A conversation with the director, cameraman and producer Manfred Neuwirth

Manfred Neuwirth: I'd like to start by telling a story that has moved me recently. I saw the film ‘Hearts of Darkness’, which is a documentary about the making of ‘Apocalypse Now’ by Francis Ford Coppola. It was probably one of the craziest film projects in recent decades. You see the creation of a production that costs millions and millions of dollars. Many things go wrong, the planned shooting time multiplies, the leading actor has a heart attack, military helicopters are used for a real fight during a scene, and much more. And in the end, despite these difficulties, the film is finished, you see a serene Coppola, who - with a little self-irony - tells a story: Since the advent of new media like video, he actually dreams that some girl in some backwoods state will pick up a video 8 camera, that she will be as genius as Mozart, and with this camera just make an insane video that will hit like ‘Apocalypse Now’. And from this point I would like to start. I like to watch the greatest widescreen epics, Cinemascope films, but on the other hand I also like very individual, small stories told with the video camera. So it's always interesting for me to explore all these areas, i.e. to see everything from the big cinema festival to the video festival, to go to the cinema, to go to an experimental gallery and to watch and take in a variety of things. I'm really interested in the whole spectrum between the extreme poles. Maybe a few names to go with that: In the field of documentaries and experimental films, for example, Johan van der Keuken, Chris Marker, Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger. Alain Bresson as an example of very reduced images, Bunuel with his surrealistic stories, and Arrabal in the same vein. From the Americans, for example, Coppola and the early David Lynch films. I'm also a big fan of Laurel and Hardy, who had an incredible anarchistic power. And the most fascinating films for me, in terms of visual opulence and power, are currently coming out of Hong Kong, such as ‘They'll Eat You Up’ or ‘Chinese Ghost Story’.

Walter Hiller: Your biography says: working with film since 1972, with video since 1976. What triggered your interest in audiovisual media?

M.N.: A fixed year in a filmography is misleading for me, because filmmaking or, to put it another way, developing visual understanding, starts very early. And to rediscover that in oneself is very interesting for me: where does the fascination with images come from, which for me was actually there from childhood. I can remember: there are a few impressions: comic books, certain photo books or even rare visits to the cinema. The second thing was certainly experiences in the family: cameras, film cameras, which were something very valuable. You could just about afford them back then. It was something great. And I experienced that. There were the photos, there were the Super 8 films. And for me, they were always associated with importance, with being interesting. And another factor was certainly that I was lucky enough to be able to travel a lot. You come to countries where you suddenly don't understand the language. Now I'm a guy who likes to observe. That's when I come up with stories on my travels. A scene: waiting times at the airport, for example. In Thailand, in Bangkok - then buses arrive with the girls and the punters who say goodbye to each other in very different ways - from a polite handshake to heartbreaking scenes. And then you can invent your own stories about it. These are also little films that play in your mind. In Moscow, I can remember, I also had time. Red Square. If you are a married couple, you go to the Lenin monument and lay a flower. You probably don't do that anymore, but that's what you did back then. The couple would walk out of the crowd and walk about 50 metres there and back alone. And you could watch them for 100 metres. And I could play through the couple's marriage story for myself during that time. Is the woman dominant, he has nothing to say. Or he is quite a daredevil, they won't last long or something. But that happens purely from visual stimuli that affect you. You just need to have your stories ready. Or how I was in China for the first time in 1977 – there's a picture I'll never forget – at that time the Gang of Four had just been dismissed, the Mao widow and her fellow campaigners – and we went to a kindergarten and there are posters of the four of them and there are these three- to four-year-old boys and girls - they were given rags - and these children walk up to a line and throw them at the heads of the gang, one after the other. And that's a picture that I have on Super 8, and I know for sure that I'll do something with it sometime. That is optical memory and then there is the lucky coincidence that it is also materialised on film and I still have it. It was just an insane scene, and that's how it is with a lot of things... you have it stored optically in you. Part of it is also stored materially as your cinematic work. But of course there are many more films in your head than you actually implement.

W.H.: What topics interest you in your film and video work?

M.N.: In my documentary work, when I look at the material, it always has something to do with taboo subjects. In the case of ‘Asuma’ and ‘Wossea Mtotom’, it was a project in which ‘artists’ and ‘disabled people’ worked together. In ‘Memories of a Lost Country’, it is repressed regional history that is not perceived in official historical consciousness. And the topic I am currently working on - namely AIDS - is also a classic taboo subject. This certainly has to do with the fact that it comes from my political and social aspiration – which word should one use – to be subversive – not in its strict classical sense, destructive, subversive, but in the impetus to attack social institutions, to bring taboo subjects to the surface, but to strive for small changes. My favourite book about film is also ‘Cinema Against the Taboos’ by Amos Vogel, and if you take a look at the stills in it, you'll know what I mean.

W.H.: You direct, you do the camera work, you do the editing. Is one of the three most important to you?

M.N.: For me, filmmaking is still a craft in the classic sense. A craft in which I actually want to oversee all stages of production. There is a favourite area for me, and that is the camera, because it is still the direct physical implementation in the work. Especially the documentary camera, which really demands to be present. You know, nothing can be repeated, it has to be right, which means there's an incredible tension behind the camera to get it right. For me, that's the sensual side of filmmaking. Camera is where you get the most pleasure in the direct implementation. Filmmaking is often also a craft of distancing. You're on the side, observing. When I see musicians, I want to be on stage and have the power they can bring. Nevertheless, I'm the one who records it. And with a camera, it's even more likely – it can still tip over, it has the same creativity directly from the body, you have an extended tool, an optical one, you have to implement, you have to move, everything has to be right, the emotion is equivalent. That is perhaps the most exciting thing about making films. Of course, editing is important again, to organise the material or to set it against each other. But most of the work depends on the moment when you are in the shooting situation. This has a lot to do with life experience – the longer you do something like this, the more you can also convey in a documentary way. That's what I've learnt over the course of 20 years: creating an environment, so that in documentary filmmaking it's not about having everything perfectly organised, but creating an environment in the shooting situation, with the team, where you can then achieve certain things. It's also a matter of working in a way that takes for granted a certain team situation. And I think you can see that in the films I have made, that a lot of emphasis was placed on this environment, and that people were therefore able to open up very much in the respective shooting situations.

W.H.: You said earlier that filmmaking also has to do with life experience: In an earlier interview, you once said that filmmaking is also searching, is also remembering ...

M.N.: Filmmaking is life. There is a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson that I really like, which he said about photography, but it also applies to filmmaking: ‘It (photography) is a way of screaming, of freeing yourself, but not of trying out or proving your originality. It is a way of life.’ For me, it is an attempt to find a way of life myself, where film topics come to me that are in my environment, that are close to me, that I can relate to. That is the way of life. And also to have a form myself, where I have my means of production and my people around me, who make these films with me. And that is important to me. In addition, I am my own producer, so I like to have the production conditions under my own control. And that gives me the greatest possible freedom to make a product the way I want to. Especially in the documentary field, it is crucial for me to have a lot of time and to be able to make full use of this environment.
It's always about getting more and more of your own life experience as a filmmaker into your films, that is, emotional experiences and experiences of the craft. It's important that you can feel that there are subjects behind the film, ideas, vitality.

W.H.: But you don't just do documentary work?

M.N.: Well, if I say that one of my approaches is subversive, then a subversive approach always has to be both formal and substantive. I always work within this field of tension. But for me there is also this research work with images... what is there already at the image level, what has been done and in that also to find other forms. One example is this short spot ‘Experts’ after Chernobyl, simply this powerlessness... and my visual memory kicked in, where I could remember there was a discussion on television with nuclear advocates shortly before the Zwentendorf referendum, where people were annoyed to no end. And then, when Chernobyl happened, I thought to myself, I'll put them in these small plastic TV sets and just make them look ridiculous. And in this case, history has unfortunately shown how ridiculous the experts are. That gives you something emotionally, and that was a one-and-a-half-minute piece that was shown in the cinema between the adverts. So it referenced advertising aesthetics. And it's fun to be able to strike back, even on a small scale. In this case, quite literally, because I hit these plastic TVs with a hammer.
Another starting point for a project that I have been working on for a long time is that there are now various image-making machines. This extends into many areas where images were not relevant in the past, such as in medicine. You can insert cameras into the body, you can make diagnoses optically, which was not possible before. Or the stories where simulations are used in architecture – you build with computer simulations. There are many areas where the optical has become much more important, such as in architecture, in technology, in medicine... I am interested in investigating these image machines. This is more of an experimental work, an investigation into what actually exists, to show that circumstances have changed, that many decisions are made optically. This image machine project also includes examples that are both fascinating and frightening, such as training or educating athletes using special autogenic methods, where they are then shown jubilant images in an autogenic-activated state, in a cinema, and which they can retrieve before a competition. As with the video camera in the past, where it was said that you could make ‘burners’, you can apparently make ‘burners’ in people's heads already. So that you can euphorise yourself with optical stimulants, which you can also evoke in the body without showing the optical stimulants again.
If I'm supposed to summarise it somehow, then in my work documentary and experimental vocabulary flows into each other. For me it's like this: I'm drawn to the experimental and love the documentary. And there are things where the two are very, very close and merge. When I manage to do that, it's the most beautiful moments when I'm making film or video. Often I want to withdraw from the verbal level, to trust more in the power of the optical and use only images to communicate. Maybe next time we'll do a different interview: I'll give you a camera and tell you to take five pictures in the next few days and I'll look at them. Then I'll take five pictures and show them to you. And we won't need to talk at all and still we can say a lot to each other.

Conversation Walter Hiller
in: Montage 3/92, published by Medienwerkstatt Wien, Vienna 1992