Original subtitles

When I attended

Las Palmas film festival

I enjoyed myself

and it made me feel full of life.

There I met Mr Isaki.

Well we actually only spoke for about 5 minutes.

In reality we barely knew each other

but we started talking.

For this reason I'd like you to understand

that cinema thrives on words

it is the fruit of exchange

and communication among people.

Your style obviously changes

depending on who you address.

If I'd written to another filmmaker

I'd have done it differently.

Writing to Naomi

makes you adopt a particular style.

This aside

I don't think this was my first filmed diary.

Some films speak in the third person

th characters who are not the author

but reflect the personality of the person behind the camera.

Sam Peckinpah for example never appeared

in his films but they transmit what he was like.

I made some films years ago

in which the narration the text

or what's being said

has nothing to do th my life.

But the images were from my domestic life

and they were saying: ''I love this woman...''

There are moments of love of desire

captured in films from years ago.

And even if the plot is unrelated

they're a kind of personal diary.

I saw the first letter from Mr Isaki

when I met him

for the first time in Las Palmas.

I had the impression...

that he was a serious person.

In this sense he's rather masculine.

As for me

I like to have fun and I'm laid back.

Sometimes he seems to get upset

when I play a joke on him.

For this reason I finished my first letter

thinking that I should be more serious.

- The first one? - Yes.

In the second one you changed your mind.

In the second one I felt fear.

There's no single explanation for this letter

it has an undercurrent

of hidden meanings.

Therefore you have to really think about it

in order to understand it.

I sent the second letter which is about the present

about being here and the things I'm doing.

Well...

I went to his home town

and I thought he'd show me many things.

We went to a lake

where the lake bed is volcanic ash.

We strolled around.

Then we went to a place that looked like a museum

but it made me a little afraid.

I've been thinking it's sad that in the 21st century

''virile'' and ''masculine'' are insults.

20 years ago it would have been fine.

Sorry?

She said that she found me masculine.

20 years ago that was a compliment

now it's a criticism. And so...

I feel humiliated.

OK but...

Naomi...

I forgot to turn the earpiece on...

- Can you hear Isaki? - Now I can. What was she saying?

For some time I've wanted to work

on a kind of cinema that speaks of the present the past

and also interprets the future.

That's not asking much is it?

I don't think that films

only talk about the past and the present.

I like to think of them

as bottles you throw into the sea that will turn up again one day.

In fact this third letter is also conceived

in relation to the fifth.

The tone changes.

That's something I wanted to do:

use different tones

so we could show our different sides.

The reasons that I work in cinema

are about striving to know myself.

I mean I didn't admire

any famous director in particular.

And I didn't want to work

with any actor who I particularly liked.

Above all I wanted to explore myself.

So I began working in the world of cinema.

That's more important.

When I create a work

it has a great influence on my life.

And the influences that you come across in life

lead you to walk forward.

Me walking ll be the subject of a letter.

So it has a synergistic effect

because everything is connected.

I guess that's how it works.

You like to direct films and everything it entails

that's why you do it right?

No I always thought I would write.

I'll change to Catalan the Generalitat's paying for this...

I'd always thought that I would write.

And later I started...

I hesitated between studying economics or film.

I wasn't strong on economics so I went over to film.

And I discovered something I'd never imagined

a bit like what you're saying

that I wasn't interested in film as a way of telling stories

or as a way of creating a way of life or a status

but as a way of creating experiences

that I wouldn't otherwise be able to have.

This is something that I often say

because I think it's important.

When we made La leyenda del tiempo

I lived with those people for many months

in an intimacy that was unthinkable without the camera as an excuse.

All the trips we've made this year

have been thanks to making films.

The same goes for being with Naomi now.

And it's not just the life experiences you have

during the shoots

but also their consequences.

And another important thing

is your relationship with the technical team.

I like to shoot with a team that's like a family.

Many of them are here today.

You can tell the focus is worse in this film

the sound is worse

because I've had to make it alone thout them.

That's something I like working with friends.

What we were discussing

about filming bodies and ghostly presence

is almost inevitable.

It's part of the natural essence of cinema.

In itself cinema

embalms characters.

I thought that Darder was probably my main influence

my putative cinematic father because

in the 1 9th century before cameras existed Darder

did the same thing as the Lumières in the 20th:

he wanted village folk to see what Africans were like

what wild animals were like.

And also to keep alive dead bodies from the past

in some sense.

Now I think it's appalling...

Darder did some appalling things

and in the 22nd century

people ll think that filming people like we do

is just as terrible.

The films I'm interested are those you can apply this to.

When we watch films...

the film I showed about Banyoles

is the first film made in 1 907

by Segundo de Chomón an essential filmmaker.

Aside from the mise en scène the charm of these films

is seeing people and places that no longer exist

but remain alive in the films.

In other words we're the taxidermists of the 21st century.

All I do

is film things that are irreplaceable to me.

This means that...

in reality...

I'm going to change the subject now...

I'd like to film in Spain.

It's also true

that I enjoyed myself in Las Palmas.

Suddenly I found myself facing Mr Isaki

and he suggested doing an interview there in Las Palmas.

Like now Mr Isaki

started to talk about many things very quickly.

And I thought... How complicated!

I guess it would be more fun

to talk as friends

in a place like the port for example.

I also ate sardines and other things.

The taste of those sardines like the taste of ice cream

is something I will never forget.

The taste of the paella

we ate in that village we went to together...

There at the lake we met a man

two women who were tns

and some men who looked like fishermen.

All these things made a deep impression on me.

These things are part of everyday life

but there's a limit when it comes to filming them right?

We have a memory.

But it is lazy.

Today you'll go home and tomorrow you won't remember

the colour of the clothes Isaki is wearing right?

You ll probably all forget.

It's blue...

Memory becomes lazy like this.

Then again

film is a little bit like memory.

Basically

I transform memory and express it in filmed images.

In this sense I'm like a translator.

I try to translate things

through cinematic images.

I think it's very interesting to use films to translate

the dramas of people's everyday lives.

I capture the landscape that I want to preserve.

I create the landscape that I want to preserve.

Well I think I do.

I'm sorry. I rejected the chat.

In Las Palmas there was a misunderstanding with the organisers.

I was actually going to Fuerteventura.

In any case

It'd be terrible if it ended up seeming like Naomi is the vitalist

while I'm the European theoretical intellectual

so I'd like to point out that what she just said

is a great example of film theory

and that between each shot of the boat

we were fucking on the beaches of Fuerteventura.

I won't show you those images.

The Mourning Forest.

has anybody seen it?

OK great.

What a strange lot!

Everybody who has seen it is here.

In this film

there's a young woman

between 25 and 30 years old

whose two year old son has died.

But the actress isn't even married

and has never given birth.

And obviously

she hasn't ever lost a child.

So this sadness is pure acting right?

But I wasn't convinced by her acting.

Even if it was fiction...

I wanted the girl to really feel sad

and totally alone.

I put that girl

in a very small room with a tatami

thout a bathroom so she could live on her own.

For the first half of the shoot...

I talked to the whole team...

but I totally ignored her.

This is a terrible thing.

Imagine a director totally ignoring an actress.

Then she'd go home and be alone again.

Then she started expressing herself really well.

Once we had filmed those scenes

I told her I had been watching her the whole time

and that she could relax.

After that

we shot some scenes that were more lively.

What am I trying to say?

That the most important thing for creation

is reality.

I really wanted

each of that girl's cells

to be totally pervaded by sadness.

I think it's important to express reality in this way

so that audiences do not feel

they're watching some made-up story

even if it is fiction.

When I'm aware of a feeling

the ordinary things I feel

I want to transmit it to the viewers

exactly the way I've felt it.

It's difficult to know how much you affect

the lives of others

and it's a big responsibility for those of us who make films.

In La leyenda del tiempo

the final sequence where Makiko starts crying

and cries a lot

was planned as a fiction sequence.

As Naomi said the search for truth

was not so much in the filming

but in the casting of the characters

who had lived through similar experiences

so in the shoot we were inviting them

to re-live them in front of the camera.

It's a curious expression: ''to live in front of the camera''

as if actors were dead.

It's inevitable to ''live'' in front of the camera

unless you film corpses.

In this sequence

Makiko had to call her father.

It is a fiction sequence

and there was nobody on the other end.

She was being told her father had died.

And she had to start crying.

We'd tried it several times

and she cried very well because something

very similar had happened to her in real life.

But on the day of the shoot

Makiko couldn't cry.

We couldn't film it.

We let it go and moved onto another scene

and while we were filming

Makiko was sitting on a bench beside us

and she started crying inconsolably.

We turned the camera around and started filming her

and it's a long take that runs for 5-6 minutes

of continuous tears.

Later Makiko told me they were tears of frustration

because of her failure to cry when we were filming the scene.

We argue about this every time we meet.

She claims that she wasn't aware she was being filmed.

But I'm convinced that she was.

When I watch the the raw footage in the DVD extras

I know the exact moments when Makiko shows us her face...

she turns her face to the camera so the light shines on it.

This was near the end of the shoot so she knew how it worked

and how to approach it.

And I bet... I can point out the moments

when Makiko offers us her face so we can film her.

But according to her - and she really means it -

she is convinced that she didn't know.

That we were filming secretly.

That brings up questions about the filmmaker's rights

over a character or a person.

If we were filming Makiko secretly

at an intimate moment

we were exploiting her private life.

I don't think we were.

In any case she authorised us to put it in the film.

Given my rhythm of life and work

I'd love to make one feature film a year

or every 10 months but this is impossible in Spain.

It took me 4 to 5 years to get each film off the ground.

If you don't do anything in the meantime

you lose the rhythm of your work.

Picking up a camera

becomes charged with meaning and that's not right.

Filming should be a natural thing

th a certain lightness.

If we look at the history of cinema

all the great masters made many films...

The filmographies of the greats from Ford

to Bergman Hitchcock Goddard

they all made many many films

compared to today's filmmakers.

There's no comparison.

There seems to be some prestige in not doing much.

I don't share that at all.

I'd like to work as much as possible.

Luckily I've had other projects between films

commissions

where I was asked

to participate in exhibitions or...

I'd be given a premise

but I could do whatever I wanted to.

Nobody ever said

I had to make a particular film th a particular story.

They gave me the subject matter and I had total freedom

so I've done whatever I've wanted

I've had fun I've kept learning

and trying things and I'm sure

if I'd had to wait until I could make a feature film

I'd still be trying to focus the camera:

in the first film I'd have learnt to turn it on

and in the second one to focus

and I'd have to wait five years to learn to film a character.

The short films I've made

which haven't been shown

although that's not important

have allowed me to discover things.

Naomi's work

hasn't gone down that path

but one of her films was a commission:

Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom

a commission by Nishii

a writer who was terminally ill

which she filmed in the last months of his life.

He had terminal cancer.

He called me one day

and told me he had two months left to live

and he asked me to make a documentary

about the time he had left.

First I wondered why he asked me to do it.

When I asked him

he told me that he chose me through intuition.

I couldn't reject the intuition

of somebody who had two months left to live.

That was all.

With the third letter we'll see...

When you make a film

it's important to reach a certain point

of course.

There are four parts:

exposition development climax and resolution.

If you watch until the climax you ll stay to the end.

So as long as the plot develops

as long as the audience

watches to the end and gets to the resolution

that's the whole point. Will you go first?

Sorry? I didn't understand the question.

Would you make the third one first?

I'd decided on an ending but it's very likely

that I ll change it now that we've met.

Now that we've been together

I might change the fifth letter.

I find it curious

how it changes things getting to know each other

through the audiovisual letters...

what an ugly word!

Getting to know each other

through the letters we have filmed

through the films we had watched

or meeting in person.

I think that I've learnt most about Naomi

through her films.

I got to know her best through her films

then through the letters and lastly in person.

I have found

that films are a very clear personal expression

while in private life there's a need...

there's a need for protection.

Firstly thank you because...

the letters are great I really liked them.

I wanted to ask you

particularly in the case of Isaki's letter

which is more constructed and elaborate

to what extent you used

the correspondence format

to channel or direct projects or ideas

that might have been breng in advance.

And also why it has to finish th two more letters.

I'm curious about the protocol or pact

that structures these letters.

Now that you are getting to know each other

to see each other

perhaps you hadn't really seen each other in the letters

perhaps you could continue

but I don't know the protocol

behind these letters.

Perhaps you could say something about this.

Well firstly...

a little explanation for Naomi:

the other day we were discussing Spanish directors

and she said she really liked Victor Erice

and we told her there was another one who was very good...

that's him.

He is a very good Spanish filmmaker.

José Luis Guerin Naomi Kawase.

And now the question.

In a sense these letters...

are an outlet for ideas that were on standby

just like commissions provide a chance

to formally try out feelings that you want to express.

You take the opportunity to do it when you can.

As for the protocol

we had set ourselves some game rules:

to make four letters which would start by explaining

that we had only met briefly

as a process of getting to know each other

and end with a letter filmed by the two of us

in the same space

which is the one we filmed in Banyoles the day before yesterday.

But all the footage we shot is unusable

because the camera chewed up the film

and the only thing we've filmed together

is an invisible film a film you can't see.

So we've decided to swap

that joint letter...

Well my idea was to take her to Banyoles

the place where I grew up

and yesterday when we saw there was nothing usable

Naomi suggested that I finish it.

For me it was important to make a fifth letter

because the third one brought up things that are interrupted

which ll end in the fifth.

When I told Naomi

she suggested a plan:

I would finish a letter from Banyoles

and she would make one in Nara.

That conclusion would make sense

In regards to documentaries

I think they're a little bit different.

There is another self

on the other side of reality

watching what I have experienced in my own skin.

As for Mr Nishii...

I say it in Mr Nishii's film.

In the film

Mr Nishii said that film is a recording

and I told him that in my documentaries

the most important thing is memory.

I said this because I think recording

is part of a place

that we don't usually belong to

something that is kept

in an art or natural sciences museum.

Nevertheless now I feel

that films are recordings.

And that's why everybody can watch them.

It's good that viewers think different things.

And memorise those different feelings.

I think that's good.

I'm especially interested

in capturing moments from real life and real emotions.

And I don't care whether I capture them

using traditional documentary techniques

or fiction techniques.

That doesn't matter to me.

What matters is what we capture not how we do it.

I was thinking about what you said earlier

and I think that the importance of an influence

is more about personalities

than nationalities.

For some years now

we've been hearing about Oriental filmmakers

Filipinos South Americans

who have not watched films and make ''primitive'' cinema.

That's obviously not true.

Kiarostami has an incredible cinematic knowledge

which isn't obvious because of his temperament and talent.

With Raya Martin people say:

''He has created a new cinema because he's in the Philippines

and he hasn't seen anything...''

and the guy spends all day hooked on...

...YouTube and Facebook.

He has watched everything just like us.

I'd like to know whether Naomi

showed her films to her great-aunt

and what she thought about her way of working.

What did she think when she saw herself filmed?

I started making films

that dealt th subjects that were close to me.

At first I dealt th the person I lived with.

I've made 3 or 4 fiction films now

and I've experienced many things.

But when I want to identify with myself

she always comes up again.

She is somebody essential to me.

When I was born my parents separated.

That's why I have a suspicion or a doubt...

The doubt that perhaps I would not have been born.

But she took this idea out of my head.

It's clear that I owe my existence to her.

I make films that deal th this.

At first I was aware that she saw the images.

When she saw the scenes

that contain the most powerful words

she told me that she felt

as though she would be th me forever.

Now she can't follow the images

because she's senile she has alzheimers.

But when I turn the camera towards her

she seems to be very happy

as though she were participating in my work.

Do you have any advice for

young filmmakers who ll come after you?

She has more experience.

I thought Isaki was older than me!

I'm older but I've made less films.

Isn't he older?

How old are you?

I'll try to overtake you.

33.

33?

I don't have much experience and I can't give advice...

but I can say that my intention

is to go further on my own and...

reach the other side of the Earth.

- Yes. - That's true.

In the centre it's hot but apart from that no problem.

I was just remembering when we released Cravan...

and we went to festivals for first works

and filmmakers would tell me

they were presenting their first film

which they'd made to get a foothold in the industry.

They said: ''This film was a commission

but the next one will be closer to what I want to make''.

But they never made the second one

so they only made one film

and it wasn't the one they'd really wanted to make.

If you only make one make sure it's the one you feel like making.

My advice: always try to do what you want to do

rather than what you're asked to do.