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What was the inspiration behind you becoming a director?
I needed to do something. I needed to make a living somehow.
I needed to pass the time somehow.
I needed to assuage...
...my ambition and my vanity in some way.
The most important thing was to do something,
to Iive and feeI myseIf to be fuIIy human.
Were there any specific films, people
or events that were influential?
PeopIe I saw on the street who no-one was paying attention to.
I was interested in observing them.
I could have gone on observing these people forever.
I was sorry I couldn't do this my whole life
and make it my profession.
Then I saw some old films.
Old Italian films...
And then somehow, when I was about 1 6,
it soon became clear... that I would do something on film.
That is, something photographic in reIation to Iife.
The most photographic thing of aII is cinema because it records Iife.
FIat snippets of time.
Of peopIe in fIat snippets of time.
So I went into cinema.
So, in ''Palms'' there arose...
From a dialogue and experimentation with the film.
I was interested in the film itself as a certain type of substance.
A light bearing substance...
...which speaks in the language of photographic reality.
To do something new was what I Ieast wanted to do.
I wanted to create a certain type of fiIm.
The fiIm is the main dramatis persona in "PaIms" .
The figures of the downtrodden onIy serve to reveaI the fiIm's density
and its Iife bIood, if there is such a thing.
Why did you choose these figures to depict this?
Was it coincidence or were they an ideal?
The downtrodden seemed to me to be that Ianguage,
aIIowing one to see the fiIm itseIf, if you can put it that way.
To see and to feel with one's eyes.
The film was shot like a string of prayer beads for the eyes.
When we watch a film with our eyes, we sift through these beads.
And the figures of these poor people in the film polish up our vision
and our eyes in much the same way as the prayer beads
made out of bits of cloth or stones polish the fingers of those who pray.
Thus each frame of this fiIm shouId poIish the eyes
of the person watching the fiIm.
How did you succeed in making the film look so old,
as if it had just been dug up by archaeologists?
It was very simple. I had to duplicate the image represented
by transferring it from 1 6mm to 35mm fiIm.
From narrow to wide format.
It's clear that the representation is very simple and home-made.
Like a bIack and white fresco that is cracking and fIaking a bit.
Could you tell us a little bit about the specific place,
the time and the people appearing in the film?
How typical were they?
It was a town in which everything was cIear to me, where I feeI great.
I feIt compIeteIy at home there.
Kishinev was my whole world.
It would have been different had it been another town.
But the whole world and all other worlds resided in Kishinev for me.
How typical were the things that you showed?
Was this part of town an exception?
No, it was a town and there were people there.
There are poor people in any town.
I filmed people to whom I had access.
I expIained it wasn't for teIevision, the cinema or a newspaper.
It was for my Iove of it.
I didn't think I wouId make a fiIm out of it at the time.
I just felt that I had to film and film and film...
I was interested in the people, their actions,
their figures, their close-ups as a language,
like a sort of code...
A code through which you can talk with people.
A certain non-verbaI Ianguage - a visuaI Ianguage.
Did you think about the end product
or were you prepared to keep filming indefinitely?
A Iot of materiaI accumuIated and I decided to turn it into a fiIm.
At the basis of this fiIm Iies one person's monoIogue.
A monoIogue addressed not so much to another person or to God
but a monoIogue to someone...
...yet to come into this worId, but of fIesh and bone -
a chiId stiII in its mother's womb...
...who will certainly be killed.
A child destined not to live.
And the conceptual part of the message to your son.
Was this message a reflection of these images
or did it ripen of its own accord...
Did it develop independently?
No. There was a man in Kishinev who wouId waIk the streets aII day
taIking to his unborn son. This man existed.
He never taIked to anyone.
But sometimes if one wanted to hear what he was saying,
one couId foIIow him and Iisten to what he was saying.
He wouId spend aII day taIking to his unborn son.
His wife had gone off with another man and got rid of their chiId.
But he continued to taIk to his son.
When I was stiII quite young I overheard a part of what he said.
Therefore it was easier for me
to teII my story... through this person.
The film is the conversation between this person and his unborn son.
We don't see this person - we only hear his voice.
Going back to the people in the film, did you know them personally?
No. I shot peopIe who I saw in the street...
...and in the houses I went into.
I couId go freeIy into these houses without permission.
It was a squaIid IittIe pIace where the poor peopIe Iived.
The intimate way the film was shot gives the impression
that you'd lived with them.
I don't remember that. I was distanced from them.
I didn't set myseIf any goaI to create such a feeIing.
I don't remember that any particular closeness arose between us.
I would stay with them or follow behind
and just filmed them and that was it.
I remember one accusation made in the cinema in London -
that you used these people instead of helping them.
That what they needed was basic social welfare
rather than the theories
that you were proposing to them.
I have never proposed any esoteric theories to anyone - God forbid!
I'm an artist, not a sociaI worker.
These peopIe simpIy existed for me as modeIs.
A painter sees a person on the street
and invites him and pays him if he can't persuade him to pose for free.
An artist puIIs these poor peopIe and aIcohoIics into his studio...
and creates portraits of kings and prophets out of them
and then sends them on their way.
It was exactIy the same for me. There was no common human tie.
I didn't think about them or their Iives for Iong.
It was more a diaIogue with myseIf.
It had and has nothing, and can have nothing to do with them.
I am the artist and they are the modeIs.
And the stories you told about them.
Did they came from them or from you
or was it a combination of the two?
No. I recorded their voices and remembered their stories
and sometimes I had a camera.
When I was filming them myself I heard their voices.
And then out of their stories I wrote biographical allegories.
Out of the lives of two people I would write the story of one.
So their life histories would sound like allegories or fairytales.
Did you write these stories while filming or later on?
The stories of their lives were written before and during the shoot.
They wrote themselves during my life in Kishinev.
Nevertheless, I didn't change a single fact within these stories.
I discarded everything that was superfluous
and created these allegories.
And I recorded them whilst dubbing the film.
It was improvisation.
When I was dubbing the fiIm, teIIing the stories of these peopIe,
I simpIy taIked via these images that I saw on the screen
and just continued to taIk.
Then I wouId discard any text that was superfIuous.
It aII came out of the darkness.
The screen wouId Iight up,
I wouId see the figures of these poor peopIe,
the frames fIew past and I just taIked.
That is how this monoIogue came into being.
It was definiteIy born in the darkness.
In the darkness of the haII where the recording was pIaying.
How was the film received in Russia and the rest of the world?
These sorts of fiIms... are usuaIIy viewed
either with rapture or hostiIity, even by peopIe in the arts.
And that was how it was viewed. Most peopIe were hostiIe to it.
How was this hostility expressed?
Resentment. CompIete rejection of the fiIm.
Rejection of the message behind the fiIm.
Resentment towards this message.
This message is very difficuIt.
This message is more emotionaI than anything eIse.
It's very difficult to define in words.
But this is the message behind the film.
That's the spirit of it.
There is a lot that is ecstatic, hysterical and insane in it.
It used to be caIIed amateur fiImmaking.
Honest, personaI fiImmaking.
Auteur cinema. You can caII it what you Iike.
I don't think there is an apt name for it.
It's fiImmaking and that's it.
Does that mean you achieved your aim?
No. This is just an attempt.
It works at certain moments...
...in a way that I can't express in words.
AIthough the fiIm is quite Iong
it onIy takes pIace in severaI episodes.
These episodes were not pIanned by me.
These episodes came about...
They arose...
...of their own accord later on.
During the creation of the film.
For exampIe at five or six moments when somehow...
...the image, the voice and the music
or the absence of a voice or music came together.
Something coincided, something that we see and hear.
Such fiIms are made bIindIy.
This happens not because it was something I wanted to happen,
but simpIy because it just happened that way.