Description of a Method

Rudolf Thome is a filmmaker. His films MADE IN GERMANY UND USA (1974), TAGEBUCH (1975), DAS MIKROSKOP (1988) and TIGERSTREIFENBABY WARTET AUF TARZAN(TIGER-STRIPE WOMAN WAITS FOR TARZAN) (1998) had their world premieres in the Forum.

In 2000, PARADISO - SIEBEN TAGE MIT SIEBEN FRAUEN (PARADISO - SEVEN DAYS WITH SEVEN WOMEN) was shown in competition at the Berlinale. He wrote the above text for his film BESCHREIBUNG EINER INSEL (Forum 1979, codirected with Cynthia Beatt). It was published in the Forum catalogue in 1979.

The documentaryRUDOLF THOME - ÜBERALL BLUMEN (RUDOLF THOME - FLOWERS EVERYWHERE)by Serpil Turhan is premiering as a Special Screening in this year’s Forum.

1. In DAY FOR NIGHT, François Truffaut says that filmmaking started off as the realisation of a bold dream and (because of all the difficulties that get in the way of the original plan) ended up as an ongoing set of compromises, leaving one even happy to actually finish a film. This path from initial enthusiasm to sobriety and objectivity, which leads in turn to resignation and indifference, is not unavoidable for the filmmaker. It is mainly brought about by working with a “script”, by having to set out in advance all the details of what is supposed to occur during the shoot. From the perspective of the audience sitting in the cinema auditorium, the results of the filmmaker’s efforts are seen accordingly: they see “cinema” — colourful, moving images that at best succeed in making them forget about real life outside for an hour and a half. The majority of films showing at the moment in our cinemas are hardly the kind to bowl us over. And even the best of them come across as strangely flat, as sterile and artificial. They no longer contain any life. When the last image disappears from the screen, the film too is dead.

Why is this? Are the films of the 70s so much worse than those of the previous decades? That may be the case, but it doesn’t seem very likely. What seems much more likely is that a change has occurred in our viewing habits, in how we behave with regard to reception. Could it be that television has changed our behaviour in terms of how and what we consume in our free time and thus brought the film industry in this country at least to the edge of the abyss, that a shift has equally taken place in the demands we make of what we see in the cinema and the needs we have of it?

What have been the most exciting television programmes of the last few years? Football games, boxing matches and live talk show formats: depictions, reflections of things taking place at the exact same moment at which we see them. When watching such programmes, we are both spectators and actively involved (some talk shows gives us the opportunity to take on an active role by calling the television station) in a process whose final result is still unclear. Filmmakers and the film industry, as far as the latter still exists outside Hollywood, must now engage with the fundamental openness and authenticity of a television live show.

2. When making a film without a script, without a written framework set out in advance, the situation of the filmmaker looks very different. It’s not just about working on a film where everything is done for appearances and to deceive the spectator (and by no means in a purely negative way), where at the end of a scene the actors are “switched off” along with the camera. It’s rather about working with the “actors” on a real project that contains all the risk factors of real life, which also has to be conducted regardless of whether the camera is running or not.

There is no clear beginning and no clear, unambiguous end. There is no relationship between what has been made already and what has yet to be made, a relationship that shifts inexorably in favour of the latter whilst shooting a standard film with a script and that necessarily depresses the filmmaker when he or she thinks about what was in mind at the beginning and what were the compromises that had to be made.

When shooting without a script, only two things exist: what has already been done and the period of time agreed with one’s team to be used for the shoot.

The film material exposed each day is not based on scenes that one (or indeed someone else) has thought up previously and now transposed to a filmable “reality” in rough and ready fashion, but rather on an activity the actors would have carried out on this day anyway even without the camera being present, on their concrete needs and wishes, their moods and emotions. In their original state, the scenes shot by a team filming without a script are unique sections of a small piece of reality that can never repeated and not the copy of reality contained on a piece of paper covered in writing – a single page in a script.

The power and energy of all those working on such films flows directly into the fruits of their labours and not into the process of implementation.

When shooting according to a script, the greatest amount of energy is spent on finding people, locations and objects in reality that correspond to those described in the script. One sometimes spends days, weeks or even months looking for a particular actor, a particular location etc. When filming without a script, whatever the camera is supposed to depict is usually already there. The most important problem that emerges here and that everyone involved concentrates on is whether the people are supposed to do anything different from what they would normally do (without the presence of the film camera and the technicians operating it): the problem of the relationship between fiction and reality.

3. What is “documentary fiction”? This concept, which has appeared more and more frequently in recent years (and is actually a contradiction in terms), has two different meanings. The first of these refers to documentaries with simple fictional plots (perhaps one must already include Robert Flaherty’s 1921 NANOOK OF THE NORTH here, because most of its scenes were supposedly staged). The second meaning — and that is the more recent and more important one — refers to a fiction film shot using the methods of the documentary.

Documentaries convey something that already exists in reality, they are thus direct portrayals of sections of reality. As one can never convey reality in its entirety, the art of the documentary consists of how it selects these sections and combines them in such a way that at least the impression of a totality is created. The fiction film conveys something already made, something invented, it is a “double reflection” (Lukács) of reality as far as realistic films are concerned. Its method is indirect and its fascination emerges from the tension between the fictional, invented character of the subjects, characters and their actions it depicts and the authenticity of all the depictions within the film (for everything depicted by the film camera must in some way be real and must have occurred in order for the camera’s lens to be able capture it). It is this tension that has sustained the fiction film thus far.

Yet after having been used thousands and thousands of times already, this procedure has worn increasingly thin, becoming little more than a necessary academic exercise, one whose efficiency has nearly been snuffed out. Conventional films seek to enthral their audiences by placing new subjects in front of them again and again (depict subjects no one has thus far dared to do). And by depicting these subjects in a spiral of violence and cruelty, they attempt to shock audiences, to stimulate them, to disconcert them. Today, the most technically proficient films leave the spectator in a state of dull stupefaction.

In the current stage of this development, documentary fiction offers a possible way out.

4. Documentary fiction depicts something that is really happening. As there is no script to tell them what to say and do, its actors must therefore invent what they say and do at the moment of filming, just like real people do in everyday life. As everyday life cannot be depicted in its entirety, certain sections of it must be defined, much like in a documentary. These sections form the framework that the actors must then follow. But they are otherwise not subject to any restrictions. I’ve made two films in such a way: MADE IN GERMANY UND USA (1974) and TAGEBUCH (1976).

My principle when making these two films was to bring as little fiction as possible into what I was filming. When making documentary fiction that draws on improvisation, fiction becomes a form of medicine only administered to the patients, that is, the actors, when a serious illness has been diagnosed, when the progression of the story seems to have come to a standstill. I don’t mean story literally here, as no story is being told in the conventional sense anyway. For the concept of a story means that whatever is being told is already in the past and has already been set out in advance.

5. When shooting this sort of improvised documentary fiction, sections of reality form themselves into different “arrays” whose “points of intersection” are not fixed, with their meaning remaining open or, even better, in flux. These arrays are created based both on free association and several people working together and develop into an ever more complicated system of references in the mind of the filmmaker and his or her team with each shooting day that passes (a system not clearly apparent to those not involved in the process of creating it). Getting your bearings within this system and progressively condensing it, much like how a spider weaves its web ever more finely and tightly, generates an enthusiasm in all those involved that only grows in intensity. It is exactly the opposite situation to that described by Truffaut.

The fact that it remains open during the entire shoot, until the final day of shooting in fact, whether a scene will be created on any given day that will throw the meaning of everything previously shot into disarray and cast all that has thus far occurred, been developed and experienced in a new light, is a challenge to the imagination of everyone involved in the process.

As such scenes arise several times during the shoot, anyone working on the film that is not prepared for such things can easily feel a bit unsteady on their feet and lose any sense of orientation for a while. The only fixed point of reference they can cling to is the end of the agreed period of shooting. This makes the length of the working period set out in advance and the quantity of film negative available hugely important for this type of filming.

6. Improvised documentary fiction gives filmmaking and those who work in it the same freedoms that those active in the other arts have always made use of. The “free activity of fancy”, writes Hegel, is the “source of all art works”. Filmmaking of this kind is no longer just concerned with translating a film invented in either the filmmakers’ head or someone else’s into sounds and images, with “implementing” the process. The filmmaker is no longer an “implementer” but rather creates something where there was nothing before.

And the product spontaneously created in such fashion can perhaps also reflect the spark of enthusiasm that led to its creation, with perhaps this type of film being the one to succeed once again in passing this spark on to audiences.

A filmmaker that uses this method does not work according to a finished, self-contained model (as represented by a script), but rather sets a process in motion whose essence it is to search for what is supposed to be made, whereby the model and the form (the art work) coincide, whereby what to be expressed and its expression, form and content become one.

7. This form of filmmaking proceeds in a way analogous to science, as the filmmaker equally wants to find out something previously unknown. This type of filming is an adventure, a research trip into unchartered territory (needless to say, it makes no difference here where the film is shot). The filmmaker wants to find out how people behave and to portray this accordingly. If you apply the concept of “ethnography” not just to foreign, “primitive” peoples, but to one’s own people too, I’ve basically already made such ethnographical features in the form of MADE IN GERMANY UND USA and TAGEBUCH. It thus seems only logical that I attempt to continue along the same path following these films by making this method of ethnographical filmmaking the subject of my new film.

And while for those two films, I still had the choice of shooting them with or without a script (as I was familiar with the people and how they live), I have no other choice for the film I’m currently planning, as I neither know the inhabitants of Ureparapara nor how the Europeans will behave when confronted with such a foreign world. Everything I might be able to invent there would be lies and charlatanism.

Filmkritik No. 245, May 1977, pp. 226 - 229