Distinguished Serb filmmaker Goran Paskaljevic gave a very interesting masterclass on Thursday, November 19 at the John Cassavetes theater, in the framework of TIFF.
Goran Paskaljevic rejected the term “masterclass”, saying his meeting with the audience was a “discussion”. The audience however knew very well that they had taken invaluable lessons in filmmaking from the Serb artist. TIFF president Georges Corraface was present at the event. Making a comment on Paskaljevic’ work, Mr Corraface noted: “Humor is the graciousness of desperate people and this element stands out in the entire career of Goran Paskaljevic”.
Commenting on the distinguished guest of the Festival, TIFF’s Balkan Survey coordinator Dimitris Kerkinos said: “Goran Paskaljevic is a filmmaker who has been active in the last 40 years. He has directed fifteen feature films, thirty documentaries and a number of short films, and one of his trademarks is artistic and ideological consistency. A humanist, imbued by the simplicity of Italian neorealism and especially the cinema of Vittorio de Sica, Paskaljevic makes movies based on simple stories”.
The Serb filmmaker, after thanking the Festival and Dimitris Kerkinos personally for the edition he prepared in his honor, moved on to explain why he is so deeply moved when he is in Thessaloniki and at its Festival, more moved even compared to his presence in New York, whose festival paid a tribute to his work two years ago: “Thessaloniki is where I always present my movies, I have served as president of the Festival’s jury in the past and I am always happy to return here. It is truly a special moment for me”. The Serb filmmaker, who has lived for a year in Greece in the past, added: “What you probably don’t know is that my grandfather from my father’s side was a Greek from Thessaloniki named Pashalis. When my grandmother and father came to Serbia, the first Paskaljevic was born”.
Paskaljevic, adressing the audience stressed that the important thing is that movies are made. “To me it has never been a problem how to find a story, I never had a problem of ‘writers block’. I have always had three or four stories in my mind that I wanted to narrate to people. Real stories, with real characters. My problem has always been lack of funding. What I want, therefore, is to encourage young people to get involved in filmmaking in any way they can. I give the same advice to my son, when he is complaining about missing this or that. I tell him ‘grab your camera, get out there and shoot your movie, if you have a story’”.
Paskaljevic commented next on how big film budgets can restrain the filmmaker. He mentioned as an example his experience of working with a big American studio, which was willing to provide him with the budget he requested, but not with the artistic freedom he desired. “During the first steps of my career, we had huge, unwieldy cameras which I was forced to use in order to capture sound as well as image. With the technology available those days, most of the times you had to add the sound to the image later. In order to capture the spontaneity of actors, I was forced to do more static shots, using those cameras. Compared to now, when I have seven or eight million dollars to make a movie, differences are great. But let me tell you something: When we were preparing Tristan and Isolde, a film with a 40 million dollar budget, suddenly the production was canceled. Despite the fact that the costs of pre-production (which lasted more than a year and a half) and the script were covered, the movie was never filmed, because a film of the same genre starring Kenneth Branagh released at that time had proved to be a box office failure. So the studio decided it is better to lose 1.5 million dollars rather than 40 million, and this was the reason it pulled the plug on my film. It is then that I realized that cinema is in the hands of petty accountants and that big budgets imply various obligations. This is the reason why I believe in the digital age, which in my opinion will not be the undoing of cinema – quite the contrary”. Justifying this point, Paskaljevic mentioned the example of the distribution of his latest film, Honeymoons, which is released in Spain in two copies –one in Madrid and one in Barcelona – while six other digital copies are used in smaller cities around the country. These digital copies are top - quality ones and make his work reachable to a wider audience.
Paskaljevic’ movies naturally figured prominently in the discussion. The filmmaker made references to specific examples from his long career in the motion picture industry. The audience watched characteristic scenes form his films. In one of them, The Optimists, Lazar Ristovski hypnotizes a woman. In another sequel, the same actor meets a 12 year-old autistic girl and her mother, who have occupied his house during his ten year absence in Midwinter night’s dream. This scene raised the question of why the filmmaker had decided to cast a real autistic girl and not an actress. The audience also asked Paskaljevic about the challenge a filmmaker faces when dealing with the unpredictable behavior of non professional actors. “When I met the autistic girl I was charmed. Making the decision to cast her, I faced an ethical dilemma, however her doctor was adamant that such a social activity would do her nothing but good. For this scene I tried to keep everything as small and unobtrusive as possible – the cameras, the actors, the lights. Then I brought here to the set, without having the remotest idea as to her possible reactions. Certainly this is was a risk, because we didn’t know what will come out of it, but this is the kind of adventure I seek in every film. It would be impossible for me to make movies without this sense of adventure. I want the script to be developing. Besides, when shooting a film, some parts prove to be more important than others and some less important. This becomes obvious from the movie itself, which is a living creation. This is the reason why I could not make pictures with the Americans, because they wanted everything to be done, following the script to the letter. I actually did make one film with them, but it had no spontaneity – it was a film I lost my soul as a director”.
Commenting on the role of cultural differences in filmmaking, Paskaljevic said that he has noted something similar in France, which, despite being his second country, is not a welcoming place for his films. “In France, it feels like they have solved all their problems and are only worried about relationships and love. Its not like the Balkans, where there are important and strong stories to tell. This is why I make films here and not there. In France, they ask me to see their country as a Frenchman. They are not interested in my scripts, where I see France from my own perspective. Possibly, they think that films made in this manner will be commercial failures”.
During the masterclass, Goran Paskaljevic invited one of his favorite actors, Nebojsa Milovanovic, the protagonist of his last film Honeymoons, which participates in this year’s TIFF, to make a comment: “The important thing is trust” said the young actor, adding that “there must be mutual trust between the actor and the director. And we have this kind of trust with Goran”. Paskaljevic ended the discussion summarizing his view on his art in a laconic way: “I try to say what other people cannot”.
