Ulrich Seidl presented a workshop on his new projects Paradise and Basement (working title) in the framework of TIFF’s tribute to the work of the Austrian filmmaker.
Addressing participants, TIFF director Dimitris Eipides said: “I am glad we meet again. The 52nd edition of the Festival is approaching its conclusion. It is an honor for us to host such a distinguished and important director as Ulrich Seidl. His work, both in fiction and documentary, is fascinating. Today he will be presenting an important workshop based on his latest projects”.
Initially, Seidl’s intention was to make one film, but he ended up developing three separate one, which are still works in progress. During the workshop, participants had the opportunity to be the first ones watching clips from his three projects. Present at the workshop was also the managing director of the Austrian Film Commission, Martin Schweighofer, who contributed in organizing the tribute to Seidl. “Seidl is one of the two filmmakers that helped the most to shape the identity of Austrian cinema, the other being Michael Haneke. Werner Herzog has said of Seidl that ‘never before did I have the chance to look hell in the eye’. Seidl takes us to a strange world with bizarre people. Is Seidl a monster? No; he is a very serious, low-key person, like all Austrians. He was born in a town 100 kilometers north of Vienna, close to the Czech border, and grew up in a conservative catholic family”.
Seidl said that his social environment had exerted great influence on his way of thinking. “A man’s personality is determined by his origins and my origins are my roots. I suffered under the rigid religious environment I grew up in, but thanks to that environment, I developed my insightfulness, and I resisted the authority of the father, of school, of the church – of authority in all its manifestations. This is how I developed, making films focusing on social situations”.
The filmmaker noted that he works both with professional and amateur actors and some times his method demands a preparation stage that can last several years. His Paradise project is a film with episodic structure. The protagonists in the three episodes are three women: a mother, her daughter and her sister. The first woman, described by the filmmaker as a “sugar mama”, is in her fifties and strives to find love and completion. At the behest of a friend of hers she goes on vacation to Kenya, where she tries to find sexual acceptance. Her daughter is an overweight 13year old girl, who falls in love with the director of her diet clinic. Her sister is a religious zealot, resigned from the idea of ever finding love in this life, who devotes herself fully to Jesus. All three of them are searching for paradise, for completion.
Mr. Schweighofer related that “this project goes back ten years. I remember talking with Dimitris Eipides and Ulrich at the Toronto Festival – Seidl had just arrived from Venice with the Silver Lion. We were talking about his film Import Export when he told us of another film on sex tourism. It turned out that instead of making one movie, he ended up doing three independent ones. What you just saw is a first cut, but it only takes the viewer ten seconds to realize he is watching a Seidl film. His films are very characteristic”.
The director revealed that he does not write dialogue in his scripts. “Making a film is similar to the beginning of a journey. I often have no idea of the stages or the final destination. My method of writing differs from the standards of script-writing. Besides, scripts are used for shaping the story and finding funding, but the work done on the set is open to alterations. In my fiction films, I allow myself ample freedom to develop the narration, a luxury I do not have in my documentaries. If I had a rigid script, I wouldn’t be able to change anything but a couple of details, because budgets are limited”, explained Seidl. Talking about the script-writing process with his collaborator Veronika Franz, Seidl explained: “We don’t sit around the same table. I don’t know with certainty where the story begins. My ideas are mounting up on a pile. I write a lot and then I start eliminating things. Once I have arrived at a more concrete text, I send it to Veronika, who puts in her own comments and sends it back to me. The final script is the outcome of this distance dialogue “.
Once the final draft is ready, they begin searching for funding. Then comes the casting process. “Casting is very time consuming, since we don’t have a list of actors and we don’t employ an agency. I spend a lot of time on the actors. I feel as if their expressions are a reflection of me. Amateur actors do not get the script, so I try to convey what the film is about, so they can get a feeling of the role. I try to establish a relationship of trust, so that I can also be certain they are the right ones for the role. Once we have established a relationship of mutual trust, we try out the scenes directly on the set, so that they remain impulsive when they act. It is all an improvisation”, said the director.
“In Seidl’s films, cinematography and the artistic aspect are of paramount importance. Seidl is exact, his frames are flawless”, said Schweighofer. Picking up on this remark, Seidl explained: “if someone sees the first film I made at cinema school, he will be able to discern my distinctive style, which evolved in my later movies. My cinematographer and editor have been working with me for years and they know what I want, what I seek in every new film I make”.
The workshop focused a lot on whether Seidl’s films belong to the documentary or fiction film genre. “When I started out I wanted to do documentaries. Back then, documentaries were not strictly documentaries. They entailed fiction, which gave filmmakers more freedom of artistic expression at a low budget. Making a documentary meant you didn’t need a cast of actors or a camera operator; you didn’t have to get a license. For a year, I was free to shoot whatever interested me, to collect the material and then make my next film”, said Seidl, explaining: “for me, fiction and documentary are closely related. When the actors performing a role are not filmed on their own surroundings, but are acting a part, we are talking about fiction. In my film Models, for example, there are both fictional scenes, and scenes shot inside the models’ houses. My leap to fiction came with Dog Days”.
Mr. Schweighofer noted that Seidl’s films “have always been very controversial; none of them was received with open arms”. Seidl added: “I was really disappointed at first. They told me I would never be able to secure funding. After many positive reviews from abroad, however, my films were accepted in Austria as well. Facing the critics was for me a process of learning. But I stayed true to my personal style, because I was confident, despite the fact that part of the audience does not like my truth or thinks that it doesn’t faithfully reflect Austrian society. This is what happened with my film Losses to Be Expected, which was filmed at the Austrian border. People who have no idea about the status of minorities are disturbed. However the people featured in my film present themselves exactly as they are”.
In the second episode of Paradise, the heroine is a religious woman who tries to convert a man – the woman is played by a professional actor, while the man is an amateur. “In my film Jesus, You Know I discovered there are religious people who go from door to door trying to proselytize others. We followed them, along with representatives of the official church, to see what they do. Then, me and the actress imitated them. We knocked on doors and showed people religious icons of the Virgin Mary, to see how they would react. Some sent us away, while others invited us in. The actress was raised in a strict, repressive catholic family. It was so hard for us to see eye to eye, that at one point we said ‘that’s it, we are dropping the movie’. A year passed, and during that time, the actress went to a monastery trying to come to contact with God. We tried again after one year. And while I was preparing this episode for years, the scene was over and done with just two shots taken in a couple of hours. You can spend endless time and still go nowhere, but you can also have the result you had hoped for in a couple of hours”, noted Seidl.
Seidl then replied to Mr. Schweighofer’s question about whether his film is a tragedy or a comedy: “What I want to achieve is to shock the audience, make them feel uneasy, make them feel something. I want audiences to watch scenes that make them cry, feel bewildered or laugh. The mechanics of laughter and cry are very different depending on the person, and this is something I like very much. Someone might start laughing with a scene, disturbing the person sitting next to him, who thought the same scene was tragic. The tragic element is very subjective”.
The workshop ended with a screening of clips from Seidl’s latest documentary project, Basement. “This is a project that started three years ago. When I was making Dog Days I discovered that many people in Austria have basements at their houses, which are often bigger than their actual house, and that they spend a lot of time there. When the story about the Austrian who kept his daughter locked up at the basement came out, I did not make any public comment, but I decided to make a film on the relationship between Austrians and their basements”, explained the director.
The tribute to Ulrich Seidl is one of the events of the 52nd TIFF funded by the European Union – European Regional Development Fund, in the framework of Central Macedonia Regional Operational Program 2007-2013.
