You studied at IDHEC. What led you to move away from “traditional” narration to a purer style today?
It’s the mental path you take when you’ve used a tool in a certain way, and suddenly you try something else. The narrative, the script, predictability, shooting the film, actors who take charge of their emotions, the crew, the production, the cost, our economic relationship with the world… freedom is strictly economic. All of that mixes together and eventually, with lighter and more refined equipment and tools, you manage to better define the scope of your work and avoid certain conventions you used to take pleasure in using. You don’t disown them, but they just don’t fuel you anymore. They don’t inspire you. And you sort of have the illusion of renewing yourself, that you’re following the successive metamorphoses of your life, and so are your films.
Did the development of the video camera help you come closer to where you wanted to be?
Yes, but it’s already outdated. No one cares today if something was filmed with an enormous camera surrounded by fourteen servants, or with a little handheld camera. But for me, at my age then and at that point in my career, fifteen years ago, my working tool, which was rather heavy, rather crude and fairly expensive, became light, refined and cheap. It suddenly had all the right qualities. So I used it. And I listened to it because it led me where I hadn’t gone before. I am a child of the camera, of the camera as a tool.
Along the same lines, I’ve read in interviews that you praise the development of special effects as being new territory, nearly uncharted ground. What possible evolution do you see in this direction?
That’s part of a path I would’ve also liked to follow, but I’m very attached to what I pick up with my senses, my eyes, my ears. I work within reality, but for people who work in the imaginary, you can imagine a complete reshaping of reality, with monsters, purple dawns, whatever you want. Digital allows for endless exploration. So for both of us – me more as an observer, others who are more transformers – the tool is perfect. In any discipline.
You are, effectively, in the position of an observer, while in more traditional cinema, we see a way of re-creating a pre-existing vision…
Before, you would see things that were funny or stirring and you wanted to film them, but you didn’t have the right tool, so you wrote stories and filmed them with actors, but actually it was a rather weak reconstruction of a real-life model. Whereas I have the impression of being there when it happens. I film directly. If you film directly, I find that reality offers you stories and utterly sumptuous narratives. It’s time itself, on the faces, evolution, hence the marvelous laws of narration, suspense, anticipation, conclusion, revival and theme. You have that in the other way, except that there’s a profound law of relationship between the showman – the filmmaker – and the audience and people filmed. A triangle between the filmmaker, the audience and the person he’s filming.
Who are the filmmakers today that…
(interrupting) I’m not going to name names. I haven’t named a filmmaker in twenty years, and the few times I have, they’re dead. I choose dead ones. That way, I have the freedom to say what I want, even if it’s often quite good, like for Mr. Whale, who made The Invisible Man. Seeing without being seen, that’s the basis. All the rest…
Do you still keep a video notebook?
I wait for events that are in the midst of happening, a story already under way. I gave up taking notes; I look for things that have already been drawn. I sometimes come back to them; I have around twenty ongoing projects, around twenty people I’m making films about. I don’t know if I’ll edit them, don’t know if I’ll put them in a feature-length film. I don’t know yet…
You don’t plan to shoot on 35mm film again, do you?
I have a problem… If I were forty years old, I could do it all over again, but now, I have no desire to find myself with a crew, a lab… I need an immediate solution, easy, light – that’s when I’m at my best. My working tool is the unforeseen, not manufacturing emotion, but being there when the emotion breaks out naturally. I’m not a militant against old-system. I don’t judge it all. No judgment at all.
What does the release of your films on DVD mean to you? Is it something that touches you personally?
Yes, I have to be involved, be around, put together the bonuses… I have to watch over the copy, the transfer, and then, what do we add? In the one for Thérèse, there’s a lot of added material. I went through what I had filmed but hadn’t edited, and then edited some of it. They were little things that occurred to me at the time, and I thought they might be interesting. But I could never make a bonus to explain how I did it, explaining to people what they wouldn’t have seen. Never. A bonus for pleasure, yes, to discover something else, to thank people for buying the film.
Your films are suited to this format.
Yes, especially these three films, connected over a thirty-year period.
For example, there are five hours of portraits! That’s why I made just one 27-minute bonus. It has to be watched in small doses. Even outward appearance is a show. No, I’m pleased. Ce répondeur… (This Answering Service Takes No Messages), for example, had practically disappeared. No more copies. On 16mm, it was dead… And now it’s still alive in a way. And for quite a while: it’s not on film, there’s a permanence to it.
And Le plein de super (Fill ’er Up with Super)?
I engage in passive resistance… It’s released when it needs to be, when there are people interested. We’re better when we’re in need than when we’re satisfied. Anyway… There’s an edition of Martin et Léa (Martin and Léa) in the works, but it’s too long. These films were made in ’76-’77 and are very “’70s”, with a ’70s mindset, but with depth, no music, none of the folklore. And since I made a lot of little bits with the four from Le plein de super, and with the one from Le plein de super who’s in Martin and Léa, I have a bonus that could be very lively. The film has been re-edited, and saved from oblivion. Well, not oblivion, since it’s been shown on television and they keep traces. It’ll be released by Pyramides or Rezo or some other independent. There are problems with the rights, but I’m letting them take care of that. I don’t want to waste my energy on that.