Ulrich Seidl Intervju
IMPORT EXPORT was a strenuous project: In the Ukraine you shot at -30º C (-22º F), in Austria, among the dying. Did this push you to your physical and psychological limits, or were those normal conditions?
Ulrich Seidl: Every film has its own laws, and none of them come easily to me. But extreme conditions rarely deter me. I believe that intense and extreme scenes and images can be created only under intense and extreme conditions.
Your film deals with labour migration between East and West. Which struck you first, the import or export?
Ulrich Seidl: Export. The idea for this film came while I was working on another film. While I was researching a group documentary titled, “Zur Lage” [State of the Nation], I became acquainted with an extended working-class family in which everyone was unemployed. Ever since, I often thought about using them as the basis for a fiction film. As for the Import side, for years I’ve wanted to make a film in Eastern Europe because I feel very close to the people there. So I began writing stories that move from East to West and West to East.
Are the actors in the two lead roles professionals or again non-professionals, like in your last film “Hundstage” [Dog Days]?
Ulrich Seidl: Neither of the leading actors had ever appeared before a camera before. In real life, Paul Hofmann, the Austrian, is very close to the role he plays. He is also unemployed, hangs out, seeking love and brawls. Ekateryna rak, the Ukrainian, used to be a nurse and plays one in the film. Before this role she had never been to the West, and she doesn’t plan to live here now.
In the story the two main characters don’t meet. Why not?
Ulrich Seidl: In fact they were going to meet each other, without speaking, at the border. That’s what was in the script, and I think that’s what would be in every script. But as the shoot came closer, I decided I didn’t want there to be any physical borders in the film, since in any case they are coming down. Contrary to borders within society, which remain.
You shot the film over two winters. You spent two years editing the film, and a year casting it. Why does it take you so long to make your films?
Ulrich Seidl: Because I’m a bit slow at everything (laughs). No, seriously: my scripts are only outlines for what to shoot. At some point the film begins, and my crew and I start on a journey. The journey has a destination but nobody knows the route it’ll take to get there. It’s a process that develops, and there are frequent interruptions because I simply don’t know what to do next.
IMPORT EXPORT is a feature drama shot in a way that sometimes makes it look very much like a documentary...
Ulrich Seidl: In that sense IMPORT EXPORT is more documentary than “Dog Days”, since to a large degree it was shot in real, hence documentary, existing locations and worlds. That is, in two real hospitals, real Employment Offices, real internet sex parlours and geriatric hospitals.
Speaking of geriatric hospitals: Here, too, you mingled actors with real patients. Was it difficult to shoot with the dying?
Ulrich Seidl: The only difficulties came from officials and staff, who tried everything to interfere with my project, no doubt because of the many scandals involving Austrian geriatric institutes and the subsequent damage to their reputations. months before the start of shooting we began spending time with the patients. To prepare, actress maria Hofstätter, for instance, worked for several months in a geriatric ward twice a week on both night and day shifts. For the patients, or at least those who were aware of it, the shooting offered a welcome change from their prison-like routine.
Your first feature, “Dog Days”, was awarded the Grand Special Jury Prize in Venice. Has success changed anything? Has it changed your work?
Ulrich Seidl: I don’t think so. For me making a film is always a strenuous process and it often involves a lot of suffering. I don’t make it easy on myself or my collaborators, and every film is an adventure that you have to fight hard for. I don’t have any recipe for success. my next film might be a disaster.
Ed Lachman, one of the two cameramen with whom you made IMPORT EXPORT, described you as a moral filmmaker, but not a moralistic one. Do you agree?
Ulrich Seidl: I don’t seek to entertain people with my films, but to touch them, perhaps even disturb them. my films are critical not of individual people but of society. And I have a vision of a life with dignity. If, beyond giving pleasure, a film is able to create an opening in viewers that has a connection with their own lives, then it has achieved a lot. I want the people in the theatre to be confronted with themselves.
You don’t fit the mould of the classical, socially critical filmmaker. You show, you don’t judge.
Ulrich Seidl: I don’t possess an ideology for improving the world. It’s never about judging the individual. I try to cast an unflinching gaze on life. I believe that reality touches all of us, with all our fears and desires: the fear of death and the desire for love.
The pessimism in your work has been discussed often. However you also work with the element of humour...
Ulrich Seidl: Humour often makes the horrible, the inevitable, more bearable. And I’m always on the lookout for places where tragedy and comedy overlap. As far as pessimism is concerned, I don’t think that optimists are necessarily more constructive than pessimists, so they shouldn’t be seen as better. When I look at the world with open eyes, I can’t avoid being pessimistic. But like every pessimist I also see things of beauty.
IMPORT EXPORT is a film that shocks, but it can also be seen as your most humanistic film to date. Have you grown gentler and wiser?
Ulrich Seidl: Wiser, I hope, but not gentler. But all my films are the product of my humanistic world view – even if they do disturb, provoke or shock.
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