Barbet Schroeder

To get the best performances possible and never miss a moment from a 'magic take' I used two or three cameras crossing each other. It was something new that I had wanted to explore when making the very first feature film shot in HD Video in 1999, La virgen de los sicarios (2000) with the cameras still shooting at 30 frames per second. Subsequently with [cinematographer] Luciano Tovoli we employed the three-cameras-shooting technique in 2001 in Hollywood for Murder by Numbers (2002), and then on all our other movies after that until "Amnesia" (2015), which is our eighth collaboration. Luciano managed to find solutions, without ever sacrificing the quality of the image, to the seemingly insurmountable problems of light that that kind of set up creates. But by using this system it meant every actor in every scene was always looking and reacting to the other in front of one of the cameras, so we could not miss any 'magic moment'.[2015] Show less «

[on his biography and Amnesia (2015)] I do not speak German and yet it is my mother tongue. I am Swiss and my maternal grandfather is the German philosopher and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, famous for his studies on the art produced by the clinically insane. My mother always categorically refused to speak to me in the language. Therefore, the subject of the film is very close to me but I did not want to make a movie about my mother. Rather, I was interested in showing, via a succession of unsaids between the two characters, the emotional experience of rediscovering love as well as reuniting with one's homeland and especially one's mother tongue. A film, in other worlds, on Martha's reunification and Jo's life education. I spent much of my childhood in Geneva and some years in Colombia, all with a mother who refused to speak to me in what should have been my first language. Paradoxically, German culture was everywhere at home and present in all the reference points I had as I grew up: the country's painting, its poetry and its music, including my mother's cello that would fill the house with its beautiful sound when she played alone pieces by Bach or Schubert. I have often asked my mother to tell me about Berlin in the 1930s when she was there as a girl, to tell me about her school, her Jewish friends who disappeared from one day to the next, about the public benches that were marked "No Jews allowed" and so on. I asked her about how she managed after her father had died to convince her mother, a theatre actress in Berlin, to take a one-way ticket to Zurich in 1936. She settled there, did her studies and met my father, a man from Geneva who did not speak a word of German. He was a geologist and had to leave for work in Iran. She could not stand their separation and so she left Switzerland as the Second World War raged in Europe, and crossed a dozen countries on the train and bus to join him. And so I was born in Teheran.[2015] Show less «

In 2014, fifteen years after La virgen de los sicarios (2000), 35mm is more or less history, but I found myself again exploring things that were even more revolutionary than the beginning of HD Video. Amnesia (2015) is the first European film shot in 6K. This is so exciting not because of the quality of the image - 6K provides three times more image definition than 35mm - but rather for the unlimited editing possibilities 6K allows within the image itself. So I had the pleasure and exhilaration of discovering and exploring anew the most modern possibilities in cinema. This shooting system was essential for being able to capture many of the situations in "Amnesia" that were often full of subtle reactions and unsaids between the characters. [2015] Show less «

[on Amnesia (2015)] This film in the most part was shot in the house my mother bought in Ibiza in 1951. We lived there without a fridge, using the petrol lamps for light and drank the rain water collected in the well. At first we stayed there during holidays and then, over time, my mother settled there permanently. This is where I shot my first film More (1969) in 1968. Even today in the summertime you can hear the loudspeakers from the tourist boats that pass from time to time annoucing: "This is where the movie "More" was made, with music by Pink Floyd". The architect Raoul Hausmann was the inspiration behind the house that was built in 1935, faithfully respecting the local architectural traditions. Hausmann lived in Ibiza from 1932 to 1935. He was stunned by the peasant houses of the island, all shaped like white cubes. He went on to write articles on the houses that were published in major architecture journals and magazines, along with photographs and plans of the architectural layout. Shortly after Hausmann, Benjamin, Jean Selz and others arrived in Ibiza. For this community the island represented their ideal of a harmonious life in total accord with the elements of nature. They saw the life of the peasants as an image of aesthetic and human perfection. The house of the movie is nearby to San Antoni, where Walter Benjamin lived. [2015] Show less «

[on High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology] Two years ago this technology would have been unthinkable for movies. For the first time in cinema HDR allows you to combine two different exposures in the same shot: one for the interior light and another for the exterior light, which of course is ideal when you are working in a place like Ibiza that has such great contrasts in light.[2015] Show less «

[on Amnesia (2015)] It's a chamber piece movie based on emotion and it's a love story without sex and it's completely spiritual. That's already something quite different. It was difficult to work out. You have to build all kinds of suspense and moments that are unspoken. You have to have good actors and a camera on each of them to see how they react in a given moment. And you have to have the whole mechanism worked out in the dialogue, so you're not dealing with improvisation.[2015] Show less «

[on Barfly (1987)] We did the editing fast [leading up to the festival]. It was intense in order to make the deadline. The sound mixing wasn't completely perfect. The director of the festival at the time, Gilles Jacob, was hoping that Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway would win the Best Actor and Actress prizes. Cannes is the best promotion for a movie. You have all the buyers and directors from festivals around the world.[2015] Show less «

Reversal of Fortune (1990) was financed by a combination of foreign money. Warner Brothers took it for distribution. And they never believed in it until the film went to the Oscars.[2015] Show less «

[on testing his films] Every one of my movies went through testing even outside of America, because I need the results to do my editing. (...) I'm probably one of the only directors who enjoys doing them because it helps me with editing. I can tell you it was a disaster for me because I wanted to do one on my thriller Inju, la bête dans l'ombre (2008). I needed to have a reaction from the audience. By myself, I organized a preview screening. My [global sales agent] UGC asked me 'You really want to do that?' Of course, there were people who came and commented that they didn't understand certain parts of the film, which always happens. But then UGC decided immediately that the movie wasn't working. They stopped everything: no more trailers, no more press bookings; not one more cent spent on the film. This is the opposite of what's done in America. You do a preview and you decide how to make the film better after the audience doesn't understand certain parts. Here, that test screening killed the movie. I should have never done it. [2015] Show less «

I'm against making rules that one should never do this or that. I think you need to be in your own conscience. One can't start judging from the outside. But I think it's very exciting to be close to something dangerous, like playing with fire.[2015] Show less «

[on L'avocat de la terreur (2007)] It's the history of terrorism, the blind terrorism that started in 1957 in Algiers and then became something unbelievable that became part of our daily life. It's a very perverse movie talking about a perverse man. It gets you to approve the bombs of Algiers and the liberation of Algeria [from French colonial rule] and all this, very moving, I can understand the justification for this. But the minute you have approved that, you are pushed into worse and worse situations, from the Palestinians to Carlos. So you realize it is very dangerous to approve anything in the first place. There is no real difference between that and the [twin] towers. There is a logical thread.[2008] Show less «

I take reasonable risks. I know it looks crazy. When I did Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait (1974) the danger was not that Idi Amin would kill me. The danger was that someone would try to kill Idi Amin and I was filming him at the moment. In Idi Amin's eyes, I was somebody in his service trying to do a... puff piece. And then on La virgen de los sicarios (2000) I had bodyguards for me. I had bodyguards for the equipment, so it was less dangerous than it looked.[2008] Show less «

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