Dutch Film Director Sam de Jong Crowns A "Prince"

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 04 September 2015 21:49

Written by Brad Balfour

English-language movies documenting society’s underbelly include such classics as the hard-nosed Last Exit To Brooklyn or the comparatively benign West Side Story. And there’s a body of work that has emerged out of England’s rock subcultures from the ’50s on up. But fewer films detail Europe’s youth subcultures, although that’s been changing — witness a French film like La Haine (Hate).

Now a youthful director from Amsterdam, Sam de Jong, adds to the canon with Prince, his richly detailed, off-kilter portrait of a teen trying to navigate his way around the pitfalls of the projects he has grown up in without losing his sense of self or family. A peculiar movie for a peculiar age, it is both a gang saga and a teen angst tale of desire, full of dead ends but also of beginnings.

Viewed through the 29-year-old de Jong’s surreal lens, 17-year-old Ayoub lives on the cusp of Amsterdam’s projects, hanging out with his three buds — two other Moroccan expats and a Dutch kid, Franky (Jorik Scholten), the younger brother of Ronnie (Peter Douma), ringleader of a trio of local toughs.

Coping with junkie father Mo (Chaib Massaoudi), lonely divorcé mother Saskia (veteran actress Elsie de Brauw), and lovely half-sister Demi (Olivia Lonsdale) — whose budding sexuality disturbs him as she falls for his best friend — Ayoub has a lot on his mind. Then there’s his crush on local bombshell Laura (newcomer Sigrid ten Napel), who seems attached to a tattooed skinhead buddy one of the gangsta wanna-be trio who ride ATVs around town like they’re hardcore Harley-bikers, committing petty crime and drug infractions.

Haunted by his father's terrible state, Ayoub can't get any traction. But he does, however, win the favor of violent, eccentric, purple Lamborghini-driving, sociopathic local crime boss Kalpa (Freddy Tratlehner). Falling in with him, Ayoub tries to stretch his status (and wallet) enough to win Laura over, but soon finds that this life is much more than he bargained for. While Ayoub fights for her heart, he realizes that before he becomes a prince he has to learn to be a man.

Though being such a novice — born in August, 1986 — de Jong has directed docs, music videos, commercials and dramas; his work has won awards, and been screened at A-list festivals like Sundance, the Berlinale and AFI Fest. Prince made it into the 2015 Berlinale where it got Honorary Mention: Crystal Bear for Best First Feature.

Raised in Amsterdam’s suburban outskirts by trained therapists for parents, he was came to understand motivation better than most. Before graduating from the Netherlands Film Academy in 2012, he and his younger brother had traveled the world informing this feature and his shorts. After making his thesis, Magnesium, it was followed with other critically recognized shorts: Marc Jacobs and Malaguti Phantom, before developing this feature. In addition to music video work, De Jong’s also a musician, formerly of the award-winning Parachute Band.

With an impressive array of cinematic techniques, Prince is a self-assured, sure-handed debut with some simple but well-drawn characters. And de Jong managed to get some boost from producing partners: 100% Halal and Vice Magazine’s production division.

This exclusive one-on-one was conducted over Skype in anticipation of de Jong’s birthday, Prince’s brief theatrical presentation and its extended life on VOD platforms.

Q: Here in the States, we have an image of Amsterdam with its quaint canals and cafes and such, but we don’t see this dark side, of a disenfranchised immigrant population — much like other communities in the rest of Europe. What motivated you to tell this story of a punk side of Amsterdam?

SD: I wasn’t trying to show a part of the Netherlands that no one knows. I just made this film because I grew up in this world. To me, the Red Light District [is] just iconography for the outside world, it’s not real life. This neighborhood is one from where I grew up, and the kids in the film, the Moroccans, are very integrated in our society. It’s similar to Mexicans.

Q: But they’re disenfranchised, too.

SD: They are, and it’s a problem. There are many right-wing parties and lots of xenophobia. But to be completely honest, when I set out to cast the roles, I didn’t really look for ethnicity. I looked for Ayoub as a guy who is vulnerable yet aggressive, and I found him to be just that guy. I also saw caucasian people for that role, so it wasn't about finding a certain ethnicity per se.

Q: Your background isn’t as dark as the kids in this movie, so why this story?

SD: It’s a combination of things. I did several short films starring the same kids from Prince and many of the stories they told me. One of the kids I worked with had a similar parental situation to Ayoub in the movie. I felt there was more to it than a short film, so I started writing a feature. The streets where we shot the movie are the streets where I grew up as well — although I lived in a more rural place, this is where I used to spend my teenage years.

I’m 28 now and looking 10 years back, lots of the things I cared about — growing up with divorced parents, longing for unattainable girls, that quest was something I was obsessed with at that age. It’s a combination of autobiography and documentary.

Q: The drug dealer/criminal character takes on a mythic quality. What was the idea in that?

SD: I was really inspired by [Federico] Fellini, the way he has the balls to make his characters larger than life and theatrical when he needs to. When you’re that age and you think about older guys, they always have a mythical quality about them.

They seem untouchable and spark your imagination. I wanted that character to not be a real person, but like a mythical bad boy that the main character looks up to. Also a metaphor to represent the Devil. It’s pretty bold and obvious with his Lamborghini Diablo, but I just wanted it to be as bold as that.

Q: How hard was it to get to use one of those Lamborghinis?

SD: Very hard, because I wrote in a purple Lamborghini but didn’t realize that purple Lamborghinis are very rare; there are only 80 in the world. And this Lamborghini just sold for six hundred [thousand]. They’re very expensive.

It was terrible. It takes a lot of time to move it around, and when you start the engine you have to drive with ear protection. We broke the window on the second day of shooting.

Q: You broke the window? That must have cost you thousands.

SD: It did. There was only one window left somewhere in a forgotten village in Italy and we had to get it over [to Amsterdam]. It was a hassle.

Q: Those Lamborghinis are almost impossible to get out of. One of the actors seemed to struggle with it in a scene.

SD: You’re right, it’s very hard to get out.

Q: Do you see this film as having a moral statement?

SD: There’s a strong moral to me, that you shouldn’t chase a consumerist-driven dream or externalize your problem like Ayoub is doing: [he] thinks that if you change your identity you’ll change your spot in life.

Luckily, he finds out by not wearing those shoes he got from Kalpa and just being who he is, accepting where he comes from, will make him more happy and he gets the girl he’s longing for. In a way there’s a fairytale moral to the film.

Q: Did being raised in the Netherlands give you a strong moral backbone so you are fighting against the hypocrisy?

SD: I think I’m reacting to white hypocrisy a little bit. I grew up with strong cultural awareness. My dad is a transcultural psychiatrist and my mom is a psychologist. My father had an NGO and at an early age he took us to Uganda into post-conflict areas because he helped people out with PTSD. So I came from that, but at the same time I grew up super-liberal in Amsterdam with a lot of freedom and possibilities.

I wasn’t always so socially aware as I am now. For a long time, I just wanted the fastest scooter at school and stuff like that. I try to talk about that within the parameters of Prince.

Q: How much of the story is drawn from these boys?

SD: I did all of it. There’s hardly any improvisation.

Q: Did they give you any suggestions?

SD: With the actors, I just had to control them and damage-manage them and make sure they were on the set and in the shot. With the actors I did have creative conversation, but not an equal creator conversation.

Q: You restrained yourself from being too violent, and none of the characters were all thatbad.

SD: It’s about being in between. It’s about teenagers growing up. In that case, I do like The Breakfast Club.

Q: So you’re making a John Hughes film for the modern age?

SD: Yeah, a little bit.

Q: Do they all stay friends after they choose not to kill the other guys?

SD: I think a week from the ending of the movie, Ayoub is left by Laura because she finds out [he has nothing] after all and shit hits the fan.

Q: She starts modeling and meets a nice rich businessman. Where did you find the actresses?

SD: The girls are [more professional] than the guys. The girl playing Laura is pretty well known in the Netherlands. When I went to film school she was in theater school, so we knew each other and it made sense to cast her.

Olivia [Lonsdale], who plays his sister… My girlfriend introduced her to me and she’s fabulous. This was her debut role as well, but she’s doing lots of stuff now so she’s growing into an actress.

All the boys, they’re not interested in acting, they’re back on the street and not getting into acting.

Q: What are they hoping to do or become? Hopefully not dead?

SD: I think they’re going to become like Kalpa and realize their inner gangster [laughs].

Q: What made them want to do this film? Their ego? It couldn’t have been the pay.

SD: I think it was the pay. This was a low-budget movie, so we paid them fairly less [than some films but…] But they’re used to working in a supermarket or delivering pizzas, and now they’re offered 25 days of shooting with some money per day. His mother even called me and said, “Is this money for real?” because it was so much.

He was 17 at the time and for a month’s work it was a lot of money. We had a lot of struggles on the set. They would walk off, and what kept [them] coming back was they constantly said the reason they were doing it was for me.

We were working on more projects in the course of two years, so we really built a relationship together and we did it hand in hand and decided to do this, and I guess that was a big part of their motivation.

Q: Because he finessed his character so well I assumed that the guy who plays Kalpa, Freddy Tratlehner, is an established actor…

SD: He’s a big rapper, one of the biggest rappers in the Netherlands.

Q: Is his music in the film?

SD: No, because it’s hip hop. He’s a friend of mine and we talked about the film once and he said he wanted to be in it, so I wrote him this part. It’s his first part ever. It was fun working with a friend.

Q: Your soundtrack has both a retro and contemporary quality. What does that say about you?

SD: I grew up in the ‘90s, so it’s partly my own childhood; there’s a nostalgia aspect in me using this soundtrack. It also helps because my short films used to be rooted in social realism and in this one I wanted to create my own environment, so finding music that was contemporary but also had an idiosyncratic quality really helped in making it like a fairytale, in a way.

It would be obvious to just use what’s popular and what the kids listen to, but I wanted it to be our world — the world of the film — and not necessarily their world.

Director Simon Curtis Brings a New Life to "Woman in Gold"

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 08 July 2015 01:12

Written by Brad Balfour

With famed Academy Award winning actress Helen Mirren receiving a special honor  from the World Jewish Congress in front of Gustav Klimt’s The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1 --  now housed at New York’s Neue Galerie and the basis of the film Woman in Gold — her role as Maria Altmann comes full circle.

The event featuring speeches by Mirren and Lauder, celebrates Mirren’s portrayal of Maria Altmann, the Austrian-American woman who won headlines for her legal battle against the Austrian government to reclaim five Klimt paintings including the painting of Altmann’s aunt, stolen from her family by the Nazis during WWII.

But then, British director Simon Curtis has an uncanny and outsized skill at revealing history — judging by the two theatrically release features he’s directed. The first, My Week with Marilyn, collated Colin Clark’s two diary accounts about his time with Marilyn Monroe— The Prince, The Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn — into an award-winning film.

The second, Woman In Gold, follows the travails and triumph of Jewish survivor Altmann, who resolves to recover family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt's famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I — a painting of her beautiful aunt.

When the Nazis  shipped off her family and friends off to the death camps, they confiscated their property; she fortunately fled Vienna during World War II before they caught her as well.

Sixty years later an elderly Altmann starts a quest with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) which takes them all the way from battling Austria’s establishment to the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past.

In both films, the 56 year Curtis starts with two high-profile scenarios that people understand only through broad strokes and personalizes them through carefully rendered characters. Maybe his experience in directing British actors for theater and dramatic BBC series lends itself to creating such subtle portraits.

Appropriately first screened in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, the film has gathered fans steadily and deliberately. But now that the Woman In Gold DVD has just been released, audiences can bring the film home for repeated viewings.

Q: Didn’t you used to work as an assistant for Helen Mirren a while back. What was that like?

SC: Well, she said I made a very good cup of tea [laughs].

Q: It’s been quite a while since you last worked with her.  How did you manage to cast Helen Mirren in this role?

SC: Well you don’t have to be a genius to go off the edge and [commit] murder when you’re casting this part of Maria Altmann. There [just] aren’t as many actresses of her stature at her age [69].

We believe her as this woman that’s like herself, who has lived in Europe and then lived in California for the second half of her life. She’s an incredibly smart, talented actress, and I was ecstatic when she said she would [do the part].

Q: You have two great leads with Ryan Reynolds uncharacteristically playing this character of Rnady, but there a lot of other great actors in the film as well. Was it hard getting everyone on board and  onthe same page?

SC: People just responded to the material. I called in a lot of favors, like getting [the classical British actor] Jonathan Pryce to play the Supreme Court judge. Tatiana Maslany is one of the greatest actors I ever worked with; she’s just phenomenal in [the Candian produced, BBC America series] Orphan Black. And it was thrilling for me working with all these great German actors who I hadn’t worked with before like Daniel Brühl, Moritz Bleibtreu and Antje Traue.

Q: You made such great choices in these German actors; they were a great pick.

SC: I was determined to have their parts played in German as well.

Q: How was it working with writer Alexi Kaye Campbell?

SC: Alexi did a brilliant job with the story, we had to cram a whole century into the story and Alexi did a job that fulfilling that while making an accessible and entertaining film. He was a playwright very well known in the U.K. and had done a lot of work that spanned different time periods. He was brave enough to take on what is quite a dense and complex story and turn it into something hopefully accessible and entertaining.

Q: It must have been hard to get a script with this complicated premise and narrative strands in different time periods and places to come together?

SC: I would say it was very hard. We went through a lot of drafts over a lot of years. It worked as it usually does. We met. I’d give notes. He’d go away and do another draft.

Q: With shooting in three different countries, were there difficulties in raising the finances?

SC: It was expensive to make for that reason, but both the films we made were developed by BBC Films and when I cast the leading actress, Harvey [Weinstein] and the Weinstein Company became involved. So that really took care of it. This film meant a great deal to me personally, but it also meant a great deal to Harvey personally as well. He was incredibly supportive all the way through.

Q: As the story goes, you saw a BBC documentary on Maria Altmann and that led to you making this film. What was the fascination with her?

SC: I don’t know. I’m from a Jewish family myself, and that idea of leading on with your life but still honoring the past, and the idea of this couple, Helen and Ryan, taking on the campaign, taking on the whole government, it means a great deal to me.

I was so lucky with the casting of Helen and Ryan because they adore each other. They brought some humor and wit to the film that it needed.

Q: How did your own background influence your approach to this film? How did you approach the Jewish community in order to tackle this project?

SC: My family was in Britain before the Holocaust, so I don’t have any Holocaust stories in my family, but I obviously identify with that family and community in Vienna, that powerful, happy community that was, literally, destroyed overnight, so that meant a great deal to me.

I suppose there are certainly women in my family who remind me of Maria or the other way around. I feel connected to my family’s past but don’t know too much about it. I was very struck when I read about it that Maria’s wedding was the last big Jewish social event before the Nazis arrived in Vienna. I felt that was very powerful, that sense of this mighty family and that its days were numbered.

Q: What did you discuss with Helen about the psychology of being her character being a survivor?

SC: Obviously neither of us met Maria, because she died before we started making the film, but there’s a lot on video tape and at the Holocaust Museum she is interviewed talking about it as part of that documentary Steven Spielberg made (Shoah). But also, like a lot of people that have been through something horrific, they don’t talk about it all the time. We tried to get that ambivalence. In the film she’s sometimes very keen to pursue the case and sometimes she’s keen to let it go. We wanted to get that real sort of inconsistency which would be psychologically true to that experience.

Q: Was that prickly personality we see in the movie at all in the videos?

SC: Not so much, but Randy Schoenberg, who was an advisor on the film [and grandson of the famed Austrian Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg who escaped the Nazis], knew her pretty well and it clearly was her modus operandi.

Q: What influence did you had on the visual style of the film?

SC: I was very lucky with my Director of Photography, Ross Emery, and we talked about it a lot because the film was in three time zones, but we caught the golden period that Klimt is painting in, the past in 1938, which is dark and desaturated, and the modern journey for Helen and Ryan to California and back; we wanted each to have a slightly different pallet.

Q: What were the challenges in finding the right place with the right look?

SC: More of the interiors were shot in London and none of the film is shot in London, so that’s quite a challenge. Vienna is like a dream place to film, they were very welcoming to us. It was phenomenal to be on the actual streets, it’s a very beautiful city. We filmed them on the steps of the actual art institute where Hitler was rejected, so it all has great meaning. Then we did a week in Los Angeles, and I wanted it to be non-showbiz LA, which I think we pulled off.

Q: How was it working with Oscar-wiining composer Hans Zimmer?

SC: Zimmer and [co-composer Martin] Phipps had never worked together before, but they’re geniuses. They identified with this story. We didn’t want it to be a sappy score, we wanted it to sound like a thriller to drive the film on. It was a great honor for me to work with Hans Zimmer.

Q: You have a unique relationship with one of the actresses in this film, Elizabeth McGovern given that she’s your wife. Were there hesitations in casting her in this film — she plays Judge Florence-Marie Cooper — or did you think that would keep the budget down?

SC: It was actually very problematic, because she’s in a show called Downton Abbey, and we had to make the schedule work for both. She’s the daughter of a law professor in LA, playing a judge in LA, where she’s from, so I can’t think of anyone in the world better to cast.

Q: Did you have a conversation with Helen about the fact that she’s married to a director — award winning Taylor Hackford — and you’re married to an actress?

SC: We did, actually, and we agreed that a director and an actress working together while married is a wonderful and difficult thing.

Q: It must have its daunting moments.

SC: Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s unpredictable.

Q: Does Elizabeth ever give you advice? Or do you give her advice?

SC: Well you can’t go home and slag off your leading lady and she can’t go home and slag off her director. Well, she can, but I rather she didn’t.

Q: And do you have a favorite painting by Klimt?

SC: I have to say, The Woman in Gold, since we’ve [all] been looking at it for so long.

"Dark Star" Doc Illuminates Art Legend HR Giger's Life

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 22 May 2015 18:27

Written by Brad Balfour

No one expected legendary sci-fi artist H.R. Giger to go in such a way — dying due to injuries from a fall. After all, he seemed immortal, if only for his iconic images of an air-brushed bio-mechanic merger that became the beastly berserkers of the Alien film series.

Yet in mid May 2014, the Swiss-born and based visionary suddenly died after years of obsessively building a world around him that expressed his unique ideas on paper, canvas and in whole rooms full of his furniture and wall constructs. By focusing on this vision, he built up a fanatic following of collectors, viewers, filmmakers and fellow creators influenced by his core idea. 

And though there has been ample documentation of his life over the years, a new documentary, Dark Star: H.R. Giger's World, fortunately was being made of his more recent years which thankfully captured a more current Giger not long before his untimely demise.

Besides this doc's release, the Museum of Arts and Design (at Manhattan's Columbus Circle) marks the one-year anniversary of his passing by presenting The Unseen Cinema of HR Giger -- a weekend-long event which presents rare and never before seen films made by and about HR Giger.

Partnering with the HR Giger estate and the HR Giger Documentary Film Festival, Giger’s personal archive was sourced for these films which reveal his behind-the-scenes practices. Here's a rare glimpse into his personality, process, and vision.

Born in 1940 to a chemist’s family in Chur, Switzerland, Hans Rudolf Giger moved to Zurich in 1962, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts. By '64 he made his first works, mostly ink drawings and oil paintings, garnering him a solo exhibition in '66, followed by his first poster edition being published in 1969. 

Once he discovered the airbrush, Giger developed his unique freehand painting style, leading to the creation of his most well known works -- the surrealistic Biomechanical dreamscapes -- which are at the cornerstone of his world. To date, 20 books have been published about Giger’s art.

But it was Giger’s third book, 1977's Necronomicon, which served as the visual inspiration for director Ridley Scott’s film Alien, earning the artist an Oscar in 1980 for the Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his work creating the film's title character designs and the stages of its lifecycle, plus its otherworldly environments. Giger's other film work includes Poltergeist II, Alien 3 and Species.

Giger also produced album covers for Blondie's Debbie Harry and Emerson Lake and Palmer; they have been noted as among the best in music history. Giger has made sculpture as well, and in 1988 created his first total environment space, the Tokyo Giger Bar, and a second one in Chur in 1992.

Inaugurated in 1998 in the Château St. Germain, The HR Giger Museum fills a four-level building in the historic, medieval walled city of Gruyères, Switzerland. It houses the largest collection of his paintings, sculptures, furnitures and film designs,  from the early '60s until the present. On the museum's top floor is Giger's own private collection of more than 600 works by artists such as Salvador Dali, Ernst Fuchs, Dado, Bruno Weber, Günther Brus, Claude Sandoz, François Burland, Friedrich Kuhn, Joe Coleman, Sibylle Ruppert, and Andre Lassen, among many others.

In its adjoining wing, The Giger Museum Bar opened on April 12, 2003. Giger’s designs emphasize the pre-existing Gothic architecture of the 400 year old space. Giant skeletal arches cover the vaulted ceiling, and together with the bar’s fantastic stony furniture, evoke the building’s original medieval character, giving the space a church-like feeling. 

During his last four years, Giger was honored with a series of museum retrospectives. 2004 saw the opening of a six-month exhibition at the Museum Halle Saint Pierre in Paris, France -- the largest exhibition of his work to take place outside of Switzerland. 

Thanks to his Alien creature designs, Giger had been established as one of the word's best known artists.

So Dark Star became a cinematic marker that the 74-year old creator left behind for audiences to contexualize and comprehend his life and legacy. Though Giger’s no longer here to share either his museum or environments, director Belinda Sallin's intimate documentary did elaborate on his creations and offer insights into who he was in his later years.

Born in 1967, this Swiss German studied German literature, philology and communication science, worked as journalist/editor and, in 2009, co- founded an independent production company. Currently she lives with her husband and two sons in Zurich.

Though Sallin made films before, this feature doc is her real international debut -- and what a debut it is. She discussed all this recently in an exclusive phone interview conducted from her Swiss home.

Q: How would you contrast the young Giger from the old Giger?

BS: I like them all very much. I’ve seen the young Giger in the archives. But I really appreciated the older Giger that I knew for two and a half years before he died. I was very surprised when I met him the first time. I don’t know what I was expecting. I was expecting a man that was more dark and distant and he was the opposite. 

This was a great experience to meet him because he was so nice, friendly, and charming. I don’t know how he was when in the '50s or so, but the older Giger is like the young Giger in the films, a shy person. Somebody who retired, who doesn’t like to be in the spotlight. For me, they went together well, the old Giger and this young one in the archive.

Q: When did you start shooting this? It seemed like it would be a process to get him involved. It’s hard to interview him.

BS: I had the chance to meet the museum’s director, the former life partner of HR Giger, and she opened the door.This was a good step for me. She introduced me to him. When I entered his house the first time, I was overwhelmed. It was a great house where he lived amidst his art.

Then I met him, we got along very well from the first day.I had the chance to live near his house in the same time, so I paid him many visits and shot or came without camera and visited him a lot. He saw that my research was serious and knowledge of his work profound and he appreciated that. 

We got along. I accepted some circumstances that he didn’t like to talk a lot anymore and he realized that I was looking for other ways to do this film and he appreciated that a lot. We had a good base of trust. I could do some interviews, even if I said at the beginning of the process that I wouldn’t do interviews for hours and hours because he didn’t like that.

But we had a few times where we could speak together. You see it in the film now where he talks about Li, his life partner, when she died in the 1970s and you can tell how he felt about it. That’s the first time he spoke about Li in this way and I was very touched by that.

Q: It helps that you’re a woman, he has a very strong bond to women. All his subjects are women.

BS: It’s possible, I don’t know because I didn’t ask him if he talked to me because I was a woman. I don’t know. Of course women are very important to his life and I think it’s amazing that he kept in contact with Mia, for example. They didn’t break and fight. They were friendly together until the end.

Women are important in his work, of course, but he shows a lot more. He shows everything, he shows birth and life, and mortality, and death, and male figures, and female figures all together. That’s what makes his work strong.

Q: Like in a Jungian collective unconscious sort of way, was he influenced by Karl Gustav Jung or other psychoanalysts?

BS: I asked him once what his influences were and he said, “My influence is life. Everything influences me.” I know he read the books of Jung and Freud. The books you see in his house, he reads them. Of course he was influenced, but he never liked to talk about his work.

He said it very clearly at the beginning of the process of filming, “Don’t ask me about my work. I don’t like to explain it. I can talk about my influences but I can’t explain my work.” Giger himself didn’t know how it happened.

Q: Did Giger talk about the people he has influenced and how important it was to win an Oscar? Did he talk about his legacy taking away from his work?

BS: Giger made what he had to do. It was not Oscar winning or yes or no. This had an impact on him as a human being, as a person, but not as an artist. He stuck to his path. That’s what I really like about him and his biography. What impressed me most was that he followed his dreams and he followed his path, regardless of what people thought of that.

His art is quite provocative. I can only imagine what people thought about it in the 60s or the 70s about his art. He didn’t bother. He stuck to his own path.

Q: Imagine how powerful his work was in the early ‘80s.

BS: It’s incredible. And still now his art is very provocative. You have to do that over decades and decades and it’s still provocative.

Q: Did you feel he fulfill his ideal of bringing together machine and flesh or was he still seeking a better way?

BS: I don’t know. He didn’t work a lot anymore in the last two years when I knew him. He would draw, and in the film you see at the beginning when he draws because he started with a pencil in his hand. Airbrush and design and sculpting came later, but he started with a pencil in his hand. He had it filmed, so I like it very much. I didn’t know if he fulfilled his wish for the biomechanical.

I don’t know if you know the sculpture he created it in 1968 for the film Swiss Made. It’s quite a weird creature. It’s a creature with a camera instead of a face and a recording machine instead of a chest. It was so visionary and incredible and he did this all his life, completing this vision from 1968 of a human-machine hybrid.

Q: His work would alter space. I remember the Giger Room at the Limelight and it was like another universe.

BS: His house where he lived is exactly like that. You have the feeling that you entered another universe, another world. And not just the house, but also the garden. I wanted to show that when I was shooting with the drone flying away from the house. You see all the new buildings around him, but he stayed there and it’s like a nest from another world.

Q: I interviewed Alejandro Jodorowsky and the director of the documentary,  Jodorowsky’s Dune. They were disappointed that it didn’t get made. Wasn't Giger also disappointed that he didn’t get to work with David Lynch when it was handed over to him?

BS: I know Giger was disappointed. He did a lot of things for this movie, his furniture, for example. He made the Harkonnen chair for Dune. But I don’t know why Lynch didn’t want to work with Giger. Giger didn’t know it, but he was disappointed.

Q: He also suffered night shock syndrome where he wakes up screaming. Did he talk about it?

BS: Yes, there was a time when he had many nightmares. He said life influences him, but also his dreams. Nightmares influenced him. There are many pictures of them. There are monochrome pictures he did of what he saw in his nightmares while he painted "Passages."

Q: In light of what we see in the house, I didn’t realize the extent to which he had strange things everywhere. How did you decided what you could and couldn’t show? It would be a nightmare trying to pick and choose. How did you define the movie?

BS: This is the most difficult work in the process of filming for me, when you’re in the edit room and you have to choose, you have to select the material. I can’t explain to you.

It took days and weeks and hours and hours but finally you have to make a decision. I hope I have chosen best. I hope.

Q: Did the curator and museum director -- who is also his ex-wife -- help in the process since they knew him at an earlier time? Or was it important to show him as he is now looking back?

BS: Nobody had influence on the editing. They didn’t help me in choosing the material. I did this with my editor and my producer. For me it was important that Hans Rudi like the work I do. I did a teaser while I was shooting and I showed him this teaser and he liked it very much. He thought it was nice and I explained it to Rudi that I didn’t want to make a conventional biography. I can’t just say, “This is HR Giger and he was born in Chur in 1940.” 

I wanted to go further. We were in the middle of editing when he died and it was a huge shock. Carmen Giger was the first to see it in the editing room before it was released and she sort of approved it.

She said to me after the screening, “This is true, this is honest. This is the Hans Rudi I recognize, I see him.” This was important to me. I would have a problem if she said to me after the screening, “I don’t recognize my husband here” but she said the opposite. She said it was deep and true. So that was important to me.

Q: Giger had an impact on the Japanese and did designs for the film Teito Monogatari. The impact his work had in Japanese animation and in Asia, they have these meldings of machine and man. Did he see that connection or discuss it?

BS: I know he liked Japanese culture, but I don’t know if he was aware of the huge impact he had on artwork in Japan. I know they liked his bar there. It was not so easy for him to work with a Japanese director. I don’t know if he was satisfied by those films made because I didn’t ask him, but I know the huge impact in Japan and in Japan they admire a lot his airbrushed work. They say he’s the master of the airbrush. 

Q: Did he sign anything for you or give you any art?

BS: He signed some drawings for me, and I really appreciate that a lot. I didn’t ask him, I would never ask him for something like that. But he signed something for me.

Q: Did he do a sketch before making a painting? How did he design them?

BS: It’s really amazing. I don’t think Giger himself understood the process of his work. It’s coming from somewhere else. This is not Giger deciding. Giger didn’t understand where the paintings were coming from. This is why Giger said at the beginning of the project to not ask about his work, I don’t think he understood it.

Q: Sometimes he sketched and other times he just started airbrushing?

BS: For the airbrush paintings he didn’t sketch at all. Nothing, not at all. He would sketch with pencil, but no sketches for the airbrush work. It’s really out of his mind. The airbrush is the perfect tool for work like that. You don’t even touch the wood or paper you’re working on. It’s like…

Q: In a way, it’s like a mystical experience.

BS: Exactly. I like that he remained enigmatic. It’s cool. We don’t have to explain everything and I like that in this film.

Q: I’m glad he spoke about that experience with Li, his sexuality in his youth had an impact on the work. Would you agree?

BS: After Li’s death, his work became a little darker. Only a few times later he painted the Necronomicon which is a monster and it started the Alien career because Dan O’Bannon, the writer of Alien, had the book Necronomicon, and that’s what he showed to Ridley Scott who said, “Wow, that’s my monster.”

Q: We don’t realize how many ways in which the ideas came from Giger instead of the other way around. It wouldn’t be the same without him

BS: I absolutely agree. This movie happened because of HR Giger.

Q: One of my prize possessions is an Alien toy that were made when the film was first released; it was pull off shelves because it was too scary for kids. But those figurines are incredible. Did the movie scare you?

BS: Oh yes. Someone once asked me what scared me the most in the house of HR Giger and I can tell you it is his cat. It is unpredictable and she liked to jump on the shoulder of visitors.

Q: It’s funny you say that. He’s definitely a cat person. Did he ever suggest that his work was influenced by Egyptian mythology and art?

BS: Absolutely. This is a subject in the film, when he’s in the museum with his older sister and saw a mummy for the first time and was terrified. This is a great moment too, when Carmen explains that when he was afraid of something, he would visit this mummy on and on and on until he was not afraid any more. Until he could master his fears.

It's very inspiring too, to master your fears and engage with them. He was very influenced by his art. It’s not shown very well in the film, but he has this door to the room of his wife, Carmen, and he made this door in the shape of a sarcophagus. This influenced remained with him until the end of his life.

Q: I liked the stories about his lion skeleton and the skull in the bathtub. Are those skeletons still there?

BS: I filmed it. It's in the film. There are no skeletons of animals anymore though. They might be hidden somewhere though. 

Q: What’s the next step for you? Do you see yourself continuing your relationship with the Giger folks or focusing on your own artwork or going in a completely different direction?

BS: I have a lot of projects in my mind, a new film project, but it’s too early to talk about, there’s nothing to share. But of course I have a relationship now with the Giger family. I see Carmen regularly because I want her to know what’s going on with the film, and what we're doing. I see Tom and the mother-in-law who works there. I still pay them many visits.