Jean-Luc Godard: "These are not quotes, but archaeological remains"

by Antonina Derzhitskaya​, Dmitry Golotyuk

​There is no need for special reasons to remember Godard, but December 3 is a special day: the classics are 86 years old. Seance congratulates the beloved director and publishes an interview, taken from him six months ago in Switzerland by Dmitry Golotyuk and Antonina Derzhitskaya.

- Many people were inclined to perceive "Goodbye to Language" as your "farewell, cinema". Fortunately, this is not so, and you already talked about it. But is it any coincidence that you seem to track your film path in the film? You quote your article from the times of Cahiers du cinema, when you just shot short films; Take the same Aragon and the same Apollinaire as in "At the last breath" - your first full-length tape; The dispute at the washing machine is reminiscent of "Number Two", the scene of violence in the soul is even less ambiguous about the "First name: Carmen and the formula ”Abrakadabra, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara”, is borrowed from the "King Lear" and indirectly refers to your "Maoist" period. Finally, we hear a fragment of the soundtrack of your past film - the girl's voice Florin, who says a quote from Beckett. It might be like an artistic testament.

​- "Yes, but I did not think of anything like that." Of course, I have some memories, sources, to which I return, phrases that could be called loved ones. If I can use them, I use them. By the way about Beckett, I read that when he was just starting to print, his audience numbered only two or three hundred people. Fame came to him much later. And ""Goodbye to Language" I thought how ... It's still about the language. I read a book by a German philosopher of the beginning of the century, which is called "Language". In general, it says something like ... how it was ... wait, I'll bring it. (Brings the book of Fritz Mautner.) At the end he says: "We would make an atoning act (the" redemptive "sounds a bit Christian, but ...) if we could carry out criticism right up to the voluntary, quietly desperate death of our thinking-speaking (How we think and talk - LIL) and if for the implementation of this criticism we did not need words that have only the appearance of life. " I wanted to say this in relation to the movie or the image that we live in an era when words or what people call "language" refer to images rather than proceeding from them to achieve speech (parole). Words always cover themselves all the time - we see it on television and not only. That's what I meant. "Goodbye to Language" is "farewell, our way of thinking-talking" (if it is possible if I succeed ...). And in Switzerland - in any case, here in the province of Va (in the canton of Vaud, which is usually called "the edge") "farewell" ...

- Yes, yes, it means also "hello".

- Yes. What is your name?

- Antonina.

​- "If we meet on the street, I'll tell you:" Adieu, Antonina. " And the same, if I want to say goodbye - it all depends on the tone.

- In the film, you also recall the thoughts of Kirillov about suicide ...

​- Yes, when I was very young, I was very interested in this issue. Later I returned to him. By the way, I called Kirillov one of the characters of the "Chinese women". This is from Dostoevsky - from the "Demons", if I'm not mistaken, which I have never read in full. His other novels were read, but this one was not. In addition, when I was still a schoolboy, one of Camus's first philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus, was published. It began with a phrase that I used in a movie - For Ever Mozart, it seems: "Suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem."

- And in 'Our Music'.

- Perhaps. Yes, these are phrases that have ceased to be quotations and have become a part of me. I pronounce them as if I had invented them myself. (Laughs.)

- But do not try to create any continuity between the films.

​- No, no, absolutely. More precisely, some connection inevitably arises, but sometimes it is a bridge to what was, and sometimes - to what will be.

- Anyway, between the "Film Socialism" and "Goodbye to Language"" there is one obvious - witty and slightly outrageous - a bunch: in the first film the boy Lucien declares that when it comes to equality, he will talk about shit, and in Second, Marcus and Jédeon fulfill his promise.

- Yes, Yes. This story with shit also refers to Antonin Artaud, who argued that when speaking of being, we are talking about shit (he was still an anti-Heggedian). In addition, in French, when someone makes a mistake or is stupid, one can also say: "This is shit." That is, what flies out of your mouth is akin to what comes out of your ass.

- In the credits "Goodbye to Language" is absent Anne-Marie Mieville.

​- Yes, we are just talking now. Sometimes she expresses her opinion, but ...

- That is, you still continue to discuss with her what you are doing?

​- Not too active, but, as they say, this is not silence.

- And as for the new music in the film - the fresh records of Dobrinka Tabakova, Valentina Silvestrov - did she show it to you?

​"No, no, she had nothing to do with it." This is the music that I get from ECM. From time to time it affects me. They regularly send me their notes, and I sometimes use some fragments. Especially since with ECM it is then easier to negotiate about copyrights.

- But still have to pay?

​"Oh yes, I have to pay." As Eddie Constantine in Germany says "nine zero": "Always love, always suffer, always pay". (Laughs.)

"So you listen to everything they send?"

​"Not at once." When I'm working on a film. Mainly during installation. At some point I say to myself: "Music is needed here," and I'm going to look. It would be nice to make something out of the music ... Do not use it as an accompaniment, as in American films, where it is completely unbearable. Even Hitchcock's music is unbearable - at least for me.

"For our part, we really appreciate how you work with music, with sound in general." Being musicians, we consider you as such.

- No, I'm not a musician, because I do not listen for myself. Maybe earlier I listened to a lot - especially classical music - but not now. I listen only when I search for something - a sound that would be equivalent to the image and closer to speech in the deep sense of the word. After all, neither Germans nor Americans have such a thing as "speech" (parole), they say Worte or words. Even Hamlet says: Words, words, words. And the speech ... I remember, Malraux wrote (I used it in one movie ... in "For Ever Mozart" ... no, I do not remember which one): "When we hear your voice ..."

"... where does he come from?"

​- "... we listen to it not with our ears, like someone else's voices, but ... When we listen to our voice, it comes from the throat". Not from the brain or from somewhere else. I forgot in what movie it was. But it was "For Ever Mozart" that became the turning point, from which my gradual approach to this "Goodbye to Language" began, which continued in three or four subsequent films.

- I like the ironic and pompous beginning of Mozart: the title of the film arises with the first - taken on the fortissimo - the chord of a classic concerto for piano and orchestra. But the most remarkable is that it is not Mozart, but Beethoven.

​- I do not remember.

​- As if we easily confuse one with another. I still therefore focus so much on this comic dissonance between the visible and the audible that in his own way it reflects the key opposition to the film for biased and pure art, because we know that Beethoven was a much more politicized figure.

- Yes, yes, he saw the emperor Napoleon, when he went to Russia. But these are not even quotes, but, rather, archaeological remains. The film that I'm doing now, I call ... If it was a literary work, I would call it "an experience of moral archeology". But "experience" sounds too literary, so I limited myself to "moral archeology". These are collected fragments from different films in which we are looking ... Like that Italian couple - I do not know if they are familiar to you - which is engaged in archaeological research. I forgot my name. Representatives of the underground. No, I do not remember ... Names are now often escaping me, but that does not mean that I lose memory. I just have faces or phrases in front of my eyes - but not as sounding words, but as pictures. Even in everyday life, when I say to myself: "I'm going to smoke a cigar," I first see the image of this cigar, and the word comes later. Or I say: "I'll go eat lunch in a restaurant" - but before I can mentally see this restaurant.

"It's closer to what you call language."

- Yes.

- In the 80's, you seem to have moved from politics to more general, non-historical topics, but have never ceased to be biased by the surrounding reality - including the political one, which since the mid-1990s began actively reclaiming its positions in your films. It can be said that now both of these beginnings have joined in you - both Mozart and Vicky.

- ​"Who?"

- Vicky, director from "For Ever Mozart".

- Oh, yes, Vicky, Vicky ... Yes, but it also came with age. And then I always ... from my youth, when due to the fact that I grew up in a very reactionary environment - Protestantism and all that - I had to discover World War II for myself ... I did not even know ... I remember I was interested in Tolstoy, "War and Peace," after the Germans invaded Russia. In those years, my parents did not tell me anything, although they worked in the Red Cross, they helped the children. I remember that I knew equally well the names of German and Russian generals, put flags on the map and so on. I remember the names of some battles-for example, the capture of Rostov. All this remained in my memory because the period between my 15th (or even less) and 25th years I discovered for myself, hindsight. And if for some time I have been politically activated, then after. I was always more interested in - and over time, I just got it - to appear after, not in time. To go to Sarajevo after all was over, to go to Palestine at the very moment when everything began to end - the Palestinian revolution and so on. While all political activists ... In the 68th in Cuba many intellectuals gathered to honor Castro and the company. I also received an invitation. But I did not want to go there with everyone, I went alone, with my own money. Like this. Always after, after.

- I think there were exceptions. For example, Raoul Coutard says that by shooting "Passion", you wanted to annoy Giscard d'Estaing ...

"Pff ... Maybe I said something like that." But Raoul, of course, did not understand me well. And in my own way he interpreted my words. He is a veteran of Indochina, like Shenderfer and others. I remember, on the set of "Mad Pierrot" ... I was still not quite determined with my position, and it was equally irritated both Jews and Arabs. He slightly preferred Jews to the Arabs, but he could not tolerate either of them. (Laughs.)

- If I'm not mistaken, you first hoped to finish "Train the right" for the parliamentary elections of the year 86.

​- Maybe.

- And the main characters were to be two policemen - one right-wing, the other left-wing.

- I do not remember. But this is all external. I often lag behind others. I started making films only by the age of 30, and my life and my thoughts always lagged behind the movies. If you imagine it in the form of a train, the movie was a locomotive, and politics and everything else is the last car. Only from "Mozart" and especially from "Film Socialism" did one level with the other, as in my personal life, as my personal life combined with the cinematic.

- In the final of "Mozart", we are witnessing how the so-called "pure art", l'art pour l'art, takes precedence over the biased (in the person of Vicky with his "Fatal Bolero"). It's irony?

​- I do not know.

- Do you think that art, too attached to political reality, bears defeat in itself?

- I think, yes. In what movie was it? I forgot the name of the film that I did in Sarajevo ... "Our music". There is filmed one little-known philosopher, Jean-Paul Ciurnier ...

​- Yes, yes…

"He recently wrote an interesting book called "Pirate Democracy." I do not know if it's published already or not. It says that real democracy existed at the time of the pirates, in their circle. Or on ships, among sailors who rebelled and became pirates, about which in Hollywood a lot of films such as "Mutiny on the Bounty" were shot and that ended up settling somewhere in Polynesia with girls and so on. (Laughs.) But they had something that does not exist now. So, I instructed Ciurnier the phrase of one of Sartre's contemporaries, less famous, by the name of Claude Lefort, who spoke ...

- "Contemporary ​Democracies ... "

​- Exactly. "Contemporary democracies that make politics a separate field of thought are predisposed to totalitarianism." This is one of those phrases that are now called key. But I like to object that they, perhaps, are keyholes, and not key ones. Because when we say "the key to the dream" ... Even Freud constantly forgets about the castle. In other words, he forgets about the image.

- In "Goodbay to Language," you quote also Jacques Ellul, who speaks of Hitler's second victory by means of technology and techies. Towards the end of the movie, you bring a dialogue from Frankenstein, during which the protagonist, despite threats, refuses to create another monster (one might say - a technical monster). A couple of minutes later, in the frame appears a drawn Lorraine cross - a symbol of the Resistance.

​- Yes. He was a symbol of de Gaulle, even before the Resistance.

- "In any case, you fit in with the Resistance, but on the territory of art."

​- Yes Yes.

- "It reminds me of Jean-Marie Straub, who believes that Webern's abstract music is more politic than Berg's music with his Wozzeck, and one of his most political films calls The Chronicles of Anna Magdalena Bach."

​- Yes, I understand what he is talking about. By the way, Straub lives here.

- Here - is where?

- In Rolle. Perhaps he is seriously ill, I do not know. He has a girlfriend who has lived with him since Daniel Yuue died. We saw him occasionally. Now - and even less, because we have nothing to say to each other. Like this. From time to time he sends me his films.

- Do you appreciate his new films?

"I appreciate his work, unlike the rest." I see him rather like a sculptor who carves from a stone. I'm confused that he always comes from the text, but the text for him is like a stone that he is polishing before our eyes. However, this is my personal opinion. He then made a small film about Montaigne, which everyone finds useless and unbearable - with these endless plans where nothing happens. (Laughs.) But I believe that there is something in him about the sculptor ... something from Michelangelo. Now, acting as a critic, I resort to the language from which I myself try to get rid. But I would say something like that.

- There are those who advocate the purity of the cinema language, in order to free it from the effects of other forms of art: to move away from painting, not to use music, and so on. You go rather in the opposite direction, your cinema is a kind of crossroads of the arts.

​- Yes, you can say that.

- "And sometimes you purposely blur the boundaries between them, comparing "Our Music" with the book, defining the "Film Socialism" as a three-part symphony or talking about your new project" Tentative de bleu ", that the viewer is inside the sculpture . Are there really three screens involved?

- Not yet. If I manage to finish it, then, perhaps, we will try to shorten it, but shorten it by distributing it on three screens, that is, by dividing by three. (Laughs.) And to do ... as it's called ... an installation, which is very easy. I am inclined to such a decision, because I am concerned about the flatness of the screen. We lost a little (and not even a little, but it's normal, nothing stands still) the sense of space that was inherent in the early films, before World War II. Then everything became more flat and not at all like in painting. Sometimes a good photo expresses more than a movie. And even than treveling. I remember that Cocteau said that it's foolish to do the tracklings, because they immobilize the image.

- Do you now mount during the filming?

"Not really." Sometimes ... Now, at any rate, I start with a script - more precisely, with what Americans call a storyboard, only the sequence of plans in it is determined not by chronology, but rather by something unconscious. It's like a sketch for a classical artist. I often prefer the sketches of Delacroix to its large canvases, because the sketch feels movement, openness, whereas the picture is static, and text is superimposed on it. We say: "Freedom leading the people." But when he makes a sketch, we see freedom in action.

- "So you have not started editing a new film yet?"

- I'm just starting. Following what I call the idea of ​​the script, the outline of the script. Where there is nothing but photographs. Earlier, too, so did. I know that Fritz Lang, when he was preparing his first American films, began with a report about the chosen region or something else. And only then took up the script. He did not try to write at once. I think it can be compared to a musician who works for a piano before writing his symphony, because writing is writing. That's why I always liked free jazz (although I never really got used to it) - there's nothing written there.

- "Blue Trial" - the current name?

- No, now it's just "Image and Speech" ​(Image et parole), and in brackets: "Papyrus". As if we found an old papyrus, glued it from pieces. Those two Italians do just something like this: they collect a whole from fragments of other people's films, shot at 35 mm. Look at them frame by frame. That is for them it is an archaeological find. So they can find out some details - fragments of a broken vase and so on. Then they, archaeologists, clean them with their brushes and see what it is. Their approach reminds me of what is called archaeological excavation; He allows them to discover that once there was such a city, there was such a thing - to create a sense of reality. And I'm doing the same now. I find it very stupid that all the films that are shown here at the Nyon festival ... (Laughs.)

- Such like exist?

​"Yes, and it's called Visions of Reality."

- What you are talking about, as a rule, is denoted by the English-speaking term found footage.

​- Yes, yes, found footage.

- Some Austrian directors work in this genre, for example, Gustav Deutsch.

​- I do not know him. I'm not looking at anything. Sometimes I read a movie about a movie and ask it to be sent to a DVD. To stay a little in the course. Anne-Marie does not even do that.

- And how do you choose these films?

- "I say to myself: "Perhaps there is ... "It's a bit of utopia or nostalgia, but I hope to find in films something that we once discovered there and, to some extent deceived, were extolled in Cahiers du Cinema. At some point, we suddenly said to ourselves: "So, it's possible" - regarding the French cinema on which we grew up. I came much later than others - Truffaut, Rivette or Romer. I followed them, watched, did not say anything.

- But "Breathless" appeared less than a year after "Four hundred blows" - not much later.

​- Yes, but after. Let's just say I'm second best.

- The past title of your new project - "Blue Trial" - suggests the idea of painting.

- Yes, I think that in the end there will be a reference to painting, but, in general, it is not so obvious, because I am making a very long introduction. As if, before we see the whole hand, we should consider each finger individually. So, I give first five elements: war, travel, law (according to Montesquieu, "On the spirit of laws") ... even some last one, called the "Central Region", in memory of one of the films of the American underground, and then already goes hand. This is a small story, borrowed by me from one interesting book and entitled as "Happy Arabia" - an epithet of travelers of the XIX century (for example, Alexander Dumas) awarded this now poor region, the Middle East. The action takes place in one of the local countries where no oil is found; People are satisfied with this state of affairs, but their ruler wants to gain dominance over other Arab countries. He is plotting a pseudo-revolution, which eventually fails, and everything returns to normal. I shoot without actors, they do not need me here. But there is a narrator, as if reading fragments from the book, and we in general understand the history, which is a kind of parable.

- So, there will not be any actors at all?

- No one. My assistant, Jean-Paul Battaglia, said to me: "Look, you could take as the narrator Jean-Pierre Leo, it would be very good." But I answered that Leo will read like an actor, but I do not need actors. So either I do it myself, or I'll invite someone unknown.

- "Since you mentioned Leo, I remembered Anna Vyazemsky and one very strange related project." You are aware that Michel Hazanavichus...

​- "Oh, I do not even want to hear about it!" I do not like it. Although, in fact, do not care.

- "It seems like a rather stupid idea."

- Yes, Yes. But it's the same firm, Wild Bunch, that produced my last films. They did not even dare to talk to me about this. (Laughs.) Stupid idea, stupid.

- But from you in this situation nothing depends?

​- No, no, it's people, people are free.

- Do you follow what is happening in contemporary art?

​- No, I do not.

- "I mean the last forty-fifty years." Relatively speaking, after painting.

​- No.

​- Very coarsening, we can say that contemporary art brings to the fore the idea and spares the form - more precisely, the beautiful. How important is a beauty for you now, do you seek consciously beauty?

​- Now there is no. Maybe some kind of fidelity of transmission, but not necessarily. And as for all these modern things ... When I look at them, I see that first comes to the word, and then - the execution. They say: "We will make an installation that will mean this and that." This is now being done by Agnes Varda, she was doing it ... what was her name ... Belgian filmmaker who recently died ... Chantal Ackerman. But it's all words, it's not good.

- "I like the definition of beauty that the German composer Helmut Lachenmann gives:" Beauty is a rejection of habit. " In my opinion, it is applicable to what you are doing - especially since the "Film Socialism".

​- Yes.

- In "Our Music" you put into the mouth of a Bosnian student the question: "Can small digital cameras save a movie?" Does this mean that you already then assumed the possibility of using them?

- "Well, then they did not exist, did they?" But I almost from the outset gravitated towards small things - to 16 mm and so on. To simplicity and minimum of means. Now we are making a triple film, and that's quite enough. If I had to ... Sometimes I even wanted to ... Some time ago I tried to make a movie in Hollywood, but nothing came of it ...

— The Story?

- "No, much earlier." Although no, not so long ago. On one sensational book - I do not remember already what it was. Something very good. I said to the producer-American: "I would like to make this film, but only as a director. You will pick up the actors, the scenery, everything else, and I'll do the production. " He did not agree.

- "And when was it all the same?"

- ​"About ten years ago."

- Why did you want to put yourself in such a framework?

​- To try to work with what remains. But this is also a matter of fatigue, age. I'm tired of being on the run all the time, doing a thousand things. I'm not interested, I do not want to. Even the three of us work tiresomely. Because the other two are my good friends, irreplaceable in everyday life, but as for talking about movies, they simply do not exist. I do not have enough. At such times you begin to talk to yourself. And this also becomes a habit. (Laughs.)

- Can you say that these small digital cameras give you what you wanted to get in your time with the help of "Aaton 35-8".

​- I think, yes.

- The combination of compactness ...

- And quality? Now I do not care. Because what I'm doing in the new film is more archeology, I do not care about the quality of the image.

- In general, you have two approaches to the figure. On the one hand, you start from marriage to create on its basis rich textures - what could be called "digital expressionism" ...

- Yes.

- And on the other hand, you use it in the usual way, continuing to do what you did before by 35 mm. Does this mean that a film like "Our Music", for example, could be taken down to a figure?

​- Yes it is possible.

​- So, you do not care now?

"I do not care, and then the figure asks for less money." In my new film Wild Bunch gives (promises) 300 thousand euros. To make it it is necessary for two years (term rather small - all year on five fingers and year on a hand). If this is not enough, I give the producer what I get from TV shows in France, and I do not ask you to return it. That is, having 300 thousand, we must make a film and pay for the work of three people, including myself, for two years. But if I pay to us from the money of the film, it will go for 9 thousand a month, and months - 24. And the film, so nothing remains. Therefore, I have to give my money to the producer - fortunately, I have a small amount. I do not want to ask him anything. That's what the economy of the film is. It would be interesting to see if a large economy can function in this way.

- But in terms of the image - light, depth of the frame - the figure is different from the film?

Yes, yes. But it's still important whether we light up or not, and so on. If so, I always use only what is available. We clean it only in case ... I try to keep everything. But with Fabrice and Jean-Paul it is not easy, because they behave like a real band - they come and scatter their things everywhere. I tell them: "This is a decoration, you do not have to touch anything, but things are better to be taken away somewhere far away." But there is much that we can not do. And we do not try to do it, that's all.

- Why did you change the format of the image?

​- Yes, simply because all the TVs are now.

- However, a few years ago you sent a sheet to Cahiers with two frames from "Our Music", presented in three different formats; You wanted to show how 16: 9 enslaves the person and disguises the truth.

​- Yes, this is not a good format, but it belongs to our time. I want to say that artists always proceeded from what was at their disposal. For example, the appearance of tubes of paint greatly changed the impressionism and so on. We are dealing only with reality, and what it is is not so important. And then, if I record a movie on a DVD, it's reproduced normally, everything suits me. Whereas in cinemas there can be a thousand different ... Yes that far to go - you will not find two TVs that show the same. It would have to be somehow unified so that we knowingly know what we are starting from and what we are striving for, if you want.

- In the beginning "Goodbay to language" we see some mysterious object with elements of the 3D-camera. He appears for only a few seconds in a wandering ray of light, and shortly before the end of the film appears on the cover of Van Vogt's book, and that you put it there - the real cover looks different.

- Yes, I changed the cover of Van Vogt, because I needed a title, and the picture did not fit. I replaced it with an image of an Indian totem or something like that (I do not remember already where I found it) - it seemed to me that this is better. If I were the publisher of this book, I would release it.

- There are many famous tandems director/cameraman. You have in the 60's formed such a tandem with Raoul Coutard. I think that Fabrice Arango will stay with you for a long time - especially since he is not only an operator.

​- Oh, Fabrice is engaged in everything little by little. He answers - technically - for the final installation. Sometimes I ask him to do something in his own way, and this gives me new ideas. Or we leave his version, and he, let's say, brings it to the standard. On the set, he answers not only for the image, but also for the sound. As in documentary films. I was always amazed at documentary films, where there is a journalist who speaks and the cameraman who shoots - I do not understand why one person can not do this.

"Is that why you stopped working with François Musy ?"

​- No, it's a long time already. I do not like his methods anymore - he works according to the classical scheme, voices classical films. This is a separate process. But we got on very well, I was always pleased with our cooperation. And now ... I'll show you what I'm working on here - it's very old equipment, which often fails, or even does not start at all. I could, of course, instead of messing around with seven or eight cars that occupy the whole room (and which are already 10-15 years old), learn how to use a tablet and all these installation pieces. Fabrice even offered me some kind of program that mounts according to the principle of chance, and where nothing is required of you - it does everything by itself. But it's not ... In general, no.

- Musy was a sound engineer for "Film Socialism".

- "Yes, the last time." Because we shot in ... I do not even remember if he was ... Although yes, that's right, he wrote the sound, because I wanted to have a quality sound in the episode with the garage. At least, that everything was legible. I was not very sure what I was doing. As well as he. In addition, Fabrice was not yet here really, if you want.

- Over the past 35 years, you have worked with many operators - in addition to Kutar this is, in particular, William Lubchansky, Carolyn Champetier, Julien Irish ... Why did you change them? Why, for example, you did not continue to cooperate with the same Kutar, although he, in my opinion, was very good in "Passion" and "First Name: Carmen"?

​- Well, we made a lot of movies with him. Then I went on, and he stayed where he was. It's the same with Lyubchanskiy and others. There were many of them. We started together. At some moments ... Lubchansky had Caroline in the assistants, Caroline had Julien, so I moved from one to another until it stopped ... (Laughs.)

- You sometimes left Carolyn Champetier alone on the set, you even sent her to Moscow to shoot scenes for the movie "The Kids Play Russian."

"Yes, yes, and she did an excellent job." This is the person who wanted to do everything, discuss everything. I told her: "Want? You are welcome. Here's a bundle of money for you, go to Moscow and take off Anna Karenina's death. I will not do this."

- She was very frightened.

- Still would.

- Regarding the new film, you said that you will have to go to St. Petersburg ...

- It was at the very beginning, even before I started to work. The fact is that the second episode, the second finger, is based on the book of a French writer whose name is ... You see, the name is spinning in my head, and the book stands before my eyes, and I can not remember ... Which was the French ambassador to St. Petersburg in the time of Napoleon ...

- Joseph de Maistre.

- Joseph de Maistre. This is a book about a right-wing war, absolutely Nazi. In general, I use it. And at first, when the project was completely different, I thought that I would go to Petersburg, we would find a young couple ... But, I do not know why I gradually abandoned this idea.

- The last question: when do you plan to finish the film?

- I still hope to catch it by the end of the year, according to the contract. Although we are, of course, already a little behind.

Rolle, May 22, 2016

Translated  from  russian  by  Dejan  Stojkovski

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