You made your debut to the Hungarian audience with the film Dallas Pashamende at a festive occasion: on the opening night of the 36th Hungarian Film Week. One could read a lot about the circumstances of the shooting of the film in the papers, but it isn’t such a lot we know about you and your prior oeuvre.
I was born in Arad in 1964. My father is of Hungarian, my mother is of Romanian origin. We left Transylvania in 1972 and emigrated to Austria. We settled down in Vienna where fortunately both my parents immediately got jobs as engineers in the textile industry. As a result of this, we never had to live in a refugee camp.
Did you have difficulties with assimilation? How fast did you get used to the new environment?
It wasn’t such a big problem for me. Although I had been in third grade in Romania, I started school anew in Austria because of the language handicap. With the help of an excellent teacher, I learnt to speak German within half a year. In this, I was greatly aided by my bilinguality and some knowledge of English, which I acquired back in the Romanian school. Soon I had excellent grades in school. In fact, it was my parents’ struggle that left its mark upon our emigrant existence. For them, adapting to a foreign culture was a major trauma and had difficulties with standing up for their Hungarian and Romanian origins. At the same time, they felt ashamed for their foreign accent. My once so lively and cheerful father gradually became an introverted somber man.
It was perhaps this transformation that he wanted to counterbalance by making films. He shot amateur short films first with Super 8 cameras and later with better and better ones. He often asked me to help, which I hated as an adolescent. Later I took to film making myself, shot short films and presented them at several amateur film festivals.
When did this turn serious? How did it become your vocation?
Although I made my first feature film, Crescendo at the age of 19 with the support of my parents and the cooperation of my friends, I didn’t plan to become a director. I got a degree in mechanical engineering. Only after this did I start studying at the University of Theatre and Film. However, I quickly grew disappointed, quit after three years and never got a degree. It was the nature of teaching that deterred me as well as the atmosphere that prevailed there. The main goal was not to clear the way for the students’ creativity and to support individual initiatives and the quest for personal style. Everyone was to be integrated into a world of uniformity that differed greatly from my aspirations. I almost felt that the influence of teachers who had hardly shot a film in their lives was menacing. I feared that the experience I had gathered and the results of my experiments would go to pot.
Instead I started to use the knowledge I had acquired in practice. I worked for several prestigious advertising agencies (for example DORO Production), made commercials and music videos. One of my major projects never got to the stage of realization. I submitted a plan for the commercial that was to present Austria at the World Expo and I was commissioned to direct it, but for various reasons the shooting came to nothing. I worked as a production manager for a long time. Then I lived in Paris for a year in 1992 gathering experience. Then I returned to Vienna, as I had been unable to find work in Paris.
When did your experiences start to yield success?
In these years I repeatedly submitted film plans at competitions, but I never won. Then following the advice of a „decision maker” of one of the foundations, I started use my personal experience as raw material and returned to the thoughts that preoccupied me in my adolescence when I created my first short films. This is how the script of my film, Lipstick came to life, with which I won a competition. Its story takes place in Budapest at the time of the Serbian war. It is about the passing affair of a Bosnian girl and a Russian soldier and about their friendship with an old bar pianist. I tried to depict with the help of my own experiences the intersection of diverging courses of life, the meeting and parting of three Eastern European characters of different nationalities and languages. Although there were a couple of technical and dramaturgical mistakes in the film – as we didn’t have enough time for the shooting and were quite frustrated – we managed to create a very special atmosphere and to depict deeply human relationships rich in emotions.
What kind of staff did you work with?
I worked mainly with Austrian professionals as the film was almost a 100% Austrian production, but Hungarian actors played in it as well (for example János Bán and Péter Andorai). The main character was played by Sinolicka Trpkova, the leading actress of Time of the Gypsies. The film was made on a very low budget of a hundred thousand dollars. Post-production was carried out in Hungary by Quality Pictures, the company of Gábor Sarudi.
How was the film received?
Its reception was excellent, perhaps because of its attitude. It had success at several festivals and won the Austrian National Film Festival, which none of us had expected (especially as the competitors were quite strong that year). Michael Haneke’s Benny’s video was made that year, too.
Did you have friends or colleagues in Hungary at that time?
Yes. Although it was Sándor Buglya who helped me most in making Lipstick and with him my acquaintance goes back to the times of amateur filmmaking when we met during the shooting of Crescendo.
What themes, what stories preoccupied you at that time?
I had several plans or pieces in which I attempted to depict the duality of human nature, the different aspects of personality and the contradictions between them. Unfortunately my first such plan never materialized. I wanted to make a documentary about an Iranian girl who came to Austria through the „green border”. She was transsexual and wanted an operation. I wanted to make a film about how she prepares herself for the operation and I got the necessary financial support. However the production agency gave me one year for the shooting, while the whole procedure, the psychological tests, the preparation and the examinations take three years. They would not take that into consideration, so I decided not to make the film.
However, I managed to have another film, The Way To Paradise made, which was based upon the acquaintance I made with an anatomist. I wanted to make a film about his work and personality, but the plan was not accepted at any competition. While I was gathering material, I got acquainted with János Keserű, an anatomist at the Hospital of St. John. So I made a documentary about him. In contrast with the stereotypical alcoholic professional, he has a healthy personality and lives a normal family life. The film intends to find out what kind of relationship someone who spends his days dissecting corpses might have to death. This was the first film that I was satisfied with, in spite of the fact that I didn’t have too much money for it: at that time, I couldn’t have done better. Working on it was difficult but highly interesting. On the one hand, we managed to show the attractive aspects of this job with a somewhat naturalistic, twenty minute long sequence showing the process of dissection without commentary, while on the other hand we knocked down certain taboos connected with dead bodies. I was worried that this attitude would be frightening for a lot of people, but the audience was very receptive. It won the prize for Best Documentary in Rotterdam, won the documentary contest of ÖTV and the first prize in Montreal. More than 40 thousand copies were sold in video sales and the Austrian television aired it several times. It was shown on television for the first time on All Souls’ Day, which was a huge scandal. It inspired extreme reactions and caused great uproar in Catholic circles. Interestingly enough one of the TV channels still shows it on that day every year and it still attracts attention.
My next film was a portrait about the artist Joe Coleman. (Rest in Pieces) who paints miniatures in an eccentric style and chooses strange motifs. Similarly to Brueghel and Bosch, he paints tiny scenes of apocalyptic visions and horroristic motifs. In this film, we tried to discover with the help of the painter’s approach where people’s interest in horror culture and the motivation of its creators come from, while at the same time light is thrown upon the duality of the personality of Joe Coleman. This film was well received abroad and in America.
Were you living in the United States at this time?
I met my wife Magda after the shooting and we settled down in New York after we got married.
Did you fit in well with the American world of filmmaking?
Almost not at all. My interests and relationships tied me to Europe. I accepted more and more commissions and shot seven television films in four years. One of them was a piece from Crime Scene (Tatort), which got into the „best of” selection of the series.
Then, if I am not mistaken with the years, it was the time when you made Dallas. Where did you get the idea from? As far as I know, the community that the film depicts really does exist and they live next to Cluj Napoca.
The idea of the film was conceived years ago at the time of shooting The Way to Paradise. Gábor Sarudi made a documentary together with the German director André Schwartz about this garbage dump and they asked me to edit their film. Although I was deeply shocked and upset by the stuff, I was unable to accept the task. The film was later finished and was shown under the title Wasteland, On The Ramp. The writer Géza Csemer was invited to be a consultant. After we met, we started to make plans for a feature film together and Géza started to write the script. However, the first version was rejected by the Vienna film foundation. While they liked the theme, they recommended modifications. We rewrote the plan many times, we visited the locale and I devoted lot of time to it, because I felt that the quest for identity, which became the dominant motive of the film, was a determining experience in my life, as well. Meanwhile we kept applying for support but we did not succeed in getting any money.
How did the Hungarian-Austrian-German co-production come to life? I understand that the New Budapest Studio had a determining role in it.
We first started working on the plans with Gábor Sarudi, but then Gabi suggested that we find somebody who is more familiar with the locale, with Transylvania and Romania. This is how we found the producer László Kántor who was very supportive of the plan from the very beginning. Then the complicated story of bringing the co-production partners together began. A lot of versions were considered before the present set-up was finalized. Brigitte Schröder of Bayerische Rundfunk was of great help to me. She liked the script very much and helped us find a German partner.
What proportion of the production was each party responsible for?
After numerous versions, the German party was to provide 55% of the budget, the Austrian party gave 30%, while the Hungarian party stood for 15%. All the parties agreed that it had to be a Hungarian film. However, the MMK (Hungarian Motion Picture Public Foundation) was not very enthusiastic about the idea and didn’t support the film with any money in 2002 in spite of the fact that the film was to be Hungarian despite the German-Austrian majority financing. In the end, after a lot of begging, they gave us 50 million forints. This was greatly facilitated by the Hungarian-Bavarian Film Treaty signed that year. The money came smoothly from the German and Austrian parties.
How did you manage to put the staff together and share the tasks according to the proportions of the co-production?
It was relatively easy, since I am an Austrian citizen and a large part of the equipment came from there. The rest we needed to juggle cleverly.
When did you manage to start working?
We started to have a look at locales with Vivi Dragen Vasilev in 2002. We decided for a garbage dump that had been abandoned for 10 years next to Brasov. But things started to become complicated already at that point. Prior oral agreement did not suffice for the police, so we had to move on to Rákos, which was a difficult logistical task. In Rákos, we obtained all the authorizations in writing. At last we started shooting, but there wasn’t a single day on which everything would work. The authorities made every effort to hinder the shooting wherever they could. We even had troubles with shooting a scene at a train station. The staff had extreme difficulties tolerating this. The only thing I still don’t understand is the attitude of the production manager, Károly Fehér, who came to the set one day before the shooting started.
Compared to your prior work, what experiences did you gain? In what respect did this staff work better or worse than the staffs you had worked with before?
I had never worked in such chaos before. There were at least fifteen things a day that wouldn’t work. I experienced great benevolence on behalf of the production staff but I suspect that they underestimated the scope of the task. We tried to make up for the shortcomings with the production assistant. I think it was also because of these mistakes that we had to move. At the same time the extras (mainly Gypsies) were incredibly reliable: they came on time and carried out our requests exactly as we asked them. László Kántor made great efforts to make things go more smoothly.
How was the staff as a „spiritual milieu”? Was there harmony between the co-operating artists?
It was great. We discussed everything with Vivi Dragan a thousand times and I felt that he was always there in the background, I could rely on him and he tolerated the complications with incredible patience. The expertise and the company of Tamás Banovich was also a great experience. I think the harmony between the three of us left its mark upon the film.
How did the co-operation continue during the post-production work? I understand you were working with an extraordinary amount of material.
Yes. This comes from my conviction. On the one hand, I always like to „insure” myself, as I like to do the editing myself and I know how frustrating it can be when something is missing. On the other hand, we worked with a lot of extras, among them a lot of children, so we filmed the scenes with three cameras at a time, in order to avoid making them repeat certain parts all the time. But I could co-operate well with our editor, Réka Lemhényi as well.
Let’s return to your choice of theme for a minute. What significance do the experiences of the main character (leaving a certain community and returning to it) and the effect of these experiences on the transformation of a personality have for you?
This theme had preoccupied me for a long time: Lipstick was about this, too. As I have mentioned, I experienced fear of foreigners, distress caused by foreign accent and the difficulties of standing up for one’s origin many times in my own life, but more importantly through my parents. I am an Austrian citizen, but I feel Eastern European in every sense and I want to stand up for it. I want to be accepted this way.
Why did you want to show these experiences specifically in a story that takes place among Gypsies? How much do you know about Roma communities?
I relied partly on childhood memories, since I used to know the Gypsy ghetto next to Arad. Besides, I was always excited by the way Gypsies stayed outside of society, the fact that they can never be „classified”. They remain outsiders. They do not live according to the rules of modern civilization. This comes partly from their cultural traditions, of which they can be very proud of at times, but which is only present in fading traces. Losing one’s identity and roots is a determining experience for me in connection with this community. And this is not only a Gypsy theme. A lot of people experience this from Cluj to the Philippines.
One of the most important motives and at the same time one of the greatest difficulties of depicting the Gypsies is showing their poverty. How did you manage to avoid the stereotypes connected with this?
I purposefully chose some characters that displayed stereotypical traits (like the coarse, rude husband who often quarrels with his wife.) Showing these belongs to the depiction of that environment. At the same time, I wanted to shed light upon other traits of these characters. It was important for me to show, in what circumstances some people live, how they preserve their dignity, what dreams take them away from reality.
How did you attempt to avoid „the romanticism of shanty towns”?
Mainly by identifying with the characters: I tried to emphasize the inner developments, the emotional transformations that they go through. Strangely enough, this was enhanced by moving to Hungary and therefore I could almost say it was fortunate. Usually there’s no opportunity to have a look at completed material during the shooting, however in this case, we were forced to do it, because we needed to know what we’ll have to be careful about in the new locale. It was through this that the characters got into the focus of attention. It was partly out of necessity, because we needed to hide a lot of the environment in the new scenery. However, the Gypsy colony is a very important backdrop in all of its elements.
The choice of music is a very important supplementary instrument in creating the atmosphere. As far as I know, you had difficulties with this.
Yes. First we tried to have György Selmeczi write the music of the film. He is a great composer, but we found out soon that we disagreed. He thought that a melody made up of classical elements would have suited the film best, one that does not „blend into the background” of the story but rather „works against” it. I listened to a lot of pieces of music and agreed with György Selmeczi that traditional Gypsy music would not go well with the film. Nevertheless, I was looking for something in which traces of the archaic motives of Gypsy music were discernible and I found it in the music of Lajos Kathy Horváth. However, Gyuri didn’t like it, so I turned to Lajos Kathy Horváth, who almost immediately got tuned to what I wanted and very quickly and beautifully put the music together.
Who are the foregoers who you feel are close to you? Kusturica and Makavejev have been mentioned in connection with your film. What do you think of these „labels”?
There is one school I find similar in terms of style: it is Italian Neorealism, mainly Ettore Scola’s oeuvre, especially Down and Dirty (Brutti, sporchi e cattivi). Among Gypsy films, films of Aleksandr Petrovic stand close to my heart. I tried to approach this world more „seriously”, more realistically. At the same time I tried to become more elevated with the help of surreal elements and to balance on the edge of the two attitudes.
I think it is extremely important to talk about these problems, about poverty and segregation. It is important to keep in mind how many people live in such circumstances in Hungary, too. Some Gypsy politicians reproached me for certain parts of the film. But these are facts, they happen the same way in reality, as incredible as it may be. Many children die of intoxication or explosion on the garbage dump next to Cluj. And it needs to be recognized that these people bear the possibility of a breakthrough, they only need to be helped. And this is not only a question of money. A lot of programs fail because conditions are not given for their fulfilment irrespective of the Gypsies’ cooperativeness.
I am afraid that accession to the European Union brings us farther away from the solution and not closer to it. Subsidies are not directed to those who could be of real use to the Gypsy communities. At the same time, the talented ones, who manage to break free, get more and more detached and lose there identity. The end of the film uses a certain type of duality. The failure of the main character to find his place in the Roma community and to reintegrate into it is counterbalanced by hope embodied by the character of the little boy.
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