Alexandru Solomon
13 Oct - 20 Nov 2011
ALEXANDRU SOLOMON
Films. Archive. Installation.
invited by Ruxandra Balaci
organised by Carmen Iovitu
13 October - 20 November, 2011
Why and how
When I was a boy, I liked inventing stories. I remember one that had a lot of success within my family: it was called “ Sausage at the bottom of the sea”. Then, I grew up and my ability to invent stories shrinked, while my sense of good observation developed.
I studied in the Art High school and there I learned how to observe nature and study it. Later on, in the University of Theatre and Film, the issue was not really to follow nature, to observe what is around you: it was a mess not to be shown. After the fall of the communist regime, i.e. after the disappearance of Nea Nicu (Nicolae Ceausescu), even though my quick debut (as a camera man) was in the fiction film, I kept a certain feeling of misfit. I really liked this job, but I disliked the distance between: tens of technical stuff, machines and months of exhausting preparations were between the author and his subject, almost like purposely killing the very last trace of reality. I still have an enormous admiration for the great fiction film directors who are able to surpass this gap.
Besides the camera man job I had the great opportunity to work with real artists using film in a different way, without professional prejudices or technical education. Some of my best field memories is about one morning, while working with Ms. Geta Bratescu a film called “Earthcake”.
Just the two of us, me with my camera, Ms Bratescu with an aluminum foil on her head, wearing pale make up almost like a ghost, eating this earthcake. We were both in a white space confined by a white bed sheet.
When, in 1992 in Bucharest, the first big retrospective of the Romanian Avantgarde opened, I was swept by the freedom and humorous creativity radiating from the exhibits. This was the moment for my next two films together with Radu Igaszag, two films about the avant-garde (“Shriek into the Eardrum” and “The Zurich Chronicles”, half documentaries and half video experiments. Gradually, reading and re-reading and trying to tell the story of some writers and artists, I kept connecting with those subjects, let’s say, more cultural subjects; in fact I took advantage of living next to these artists for a while: next to Paul Celan and my father, Petre Solomon (in “Duo for Paoloncello & Petronome”), next to the photographer Iosif Berman (“ The Man with Thousand Eyes”) or accompanying Caragiale in Berlin (“ The Sweet Bread of Exile”). First of all, for me, documentary film means the experience of research, which is free of charge: finding out something means curiosity together with imagination feeding each other. One travels in time through the documentary film. Doing it, one must return to reality with new images from a past time.
These stories – while at the beginning they were pretty visual – became in time ever more connected to the word. And because every day I am getting mad at the world we live in, I started getting interested in politics or better interested in the old habits we drag along and which influence our lives. And after 7-8 films I was fed up with the fact that my films would only be seen in festivals or in private projections. (On the TV screen these films were shown only in 2002, without a specific presentation).
I finally planned an international co production, together with a well known company from France, also with Arte, BBC, France 2, a co production called “The Great Communist Bank Robbery”. I was fascinated the story of these communists playing the roles of gangsters in a propaganda film.
Nonconsensual negative characters, while big stars in cinema. I never lost the taste for show – I believe with all my heart that the documentary film is still cinema and only the teller knows how to look in this chaotic reality to see an exceptional story to be told later on. Every artifice is permitted only to be true; it is not allowed to lie.
More over, I like unclear stories, who’s good or who’s bad. Or stories in which the good guys make wicked things and the bad guys judge them. I like the stories in which truth is hard to tell because lies are immediately traceable. For all the rest, we have to have our doubts. I feel happy when people tell me they had an agitated sleep after watching “Great Communist Bank Robbery”, trying to understand why and how. A good documentary raises discussions, dilemmas, fights, doesn’t sedate you with certainties.
Well, to cut the theory short: almost for the same reasons I became connected with the theme of Radio Free Europe. I rarely encounter something so remote (it was broadcasting from Germany) which would create so much passion (the listeners loved the voices of the speakers, the Ceausescu family hated them). Not to mention the fact that it had a lot of mystery (it is not known why the three directors of Free Europe have died one after the other), it had terrorism (I spoke on the phone with Carlos the Jackal) and secret services involved (I investigated the way in which the Securitate had planned bombing attacks, radiations poisoning attacks or simply knife assault). Above all these, it is about the strange power of a sort of media totally deposed today in the television era. When the radio producers came back to Romania after the Revolution, they were recognized everywhere, on the street, in the supermarket, in the taxi, or simply after the sound of their voices. Embraced or detested as if old friends or enemies. They were stars.
Today we hardly know who they are anymore. Something else was really appealing for me in this subject. Something that was only sound had to be transformed into image, specifically into film.
It was difficult, very difficult: with every step, a new story about Radio Free Europe appeared.
Everyone had their own story; I met tens, hundreds of people who worked there, listened to the shows or lived traumatic experiences connected to the radio shows. I had to renounce to some of the stories, but I hope that my film represents just the beginning and these stories will eventually be told. (...) This piece of writing has been elaborated beginning with November 2007, on the occasion of the movie premiere of “Cold Waves, Razboi pe calea undelor”. Meanwhile, other films, other thoughts intervened and probably I have changed as well. While working at “Cold Waves” the idea of a third film occurred to me, a film that would complete the series started with “Great Communist Bank Robbery”. It was supposed to be a film of transition from communism to capitalism in the surrounding areas, a movie in which television has the main role, in the way in which radio and cinema were dominating the first two movies. But “Kapitalism...” appeared also in the intention to approach contemporanity. Contrasting with the previous works, in “Kapitalism...” I took a more critical stand - it appeared to me that I mustn’t hide behind dilemmas and that I must clearly find myself a placeto deal with the people I talk about. On the other hand I chose to look at the real life through the magnifying glass of a distorting fantasy type and which places into perspective the details of our lives in the last two decades. Meaning, I called for Ceausescu’s phantom.
I was describing at the beginning of this text what made me get away from the fiction film. But I got stuck – through my work experience as a camera man, as also through the years of visual experiments – in the desire to produce artifacts, to “imagine” life - in the deep sense of the word. And here I am today at the crossroads of contradictions (apparently): between telling a story with real people and to create them, between keeping a distance (as a documentary) and defending a stand.
Today I am in this crossroad. This exhibition is a good moment for a look back.
Alexandru Solomon
With the support of: Arte Vizuale Foundation, HiFi Productions
Films. Archive. Installation.
invited by Ruxandra Balaci
organised by Carmen Iovitu
13 October - 20 November, 2011
Why and how
When I was a boy, I liked inventing stories. I remember one that had a lot of success within my family: it was called “ Sausage at the bottom of the sea”. Then, I grew up and my ability to invent stories shrinked, while my sense of good observation developed.
I studied in the Art High school and there I learned how to observe nature and study it. Later on, in the University of Theatre and Film, the issue was not really to follow nature, to observe what is around you: it was a mess not to be shown. After the fall of the communist regime, i.e. after the disappearance of Nea Nicu (Nicolae Ceausescu), even though my quick debut (as a camera man) was in the fiction film, I kept a certain feeling of misfit. I really liked this job, but I disliked the distance between: tens of technical stuff, machines and months of exhausting preparations were between the author and his subject, almost like purposely killing the very last trace of reality. I still have an enormous admiration for the great fiction film directors who are able to surpass this gap.
Besides the camera man job I had the great opportunity to work with real artists using film in a different way, without professional prejudices or technical education. Some of my best field memories is about one morning, while working with Ms. Geta Bratescu a film called “Earthcake”.
Just the two of us, me with my camera, Ms Bratescu with an aluminum foil on her head, wearing pale make up almost like a ghost, eating this earthcake. We were both in a white space confined by a white bed sheet.
When, in 1992 in Bucharest, the first big retrospective of the Romanian Avantgarde opened, I was swept by the freedom and humorous creativity radiating from the exhibits. This was the moment for my next two films together with Radu Igaszag, two films about the avant-garde (“Shriek into the Eardrum” and “The Zurich Chronicles”, half documentaries and half video experiments. Gradually, reading and re-reading and trying to tell the story of some writers and artists, I kept connecting with those subjects, let’s say, more cultural subjects; in fact I took advantage of living next to these artists for a while: next to Paul Celan and my father, Petre Solomon (in “Duo for Paoloncello & Petronome”), next to the photographer Iosif Berman (“ The Man with Thousand Eyes”) or accompanying Caragiale in Berlin (“ The Sweet Bread of Exile”). First of all, for me, documentary film means the experience of research, which is free of charge: finding out something means curiosity together with imagination feeding each other. One travels in time through the documentary film. Doing it, one must return to reality with new images from a past time.
These stories – while at the beginning they were pretty visual – became in time ever more connected to the word. And because every day I am getting mad at the world we live in, I started getting interested in politics or better interested in the old habits we drag along and which influence our lives. And after 7-8 films I was fed up with the fact that my films would only be seen in festivals or in private projections. (On the TV screen these films were shown only in 2002, without a specific presentation).
I finally planned an international co production, together with a well known company from France, also with Arte, BBC, France 2, a co production called “The Great Communist Bank Robbery”. I was fascinated the story of these communists playing the roles of gangsters in a propaganda film.
Nonconsensual negative characters, while big stars in cinema. I never lost the taste for show – I believe with all my heart that the documentary film is still cinema and only the teller knows how to look in this chaotic reality to see an exceptional story to be told later on. Every artifice is permitted only to be true; it is not allowed to lie.
More over, I like unclear stories, who’s good or who’s bad. Or stories in which the good guys make wicked things and the bad guys judge them. I like the stories in which truth is hard to tell because lies are immediately traceable. For all the rest, we have to have our doubts. I feel happy when people tell me they had an agitated sleep after watching “Great Communist Bank Robbery”, trying to understand why and how. A good documentary raises discussions, dilemmas, fights, doesn’t sedate you with certainties.
Well, to cut the theory short: almost for the same reasons I became connected with the theme of Radio Free Europe. I rarely encounter something so remote (it was broadcasting from Germany) which would create so much passion (the listeners loved the voices of the speakers, the Ceausescu family hated them). Not to mention the fact that it had a lot of mystery (it is not known why the three directors of Free Europe have died one after the other), it had terrorism (I spoke on the phone with Carlos the Jackal) and secret services involved (I investigated the way in which the Securitate had planned bombing attacks, radiations poisoning attacks or simply knife assault). Above all these, it is about the strange power of a sort of media totally deposed today in the television era. When the radio producers came back to Romania after the Revolution, they were recognized everywhere, on the street, in the supermarket, in the taxi, or simply after the sound of their voices. Embraced or detested as if old friends or enemies. They were stars.
Today we hardly know who they are anymore. Something else was really appealing for me in this subject. Something that was only sound had to be transformed into image, specifically into film.
It was difficult, very difficult: with every step, a new story about Radio Free Europe appeared.
Everyone had their own story; I met tens, hundreds of people who worked there, listened to the shows or lived traumatic experiences connected to the radio shows. I had to renounce to some of the stories, but I hope that my film represents just the beginning and these stories will eventually be told. (...) This piece of writing has been elaborated beginning with November 2007, on the occasion of the movie premiere of “Cold Waves, Razboi pe calea undelor”. Meanwhile, other films, other thoughts intervened and probably I have changed as well. While working at “Cold Waves” the idea of a third film occurred to me, a film that would complete the series started with “Great Communist Bank Robbery”. It was supposed to be a film of transition from communism to capitalism in the surrounding areas, a movie in which television has the main role, in the way in which radio and cinema were dominating the first two movies. But “Kapitalism...” appeared also in the intention to approach contemporanity. Contrasting with the previous works, in “Kapitalism...” I took a more critical stand - it appeared to me that I mustn’t hide behind dilemmas and that I must clearly find myself a placeto deal with the people I talk about. On the other hand I chose to look at the real life through the magnifying glass of a distorting fantasy type and which places into perspective the details of our lives in the last two decades. Meaning, I called for Ceausescu’s phantom.
I was describing at the beginning of this text what made me get away from the fiction film. But I got stuck – through my work experience as a camera man, as also through the years of visual experiments – in the desire to produce artifacts, to “imagine” life - in the deep sense of the word. And here I am today at the crossroads of contradictions (apparently): between telling a story with real people and to create them, between keeping a distance (as a documentary) and defending a stand.
Today I am in this crossroad. This exhibition is a good moment for a look back.
Alexandru Solomon
With the support of: Arte Vizuale Foundation, HiFi Productions