device that the Soviets built only 2 miles from the Chernobyl nuclear station, represented a very deep and dark mystery: what was its real use and was there more to the Chernobyl story than the Soviet government let on? Is it possible that there might have been a criminal mind behind the Chernobyl catastrophe that the world doesn’t know about? As incredible as this may sound, is it possible that Chernobyl was blown up on purpose??

Duga antenna

The “Russian Woodpecker”

These were questions without answers and just another “conspiracy theory” until the day Fedor decided to confront the Russian Woodpecker that is now rotting away in an off-limits military facility in the middle of the radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

In one of the most astonishing visual sequences of the film, Fedor is sailing naked across a radioactive sea on a raft of mirrors which he himself constructed following a dream he had about the mysterious device.

Steeped in a climate of paranoia, with the Russian Secret Police threatening Fedor into closing his investigation and all sorts of dangers lurking at every step of the way, Chad Gracia’s documentary is more fascinating than a Bond thriller!

Chad+Gracia+Sundance+Film+Festival+Portraits+yMrGDWAhEfhl

Fedor Alexandrovich, director Chad Gracia and cinematographer Artem Ryzhykov

Dana Knight: The Russian Woodpecker is a most compelling story. I loved the way the pieces of the puzzle were put together by Fedor’s inquisitive mind and the way you conducted the investigation that followed. What wasn’t perfectly clear to me is this: did Fedor form his theory about the Chernobyl disaster not really being an accident before you started shooting or is this incredible discovery a result of the film?

Chad Gracia: No, our main interest was in the antenna, our plan was to debunk the conspiracy theory that the antenna was a mind control device. He just had some sort of artistic fascination with this object, he described it to me many times but he spoke of it in terms of some sort of aesthetic urgency that he had about witnessing it, feeling it, approaching it. Fedor is very sensitive, he sort of follows his instincts, he has his own creative antenna. But I don’t think he had any rational idea for why he has to go there, he was just drawn to it.

Knight: In a sense, it would have been even more astonishing if Fedor put all the pieces of the puzzle together before you embarked on the investigation.

Gracia: Yes but as you see in the film, it only came about because people were very nervous when asked about the antenna. That made him suspicious. And Fedor says that he could never believe such a thing was possible, but that was actually the direction that his research took him. We came about it in a way naively, we really did not expect to find what we found. It was supposed to be a very short film about this antenna.

Fedor+Torch

Knight: I know, but even if he had the idea to begin with, he would have probably only gradually disclosed his thoughts to you, because to hit you with all these crazy ideas from the start, it would have been too much for you to take on, I guess.

Gracia: Well, you would have to ask Fedor, he certainly is a very mysterious guy! But in my opinion it started more as just an investigation: there’s this strange object, this enormous antenna that no one knows much about, it’s standing next to Chernobyl, it’s dying to be filmed, it’s dying to be explored, it’s ready to be questioned. That’s what we did, without any assumptions at all when we started.

Knight: How did you get access to those Russian former high officials? That must have been difficult.

Gracia: Well, when we first reached out to them we didn’t say anything about me, an American, being involved, I would just show up. And after many months of getting nowhere, we realised that my showing up made them not really want to speak with us. That was a step in the wrong direction. So at that point we got a special apartment with a kind of a cubby where I could hide, so they never knew there was an American director involved. I used to Skype to send questions to the team and clarifications during the interview. The question as to why they agreed to meet, I think originally when our Ukrainian contact called them, she said, “Look, they want to talk about your life”. These guys used to be at the top of the Soviet pyramid, they were heroes of their day and now they are all forgotten, living on tiny pensions, in crumbling apartments and no one cares about them. So they have someone coming to talk about their youth and about their technological achievements which were quite significant. This antenna, we don’t have time to get into it in the film, but it spurred a lot of research into super computers in Russia. Being able to assess the signal was incredibly difficult. So they were very proud of what they achieved and they wanted to talk about it but not with an American.

Knight: I found that very funny, the way they became immediately suspicious when the word “American” was pronounced. They are basically still caught in the past.

Gracia: I was surprised too, I thought the Cold War was ancient history, I really did not expect these guys to still be living in that world. But Fedor was the one who kept telling me, “No, Chad, you don’t understand, the Cold War is still alive, the Soviet ghosts are still haunting Ukraine, they are everywhere”. I thought he was crazy. He was also the first one to say that the Soviet Union is coming back, there’s going to be war. And he said this to everyone who was listening but everyone thought he was crazy. This was months before the annexation of Crimea, or the events in Eastern Ukraine. Again Fedor is kind of an antenna, he’s like all great artists, he’s very sensitive to things before the rest of us.

pecker

Knight: The timing of your documentary was perfect in a way: the progression of the documentary found resonance in the Revolution that was happening around you.  And this climate of paranoia, with the Russian Secret Police that started interfering with your project, and your own paranoia about the other team members filming a parallel film!

Chad: I know, it’s strange. It’s obviously unrelated that the Revolution broke out. And when I walked into the Chernobyl exclusion zone and when I got into the force-field of this antenna, my life became very surreal. And you’re right, the climate of paranoia engulfed us, as it eventually engulfed the whole city and the whole country. But that’s just a quirk of history and a sad fate for Ukraine, but it made our story so much more dramatic and timely than we expected it to be.

Knight: The moment the Secret Police interfered with your project was a key turning point in the film, you almost lost the project as Fedor wanted out. How did you get over that obstacle?

Gracia: Well, Fedor left and we had no film and I went back, I left the country trying to figure out how to salvage my project. And it was only when the Revolution kicked off that Fedor felt he had a patriotic duty to come back. This was three months later. But he had certain requirements. He said that he wanted to give the Secret Police final cut, final approval of the film, he told them that he would try to convince me of that. So we kind of agreed on that but within a week the Pro-Russian government fell and then luckily we never had to do that. Also we had to put the disclaimer, by way of a contract, Fedor was pressured to put this disclaimer in front of the film, that the film is not intended to disrupt relations between Ukraine and Russia.  I guess Fedor also felt that having his theory out in the world would make him safer than if he was the only one who had the theory. So he felt that, paradoxically, by publicising the theory he was safer. 

Knight: That’s actually the next question I wanted to ask: is Fedor safe now in Ukraine, is it safe for him to be there?

Gracia: In today’s situation, nobody knows who is safe and who is not safe in Ukraine. But when people ask Fedor if he feels he’s personally at risk, he answers: “Look, it’s not just me, it’s all of us. No one is safe as long as there’s such a madman at the helm of a nuclear armed country, who wants to bring back the Great Empire”. That’s what Fedor says. I think he’s safe, we hope he’s safe. We’ve been invited to Moscow to screen the film at a documentary film festival there. Fedor is terrified but I think I’ll go.

Knight: You’re not terrified?

Gracia: Look, I’m an American. As you probably know, an Ukrainian film director was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison following a mock trial. So Fedor is not entirely crazy to be nervous. But my hope is that the government there has much bigger worries than some documentary about some cover-up that happened 30 years ago.

Knight: Fedor is an amazing, fascinating character. Going back to how this project started, I understand that you two met on the set of a play that you were working on in Kiev.

Gracia: Exactly. And I immediately knew he was a special character, like out of a Dostoyevsky novel.

Fedor writing on mirror

Knight: What is also amazing is that you don’t come from a film background, you did theatre, this is your very first venture into filmmaking.

Gracia: Yes. But the film is quite theatrical in some ways, you can definitely feel the influence. But my experience in theatre was also as a dramaturge, dealing with story-structure, so that helped me a lot. But it’s true, all of us were first time filmmakers. Our cinematographer ARTEM RYZHYKOV  worked on something else before but this was his first major picture. He’s a genius.

Knight: He must be, the cinematography is incredible. The whole film is incredible.

Gracia: Yes, it was a magical, miraculous experience. The whole project, from concept, to how we got it financed, to our opening in New York on Friday and seeing people really enjoy it. People find it fascinating and they love it. That’s the best part about it.

Knight: You also mentioned you had a lot of footage. How did things go in the editing room, what did you decide to leave out and why? The film is very well put together, it is seamless.

Gracia: The editing was extremely complicated. We had five separate films that were apparently unrelated: Fedor’s dream, which was a long journey across Ukraine, we had the Chernobyl disaster, we had the technology of the radar, we had the conspiracy theory and we had the Revolution that was happening in Ukraine. And I was nearly at the end of my wits trying to figure out how to bring these stories together. And the moment when it all became clear for me is when I realised it’s really only one story: it’s the story of Fedor’s soul. The story of Fedor’s psychological journey. From the 4-year old irradiated child to the man who eventually stands up to the Soviet Union. At that point I decided to cut everything else, except for that which supported his journey. And it turned out that all of these things, the history of Ukraine, going back to what happened to his grandfather during the Revolution, even the antenna, all had elements that supported and even clarified and coloured Fedor’s journey. And I wanted the film to be very brisk, I wanted it to be short and feel like a thriller. I didn’t want it to be a 3-hour meditation. I wanted it to be an action thriller/detective story.

Knight: The fact that the film is short makes it even more impactful and it leaves you with a desire to see more. Maybe a sequel would be in order!

Gracia: Maybe, I’ll talk to Fedor about it. My thoughts were that I’d rather have people wanting more than being bored.

Knight: Where is the film on the festival circuit?

Gracia: We showed the film in Bucharest recently, I was there, it was lovely. And we’re going to Copenhagen next, the film is screening at CPH:DOX.

Knight: And do you have another film project you’re working on next?

Gracia: I have but it’s kind of top secret. In a couple of years I’ll hopefully have another film to chat to you about.

THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER is opening in theaters in Los Angeles on October 30.

THE OUTRAGEOUS SOPHIE TUCKER opens in NYC July 24 (press release)

THE OUTRAGEOUS SOPHIE TUCKER is the rags to riches story of one of old time showbiz’s biggest personalities. From 1906 through the beginning of television, Sophie Tucker and her bawdy, brash, and risqué songs paved the way for performers such as Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Midler, Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé.

sophie tucker

After eight years spent reading hundreds of Tucker’s personal scrapbooks, visiting fourteen archives, and interviewing dozens of family, friends, and fellow icons of stage and screen, Susan and Lloyd Ecker have completed their comprehensive documentary about the Last of the Red Hot Mamas.

“Sophie was like the Forrest Gump of the first half of the 1900s,” says producer Susan Ecker. “She was close friends with seven U.S. presidents, King George VI, young Queen Elizabeth, Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, Al Capone, Judy Garland, Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra and every other notable of her era.”

“After immersing ourselves in Sophie’s 400+ personal scrapbooks and meeting all of Tucker’s surviving friends and family,” says producer Lloyd Ecker, “this film biography is the complete uncensored tale of this vaudeville, Broadway, radio, television and Hollywood legend. Though she obsessively documented her life, Sophie loved to exaggerate for dramatic effect. Over the years, she told multiple versions of each important event. At the end, not even Sophie knew the difference between truth and tall tale”.

Director’s Statement – William Gazecki

Sophie who? Wasn’t she the fat lady always singing “God Bless America”? (NO… that was Kate Smith). Like many people today, that’s who I thought of when I was initially offered the job of directing a documentary about Sophie Tucker.

gazecki

William Gazecki

When Tucker was alive, she was indeed buxom, and somewhere in my mind I knew I had heard of her. One of those “tip of the tongue” memories. Later I realized it was probably from seeing a couple of Sophie’s 25+ appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, the most popular of all the early television variety shows. Those were the days of my childhood when Elvis and the Beatles were thrilling me as a teenager. But Sophie was there too. As I would soon discover, throughout her life, Tucker was everywhere, like a real female Forrest Gump.

When I first met Sue and Lloyd Ecker, they kept me enthralled and intrigued with Sophie tales for hours on-end. I laughed, cried and was amazed… story after story after story… some funny, some touching, some unbelievable (for instance, Tucker befriended both gangster Al Capone and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover). The Eckers knew Tucker so well, they spoke about her as if she was family. What an interesting and compelling life Sophie had. The kind of inspiring and iconic personality about whom you want to know everything. So I happily took on the project.

My first task? Find all the Sophie Tucker experts and get them scheduled for interviews. Unfortunately, there were no Tucker experts. Try as I may, no one on the planet knew as much about Sophie as Sue and Lloyd Ecker. Why? Because no one had ever done that much research on this forgotten icon. The couple had just completed four years of reading, scanning and indexing Tucker’s 400 personal scrapbooks, learning all the stories that in some instances spanned seven decades. They also spent an equal amount of time travelling throughout the U.S. and England interviewing and taping every person they could find who actually knew her. Most of them were successful retired performers who began as one of Sophie’s opening acts. None of them really knew her that well, being not much more than young upstarts when they worked with the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas”. But they remembered Tucker, and still loved her.

As they traveled on their “Sophie mission”, the Eckers had carried a video camera, shooting interviews with everyone they met. My second task was to watch all of these endearing recordings. Sweet as they were, mostly there was a dearth of unusable material for a traditional film biography. The stars had all been kids, impressed for life by a unique and powerful woman in the twilight of her greatness.

In the end, what seemed obvious turned out to be the best choice. The Eckers were the ideal candidates to narrate the movie. They had to be, or there wasn’t going to be a movie. “Let’s do a little experiment,” I said, and away we went. Fortunately, during their college years Lloyd had worked as a comedian and Sue as an actor. Once on-camera, they were wonderful. The rest is history, which you can now enjoy by watching “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker”!

New York City
Greenwich Village – Cinema Village
Upper West Side – The JCC in Manhattan

Social Media:

Facebook.com/OutrageousSophieTucker

Twitter: @SophieTucker SophieTucker.

Tumblr.com Instagram.com/RealSophieTucker

Fassbinder – To Love Without Demands @!f Istanbul 2015

fassbinder2

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder – To Love without Demands made its world premiere at the 2015 Berlinale in the Panorama section, a programme dedicated to  films that provide insight on new directions in art house cinema.

The film is a portrait of one of the world’s most prominent and productive directors, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Danish filmmaker Christian Braad Thomsen was close friends with Fassbinder throughout his career and the film is built around the footage that Braad Thomsen made with Fassbinder throughout the 1970s and which have not previously been published.

Below is an interview with Christian Braad Thomsen taken at !f Istanbul, February 2015

christian-braad-thomsen

Danish filmmaker Christian Braad Thomsen

Dana Knight: You first met Fassbinder in 1969 when he showed his first film Love Is Colder Than Death at Berlinale and became a close friend of his over the years. How did this friendship grow and develop?

Christian Braad Thomsen: I met him because I was almost the only one that liked his first film. It was furiously booed out by the audience, whereas I thought that in a way it was the first film in the world, a rediscovery of the film language, which had been totally corrupted by Hollywood. So when I met him in a bar, I went up to him and congratulated him, because I thought he needed some comforting words. He was only 24 years old. But he couldn’t care less. This security was what impressed me most from the beginning, – and little by little we became friends .

Knight: You start the film by making a very daring statement: that in 50 years time when film history will be re-evaluated, Hitchcock and Fassbinder will be remembered as the two single most important artists of the 20th century. While everybody is familiar with Hitchcock’s work, probably the same degree of popularity does not characterise Fassbinder’s films. Is that to do with the fact that the bitter pill he served us was not sugar-coated?

Braad Thomsen: Yes. Bitter pills are not popular, but they are necessary against sickness. And Fassbinder considered his society sick. He thought that children were brought up to be talking puppets in stead of independent human beings. He thought that dependency made people sick and in his films he analyzes the causes of the sickness in civilization

Knight: Fassbinder is such a controversial filmmaker, his films are so divisive. What touched you the most about his films that made you become such a staunch defender of his art?

Braad Thomsen: The most touching element in his films is that he is able to describe oppression so clearly that we can all see what is wrong with our ways of creating our families and our society. And no matter how cruel some of his characters behave, he still has a lot of pity for them – and for us.

Knight: In your interviews with him, Fassbinder is more open than ever talking about postwar Hollywood, which was his first love, and psychoanalysis, love, marriage, children and madness. Did any of his views ever surprise you or you already knew his mind based on this films?

Braad Thomsen: I was so shocked by the last interview I did with him at his hotel room in Cannes, that I dared not watch the interview for 30 years. He criticizes me strongly for having put a child into this world, although I should have know better, he talks about sadomasochism as a natural consequence of the world, we have created, and he discusses madness as a possiblev solution for each individual. What he means is, I suppose, what also a psychiatrist like Ronald D. Laing meant in the 1970’s, that in a world as crazy as ours, everybody who reacts against this world is considered mad – though he or she may be the most normal of all persons.

Knight: The film also contains interviews with Fassbinder’s mother, Lilo Pempeit,  the actress Irm Hermann who became his lover and almost committed suicide when he left her,  the actor and producer Harry Bär who was the last to talk with Fassbinder, just a few hours before he died, actor Andrea Schober, who played the child roles in Fassbinder’s early films. How did all these other people enrich the image you held of Fassbinder?

Braad Thomsen: They showed me what love is. How could they love a person that also had so many unpleasant aspects as Fassbinder. And how could I love him so deeply, though I am not the least homosexual.  Made the film in order to find out what love is, and I am not sure I succeeded, because defining love is probably impossible. But I believe what Petra von Kant says in Fassbinders film:  “You must learn to love without demands.”

Knight: In making this documentary, you’re using previously unseen footage, mainly your own interviews with him taken throughout his life. What was it like to revisit those conversations? Anything that struck you in particular?

Braad Thomsen: What struck me most is that Fassbinder never lied, but always was honest. He never talked in clichés, but was always completely sincere and naked in front of my camera.

Knight: Fassbinder died in 1982. Why do you think it was important to wait over 30 years to make this documentary?

Braad Thomsen: I didn’t know how to make it. The task seemed overwhelming, and  I thought I needed to overcome his death, before I made the film. But finally I realized that those who were close to him, will never get over his death. He was not only a father figure for most of us, he was also a child. He didn’t want to grow up in this world, but insisted of remaining a child – and yet, he was, of course, the most mature and wise of us all. But he was also a child, whom we tried to protect – and we never get over the death of a child.

Knight: In the last film interview with Fassbinder, shot just a few hours before he died, he said something striking that sums up his contradictions:“To be complete, you need to double yourself.” Can you comment on that?

Braad Thomsen: The translation in the subtitles is not quite precise. He actually says “To be complete, you need yourself once again.” I think this is the most important he ever said. The mirror was his favourite symbol, because in the mirror we have ourselves once again. When we wake up in the morning after a hopefully beautiful dream, we see the sad reality in the mirror in the bath room. On a deeper level he may af thought of Sigmund Freuds understanding of our personality: we are divided between law and lust. The law of our parents and our society is represented in our superego, which plays the dominating role in our lives, whereas our personal needs and lust is put away in the id. Fassbinder admired Freud, and one of the projects he never realized was a film based on Freuds “Moses and Monotheism”, where Freud splits Moses into two very different persons, a cruel dictator and a mild shepherd. Fassbinder wanted to unite the superego and the id, the dictator and the shepherd.