Goran Paskaljevic is one of the most interesting filmmakers of the last decades. He always worried about the social problems of the Balcans and the relationships with European Union and neighbour countries. He has just won the 54 Edition of Seminci, what makes him the most award director of all the Valladolid Film Festival´s history..
We had the opportunity to talk to him after the projection of his film, Hooneymoons. That was the result.
At first I´m so impressive about the long-sequence shots that define your shooting style. Why do you usually employ them in your films?
Because it gives more possibilities to the actors. In the long shots you don´t create the rhythm artificially. The rhythm is inside. In one piece, for example, the scene with the motorbikes, I could have done this scene with cuts, made it more like American films, but I think there´s much more tension for the viewers –even unconsciously– when you keep following one shot, I always take a close-up on the actors, a technique that shows a better expression of their emotion.
In this way you like to come close so near to the character´s faces, emphasising the angles of their physiognomy and opening up new perspectives of the scene. Why do you go close to the faces?
Because I love faces. Well, when you are making a film, it´s about people. And in several points you have to take close-ups to the faces, because the face explains much more than some storyboard. I´m shooting the scene how I´m feeling it, without any previous reflexion, I´ve never drawn up the scenes, I do it spontaneously: I gather my actors around and we do the whole scene like in the theatre. Once I notice that the scene comes to live, I stop the shooting and comment it with my cinematography´s director, my personal assistant. This method usually takes one to three shots until we figure out the right one. I don´t approve of the technique becoming more important than the actors or the scene itself.
If we focus the conversation on the social content, the election of locations attracts my attention, Why did you decide to make a film about Albania and Serbia in particulary, leaving out other Balcanic countries?
I discovered that Albanians and Serbs are very similar and that they don´t know anything a each other at all. Under these circumstances there is a certain tension, so I thought it´s a great idea to do a cinema project together to show that they can collaborate, and that´s the whole reason. I could also have made a project including Serbia and Bosnia but it would have been very obvious.
I always had believed that in economic and politic matters, Serbia was a richer country and after the Balcanic War they had had a lot of differences with Albanians in political strategy, hadn´t they?
They are so similar. Albanian and Serbs wish to enter the European Union, that´s what they have in common. However, the Albanians went through a very difficult time over a period of forty years (1945-1985), under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, in my opinion the hardest regime in Europe in the twentieth century. The people couldn´t leave their country and travel abroad, there was absolutely no religion, no freedom. We (the Serbs) enjoyed more liberties what makes us a little different. But Kosovo is in the middle of the two countries and that is the biggest problem. If there was no conflict concerning the Kosovo region, we would probably be very good neighbours.
The Kosovo as multiethnic region already has a long problematic history tradition through many generations. What´s your opinion about the new young one?
On the one hand they are paying for the mistakes committed by previous generations.
On the other hand they are not interested in politics and fed up with it. Ten years ago, they still believed when the democratic change came to Serbia after Milosevic,s era, it would improve the situation but it didn´t. Everybody knows that all politicians obtaining the power, think of putting the money into their own pockets everywhere in the world.
As a result, the expectations of this generation were disappointed. In addition, many of those young people have never travelled abroad, so they don´t know what the world is like. Getting a visa is really complicated and even when they get it, they don´t have any money for travelling. The new generation is somehow in a deep shit!
But the sensations among balcanic people a couple of years ago were very differents. What happened to the false optimism that you commented in your former film, Optimisti ?
I think false optimism occurs in every country just before the elections. A couple of years ago I was pretty disappointed when everything seemed optimistic and ended up nowhere.
Today the situation in Serbia is really bad because the Milosevic´s forces are coming back to the principal scene, and they are sharing the power with democrats. We and in particular the young people are very disoriented. For example, the young actress of my film: for the first time in her life she left Serbia and came to Venice Film Festival. It was her first trip abroad at the age of 24. Can you imagine that you are living in Madrid and never leave it? How can you study art if you aren´t able to see the Prado, the Louvre or the Vatican museum?
If we pay attention in the characters of your films we discover that your protagonist is frecuently a man. Why does it happen in this way?
Because it´s a macho society. Men decide everything. Here in Spain you are also a little machist society. In this point I see some similarities between Serbs and Spanish.
On what concerns social structures weddings seem to play a mayor role in your film and in Balcanic countries, don´t they?
Weddings are the most important events. If you think of the film, the other father is waiting to earn more money than his brother to prepare the arrangements of the biggest wedding. They are willing to save money for a period of two or three years, to live under miserable conditions in order to show off the others that they can do the best wedding. It seems crazy but it´s exactly like that.
Why do they have these huge weddings? Is it because represents the family´s richness?
Albanian and Serbians are both very machist and patriarchal societies.
Some people think that your film is more political than others or more romantic. Do you think of the film as a political or love film?
I´m not quite sure. Somebody asked me the same question just yesterday. At first I was confused and I said it´s a love film and not a political film, because for me a political film means that you want to criticise. I think that´s not the intention of the movie. You can do a documentary or take part in essay fims, but as already pointed out before, the film is about the people. Unfortunately, especially in the Balcans, the influence of politics on our lives is very strong. My dream is to wake up and not to read the newspaper, not to be influenced by politics.
What´s your opinion about your Balcanic fellows? We only know Kusturica and you while the others are obviously relegated to a secondary role.
It´s always like that. The former interviewer asked me just before what I thought about the Spanish Cinema. Unfortunately, I know only a couple of directors, that´s all, I don´t know the Spanish Cinema very well. That reveals the biggest problem, because even this film Honeymoons I´m not sure if it will be distributed in Spain . In these times of economical crisis, television companies aren´t buying these kind of films. Maybe you could see this film during this SEMINCI ´s edition but not in the other festivals or cinemas. It is a problem of European Cinema. We all know very well the American films, even the stupid American films, but we don´t know each other. If Emir Kusturica is preparing something, he knows that they are going to take his film and that probably people will watch it. And I also go to the big festivals. But the others, they aren´t at festivals and they don´t have any distribution of their work. So, how are you going to know these films? It´s a pity because you have some nice little films which are made in Serbia , but they can´t get distribution in the mainstream or being shown into the Cinema Festival Circuit.
As we know, all your filmmaker colleagues have studied in Prague , even posterior balcanic generations. What are the influence of this School and the teachings of professor Elmir klos on your cinema?
He was a great professor. I learned so much from him and from Jan Kandar too. But the most important lesson I learned in Prague was the humour´s weapon. To avoid the censorship in Prague during this period, named the Golden Age, the filmmakers (Jiri Menzel, Vera Chytilová and Milos Forman among others) used humour in order to gain the acceptance of their audience and to pass the censorship. Deep down the movies belonged to the Film Noir genre and reported the society´s corruption. It was very clever. My first films are pretty much influenced by this Czech Style. You could show the worst things but using black joke the government let you exhibit your films. You have to keep in mind that we lived in communism and the censorship was very strict in every single country. The only thing the censors were interested in was restricting the free thought of Serbian people.
But nowadays the mentality of some people follows being so closed. A couple of journalists that watched my film told me that I showed Tirana in a better way than Belgrad. I said it´s not my task to show Tirana or Belgrad and their prejudices made them believe that Tirana was a dirty village, but it´s their problem. They thought I had invented all these cars in the street, the modern Coffees, modern Stores or Chemist´s but they are there! But after all, they are thinking that Tirana is a dirty village.
And if we go back to the film I´d like to know about the difficulties you experienced while you were making it.
To put the money together, to make it, that was the only problem. Later on, when we put the crew together, my Tirana unit had some prejudices but after a couple of days they started to cooperate and in the end it was very emotional, we even shared some tears. I´m really proud that I was the first to initiate this kind of cooperation. Maybe for some people of other countries it doesn´t mean much, but it was a big deal for us.
I´ve read on the Internet the film is the beginning of a trilogy…
That´s not quite right. I made Midwinter Night´s Dream , that was projected in San Sebastian Film Festival and then Optimisti. Both talk about Serbia and somebody asked me if they form a Balcanic trilogy with Honeymoon . I said maybe, who knows, but I didn´t say yes!.
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