Albert Serra: "The film director does not have to direct anything"

Albert Serra (Banyoles, Girona, 46 years old) is one of the most successful Catalan (and Spanish) film directors on the international scene.

With

, his last film, he dazzled at Cannes.

His next work will be immersed in the world of bullfighting.

Between one project and another we take advantage of the time to talk.

Ask.

In filming, he induces chaos with an artistic intention.

How does it manifest in Pacifiction?

Response.

In the first five minutes of shooting I saw that the actress who had to play a leading role would not work.

She had a contract, we paid her but I took her away from her.

Then I didn't know who to choose and I called an actress from Liberté.

He came, did three or four very good scenes, argued with the producer and left.

It was the 18th day of 26 days of filming.

And then we improvised a whole plot that has become a bit abstract, but which, obviously, is greater than any of the previous ones, much more original.

What the camera records is invisible to the human eye, and for this reason it is necessary to accept the chaos with a certain indifference.

Q.

Have you improvised what everyone says is your most narrative film?

R.

That it ended up being a narrative is a coincidence.

The only thing that was in the script was the purpose of doing something romanesque: lightness and vicissitudes.

That everything ended up coming together and there was an evolution of the plot and relationships is a miracle.

For me, narrative is a production issue.

I always work the same: if I go to a different place every day with all the available people, I will do what I have always done, but with the simple change of space, since a narrative sensation will be created.

P.

That changes the idea we had of the director as a demiurge who organizes everything

R.

The classic way of working does not work today when people are finer and we are used to all kinds of images.

It's too predictable and childish;

nothing magical is happening on camera.

The director is only responsible for the images, the director does not have to direct anything, perhaps the director destroys.

There are phrases and attitudes of the protagonist that, even today, if I had to say if it is a film or a stolen image, I would sign the second option.

The grace is that it is neither one thing nor the other.

I destroy the possibility of the actor consciously communicating with the camera.

I myself can not get to penetrate the faces of the actors in many moments of the film.

****

P.

If everything is so mysterious, why in many interviews, as a result of the film, have you made political statements, as if you were concerned about inequality or colonialism?

R.

It is a certain cynicism.

The raison d'être of the opinions I express is their artistic usefulness.

If I go to Tahiti, what do I know about the indigenous people, were they a very pure people and the Westerners have crushed their paradise?

It's probably true, but I don't know and I don't care.

I go there and I begin to hate these people, I look for flaws in them and I sincerely hate them.

It is nothing more than a strategy to avoid falling into the cliché and so that the use that I will make of your world escapes… but the hatred is sincere.

It is also cynical to think that any political opinion expressed in works of art can have consequences.

It is evident that it is not so.

These ridiculous people who make movies with a "message" must do it to feel good about themselves.

P.

_

But to get grants, his auteur films need the political commission to approve the message.

R.

Obviously, I am against all this.

That you can't make a bullfight movie because it's bad?

That to be a woman you have to have some kind of identity of your own?

They are not aesthetic criteria.

This ends up transforming into self-censorship: not consciously accepting the risk of certain aesthetic decisions.

Miraculously, I always stay on the edge of self-censorship, never crossing it.

All this taken to the ultimate consequences would mean that bad people cannot appear in a film.

This is especially exciting in the cinema: the actors are so close to real life that what they do can have consequences.

Who tells you that when two actors kiss each other they don't like it?

Q.

And why not stay politically correct?

A.

Because it's not funny.

As a character in the film says, you have to be able to create a foreign language, which serves to darken rather than clarify.

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