Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Haden Guest  0:00  

My name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. I want to thank you all for being here tonight, as we welcome back—the second night of a three-evening engagement—the great German filmmaker Valeska Grisebach, and we're going to see tonight her second film, a film called Longing from 2006. Valeska Grisebach has made three films to date, and with each work, she has more firmly established herself as one of the most vital, original and innovative filmmakers working in Germany and in Europe today. Grisebach’s films share quite remarkable, I will call it, an understatement of restraint and ability to explore truly profound ideas in the subtlest of fashion. It seems as if Grisebach has carefully distilled each of her films down to a kind of pure essence whereby each element, each object, each word, each gesture is underscored and rendered legible with meaning, and yet remains rich with ambiguity. Dialogue is often minimal and the principal events often remain unseen. Indeed, the space off-screen and the space and time between events plays an absolutely crucial role in all of her films, and perhaps none more than tonight's Longing. This is a wonderfully thought-provoking and moving film and one that I'm very excited to share with, to experience with all of you tonight and to discuss with Valeska Grisebach afterwards. This conversation afterwards will be all the more special because we're joined tonight by Gerd Gemünden from Dartmouth College where he is professor of German Studies, Comparative Literature, and Film and Media Studies. Gerd Gemünden has written extensively on the German cinema, and in particular on the subject of German exiles working in the US and in Hollywood. I’ll mention two books that are both important: Continental Strangers: German Exiles in Hollywood, 1933 to 1951 and A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder's American Films. He's actually working on a new book on Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel, and you'll hear more about that in April, when Lucrecia Martel will be here, together with Gerd. 

Now, Valeska Grisebach is here at Harvard. It's a very special occasion because she is the second Baby Jane Holzer Visiting Artist in Film. This is a new program inspired by a gift, a generous donation by the Holzer family, and I want to thank them, especially Rusty Holzer for making this possible. This is a gift to the Harvard Film Archive, to the Departments of Visual and Environmental Studies and Theater, Dance and Media, and this allows us to bring in cutting-edge filmmakers, not just to present their films at the Harvard Film Archive, but also stay for short-term residencies here at Harvard, visiting classes, meeting with students, and really engaging with a vibrant film community that continues to thrive here on campus. I want to thank the Goethe Institut. They are our partners on this event. I want to give a very special thanks to Cultural Program Curator Karin Oehlenschläger, with whom Harvard Film Archive has been working for a very long time. She's responsible for an ongoing series that’s taking place right now called And the Winner Is which is a celebration of recent award-winning German films and that includes Western, which was screened last night, as well as a roster of really wonderful films that have been screening at the Brattle and Coolidge Theatre. I also want to give a special welcome to Marina May, who's the new director of the Goethe-Institut Boston. We want to welcome her here and thank her for her presence and support. And I also want to thank the German Consulate of Boston Nicole Menzenbach, as well as the Cultural Programmer of her office, Liz von Wagner. I’d like to remind everybody please turn off any cell phones, any electronic devices that you have, and please refrain from using them. Let's just have a quick round of enthusiastic support for all of our sponsors.

[APPLAUSE]

And now to introduce the film, to give it full justice, Gerd Gemünden will say a few words and then the podium will be handed over to Valeska Grisebach. Please join me in welcoming Gerd Gemünden.

[APPLAUSE]

Gerd Gemünden  4:37

Thank you Haden for inviting me to this really very special event. Thank you all for coming out here this evening. Sehnsucht / Longing first premiered at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, where I first saw it, and as Professor of Film and Media in German here at Harvard, Rick Rentschler just reminded me and also a Harvard Film Archive regular, we actually sat next to each other, and yeah... It was welcomed with enthusiastic reviews internationally and also in Germany, which is not a given because German critics are especially hard on German films. It won prizes at the BAFICI, the Festival for International Independent Cinema in Buenos Aires that year, and the Love is Folly Festival in Bulgaria. 

It is really a wonderful film, both very simple and deeply complex. And you can summarize the plot in one sentence, but to fully account for its impact, you will need a lot more space than that. I want to be brief here because it's easy to deflate the viewing experience and I would like you to have your own experience of that without too much framing. So I briefly want to refer only to some intertexts that may be helpful to have in mind and which, particularly for non-German audiences, may not be that present. 

The film takes place in the province of Brandenburg, in a small town of Zühlen. That's ninety minutes by car from Berlin, but it feels like a different planet altogether. This is the former East, and the place appears to have been bypassed by history, not unlike the role of Bulgaria you saw in Western last night if you were here. If that film, Western, announces its investment in a genre in its title, Sehnsucht / Longing evokes the tragic yearning of melodrama, the conventions of which are both employed and kept at bay at the same time. Another important reference is the genre of the Heimatfilme, a decidedly German genre that is difficult to translate and that evokes notions of the homeland, of belonging, and a wholesome community. It's a genre with a long tradition in Germany, but it became especially important in West Germany after World War II, when it was employed to evoke a sense of time and place where the war and the Holocaust had not caused physical and psychological trauma. It's a decidedly conservative and nostalgic genre, particularly in its postwar incarnation. And a third point of reference is German Romanticism where the term “Sehnsucht” assumed multiple meanings. It's not just yearning or pining for, but it also alludes to some sense of incompleteness, of a not-yet, of life being bittersweet, and of something that cannot be put in words but only hinted at. Think for example of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Yet to be sure, Longing is not your ordinary romantic love story. It’s a film that invites us, even forces us, to observe and to keep a certain distance [from] its characters, which here, as in Western, are played by non-professional actors who share some of the professional background with the fictional characters they portray. Yet this documentary approach is suffused with elements that point towards something outside of time, like a myth, or legend, or a fairy tale. And it’s this finely-calibrated balance between realism and symbolism that I think marks the most important achievement of this film. Here to introduce the film properly is the director Valeska Grisebach. Please help me welcome Valeska.

[APPLAUSE]

Valeska Grisebach  8:54  

Hello, good evening. First of all, I really would like to thank Haden Guest for this beautiful invitation. It's really a very special moment for me to be here with my three films. And thank you so much, Gerd, for your words for the film. The film Longing / Sehnsucht I did, now, maybe twelve years ago. It was quite an adventure to make the film. And I think with every film I'm looking for, or searching for, for...I don't know. Every film is like trial and error, to see, okay, what is the mechanism of a story? And every film starts with a question, and in the end you have this kind of result. And when I did Western, I thought, okay, when we do a film, we have in the beginning so [many] fantasies, how the film will be, and in the end, then, that's the film. That's always a beautiful moment when you realize okay, now you are here, and you can say goodbye to a film. And so now, for me, it's a very beautiful moment later to talk with you about the film. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

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Haden Guest  10:16  

Please join me in welcoming back Valeska Grisebach and Gerd Gemünden. 

[WHISPERING/LAUGHTER]

Okay. I just asked, shall we start at the end, perhaps, with this conversation? And I mean, of course, this film makes this brilliant, unexpected, and quite radical break/turn/reinvention at the end. I was wondering if we could talk about this. And there's so much to, of course, discuss, but maybe start by talking about the role of children in the film and perhaps in cinema in general. I mean, there's a hint at the very beginning. There’s this one cut to the children on bicycles, going away, as if sort of pointing towards this ending, but I was wondering if we could talk about this final conversation among the children, where it comes from, how it fit into the larger project as well.

Valeska Grisebach  11:44  

Yeah, when I was sitting there at home and writing the story, and then I thought, “Okay, how could the film end?” And it was really a moment I thought, “Okay, how could it end?”

Because I was very happy that he would survive, and yeah, and then, I don't know, suddenly I had this idea, maybe because of my film I did before, and...

Haden Guest  12:15  

Be My Star.

Valeska Grisebach  12:16  

Be My Star. And, for me it was very important in the ending that everything which happened to Markus becomes some kind of legend or story people tell about love, or the true love. And so I think without this ending, I couldn't, I wouldn't have known to finish the film. So this was very important for me to know, okay, this is the ending of the film. And to make the last scene of the thing was very beautiful because I did it with these children. And so they did it very quick. It was really a little bit of a memory of my first film I did with teenagers or kids. And so I met them, I talked to them about the scene, and then they just did it. And this was very beautiful. But there was one sentence very important because always, when I started the project, until now, everything goes hand in hand: writing and casting and researching. So, I did a lot of interviews with people about longing, so when they’re grown up and all these different lives and fantasies, and there was one question I always asked them,”so what is your idea about…” I don't know the English word: “fate, or destiny?” And there was one man who told me, “Okay, fate is...what you can't change.” And this was very impressive to me. So because I immediately understood it in a very emotional way. And so it was very important that one of the kids would tell this sentence in the end.

Haden Guest  14:01  

I mean, this interview method that's so important to your research, to your filmmaking... The children then are also engaged in the same interview process, as if they are making a Valeska Grisebach film in a sense, you know, asking each other, “What is love? What is true love?” And I was wondering, in a sense, there’s a kind of commentary almost on your process there too.

Valeska Grisebach 14:30  

I don't know. [LAUGHS] Yeah, I mean, for me, it's always very interesting to confront a kind of fiction idea with some kind of reality. And this contrast is, for me, always very interesting or exciting. And I think this was also important for the scene. So there was a written scene, but the children themselves, they also had some kind of ideas about the story and this was really present [in] the film.

Gerd Gemünden 15:00  

It's interesting how this coda turns the film into a legend right away. And, you know: “Once upon a time there was a man…” And then the girl who sort of leads this discussion about this and who tells the story says, “and he lived not far from here.” But when you see this film more than once, you will notice that you actually see the fence where the metal worker lived as they walked down that dusty road that we've seen so many times. And it's obvious that quite some time seems to have passed, that there is no longer a memory where he really lived. And but the story sort of lives on. It's quite interesting.

Valeska Grisebach  15:43

Maybe because always when I start a project, I don't have a story. I have more some kind of themes or topics or questions, and I did these interviews with people who are around thirty, because the film before, Be My Star, I did with very young children, and with all the expectation of love and the grown-up life, and so for Longing I was curious about this moment when you are suddenly a grown-up and what are your longings or fantasies of different lives. And in the interviews, I realized that very often love stories are the stage for all these, I don’t know...great emotions? And when I was looking for a kind of melodramatic moment, I remembered this story. I was in a little village in France, I visited a friend. And she told me a story of a man, he was living across the street. And he was, I don't know...maurer? 

Gerd Gemünden 16:51

Bricklayer. 

Valeska Grisebach 16:52

Bricklayer. And she told me, “Maybe I only saw him once on a street, very normal man,” In this little French village, everybody was very closed and the people, they don't show as much emotions, and she told me, “Okay, this man he is married, or he was married, and he fell in love with another woman, and he had has a kind of love affair and his wife, she left him and he was so sad he [shot] himself in his heart, but he survived.” And this was for me, like an iconic, I don't know...story. And I liked it a lot that he survived because for me, in this village where nobody shows his emotion, that somebody chooses this melodramatic gesture, the scar was like a medal. I don’t know. And so this was very important, to start writing.

Haden Guest  17:42  

I mean, another way to read the coda, if you will, as if the film is a story told by the children and then we start to read elements differently, like the rabbit, like you know, a child would give the rabbit such a, you know, presence in the film. Also, I mean, I feel like the figure of the playground is something that appears in all of your films. I was reminded in Western, it begins first of all, and he's crossing a playground to receive the volleyball net. It’s as if there's a sense of the storytelling, as I said, a ludic quality, it’s a playful quality and also sort of a child's  innocence and looking at certain objects again, like the rabbit, or even the accident itself, seeing it from a sort of a distance. And I was wondering if you could... this idea of this film being told as a story told by children.

Valeska Grisebach  18:41  

Yeah. I'm sorry, I don't know if I have [so much to say] about this. I mean, it's a little bit, how do you say...kitschy maybe? Kitschy? Kitschig?

Haden Guest  18:52

You could say that, but I wouldn’t.

Valeska Grisebach  18:53

No, but [in retrospect,] I think maybe it's a little bit... Not the ending, but this perspective of the children. But no, I think for me it's—despite if they are children or not—for me, it's always very interesting when a story becomes a story. So, these are the legends we are living with.

Gerd Gemünden  19:14 

To come back to the question of fate, which is so important in this film, it begins by Markus rescuing somebody who was trying to commit double suicide, and only one person dies and the other survives, and he says, “I played fate. I interfered.” And I'm wondering if this interference in somebody else's fate then plays into his own fate.

Haden Guest  19:41

I might also add too, when he says to Rose, he goes, “This is the last time we'll see each other,” and then she falls off the balcony. It’s that too. It's as if, right, he's acting like fate as well. So yeah. I mean, do you want to comment on this idea of fate and Marcus as having a hand perhaps?

Valeska Grisebach  20:03

Yeah, I thought this was maybe from—I have to remember—but, I think for me it was important that there's this couple and they are maybe together since they [were] children or kids. So it's really this, a little bit old-fashioned, romantic love story and this moment of interfering with another story does something to him. So, maybe not conscious, but it’s starting some questioning about his own life.

Haden Guest  20:36  

I think when we start thinking about fate, thinking about the power of stories, of legends, the kind of magical powers that they can have. This idea that there can be this sort of fate perhaps, but there are some moments that are charged with this kind of mystery and perhaps magic. I think those with music are important, especially in this film. It's not just the dance, which seems to transform him at a certain moment, and then you cut to the fateful event, if you will. But then there's also the moment where the wife is singing in the chorus and she starts to cry as if, again, there's some sort of revelation or something. I wonder if you could talk about these moments of almost magical transformation that seem to be embedded in these musical scenes.

Valeska Grisebach  21:33

First of all, I always thought that the story itself, for me, is also a little bit like a story of a country song. So I thought when somebody told me the story of the man in the French village, I liked it because it's so simple and I immediately could connect with his story. 

I didn't see the film for a long time, and I saw the beginning, I felt a little bit embarrassed when I saw the chorus scene. I thought okay, maybe now I would do it different. So it was a little bit [GROAN] and now she will cry because she feels something. [LAUGHS] But yeah, I think at this time it was right to do it like this. There's this kind of connection between them. And yeah, but for me, always music also transports this kind of knowledge about legends or how love should be, or life should be.

Gerd Gemünden  22:40 

You use music sparingly and you use music always diegetically, so it's music that the characters in the film can hear, and not just the audience. And in each of your films, there is a scene in which the lead dances by himself or herself. Those of you who will be here tomorrow night, look for that in Be My Star. That's how Western ends—Meinhard dancing by himself—and here it’s Markus, with very dire consequences. Is that a very purposeful strategy of highlighting the impact of music like that? Because melodrama usually has music and your films have very little music, but then they have these moments where music really matters.

Valeska Grisebach  23:31  

Do you mean now, in context to the dancing scenes?

Gerd Gemünden 23:34

Mm hmm.

Valeska Grisebach 23:35  

Yeah, I [said] yesterday that, for me, to dance is a very personal moment, even if you try to control it. And this film for me, it's really like stepping onto a stage and expressing yourself. And also, in connection with this kind of elliptic moment afterwards, he doesn't know what's happened. And now, in every film I did is a dancing scene. And there are a lot of other dancing scenes in other films I adore a lot. Yesterday I [talked] about Claire Denis’ Beau Travail, the ending of the film and yeah, we will see. 

Gerd Gemünden 24:20

And the song “Polar Bear,” which we hear twice at the end, it runs over the credits, any comment on that? It's all about longing, and wanting to be somewhere else, and being somewhere else?

Valeska Grisebach  24:35 

Yeah, I mean, this song is very connected to the 80s in Germany. And it was a very interesting, but cool moment in German music. And for me, it was a kind of connection between them both, tell us about the past and maybe the polar bears also. [LAUGHS] Some kind of transformation, but for me, I think I chose it because of the memory of a certain time.

Haden Guest  25:07  

I mean music is also, not to harp—there’s a pun—harp too much on that, but the idea of community in utopia, I feel like is also in music. You know, the song “Polar Bears,” this moment where the family unit is sort of the closest, where she's singing with the chorus too—it's a moment of communion. And even if we can extend it to things like the toasts and the fireman's party. It's also the sense of togetherness, as a sort of social fabric, sort of meeting at a certain point where...because I feel like language in your films is often pushed to the limit, where it's ritualistic or it's sort of hollowed out for meaning, but somehow music and song is a different kind of connection between people and between a community. Is that something you…?

Valeska Grisebach  26:03  

For sure. I think music is really something [that] we share and I think like many other filmmakers, I use music to support a moment, or to find a feeling for an inner situation, or to connect with this, I don't know, bigger meaning. Because I think for this film it was really for me interesting this contrast: you have these melodramatic setting or situation and then you have the cast of non-professional actors, and to maybe find this image of everybody is the main actor or star of their own life—and I think the music is also part of this idea.

Haden Guest  26:50  

I mean, I was gonna ask about the cuts. We see this in all of your films, but here, perhaps it's the most pronounced. These really quite radical, sudden breaks sometimes where, you know, the sound will suddenly change, the time seems to change. I was wondering if you could talk about the strategy and the ideas behind this. Of course, one of the biggest breaks is that of the next day where he awakens to find himself disoriented in Rose's room, but you've made a clear decision to really mark this as a break.

Valeska Grisebach  27:32  

This was also one of the things I knew really from the beginning: that this night he can't remember, it's really a night we also only can have a fantasy about. And yeah, I think for me, it's always interesting: the balance between the told and the untold. And this elliptic storytelling, I think also when I look at other films it’s always very interesting to me that you have to fill up these moments of “you can't see,” and I think the spectator also knows a lot about these elliptic moments and yet these balances for me they’re very inspiring and interesting.

Haden Guest  28:22  

It seems there's also a kind of, how to say it? There's a certain rhythm, a kind of punctuation. They’re moments, for instance, when we first see Markus and Rose together, and they’re about to...actually, the first time we see them kiss, there’s this cut to this truck going by, there's a kind of emphatic, no? sort of, punctuation that you're also adding to the film at these moments too.

Valeska Grisebach  28:50  

I think we were always looking for this kind of essence of the scene: the moment when it's told, and then we can go further or we can go to the next moment. And I think sometimes it's also because we did the—this is not the reason—but, to make this film was not so easy; we hadn't so much money and it was a complicated shooting process. And so sometimes the montage is connected to the material. I mean, there were a lot of decisions before, but sometimes some elliptic moments, they are big because...how do you say?...concerning to the material. 

Haden Guest 29:48

Like, coming out of...[UNKNOWN]

Valeska Grisebach  29:49  

Yup. Yup. 

Haden Guest 29:50

I see.

Gerd Gemünden  29:51

In contrast to the cuts, there are a few scenes that are very long, it's very long shots. One is the dancing, obviously, where Markus gets lost and so we get lost with him. Another one is early in the film when Markus walks towards the lake, and we see him from behind. And it's almost like a sunrise or sunset moment. One of the few truly romantic moments in the film and is joined by his wife. Is that a conscious counterpoint to the more mundane that comes before and after? To the more mundane [UNKNOWN GERMAN]

Valeska Grisebach  30:29  

Yeah, absolutely. I think this was because you [talked] about Caspar David Friedrich. And I mean, the landscape and Brandenburg is not so beautiful, but it has its moment. [LAUGHS] And I'm always a little bit shy with landscapes, not to make too much butter to the bread, but I thought okay, we will have some landscape in the film. And it's thought in the beginning when he had this experience of this accident, I thought this could be a moment for this, that he's searching for something in the landscape. And to build up this romantic moment between him and his wife. So, to the sentence when he's [saying[, I think, something like, “I will do everything for you,” and for this also the landscape was quite important.

Haden Guest  31:23  

I feel like one of the larger ideas your films are all exploring is this question about the authenticity or meaning of emotions, like, from where do they come and what do they mean to ourselves? Do we really understand them and can we communicate them? And I feel like in this film, you're using the lens of, if you will, of legend or of storytelling. In Western you have the idea of, like, how do men express themselves, like you know, to one another? And then in Be My Star, it’s this of youth trying to learn, like, the rules of the game, if you will, of how to...of romance. And I was wondering, in what ways though, are you also thinking about...on one level, I feel like it's almost if you will, like sociological, you’re trying to understand how we express ourselves to one another. But I feel like you're also asking, how does cinema itself...what are the rules of cinema and cinematic narrative to tell these stories? What are the conventions and what are their limits, you know? And in this case, the idea of melodrama is being a form, being a kind of story, a kind of folk song, if you will, and in what ways do you think you're questioning you know, again, the rules of cinematic narrative, the form of cinematic narrative itself and what it can tell us, what it can teach us about human emotions?

Valeska Grisebach  33:00  

I mean, one thing is this...I think one thing is language. So this language we take maybe from songs or films, and we have them in mind, we have them internalized, and we can use them in certain situations. I think this is something we thought about in the film. So for example, when they are [at] the door and they talk about love, and these were the lines that the actors—they hate them; they really thought that these were the most difficult scenes [speaking] these lines! But I think for me it's always very interesting, again, this contrast between the written script or the idea of the film and then the material moment, the moment we do it, and it's connected to the physics, to the...to the moment. So, and I think this is always when I looked to other films or documentary films or the first films which were made... these moments [depicting what the material can] take. It's alive, it’s a body, it's a moment, and I think this contrast is always very interesting for me also in losing control. And so this idea of a story or a legend and there's something else besides the legend.

Gerd Gemünden  34:33 

And to come back to what you just said about the actors struggling with certain lines, I wonder to what degree these films are scripted and how you work with text with non-professional actors. How much how much text can they actually handle and how much, well maybe not improvisation, but how much can they use their own language—even their limited language, as it willfully is shown here—to convey the meaning, or the plot points that you need to get across but still creating the sense that it's their words and not yours?

Valeska Grisebach  35:13  

I think it's very important that we have a kind of long preparation time, some kind of rehearsals, so we all in a way are preparing ourselves for the shooting process so that they learn in a way the script without learning the words. So there is a script, but the script looks like a treatment maybe. And it's very precise, sometimes it's more like to [convey] some kind of atmosphere or what are we looking for? And but, only in this film, that one scene [with] Ilka Welz—the main actress for Ella—she really asked me, “Please, please, please give me the text,” and I gave her the text, and this was really not a good idea. This is the scene when she's talking with him about sex and because she was so concentrated [on] the lines, she lost something which maybe [is] beside the lines, and because it's normally we are working like: I tell them the dialogues and the scenes and then from this on, we try and… And also for me it's an interesting moment because I also have to put away the script and to re-memorize the scene and the dialogues and this brings some kind of transformation with, but it always brings us more close to the to the scene and yeah, so in this film, you can see what is happening when I give the text. [LAUGHS]

Haden Guest  36:57  

Well, I guess this naturally leads to the topic of performance because I feel like there's a kind of performance in your films as your...the actor's performance is charged with a sense... In one sense, there's an idea that they're playing a role. And I feel like as in Western, there's a sense that, you know, Meinhard at one point is the cowboy and Vincent is the villain, but those roles sort of slip away. Here, too, this idea that he's a volunteer fireman. It's like, it's a role that he plays in a sense. And then within the stories themselves—the films themselves’ roles—are sort of underscored and framed as roles. But at the same time, I feel like you're also questioning and asking—like the roles that we play in everyday life as husband, as wife, as father, perhaps even as child. What are those roles? How much are they scripted, if you will, and how much are they, you know, improvised or invented?

Valeska Grisebach  38:09  

Yeah, I couldn't have said it more beautiful than you, so.. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, for me it's really very interesting how is biography growing and how are we scripting our own life and how close are we connected to our ideas or ideas of others? How should it be? And so it's, for me, also an image of...imagination? Almagination?  [UNKNOWN]

Haden Guest  38:44  

Amalgamation?

Valeska Grisebach 38:46

Ya, ya.

Haden Guest  38:48  

Well, let me ask you then this: so what is the role of cinema then? Like what does cinema bring to that? I mean, because it seems, so in a sense, you're showing us the potential for cinema perhaps to review, or to make us think about the ways in which narrative, if you will, plays a role in this performance of everyday life.

Valeska Grisebach  39:10  

I think it's always...communicating, I think. I think I'm full of narration, of literature, and cinema or music. And I think it's, for example, like I [said] yesterday when I asked a man about Western, to come [to the[ casting for a Western film—even if it's not a really Western—but all these men, really, all these men said immediately, “Yes, I'm coming.” And I have the Western in me. So maybe for everybody, it means something different. But I think this is some kind of synchronization which is very interesting.

Gerd Gemünden  39:56 

I would imagine when you cast for a metal– you know, a blacksmith. There aren't that many male volunteers who get up and, you know, “I want to act out my dreams and be a blacksmith.” It's interesting that in both Western and in Sehnsucht, you have a male protagonist, and—actually the film, specifically this one—spends quite a bit of time with him working and showing him doing these tasks of his job, and giving ample screen time to that. But it's interesting to contrast that with the women who are, in a way, they're more knowing than the men in some way. Markus has to ask what actually happened, you know, he has no clue. And she doesn't say but there's sort of a wry smile. And in Western this figure, Vaya is her name?

Valeska Grisebach 40:50

Vyara

Gerd Gemünden 40:52

Yeah, who speaks two languages and knows more than Meinhard and Vince. And so I'm wondering how you conceive of these dynamics between men and women and in these sort of male-dominated or it looks male dominated-stories?

[PAUSE]

Valeska Grisebach 41:11

[SOFT, UNCOMFORTABLE SNICKER]

Uhhhhh…

[PAUSE]

Gerd Gemünden  41:17 

Is that too specific, or?

Valeska Grisebach  41:20  

Sorry, it’s that I don't know immediately to say what...I mean...for sure, all these men that deal with some kind of emotions, I'm also dealing with so...it's maybe for certain reasons I was really interested in these male characters, but I'm sorry that I really don't know exactly what to say about it.

Gerd Gemünden  41:49 

But the women are more than a foil. I mean, the women are really interesting, complex characters of their own and I'm wondering how you sort of think through that interaction. 

Valeska Grisebach 42:06

Ummm… I can talk more about Western because in Western, I thought that the genre was very strong and was not too easy to really– For Western, I used the women in a quite conventional way [when] the men are interacting [with] the women, and in Longing, I think the women also are in the society in quite conventional roles. And sometimes I'm thinking, okay why [do] I use these kind of nostalgic settings for the stories? Not because maybe I'm so nostalgic, but to come for a special…[SIGH]...I'm sorry about my English. Maybe now I can… [INAUDIBLE RESPONSES] No, it's okay. But maybe I don't have to say so much about the women, but maybe I didn't get the question right.

Haden Guest  43:18  

That's okay. I mean, I wanted to ask just a bit about, I mean, your use of non-actors in this film in particular because it seems here, of all of your films, you're asking some of the most challenging things of your non-professional actors. We have these, you know, scenes of nudity, we have scenes of, you know actually, these death scenes and suicide, whereas in both Western and Be My Star, you're asking your non-actors in many ways to perform, to do things that they've done before and so I was wondering if you could talk about... It seems like this is—I would imagine—maybe had some of the more challenging moments in terms of working with non-professional actors.

Valeska Grisebach  44:09  

I mean, from the beginning we talk very frankly about what will happen. So, I think they really know from the beginning that that will be quite exciting, so also for Longing, it was clear that there will be these love scenes, and because the casting process is quite intense and long so, it's really a test for all of us, not only for me, also for the actors to decide, “Okay, are we really ready to do this?” Because it's not only fun. And I mean for the love scenes, it was so that said we always knew, “Okay, we will do this, we will do this.” They said, “Okay, we will do this,” but then I had this situation that they were sitting in front of me, and I was talking to them, and they were like stones.

Haden Guest 45:01

[LAUGHTER]

Valeska Grisebach 45:02

And at some point I decided, “Okay, we have to establish this is something which is happening,” so we really looked at love scenes, just to bring it to another level, to bring it out of this personal context, and this was really very helpful to do it. And at the beginning because I thought I really have to protect them, I did some kind of choreography, but this was too, I don't know, it was like ballet and it was not really easy to do. And then we tried it in a different way, that we talked more about the content and subtext of the scene. And it was not improvisation, but it was a little bit more free and so we could catch the moment. And it was when you look at the raw material, it's really a little bit embarrassing, because you always hear my voice, telling them what to do. And it was really for me terrible to hear my voice. [LAUGHS] “Okay, kids, do this, do this.” [LAUGHTER] We had to cut it off.

Haden Guest  46:12 

This idea though... I'm really interested that you would watch together certain scenes from films. Is that something that you've done in your other work?

Valeska Grisebach  46:21

No, never before.

Haden Guest 46:22

No. Okay.

Valeska Grisebach 46:23

No, no. It was really because it was like, I don't know this...stone faces, I really had the feeling to...bring them in motion.

Haden Guest  46:37  

Maybe we could take some questions, comments from the audience and… Amanda's here with the microphone. If anybody has questions or comments, you just have to raise your hand. There's one right over here and...do you want to pass…? Maybe you want to hand the mic...?

Audience 1  46:54  

I noticed in this film and also in Western that you made a lot of headshots of the characters and I'm just wondering why you chose to shoot the film in this manner.

[PAUSE]

Valeska Grisebach  47:19

You are asking why I did so many headshots? Okay. I remember a mix, I think, of headshots and more total images? And I think one thing was to follow Markus also from behind, so to be with him. And then we tried to...sometimes we have these situations, how to say, shot and reverse shot? Yeah, so, in these moments of when they are standing at the door, to bring these melodramatic moments. But the shooting process of this film was quite complicated, so I was very happy that we brought this film to a happy ending. So, and why the shooting process sometimes, I don't know, it was really sometimes very chaotic and not so easy to make the film. And in all my three films, I was working together with cinematographer Bernhard Keller, and when we do the, how do you say, auflösung?

Gerd Gemünden 48:44

[WHISPER] Resolution.

Valeska Grisebach 48:45

Resolution, or when we talk about the images. So we talk more about lenses and feelings, and, I don't know, what is the right lens for one person, or more in general. And because this shooting process was a little bit wild, I was very happy that I could trust him because sometimes we just thought, “Okay, what do we do? I have some...we don't have so much time.” So we just, okay, so we [use] a handheld camera, and maybe not because we wanted it so much, just because we had to do [it], and so I was very happy afterwards that we are so synchronized, Bernhard and me, that we had a result we could go with into the montage. But so maybe also [in] concern to your question about sometimes rough editing: I think there's something in the material, which comes also out from the shooting process. But I think there were some moments where we were really looking for the faces. So, looking to each other.

Haden Guest  50:06  

Other questions or comments here? Robert, right there.

Audience 2  50:12  

This is probably more of a comment, but I like the way in both films—and in tonight's especially—how you kept the feeling of tension right from the beginning to the end, but without resorting to clichés. You know, it wasn't like sort of a heavy, tense action-type tension, it's more like something's brewing behind and underneath, and in the minds of the people with, you know, the characters, as well as the fact that you didn't really use much music except for the diegetic music. That also is a way that a lot of films clue in that, “Oh, yeah, something's about to happen,” or they create a tension with the music, but you're able to do it completely with the image and the acting. So I don't know if It's something you can explain, but anyway...

Haden Guest  51:09  

Do you ever think about tension in your...in this film...?

Valeska Grisebach  51:11 

Yeah, I think we talked a lot about tension because for me it's always very interesting while writing, because I start quite abstract, so with a structure of subtexts, and then I try to find a surface kind of story, because I never start with a story, so it's more like I have this construction, and then to find the surface, and it's always a question of, combination of storyline and atmosphere, and to have some...and sometimes to hide as a construction. So when I saw in our Longing, I thought, “Oh, we didn't hide it maybe so good.” So, but yeah, so I think it's always to find the balance between tension and to find some suspense moments, or that you stick to the story but then to manage to have some place for atmosphere. So I think this is something we think a lot about.

Haden Guest  52:19 

Other questions or comments for Valeska Grisebach? Roy?

Roy  52:26

Yes, I have two small questions, they're very tiny observations by me. And I am afraid they're very subjective. So I'm really asking, you know, for some help. One is really kind of banal and funny. There was a scene in which the family was having coffee and cake. And they were using whipped cream out of a spray can and I thought that was shocking. And so I wanted– I thought it was very non traditional, but of course, it was also a society that was just, you know, between past and future because it was in a way, you know, East Germany was done, and West Germany was not really there. And so I know in my family, people would have never used whipped cream out of a spray can. So that's question number one, [LAUGHTER] and I think that's probably an easy one to answer. The second one goes back to your own comment about directing the actors, especially during the lovemaking scenes. And the one scene where we actually do have the nudity and the intercourse. My subjective impression was that that was very mechanical. And I wanted to know if you directed the actor—both actors—to do it more mechanically.

Valeska Grisebach  53:51 

Okay, I have some, umm...

Haden Guest  53:53 

Combine them into one answer. [LAUGHS]

Valeska Grisebach 53:59 

This would be really talented if I…

Gerd Gemünden 54:02

Had there been more whipped cream, it would’ve been less mechanical.

Valeska Grisebach  54:08 

Yeah, the whipped cream, I liked it a lot because, yeah, when these women come together and talk about their stories and experiences, and...yeah, I don't know, it was perfect that they had this whipped cream. And umm...

Haden Guest  54:29

It’s kind of like they’re breaking the rules. The sort of breaking the rules of what you would normally do maybe.

Valeska Grisebach  54:33 

No, it's not normally. I think it's more not normally there to have this...I don’t know how you do in English.

Haden Guest  54:39 

The whipped cream?

Valeska Grisebach 54:40

No, the [WISPY NOISE]

Haden Guest  54:41 

Oh, the spray can.

Valeska Grisebach 43:42

Yeah, yeah. So um...hmm? And, uh...

Haden Guest  54:48 

And the whole question about the…whether the intercourse was meant to be mechanical.

Valeska Grisebach  54:54 

It was for me not so mechan– I think it was not intended to be so mechanical. So it was, I think for me, it was still connected to the sexuality of the couple, which is changing. And I have an answer, which is not so qualified. I just thought because this was, for me, while we were shooting... because he was naked. And I was a little bit concerned afterwards. But I just remember the premiere of the film when he was surrounded by the women of the village, and they told him what nice...I don't know…

Haden Guest 55:35

Buttocks?

Valeska Grisebach  55:36 

Buttocks, yes.

Haden Guest 55:37

[LAUGHTER]

Valeska Grisebach  55:38 

He has got so many compliments! [LAUGHS] 

Gerd Gemünden 55:43

For me, that lovemaking scene that Roy is alluding to actually does make sense the way it is because the first lovemaking scene that we see between Ella and Markus after his infidelity, he’s very reluctant, and she, you know, she draws him in, and he sort of tries to keep her at bay, and then the mechanical makes sense in that he's sort of now more...there's less desire and he's performing a duty, because she's insisting. And she also says, of course, “I desire you,” whereas Rose says, “I long for you”, so that there's very different shifts of, you know, passion there. And I think that's, for me, it made perfect sense that he's not quite with it, you know, emotionally.

[PAUSE]

But that's just how I read the scene.

Haden Guest  56:37 

Well, I think if there are no other questions or comments, I think I’ll ask you to join me in thanking Valeska Grisebach and Gerd Gemünden. [APPLAUSE]

I'll ask you to come back tomorrow, where we'll be, we're going backwards in time where I will be going back and finally seeing the first film, Mein Stern, which is a really wonderful film. So thank you all.

[APPLAUSE]
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