Filming in Complete Independence

Tuesday, 20. July 2010 11:56

An interview with Juli Szabó and Tamás Lehoczky, noted down by Oliver Baumgarten.

Using the label "Freakcinema" you have produced some further CATMAN adventures together. What else does Catman experience in these sequels?

Tamás Lehoczky: Basically all CATMAN episodes are about filmmaking. I love shooting, I love nearly all film genres and I love cats. The first episode wasn’t called CATMAN at that time, but after viewing it one of my friend told me that I’m the Catman. So that’s how the Catman saga started a long time ago…

Juli Szabó: Every CATMAN short is different. They have different stories, formats, even the roles we two took on them are different. Some were directed by Tamás, some co-directed and one was made by me. The first one was made as a self-portrait of and by Tamás, but the series is evolving. The common point is that they are little experiments about filmmaking, starred by cats.

CATMAN 0… is based on an extremely funny idea: that cinematic formalism would effect a cat's dream. How did you come to this idea?

Tamás Lehoczky: After making the third episode of the CATMAN series, one day it came across my mind that it would be a real challenge to shoot the stair sequence from BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN as a CATMAN episode. I love montage, Eisenstein is one of my favorite directors ever. Soon I realized that it’s nearly impossible to shoot fiction film scenes with cats, so I decided to get back to my basic CATMAN shooting methods, i.e. documenting our cat society’s life and then cut it together. The funny part came at the end when my HDD broke down and we had to start everything from scratch… Then came Juli’s method, she storyboarded the whole piece frame by frame. A real visual director.

Juli Szabó: Tamás originally wanted to recreate Eisenstein’s famous scene with cats. However, to give a sense to it, we decided to insert it into a frame, and while watching the already existing shots we found one where Kolbász [the cat] just falls asleep on the couch, next to the remote controls. So we decided to make some additional shots, like Kolbász watching TV and waking up – these scenes and the one with the cat basket are the only made up scenes.

Do you think that in our society which is so strongly dominated by visuals the people's dreams are working like films? Are your dreams properly "edited"?

Tamás Lehoczky: I always wanted to dream a lot, but for a long time I couldn’t bring them back to my conscious mind. About a year ago I started meditation again. I’m sure that helped a lot to reveal my dreams a lot better. I wouldn’t say editing is a key role in my dreams, I’m rather a “framing type”, all my dreams are properly set up, frame by frame. I even compose wide shots where I myself am included.

Juli Szabó: I guess, just as everything else that surrounds us, that our environment affects our dreams and vice versa, human brain functions are affecting visual arts. My dreams are very story-based, usually with a weird plot and logic, but they have a proper beginning and an ending. They are not set up as a conventional film but as if they were shot with a steadycam: no cuts, no sudden changes of viewpoints.

Did you somehow study Eisenstein's "montage of attraction" for this film?

Tamás Lehoczky: Yes, I watched the stair sequence a couple of times and tried to storyboard the film in my mind. Speed is a key role in the film, the decreasing length of the shots to dramatize the scene is one of the types of the Russian montage techniques.

Juli Szabó: Thanks to our teacher at the art school I studied, Klára Kis, I became a fan of the Russian montage school. With this film we not only evoked Eisenstein’s technique, but also Kuleshov’s famous montage experience – at the screenings, watching the reactions of the audience, we could see that it still works. Two independent pictures, even of cats, gain a meaning when attached together, thanks to our imagination and cultural knowledge.

What does the editing mean to you in general?

Tamás Lehoczky: With editing you can make magic or you can ruin everything. My teacher Klára Kis taught me a lot about editing. She was always commenting films how they were edited. When editing my exam films she sat next to me for days and helped me out a lot.

Juli Szabó: Editing is very hard work but it is also fun at the same time. Many times we have experienced the magic of editing, when putting together some frames and music, the film gained something extra that you haven’t even thought about before. Also I love the way you can just throw away shots that you don’t need, without any regret. Just deleting them, leaving the few and only scenes you need.

You both produce your films in complete independence. Would you call yourself typical representatives of the Hungarian short film scene?

Tamás Lehoczky: For me, Freakcinema stands for the strange and unique films we produce together. I never tried to fit in to anywhere with my works, I don’t know anyone in the world who shot short films the way like us. It’s not a decision, it just the way I think of filmmaking. So I wouldn’t say I’m a typical representative of the Hungarian short film scene, not at all. Last year when CATMAN 0… was in competition in the 40th Hungarian Film Week I was told by a young director that this is not a proper film for the Hungarian Film Week. After a long discussion the only thing he could come up with that “a proper film for the Hungarian Film Week is about human lives”. I made around 30 short films in the last 10-12 years as a DoP, director or editor. Most of them were no-budget ones, or director-financed. I have some colleagues who can spend 10-12 million forints (40-45.000 Euros) for a project. For me a good short film is like a short story, either it has a narrative or an experimental stuff. One good idea is enough. Money can’t produce quality on its own, and most of the times these “big-budget” short films doesn’t work for me. Juli got to know a guy in Barcelona, he told her that at the film school he attended at that time worked like a charm to him. Every semester they had to study and practice one “part” of filmmaking, such as composing, lighting, editing, etc. If you check a Spanish film you’ll notice this teaching method very easily, most of them are really well made. Filmmaking is a language, which is very simple to learn, but the fun just begins at that point…

Juli Szabó: I know very little about the Hungarian short film scene, but according to this little I know, Freakcinema is not a typical representative of it at all. Each of us have a different approach to filmmaking. Tamás is much more spontaneous, instinctive and experimenting, while I am more a theoretical and planning person, but both of us are independent and freethinking. All of these add up to the concept that is Freakcinema. We are working hard to be able to do our films in complete independence because this is the way we can express ourselves and have a lot of fun making films, which, in my opinion, are the ultimate goals of filmmaking.