10 · 07 · 07

Carlos Reygadas offers a Master Class

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Vicente Castañar

Mexican filmmaker, Carlos Reygadas, offered yesterday a Master Class at Biblioteca Pública (Public Library). Mexican filmmakers, whose movies are competing, went to the Class.
At the end of the class, Reygadas received from Alejandro Ramirez El Ojo, a sculpture by Javier Marín. It is an award that recognizes his work’s achievements: “we want to see more of you at these events.”
The filmmaker, who is autodidactic, spoke about the following topics:

His background…
“My making as a filmmaker started at 15 or 16. I started watching a lot of films and I realized that there was more about it than just telling a story, as narrative layers. I saw a lot of Kaurismaki, Carlos Saura, Berlanga Tarkovski, Rosellini and all sorts of things. When I watched Herzog’s Burden of Dreams, 1982, I felt really envious about his work in the jungle and I decided to change my life. I went to Belgium for 1 year to make movies. I learn the filming technique from watching many movies. I read André Bazan’s What is cinema? I watched every movie this great French critic mentioned in his book. I also read Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky.”

An artist creates for himself?
“There is a duty and responsibility, one has to confront this, this part of oneself is generous, but you have to render it.
There is egotistic film making but one can truly see when beauty or pain is expressed in a genuine sharing way.”

Inspiration vs. work
“I believe in both inspiration and work, but the former only works if it is based on the latter one, then it all arrives unexpectedly, some detail you noticed. I believe that films got a core where everything else just keeps adding on.”

[imagen] Photography…
“All my movies are great format; Japón was 8mm, Batallas en el desierto was filmed with the longest cinemascope I was able to find. I always try to work with the greatest amount of natural lighting I am able to. My team is small, in Luz silenciosa there were only two of us working, and an assistant for the lenses; we used Russian lenses, anamorphic, from the 60s. Unlike Carl Zeiss lenses, which are too crystalline, the Russian lenses have historically been described as lenses that can film air, because they do not have a lot of high definition. I believe that the human eye sees things this way, and I believe this view allows the movie to have more emotional content. In the search of purity there is more truth and pleasure.”

“I want my photography to have less contrast and more quality, I try to find simple planes, that is why I make few sequenced planes, frontal travelings or reverse ones, not lateral ones, no shoulder camera, its movement is intuitive. I have discovered how fragile film images can be, the delicate lab work, and color correction, scratching negatives... I have a lot of admiration and respect for those that make perfect copies.”

Time…
“I believe in something George Lucas said: the most important parts of a film are the first five minutes and the last ten, the rest can just be filling. Like the first idea of a book, its first image will tell you everything because it gives you its world view. I start from a general idea, a context. Sometimes I take time off, leave something for one year and do something else, and then later I write the script in just three days.”

Acting…
“I don’t like to work with professional actors, because all they do is represent characters. Theater is watched from a distance so actors over act, make broad faces, you have to depend on light and make up. Unlike camera, which records man in a very direct way