estfilmindustri

The approach to the human face is without doubt the hallmark and the distinguishing quality of the film. From this we might conclude that the actor is our most precious element and that the camera only registers the reactions of this instrument.
-Ingmar Bergman, 1959
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Film-making doesn't mean audiences, festivals, reviews, interviews. It means getting up every day at six o'clock in the morning. It means the cold, the rain, the mud and having to carry heavy lights. It's a nerve-racking business and, at a certain point, everything else has to come second, including your family, emotions, and private life. Of course, engine drivers, business men or bankers would say the same thing about their jobs. No doubt they'd be right, but i do my job and i'm writing about mine. Perhaps i shouldn't be doing this job any more. I'm coming to the end of something essential to film-maker -namely patience. I've got no patience for actors, lightning cameramen, the weather, for waiting around, for the facts that nothing turns out how i'd like it to. At the same time, i mustn't let this show. It takes a lot out of me, hiding my lack of patience from the crew. I think that the more sensitive ones know i'm not happy with this aspect of my personnality.
Film-making is the same all over the world: i'm given a corner on a small studio stage; there's a stray sofa there, a table, a chair. In this make-believe interior, my stern instructions sound grotesque: Silence! Camera! Action! Once again i'm tortured by the thought that i'm doing an insignificant job. A few years ago, Libération asked various directors why they made films. I answered at the time: 'Because i don't know how to do anything else.' It was the shortest reply and maybe that's why it get noticed. Or maybe because all of us film-makers with the faces we pull, with the money we spend on films and the amounts we earn, with our pretentions to high society, so often have the feeling of how absurd our work is. I can understand Fellini and most of the others who build streets, houses and even artificial seas in the studio: in this way not so many people get to see the shameful and insignificant job of directing.
as so often happens when filming, something occurs which -for a while at least- causes this feeling of idiocy to disappear. this time it's four young french actresses. in a chance place, in inappropriate clothes, pretending that they've got props and partners they act so beatifully that everything becomes real. they speak some fragments of dialogue, they smile or worry, and at that moment i can understand what it's all for.
-Krzysztof Kieslowski