Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Gaspar Noé at the Sarajevo Talent Campus

One of the last directors to visit the Talent Campus was Gaspar Noé, in a session following his latest movie "Enter the Void". This was Gaspar Noé's fourth visit to the Sarajevo Film Festival where a tribute was paid to his work in a previous edition.

Gaspar Noé explains that with "Enter the Void" he wanted to get inside the head of someone who is doing mushrooms. He thought of making "Enter the Void" for almost twenty years. When selling the film to potential producers, he explains that he kept giving successful films as examples to illustrate his film, one of them being "Trainspotting". But he also explains that financing was made possible because he had previously made "Irreversible", a commercial success starring Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci.

In the beginning of "Enter the Void" you see reality through the eyes of a character, Oscar, until a shift happens when he gets shot. The viewer doesn't really know what is happening, says Noé, is it a dream, an hallucination? But Noé adds that trips and dreams are far more experimental than what we can experience watching "Enter the Void". Music and colours were really important to render the mushroom trip experience. The film takes place in Tokyo and is very visual, therefore the script needed to describe the locations in details explains Noé. Some scenes were very short in the script but really long in the movie. Gaspar Noé adds that for him scripts are made to finance the film and that the real film starts when you start shooting. The film is full of very vivid colours but no blue, because blue isn't a mental colour, explains the director. They avoided using blue in the film because dreams are most of the time in black and white, maybe on acid you can see some colours, but never blue. He adds that the music in the film is also messy, like a mushroom trip.

Within the powerful visual and sound effects are the main characters, a brother and sister who were seperated in their childhood because they lost their parents in a car accident. Both are craving for affection and want to produce the family they lost. There's an incestual energy in their relationship, which wasn't in the initial script, explains Noé. The characters are complex because, says the director, he doesn't like films where you're told who is good or bad. We are all complex, he adds.

Making a feature film takes at least a year, explains Gaspar Noé, and an extra year for promotion. Some directors like to shoot a film a year, like Woody Allen, but Noé explains that he prefers to shoot a short film in between two features. Working on a short film acts like a rehearsal for the next feature, says the director. Gaspar Noé also worked on documentaries, commercials and music videos. He filmed a documentary in Africa about people dying from AIDS and explains that he watches much more documentary films than fiction. Sometimes he also shoots commercials but says he doesn't enjoy that process as it leaves very litlle freedom to the director. He also shot video clips for Placebo. Gaspar Noé is now working on a new project: an erotic love story.

You can see the pictures of this talk on the following webpage: http://www.sff.ba/image_gallery/show/id/330


Location:Sarajevo

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