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'Making a film is like creating a new world'
Jan Sverak, a 35-year-old Czech director with two Oscars under his belt, came of age during the Czech Republic's transition to democracy. He writes about making movies, life under the communists and the freedom of the imagination
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I have always wanted to be an artist,to do something visual. I was very interested in the art of illusion, making fiction look like reality. As a kid, I tried to imitate different handwriting. I was very stimulated by the idea that everything was possible, that you can make anything happen. My favorite cartoon of that time was Potkali se u Kolina (They Met Near Kolin), about two bears who played together by changing their bodies into a train, car, anything they wanted. I was building my own worlds on paper.
"Making a film is like creating a new world. In a film you are always trying to make fiction look like reality. The master of this is Ridley Scott. He always fills his sets with garbage and dirt. The spaceship in Alien has rusty chains and water is dripping from them. It makes it look real.
After the fall of communism, I was able to fulfill my dream of becoming a filmmaker. Before we were like rabbits in a hutch. It didn't rain on us, they gave us food and made sure we were healthy. But we couldn't go outside.
After the fall of communism, they took the hutch away, let us all out on the lawn and said, "You have freedom, fend for yourself." Few people had the courage. After all, it rained outside, the sun was hot, and one could get preyed on by a bigger animal. But I found the possibilities fascinating.
I am still a bit of a child. I don't want to accept that things are given once and for all. I want to believe that everything can be different, everything can be changed. I tell a story from a different angle. It's the view of a mouse. I play with detail. When somebody is saying something, I show what he is doing with his hand on a glass of beer. These are things a child notices while the adults look each other in the eye when they interact. A child would notice that an uncle scratched his butt or that an aunt's necklace is about to break. You learn a lot less about a character if you are just looking at talking heads.
I use several things to make fiction look like reality. I don't think the focus should be too sharp in a film. If it is, you can see the clothes are just costumes, that the sidewalk curbs are not authentic or that there are power lines in the background even though they aren't supposed to be there. Then there is smoke. When you send smoke across the screen or there is smoke in the background, it makes the scene look real because smoke is real. It's not made up. Rain is real, too. When an actor acts in an environment that is real, the reality kind of projects onto his character. Mistakes are another good tool, you leave an error in, let coincidence play a role, an unexpected move, an actor forgets his line and is trying to remember it.
Despite being a filmmaker, I think that there is nothing better than literature. In literature you imagine the story your own way. Your imagination is in top gear. You are the one to build the sets, picture the faces and you project your own experience onto the characters' deeds. It's a very creative process. A radio play is similar but you already have a voice that tells you a little how to read things. It's no longer entirely up to you. Film serves it to you on a plate, there is little room for imagination.
But I am not putting film down. By making a film, I show people this is what's happening in my head when I read this book. I am interested in stories which somehow relate to my life, that deal with issues that I am dealing with. In Kolya [an Academy Award-winning tale about the relationship between an aging Czech cellist and a five-year-old Russian boy left behind by his mother on her flight to the West] I was trying to solve my problem of marrying very young, having children shortly [thereafter] and losing freedom. All of a sudden, I found myself thinking, "I am getting old and haven't had any fun. What are the children giving me for feeding them and taking care of them?" There is an answer in Kolya: one is richer if he is giving rather than acting selfish."
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