A few questions for ...

 

Harald Schleicher, German director, who has been using a found-footage method for creating his experimental videos. At Art Film Fest he introduced his “Trilogy of Addiction” – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Don’t Bogart That Joint.

You make your movies using the form of found footage. How would you characterize this method of filmmaking?

Found footage means you already work with finished materials which were used before in other movies or TV and select the material and combine it to create something new. But in my opinion it shouldn’t be called “found movie” but “search movie” because you have to watch lots of films to find the ideal material for the idea.

One movie is a collage of a number of movies. From your short movies, the audience may get the impression that you really love cinema.

Of course it is somehow déjà vu. You are moving back in the history of cinema. Seven decades of film is the point of my interest. I choose people and pictures and I combine them at one place and those are the people you wouldn’t be able to see together.

How could you characterize you sense of humour?

(Laugh) It is difficult to characterize my own sense of humour. But I try to make an impossible dialog with people by cutting them. For example funny is when people make very similar gestures and it doesn’t matter if they are twenty or fifty.

Your short movies are very funny, but it is fun to put together this kind of film puzzle?

Well, at first it is of course a lot of work. I have to prepare the material, cut people, but then it all blends in your mind, you start to combine, you think about how to make interesting dialogs and if it works, it’s fine.

How you do you choose themes for your movies?

First I did two movies which were screened in Trenčianske Teplice. Those movies were about men’s identity. I myself am a man, so I had this need to reflect myself. Then I thought that I should give a word also to other halves, so I cut the men out.