(For Part One go here)
Two: Boo Junfeng
“Image makers not filmmakers.”
I met Boo Junfeng and Pierre on the same day in 2007 at the Goodwood Park Hotel, Singapore, where Eric Khoo was introducing Rissient to various film people. Junfeng was already known for his short films. Today he’s the writer-director of two renowned feature films, Sandcastle and Apprentice, both selected for Cannes (Critics Week 2010 and Un Certain Regard 2016, respectively). I wanted to talk to Junfeng about Pierre partly because he’d participated in a TV interview (Signature Conversations) with him in 2012 which closely approximates the experience of spending an afternoon with Rissient talking about films, and also his own relationship to Pierre, which was exemplary of how Pierre mentored/supported young filmmakers who crossed his path.
Ben Slater: I’d gone out for this crazy lunch with Pierre, and we came back to the Goodwood, and Eric wanted to introduce him to filmmakers and Pierre asked me to hang around. And you and Sun Koh (Singaporean filmmaker) came in, and I’d not met you before.
Boo Junfeng: Sun asked me to go, and back then I didn’t even know Eric very well. At that time I’d made my first film, A Family Portrait, I was probably just out of the army.
BS: You were very quiet.
BJF: I was very nervous, and I was so fresh. The idea of Cannes was so out of reach, the idea of even making my next short film was so out of reach. I didn’t see it at as “I need to know this guy.” I only got to know Pierre better after Sandcastle.
BS: I saw him just before he watched it.
BJF: The second run was at The Arts House (an arts centre in Singapore with a screening room), Pierre was there, with a public audience and afterwards we had a very long dinner. Just me and him and one of my Assistant Directors at the time, because I felt better with some company. I think Pierre saw something in the film, because when the DVD was coming out I asked him for a quote and he gave me a very nice quote, not about the film, but about mine being an interesting voice and wanting to hear more from me. He saw the future of a younger filmmaker and wanted to give that support. He knew what to focus on.
BS: And so the next time you met him was when you did the conversation with him for TV?
BJF: They planned it so it was all quite real. He was sitting there and I was entering as I was arriving (to meet him)… I knew that a lot of the focus would be on Asian Cinema and the kinds of films and filmmakers I was drawn to, and I knew he would be an expert on most of them. He was just responding to the people I was inspired by, and he knew many of them personally. I remember talking about Lee Chang-dong because I had a deep appreciation for his works and Pierre knew him very well. I remember him saying that there are film-makers who are very quiet and when you talk to them you can sense a vulnerability and that’s reflected in the films they make. That stayed with me, because you do have to be a real person, at least for the kinds of films that I want to make.
After that I only saw him again once or twice, and I remember sending him an early cut of Apprentice, and I don’t think he was too fond of it. He didn’t say much. He said how he felt it could be better and what was missing and what were the weaker parts of the film, and that gave me a lot to think about. And then I was in Paris and I met him for coffee and we talked, and then we went back to edit the film further.
BS: Can you remember anything he said that struck home?
BJF: Some things about certain performances. Which made me feel like I shouldn’t be too precious about certain moments, and I should just cut them out because they weren’t working.
BS: Did you see him in Cannes that year?
BJF: I heard from other people he wasn’t there. So as I was leaving at Nice Airport I texted him and immediately he called me and said he’d heard good things about the new cut, and he looked forward to seeing it and apologized for not being there. He was a gentleman, the way he spoke. The last time I saw him was last year at Fribourg, which turns out to be one of his favourite festivals, and I remember having breakfast with him, and Apprentice won the Grand Prix. I don’t know if he saw it.
BS: He was generous with his time.
BJF: It was one of those things that I deeply appreciated. He really didn’t have to. Of course he probably enjoyed company, and to have people to listen to him, talking about films. But as a film-maker I felt always quite honoured in his presence that he’d give me that time to discuss films and my films. Sometimes when you meet people at festivals they will look over your shoulder to see if there’s anyone else, but with him he was always so dedicated and so one-on-one and so genuine. He’s known to be honest, brutally so sometimes.
BS: In the interview he says he didn’t think much of your short films!
BJF: He talked about other filmmakers, and he said some are “image makers” not filmmakers, and there’s not a real understanding of cinema. He knew what he liked and what he didn’t like.
BS: I once asked him what he really liked and he said he wanted things to be stripped-back and simple and he didn’t enjoy excess, at the heart of what he liked was a very stark, spare cinema.
BJF: He liked films whereby the truth of that reality or story and the human condition is right there. You could see the author and the sincerity and the truth.
Signature_Rissient_Boo from M'GO Films on Vimeo.
Three: Panuksmi Hardjowirogo & Michel Cayla
“You discover it in reverse.”
Full disclosure, I have worked with Panuksmi Hardjowirogo and Michel Cayla of MGO Films quite a bit. Prolific producers of media content based in Singapore/Asia, including a great deal of work for museums and television, they frequently work with filmmakers. Among many projects, they co-produced the feature film HERE, directed by Ho Tzu Nyen which was in the Directors Fortnight in 2009, and produced a TV series Signature Conversations for Singaporean news network ChannelNewsAsia, which included the aforementioned interview/conversation between Pierre Rissient and Boo Junfeng, filmed in 2011, broadcast in 2012, produced by Panuksmi and directed by Michel.
Panuksmi Hardjowirogo: I met Pierre in Paris with (Zhang) Wenjie and Warren (Sin), they were working at the Cinémathèque of Singapore (at the National Museum of Singapore) and I went along to be a translator and to meet people at the Cinémathèque in Paris. We met up with (Saint Jack producer) Pierre Cottrell who introduced me to Pierre Rissient at a lunch for the five of us.
Ben Slater: So how did the TV show come about?
PH: Michel had this concept for a TV series called Signature Conversations which was about peers interviewing peers. So we had Boo Junfeng as the Singapore filmmaker interviewing a film person from overseas, and we knew from Wenjie and Warren that Pierre was coming into town.
BS: He came to the National Museum to show Five & the Skin (1982)… Had you heard of him before Cannes in 2009?
Michel Cayla: No. He was under the radar. But knowing where he came from, researching a bit more, I got a better picture of the fellow. He starts in Paris at the Cine-Club. His generation loved cinema, wanted to watch movies, so you get friends and you realise you can organize your own Cine-Club, which I did in Montreal, and through that you meet distributors and you find out how film works. But you discover it in reverse: you start projecting films, and then you meet distributors of film, and then understand marketing and finally how they are made.
BS: How did the idea come about for putting him in the series?
PH: We thought he could open a door into Asian cinema, but we wanted someone who was coherent and not just about Hollywood.
BS: You knew what he was like?
PH: I knew him through drinking and eating, and when I met him he wasn’t in very good shape, he’d just had an operation and was on crutches.
BS: He was off crutches when you filmed.
MC: The original concept was to have him walk into the studio with Junfeng, and to sit together and to be continuing a conversation, but he didn’t want to be seen walking on camera. So it starts with him sitting in the studio waiting for Junfeng to arrive. We had to improvise.
PH: We wanted to show the contrast between this young Asian filmmaker in his early 30s and this older French guy in his 70s.
MC: That pairing would never happen in any other context.
PH: He also wanted to find out the ideas of young film-makers and what the film culture here was like here in terms of film history.
BS: There were so many films mentioned by Pierre, you had to find clips and stills. There’s a clip of an Edward Yang film…
PH: We got that from the family. Pierre also helped us get the contacts, through Benjamin (Illos), for a lot of those clips.
BS: One of the things about Pierre that makes him hard to interview is that he drops names all the time. And drops them with the certainty that you know who he’s talking about.
MC: He mentioned this old French silent movie that he loved, L’Assommoir (1908). Completely out of the box.
BS: How long did you film him for?
PH: We were two hours in the studio.
MC: But he took a break, it wasn’t two hours straight. These guys know what they want to talk about, and what they don’t want to talk about. They are very coherent, quite focused. They don’t need to see the questions.
BS: After that did you see Pierre again?
PH: The last time I saw him was in France at the premiere of Ilo Ilo (in Cannes in 2013). He looked happy.
(For Part Three go here)
No comments:
Post a Comment