All language subtitles for Interview with cinematographer Hans Burmann (2025).English

Well, it wasn't a surprise
I went into the cinema

My father worked in cinema

All my life I have been
close to film making

At 3 and 4 years old I was
walking around the city of Lifia,

where the CEA studios were

My father was working there
and I was always watching shoots

In other words,
there was an interest in cinema,

although my father didn't always like
that I was around the filming

but yes, it was very familiar,
for me the cinema was familiar

I started because
I didn't like school

I had problems studying

so my father got annoyed
and said, you have to work

And he got me into the world of film

I had a cousin, Eduardo Noé,
who was a camera assistant,

and he found me a job on a movie,
and that's where I started to learn

And I was very happy with it

I started as assistant on the movie
The Condemned Ones (1953)

Helping to carry
things, that was my job

And then they got me...

they used very big
camera cranes back then

and there was a lack of weights for
the people who worked on the crane,

so they would put me on the crane
to balance out the weight

On my first shoot I spent
almost all my time

sitting on the camera dolly

I started with Manolo Berenguer,

who was very good,
he was a good cameraman

And then with Pepe Aguayo

And I learned a lot from them

I started with
people like Enrique Gerner,

who was like the father of us all,
the one who taught us all

He knew a lot about film making

Well, Cuerda de presos was my
first movie as camera assistant

I got involved in making that film
in 1955

I knew nothing, but
my cousin got me a job

handling the camera,
pulling focus and so on

And that's where I really started
to learn how to work the camera

and became a camera assistant

And we made a film that
turned out very well

La Cuerda de Pesos
turned out to be a good film

Directed by Pedro La'zaga,
very well made

I learned from
the people I worked with

I learned more about how
not to do it than how to do it

I learned from mistakes,
how to avoid them

What really interested me in shooting
was how I saw things

I didn't make thing up,
I wasn't creative in that sense

I tried to match what
was being shot at the time,

what the light was like,
and I tried to copy that light

I also had something theatrical
because my father worked in theater

I was used to seeing theatrical things,
I liked lighting a bit in that style

That was one aspect

But above all I tried to stay natural,
I didn't do strange things

But in the cinema I was
always trying new techniques

Reflected light, I used that a lot,

reflecting light on paper, silver,

or on wood,
so that they had that wood tone

I was always experimenting, but
it was a bit for my own amusement

There comes a time when lighting is...

not that I was bored, but I was
always trying to do new things

As cameraman, I started filming when I
was very young and I liked it a lot

I had a great time

And my mother used to tell me,
don't worry about money,

if it's about money, you just
have to work, work, work

And she got me so into this thing
that I should work and so I did

I made a lot of friends

And that helped me to make films

Well, the most serious film
of all, that was Pilar Miro's

That was the one that was
made most seriously

And everything taken care of,
pretty much everything

The truth is that
the film was very good

The previous ones were weaker,
for me they didn't have much merit

But Pilar Miro's film
was very good

And it was her first film

I was the director of photography

I was working a lot with
Mario Camus at the time,

and Pilar wanted to kind of copy the
people who worked with Mario Camus,

including the actors and technicians

And she hired me as a technician
because I worked with Mario

Well, back then
cinema was too... soft

with rather poor actors

Of course, some were good, some bad

The sound wasn't important

That's where the dialogue
was said that had to be said

They would dub it and
it would be done that way

It was a cinema that wasn't
very professional

Until in the early seventies
when recording sound came back

It had existed before, in the fifties

1950s, there was sound

But then, I don't know why,

in the fifties, sixties,
sound wasn't recorded,

but then it came back because
they saw that it was essential

that it was part of the movie too

It was a movie with bad luck,
very bad luck

with a girl who had very bad luck

and did very well,
and was very affectionate,

but everything she touched went wrong

I had to film a scene on a bicycle
and she fell off the bike

All the time, she would trip

She kept falling so consistently

that we started placing bets
on when she would trip up

Today, at what time

And one said, at 10am
it's going to happen

It was a movie that
we were making in Colombia

We were all foreigners,
we didn't know each other

A girl with bad luck

She was good,

and she did it very well,
but she had very bad luck

Proof of this is that after
shooting and we'd finished the film

a week later they called us

to say that a third of the
film had been printed,

and it had come out badly,
with the photography out of focus

It was quite serious

There was talk of filming
some parts of the movie again

which we couldn't do because
the girl had committed suicide, right?

I don't recall it so well

I took whatever job I could get,
did all kinds of films,

and with whatever
directors there were

Something would come up
and I'd grab it

So, that's why I've
made all kinds of films

Very serious cinema,
very important ones,

and then films that had
no value for me

But well, it was work, right?

And then I had to make some films
that I didn't really care about

Films with very pretty young girls

Or maybe not so young,
but, well...

And I got myself in there, I
adapted to whatever it took

The thing was to work,

I had to work as much as possible
to get to know everyone well

The whole secret at that time was
that producers needed a license

so they could import a film
from the US and distribute it in Spain

If you produced a movie,
you got two licenses,

so you could import
two movies to Spain

For the sex films, there was a room,
a bed and a girl, that was all there was

It was all very cheap and
they made movies like that

It was easy to do

A movie can cost a lot of money,
can be very expensive

But they made them
as cheaply as possible

just to get a license,
to be able to import a movie

An a production you would
always ask for a list of things

and they would reduce it
by half, or more than half

No, no, you can't have that,
it costs too much

So you had to make the film
with half of what you wanted

And little by little, well, that's it...

Because it demanded a lot from me,
with very little to work with

I had to solve problems and do it
in the least amount of time possible

And I had to be very fast on my feet

And that in turn gave me a
pretty good education

I learned a lot from those people

They were so demanding
and so hard on me,

but it was a good
learning experience, right?

Yes, that's it

Look, what do you think?

I put all my enthusiasm into it,
but that didn't really show

Always one thing
inspires you more than another

He was a man with good
ideas, very good ideas

He lived in England and came
to Spain from time to time

and had good taste

For the framing and all that,
he knew quite a lot

And he liked it, indeed

It's one of the films
I remember the most,

because it was quite serious
but also fun to make

Many I don't talk about, but
that one turned out pretty well

Well, with Umberto it was a pretty
serious piece of film making

I really liked how that man shot

He had a very good work ethic

He was a fine director

It was a complicated film, with
lots of people, lots of extras,

and he brought it all
together very well

We were filming in Zaragoza,
with planes and all that

A lot to deal with

But he was a very serious director,
he was very serious about his work

Well, I had already made a couple of
films with Margheriti in Spain, westerns,

and we shot in Mexico too,
it went well

We had good people, a good team,
and they were well made films

Well, the only problem is that
they used very modern cars,

state-of-the-art

and they weren't
state-of-the-art

But anyway, they used
them as the latest models

Well, it was a tough movie
because we were filming...

the tortures and all that

I think she really enjoyed
that world, she had a great time

and she made us all suffer

because it was
it was very painful to see that

I'd see it all played out on set,
the producers didn't

And she liked it, I think she enjoyed
all those things she put us through

No, not like a mother, what
happened was that she enjoyed it,

Yes, she had a great time

She was sadistic that way

She was a very good friend,
a very good companion,

but you could see that
she liked to make us suffer

He was tough, he was very
demanding and all that

I got on with him,
we got on very well,

We were very different
from each other,

but nevertheless, we
understood each other well

With him and his people,

his team and all that,
we worked well together

We used the same
apartment in Barcelona

We had two apartments and
we swapped things, kitchen stuff

It was a very fami|y—oriented life,
like one big family

We got on very well

And as for cinema, I continued with my
system of doing new things,

of reflecting lights against the
ceiling and doing different things

Well, something very curious happened
to us there with The Holy Innocents

We scouted places for
two, three months beforehand

Checking the locations, etc

I knew very little about Extremadura
I'd been only once

and I always remembered it
as a very dry climate,

lack of water and everything,
no greenery

And I saw the movie like that,
everywhere very dusty,

that was my idea

And then we got to filming,
a month of shooting,

and on the first day of shooting
we got a tremendous rain storm

Well, this complicated things

We had to handle things
in a different way

On the second day, the same
amount of water, or maybe more

And so we had a week or so of rain,

and that sort of did us a favor,

Since it doesn't rain there,
as soon as a little waterfalls,

everything turns green
and flowers pop up

Quite the opposite of
what we'd planned for the movie

Then we had a problem with the idea
of what we'd planned for the film

And so, well, we thought,
we haven't got what we planned

so we took advantage
of what was there,

the rain, the fog, and so on,

all of that had actually
done us a favor

So, that bad weather was
very good for the movie

You're welcome, girls

Where are you going in such a hurry?

South

You're in luck, because
I'm also heading south

So let's go

Relax, don't
be in such a hurry, girl

My hands are freezing,
it's not safe for me to drive

I need to warm them
up a bit, right?

All right, warm them up

Regarding those...
Macho Man (Eva Man) movies,

I have very little memory of them

But the Larraz film, I have
very good memories of that

That one... Erotic Safari...

That one caught my attention
due to how seriously they took it

A porn movie,
with all that goes with it...

No, they took it more seriously

than Paco Rabal
playing the mayor of Zalamea

They took it very seriously

Most others, I don't remember

A movie that I was on
for two weeks in the Ivory Coast

It was a nudist colony,

and they made us roll around
naked for two weeks to make a movie

in this nudist colony

And suddenly, well, I
took it as a kind ofjoke,

The actor was very burnt out,
he wanted to leave the film

They were paying me very well

and I told him, well if nobody
finds out, you just have to go with it

So, after the film I made
with Margheriti in Mexico,

then this one

I was coming from Mexico
shooting a very serious movie

and suddenly they send me
to the Ivory Coast

and the producer said to me

Well, you go and if you
see anything weird, just come back

I thought how would I find it strange
what he was proposing to me?

And the truth is I had a good time
and it was funny

There put us into a
Club Méditerranée,

All of us tossing balls, and so on.
Well, the actor and me

Everyone else was French...

So here you are

Damn idiots

We had to keep covering for
things that we couldn't get

because it cost money

An electric arc costs not just money,

it also takes two people to
be able to operate a single arc

There were already
two people working there

Now they want to have
all the latest gear

I think that's made things worse

Nowadays a lot of things are asked for
and everyone wants a say,

not only the director of photography
and the director,

everyone else wants
to get more and more

and they forget
how important the movie is

The movie is what matters