This Sat­ur­day, the DFFB passed its grad­u­ates for this year, while Edgar Reitz gave a speech on the future of Ger­man cin­e­ma. Con­grat­u­la­tions to our grad­u­ates, who have built artis­tic per­son­al­i­ties and went through a long process­es. We wish them a good start into the pro­fes­sion­al world.

The com­plex ques­tion posed to me is excit­ing because cin­e­ma is all about work­ing on and in a con­tra­dic­to­ry medi­um with many chal­lenges. The live­li­ness of the “cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence” – strange­ly fic­tion­al, tech­ni­cal and also very real and sen­su­al, even “musi­cal” all at the same time – has a “way of touch­ing peo­ple” that leads to psy­cho­log­i­cal changes that extend right into the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life and change it. The film­mak­er Jörg Gras­er once spoke of cin­e­ma as a sub­sti­tute for reli­gion and Gilles Deleuze of its “Catholi­cism.”

What does “influ­enc­ing the per­son” mean in this sense? Encoun­ters here are not only encoun­ters with indi­vid­u­als, but with a col­lec­tive and in some respects even “arche­typ­al” char­ac­ter. “Big films” radi­ate some­thing like a “super” indi­vid­ual being, cre­at­ed by a large group of peo­ple, who dri­ven by a cer­tain theme, shape the effec­tive­ness of an emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al flu­id­i­ty, which is not only intel­lec­tu­al­ly, not mere­ly fac­tu­al for itself and oth­ers, but also resem­bles a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly indi­vid­ual and inter-per­son­al char­ac­ter.

In this sense, “encoun­ters” and psy­cho­log­i­cal changes are nev­er one-dimen­sion­al. Rather, peo­ple always express them­selves in res­o­nance with phe­nom­e­na, in forms of expe­ri­ence that over­lap and at the same time con­tra­dict each oth­er. Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder, for exam­ple, as a deeply lone­ly per­son, has a con­stant kalei­do­scop­ic exchange with his staff and actors and (in the spir­it of Michael The­unis­sen and his book “Der Andere”) “trans­formed” him­self respec­tive­ly. To put it in Hegel’s words: we are what we are, always simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the oth­er of our­selves. This – in the realm of cin­e­ma – is trig­gered by the “nat­ur­al” char­ac­ter of the film expe­ri­ence, which is always fic­tion­al and yet at the same time tech­ni­cal­ly pro­duced.

In my case, a very ear­ly impres­sion came about through the fact that both my par­ents per­formed in the­atre plays as teach­ers, where­by I was allowed to act in plays writ­ten by my moth­er – on the stage and as a drum­mer in front of the stage – which had a strong for­ma­tive effect on me ear­ly on. At the age of thir­teen, I bought myself a 8‑mm film cam­era and my first great film expe­ri­ence was Kalatozov’s WENN DIE KRANICHE ZIEHEN (The Cranes Are Fly­ing), which effect­ed me so deeply that it became clear to me – great film can tru­ly be a work of art.

In my opin­ion, peo­ple are not so much shaped by facts as by the flu­id­i­ty that car­ries these facts. This flu­id­i­ty rep­re­sents an intel­lec­tu­al-spir­i­tu­al space, an inter­per­son­al, real­i­ty-cre­at­ing ener­gy in us – ulti­mate­ly a meta­phys­i­cal real­i­ty – that con­stant­ly shapes, trans­forms, and influ­ences us anew in our life. In this con­text, we often speak of trans­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­ences. But what does that mean? Today, trans­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty is usu­al­ly noth­ing more than pure addi­tion, not a real pen­e­tra­tion into a new field of knowl­edge in the sense of a deep­er dis­cov­ery, even an enlight­en­ment. Con­verse­ly, how­ev­er, it can be the case that knowl­edge in one field, e.g. psy­chi­a­try, psy­cho­analy­sis, or brain research applied to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent field, such as art or phi­los­o­phy, can pro­duce a com­plete­ly new per­spec­tive in the over­all con­text of “life”. In my pro­fes­sion as psy­chi­a­trist and psy­chother­a­pist, through expe­ri­ences in phi­los­o­phy and art, I have been able to fun­da­men­tal­ly pur­sue my pro­fes­sion in a new way and not only to endure the cer­tain grav­i­ty of the job of a psy­chi­a­trist, but also to exer­cise it with a new inter­est, new enthu­si­asm and new cre­ative pow­er, because the uni­ver­si­ty at which I was work­ing allowed me the free­dom to do so (Medi­zinis­che Hochschule Han­nover).

In my phi­los­o­phy stud­ies, I was influ­enced by pro­fes­sors such as Arno Baruzzi, Dieter Hen­rich, Robert Spae­mann (Munich) and Michael The­unis­sen (Berlin). Each of these philo­soph­i­cal per­son­al­i­ties exud­ed a tremen­dous res­o­nance in my life, for my intel­lec­tu­al, spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion, which had a fun­da­men­tal effect on my pro­fes­sion as a psy­chi­a­trist and psy­chother­a­pist, because it was pre­cise­ly through philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tion that new ther­a­peu­tic and ana­lyt­i­cal per­spec­tives arose.

Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary, schol­ar­ly artis­tic and philo­soph­i­cal work can indeed lead to enor­mous break­throughs in knowl­edge and changed per­spec­tives in pro­fes­sion­al work and per­son­al­i­ty devel­op­ment. In my schiz­o­phre­nia research, for exam­ple, I took as my start­ing point a philo­soph­i­cal idea from the tran­scen­den­tal philoso­pher Johann Got­tlieb Fichte, who in his “Wis­senschaft­slehre” lays out the con­cep­tion of the “spon­tane­ity of I” and thus devel­ops the self-con­sti­tu­tion of the sub­ject and its con­struc­tive­ness. This has now been of enor­mous impor­tance for schiz­o­phre­nia the­o­ry with regard to the dilem­ma of inter­nal cen­sor­ship mech­a­nisms in the brain. In neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal brain research, my research group was able to prove the defec­tive con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the brain of schiz­o­phrenic peo­ple by using func­tion­al MRI (mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing) mea­sure­ments.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of such inves­ti­ga­tions has yield­ed fur­ther find­ings in the var­i­ous fields of psy­chi­a­try, e.g. also in the field of synaes­the­sia research. These results, how­ev­er, could only emerge on the basis of the syn­op­sis of psy­cho­log­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal and ulti­mate­ly artis­tic intu­ition for psy­chi­atric anthro­pol­o­gy. All this, how­ev­er, was ulti­mate­ly trig­gered by a dream, about 35 years ago, a fever­ish dream in which F. Dos­toyevsky appeared to me and informed me: “You’ve read my nov­el The Dou­ble incor­rect­ly. It is not about the divi­sion of the ego in schiz­o­phre­nia, but rather about reveal­ing the pre­vi­ous dis­in­te­gra­tion – or “mul­ti­plic­i­ty” – which is revealed in psy­chosis. This dream expe­ri­ence led me down the “right path”, i.e. “All true life is an encounter,” as pro­posed by Mar­tin Buber. Through these encoun­ters we are con­stant­ly re-formed, recon­sti­tut­ed, new­ly devel­oped; through kalei­do­scop­ic con­tra­dic­tions, we are enabled not only to see hori­zons, but even to grow beyond them.

In a very sim­i­lar way, this was the case in artis­tic fields such as the film indus­try, where my first great expe­ri­ence was work­ing on shoot­ing the film “Abra­hams Gold” (1990) with Jörg Gras­er and star­ring Han­na Schygul­la, which began after a very seri­ous on-set acci­dent with the orig­i­nal actor Sibylle Canon­i­ca. At the time, I was shocked that the cre­ation of some­thing fic­tion­al (the film) could endan­ger someone’s life. Oth­er cru­cial encoun­ters were with pro­fes­sors at film schools: Siegfried Zielin­s­ki, Peter Lilien­thal, Jea­nine Meer­apfel, Rein­hard Hauff. I can still remem­ber when I showed the Amer­i­can film GIRL INTERRUPTED at the DFFB, in which the mov­ing fate of the bor­der­line patients is showed. After my talk, the stu­dents asked me, “Where are the boys with bor­der­line symp­toms?” And then one of the stu­dents answered spon­ta­neous­ly, “The boys are in prison.” This is one of the many expe­ri­ences, in many dif­fer­ent film schools, where I had the impres­sion again and again that I got more from the stu­dents – more or less gifts – and more than I was able to give myself.

The lec­tures at the HfG in Karl­sruhe, which I was allowed to give togeth­er with Edgar Reitz, were a par­tic­u­lar ray of light in this con­text. Our top­ic at the time was the dilem­ma of work­ing out a phi­los­o­phy of space in the cin­e­ma, a project that inspired us so much dur­ing our joint lec­tures that we decid­ed to pub­lish a dia­log­i­cal book on the sub­ject.

The main idea of this text is that “space in film” does not only rep­re­sent geo­met­ric dimen­sions, but rather val­ue worlds, rela­tion­ships of prox­im­i­ty and dis­tance, dom­i­nance and weak­ness. Par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing in this con­text is Edgar Reitz’s con­cept that in cin­e­ma there is a space that can’t exist – and this is where the cam­era stands.

It is almost impos­si­ble to explain why and when some­body becomes a film­mak­er. Usu­al­ly it hap­pens ran­dom­ly, and depends on the per­son. It is as unpre­dictable as an acci­dent, unstop­pable and unlearn­able. “Moments of learn­ing” nev­er stop. Some­times you come to under­stand some­thing because you were con­front­ed with your own stu­pid­i­ty. And some­times you need a lit­tle help from out­side. In 1975, I shot an ama­teur film on an 8‑mm cam­era. My social activ­i­ties put me in con­tact with a home­less fam­i­ly that had one child, and we became friends. They were squat­ting in the top floor of an emp­ty build­ing in a run-down area out­side of town. The order to vacate the premis­es came only a few days lat­er. In my out­rage at the sit­u­a­tion (which I still feel today), I decid­ed to at least doc­u­ment our shared sense of pow­er­less­ness.

And so, on a beau­ti­ful summer’s morn­ing, we wait­ed for the author­i­ties to come. Two offi­cials showed up along with fur­ni­ture movers, six police offi­cers and a growl­ing dog. The child was afraid of the dog and hid behind his moth­er. The par­ents looked pale as they held on to one anoth­er, and I held up my Sovi­et-era cam­era in defi­ance. The next thing I saw as I looked through the viewfind­er was a big hand that cov­ered the lens.  They tore the cam­era out of my hands and took me away to the near­est police sta­tion. As they dragged me away, I saw how the police yelled at my friends and pushed them aside in order to get into the flat and start the evic­tion.

I remem­ber the police sta­tion very well: plas­tic-cov­ered walls, steel chairs, the Hun­gar­i­an People’s Repub­lic seal behind glass and a sheet of press board used as a table. On the table was my cam­era, a present from my father on my four­teenth birth­day. They had tak­en the film out, but at least the cam­era was still there… But between me and the cam­era was an impass­able bar­ri­er: a huge police­man – huge to me, at least – who was there to keep watch of me. The weath­er that day was was a lit­tle too hot for the police­man. He scratched his stub­bly chin and scowled down at small, skin­ny me. Every now and then he impa­tient­ly ran his hand through his oily, frizzy hair. Drops of sweat were soaked up by his col­lar and trick­led down­wards behind his tie. All of the sud­den he grunt­ed, went over to the win­dow and opened it. The result was ter­ri­ble: through the bars there came a rush of bru­tal­ly hot air – and thou­sands of flies. He sat back down next to the cam­era and start­ed hit­ting the table with his fist as if he were try­ing to get the flies. His neck mus­cles stood out, his pupils grew larg­er and he seemed to be shak­ing with rage. If looks could kill, I would not be here today. Next he turned on the radio to hear the news. Even­tu­al­ly he had enough and turned it off. I think he did­n’t have the nerve to hear the weath­er fore­cast. He leaned back in his chair and wiped the sweat from his neck in utter mis­ery. That was when I began to under­stand: I was sit­ting in front of two hun­dred and forty pounds of mis­ery. It was this thought that made the threat seem small­er and small­er. I pic­tured his wife and chil­dren. His gar­den with a cheap cor­ru­gat­ed iron fence and a pig sty with a pig they could slaugh­ter for a par­ty in Feb­ru­ary.

His col­leagues final­ly returned seem­ing very pleased with the work they had done: a suc­cess­ful evic­tion. They weren’t inter­est­ed in me and my cam­era. My guard left imme­di­ate­ly. One of them looked over at me, shoved my cam­era into my hands and threw me out of the Mosoly street police sta­tion with a brief: “Get out of here!”

I can still see the fam­i­ly sit­ting togeth­er on their fur­ni­ture in the bar­racks’ court­yard: the child cling­ing to his ted­dy bear in tears and the par­ents glow­er­ing at me as if I had aban­doned them, because I did­n’t help them at the crit­i­cal moment. And that was because of the sil­ly idea to film it all…
In the end, they were prob­a­bly right to feel that way.

The DFFB fea­ture film HAGAZUSSA (R/​B: Lukas Feigelfeld, K: Mariel Baque­iro, P: Simon Lubin­s­ki, Lukas Feigelfeld) hits select Ger­man-lan­guage the­atres start­ing May 17th 2017. The offi­cial the­atri­cal dis­trib­u­tor for the film is For­got­ten Film Enter­tain­ment. Indeed Films is respon­si­ble for VOD dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Hagazus­sa is a dark tale of a woman’s strug­gle with her own san­i­ty. In a time when pagan beliefs of witch­es spread fear into the minds of the rur­al folk, the film aims to explore the thin line between ancient beliefs, mag­ic and delu­sion­al psy­chosis.

Fol­low­ing its suc­cess­ful World Pre­miere at Fan­tas­tic Fest in Austin, where it won the Next Wave Award for Best Film, HAGAZUSSA has gone on to screen at renowned film fes­ti­vals such as CPH:PIX, the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val and the Max Ophüls Prize Film Fes­ti­val

Today I would like to talk about Lluis Car­bó. I believe that every one of you would find it easy to rate his act­ing skills, not just in QUIXOTIC but in all the oth­er films he lat­er made with me.

I have actu­al­ly known him for a long time, for most of my life, some­times rather super­fi­cial­ly, some­times a bit more pro­found­ly. I final­ly real­ly got to know him while work­ing togeth­er on an ama­teur film in 2000, CRESPIÁ. That was the first time that I asked him, more or less at ran­dom, if he would like to play a role in it. I only want­ed to work with ama­teur actors. While edit­ing, I noticed that he is unique­ly “pho­to­genic”, in the sense in which the word is used in France, i.e. there are peo­ple who you can­not stop look­ing at on film because every­thing they do is good, they pos­sess an unbound­ed pho­to­genic tal­ent in the phys­i­cal as well as the spir­i­tu­al sense. He sur­prised me, unlike oth­er actors whose appeal was always some­how lim­it­ed. He real­ly stood out because of some­thing I would call “prim­i­tive pho­to­gen­ics”.

Since this first film, but actu­al­ly from a lot ear­li­er on – I have known him since I was young – he has enriched me intel­lec­tu­al­ly in a nat­ur­al way, most­ly through what we could call Sur­re­al­ism and Rock ’n’ Roll, in this par­tic­u­lar­ly strong man­i­fes­ta­tion of the “ludic”, the playful…that was what made up his char­ac­ter, his ten­den­cies, the orig­i­nal­i­ty of his incal­cu­la­ble being and par­tic­u­lar­ly the men­tal inde­pen­dence of his life that was rich with eccen­tric and even scur­rilous moments (although he led a rel­a­tive­ly nor­mal life).

I quick­ly not­ed that his way of doing things fit per­fect­ly with my method of work­ing, with­out prepa­ra­tion and film­ing with three dig­i­tal cam­eras. We always did very long scenes just like in a per­for­mance, in which every moment is unique for itself. With­out this dig­i­tal pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing humor­ous, play­ful films that exist out­side of the realm of real­i­ty, I would nev­er have become a film­mak­er and in light of the fact that life gets more bor­ing, repeat­ing itself and grow­ing monot­o­nous with the pass­ing years, I have always assumed that film­mak­ing should help me not only to change my life, but also to indi­rect­ly influ­ence the lives of those  around me. This was the case with Lluis Car­bó because any­thing was pos­si­ble and at the mag­ic moment of film­mak­ing, every­thing had pow­er, our play­ful­ness made sense out of every­thing that we were doing made, and we took every sort of risk out of “cre­ative” ambi­tion, where­by ambi­tion with­out this play­ful aspect remains dry and ster­ile: for­mal or aca­d­e­m­ic ambi­tion. As part of this play­ful­ness, ambi­tion devel­ops an inter­est­ing pati­na, it is jol­lier, far from bor­ing. Lluis always enriched the films he was in by mix­ing coura­geous, wild, provoca­tive and pri­mal act­ing, all aris­ing from this play­ful ele­ment. And it’s what lends the unique note to the films I shot with him.

This all grew more and more com­plex from film to film, lead­ing to my – and prob­a­bly also his – mas­ter­piece that I made for the Bien­nale in Venice, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty (2015). His unpre­dictable and orig­i­nal way of doing things allowed Lluis to uncon­scious­ly moti­vate peo­ple. That was real­ly valu­able, a dri­ve that ful­filled every scene and kept them from going flat. Min­i­mal­ist films are always in dan­ger of going too flat, but he turned the process into some­thing unique, actu­al­ly all my films, but par­tic­u­lar­ly Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, where he took things to a rad­i­cal and orig­i­nal lev­el, which I found to be true genius from my point of view.

It was also inter­est­ing that he, although not an edu­cat­ed per­son, always under­stood the grav­i­ty of the final prod­uct. He knew that was what it was all about, not just being recog­nised at fes­ti­vals, even though that is what gives a lot of peo­ple self-assur­ance, because they can sense that their work is being appre­ci­at­ed. Inde­pen­dent­ly of that, he under­stood the aes­thet­ic val­ue of the final prod­uct, some­thing that brings togeth­er the traces of his per­son­al­i­ty that always seem a lot more sub­dued in the edit­ing mon­i­tor than on the screen, and he also under­stood that this final prod­uct is always bet­ter than his per­for­mance in real­i­ty. That is some­thing that only a few can mas­ter, spe­cial­ly those with­out any sort of train­ing, who do not grasp the for­mal log­ic that every film is based on. He recog­nised the val­ue of that, intu­itive­ly. And after he grasped that while mak­ing his first film, from then on all his con­cen­tra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion fol­lowed this approach.

A film is more than just the time spent shoot­ing it, it’s also the count­less hours of post-pro­duc­tion that we spent togeth­er in Bany­oles, he was there near­ly every day. And then on count­less total­ly crazy trips, such as the one to Mar del Pla­ta in Argenti­na, where we flew with six or sev­en peo­ple. That was the most off-the-wall expe­ri­ence of my life. And even there, he always had the aes­thet­ic final result in the back of his mind. He knew that I was fond of mak­ing a joke at film pre­sen­ta­tions: ”I have expe­ri­enced count­less crazy, con­fus­ing moments, so fun­ny and orig­i­nal that most peo­ple can only dream of them…on the oth­er hand, I have, unfor­tu­nate­ly nev­er expe­ri­enced such divine actors as there are to be seen here on the screen.”

He had a cer­tain way of col­lect­ing all the dif­fer­ent influ­ences: the best of him, the best of me, the best of every­thing that was involved in the film, and he con­tributed to free­ing them from their ego­tism and their ten­den­cy towards self por­tray­al, crys­tallis­ing the mag­ic and fas­ci­na­tion that exudes from peo­ple who know that they are in exact­ly the right place at the right time while still not for­get­ting who they are, where their pow­er lies – in their exhi­bi­tion­ism and nat­u­ral­ness.

He retained his naiveté to very end and I would real­ly like the pub­lic to make the com­par­i­son with my last film SINGULARITY as well, even though it would be dif­fi­cult as this thir­teen-hour instal­la­tion is only to be seen in muse­ums. But this film is rich in sto­ry­telling, full of dia­logues that con­firm what I have always main­tained. One can sense the way his pre­ci­sion devel­ops, his last ounce of con­cen­tra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion, even though he was exhaust­ed from his chemother­a­py. The shoot­ings seemed to rean­i­mate him. I still have touch­ing mem­o­ries of the last shoot in Ire­land. He could no longer walk prop­er­ly, we had been film­ing for twelve days in the cold and rain, were drink­ing a lot and get­ting away with excess­es that no doc­tor would have allowed. It was like a mir­a­cle. He came back total­ly changed, could walk again, could almost run again. His sub­ver­sive way of par­tic­i­pat­ing was to recov­er his phys­i­cal self-con­trol, which gave him the moral strength and ener­gy that he nev­er found in real life, one that can only be found through art and through which he over­came almost all his phys­i­cal hand­i­caps.

His pres­ence in film­mak­ing is a mar­vel­lous exam­ple of how one can com­bine pop­u­lar aspects with refine­ment and excel­lence in art, a much more inter­est­ing com­bi­na­tion than any pure­ly for­mal art, of that I am con­vinced. With­out this com­bi­na­tion, art is – whether bet­ter or worse, I dare not say – much more bor­ing.

Dear grad­u­ates, I would like to start by say­ing that I nev­er com­plet­ed my stud­ies. In fact, the time I spent study­ing was­n’t even very hap­py. But despite all that, I became a film­mak­er and, today, I would like to explain how that came to be.

It start­ed when I applied to the direc­tor pro­gramme at Fil­makademie Wien (Film Acad­e­my Vien­na), but I was encour­aged to join the edi­tor pro­gramme due to my appear­ance and due to my sex, which made them think edit­ing was a bet­ter fit for me. And so I joined the edi­tor and direc­tor pro­grammes, and was bad in both. I think a lot has changed since then, even in Vien­na. But back then, I found myself in an envi­ron­ment that was full of non-artis­tic teach­ers and tech­ni­cians, who were gen­er­al­ly con­vinced that a young woman could not han­dle the job. I should add, how­ev­er, that I was fresh out of school at St. Ursu­la and 19 years old when I joined the Fil­makademie. My face turned red when­ev­er I had to say some­thing out loud, and even I had the feel­ing that I did­n’t belong there. In addi­tion, my pro­fes­sor of film direct­ing told me that it would be bet­ter to get mar­ried than to end up like all the unsuc­cess­ful film direct­ing stu­dents who nev­er became prop­er direc­tors. I should also men­tion, that back in the mid 1990s, there was­n’t much hap­pen­ing in the film sec­tor in Vien­na. Most went to tele­vi­sion. So why should I of all peo­ple be able make it? The odds were real­ly stacked against me.

Back then, my main prob­lem was that I could­n’t accept the tasks that were giv­en to us as stu­dents. No mat­ter how hard I tried, I could­n’t see any sense in film­ing a chase scene and a work­place sce­nario. When­ev­er there is a chase scene in a film, I always think of some­thing else because they sel­dom inter­est me and I nev­er know who is chas­ing who. I have a bad sense of direc­tion. When­ev­er I go to the restroom at a restau­rant, I usu­al­ly can’t find my way back. I’ll end up in the kitchen or leave the restau­rant through the emer­gency exit.

The films we analysed were Amer­i­can genre films, all filmed by men. I could­n’t relate. I loved films that were mys­te­ri­ous and sur­re­al. Maya Deren, for exam­ple, or Buñuel. And I was inter­est­ed in style and aes­thet­ics. In cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage. But I was appar­ent­ly look­ing for a lan­guage that was not spo­ken or taught at the film acad­e­my. We were sup­posed to learn the so-called rules first – before we were allowed to break them. It’s an idea that I still find ridicu­lous, because who is it that defines the rules? Syd Field? Why him? Because we grew up with these films? Who says that cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage can’t be total­ly dif­fer­ent? Maya Deren, of course, was only dealt with mar­gin­al­ly in an option­al class. But those were the only films through which I was able to under­stand how edit­ing works.

Any­way, nobody paid much atten­tion to my chase scene, and after my prac­tice films, it was rec­om­mend that I drop out of the acad­e­my. I had already failed the edit­ing pro­gramme, because I did­n’t edit my projects the way I was sup­posed to.

My high­est or low­est point was in the sem­i­nar for voice record­ing. We were asked to dub a bad love scene in the style of a tele­vi­sion show from the 1980s. I was total­ly out of my ele­ment. I did­n’t know what to say to the voice actors. I was­n’t able to take it seri­ous­ly, and so I could­n’t think of one sin­gle direc­tion to give them. The voice-dub­bing direc­tor who led the sem­i­nar gave every­one some feed­back at the end to let them know what they did well and what they did poor­ly. In the end, he said that only one stu­dent failed com­plete­ly – and he point­ed to me. I can admit that this was a low point for me. I did­n’t grad­u­ate in film direc­tion and had to repeat a semes­ter. Just think about it: I want­ed to be famous and make great films, but I was­n’t even good enough to com­plete my stud­ies in film! And so I repeat­ed a semes­ter, shot a film twice, and dur­ing this whole, unbe­liev­ably depress­ing sce­nario, some­thing became slow­ly clear: I had to get out of there. Then my pro­fes­sor of film direct­ing died, which set me free for a time and I took a leave of absence. I was scared that noth­ing would become of me. That the oth­ers could make films, but I could­n’t. I flew from Vien­na to Berlin, worked as a trainee in a film, and worked on a screen­play in the evenings. When I got back to Vien­na, I showed my new pro­fes­sor the script and he said that the most impor­tant thing was that I liked it, and that I had to know the sto­ry that I want­ed to tell, but I had to know it exact­ly and to make it hap­pen exact­ly as I want­ed, with­out let­ting any­body influ­ence me.

That struck me to the core. No one had ever said some­thing like that to me before. It was always about ful­fill­ing a cer­tain task, or to suit someone’s par­tic­u­lar taste. And sud­den­ly some­body was telling me that I should do exact­ly what I intend­ed to do. That and only that. The script’s title was Flo­ra and it became a 20-minute film, and I was hap­py while I was shoot­ing it. I could feel that I was able to realise my vision. My pre­vi­ous weak­ness­es (real­i­sa­tion, spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion) sud­den­ly became my strengths, because I chose a scenic real­i­sa­tion that worked with­out any spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion. And that’s how I con­tin­ued to do it as a film­mak­er. I use my inabil­i­ty as an asset: since I don’t have good spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion, my scenic real­i­sa­tion must work emo­tion­al­ly. The peo­ple and their feel­ings are focus points with­in a space, the inter­nal dra­matur­gy is my ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem and film edit­ing is a won­der­ful means to con­nect places and times that could have nev­er been con­nect­ed, because they belong togeth­er emo­tion­al­ly. Like in Maya Deren’s films.

There is also my inabil­i­ty to cre­ate excite­ment through speed. Today, I cre­ate excite­ment through a threat that I let devel­op with­in the head of the view­er by means of a strange idea that takes time to devel­op its full effect.

After my expe­ri­ence with the voice actors, I worked for a while with ama­teurs, in order to dis­cov­er for myself what I want­ed to say to actors,  what was real for me, what felt real and what style of act­ing I would choose. And sud­den­ly it was clear to me that it was a good thing that I could­n’t do what oth­ers could do. It forced me to find my own way of mak­ing films. I had to dis­cov­er every­thing for myself.

I learned styl­is­ti­cal­ly from the ama­teurs and now I work with pro­fes­sion­al actors, but I still act as if they were ama­teurs. I don’t give up on cast­ing until I have found the per­son who embod­ies the role, who fits per­fect­ly, who nat­u­ral­ly acts exact­ly as need­ed for the role. I treat actors like ama­teurs. And when an actor asks for the back­sto­ry, I delay the dis­cus­sion until the clap­per­board strikes and we’re shoot­ing.

So what I’m try­ing to tell you is that I was­n’t able to do what was expect­ed of me, but that led me to do some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly and the audi­ence liked it. And I would also say that if I had done things accord­ing to expec­ta­tion, it would’ve been bad. That was con­firmed already at the begin­ning of my stud­ies.

Today, this all sounds like a good sto­ry, like the ugly duck­ing that final­ly finds his swan fam­i­ly. But back when I was in this hope­less sit­u­a­tion, I had no way of know­ing that every­thing would work out in the end – there is no way of know­ing what the future may bring. But look­ing back, I can say that it was nec­es­sary for me to fail at fol­low­ing all these sup­posed rules. It was nec­es­sary to fail at film direct­ing in order to under­stand that I could­n’t do it the way any­one want­ed me to. Not because I did­n’t want to, but because I could­n’t!

I would like to add anoth­er chap­ter to my sto­ry. So I was able to shoot my short film Flo­ra. I was hap­py, but I had already been sin­gled out as a los­er at the film acad­e­my. The film had to first gain recog­ni­tion else­where – Flo­ra won some prizes at inter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­vals – and then peo­ple start­ed treat­ing me with more respect. I lat­er shot a film for my grad­u­a­tion, and it was also suc­cess­ful at fes­ti­vals. This helped me get financ­ing for my first fea­ture film: Love­ly Rita. And so I seemed to be on my way. I had sur­vived the film acad­e­my and become a film­mak­er.

Then I shot a film called Hotel: the idea was to shoot a genre film that went against the genre. It is a mys­tery thriller that nev­er resolves the mys­tery, and a hor­ror film with­out a mon­ster. When the film was fin­ished, pub­lic opin­ion was split. Some were aggres­sive and annoyed. Users left com­ments on the film’s web­site like; “it’s like jaws with­out the shark,” or “I want my mon­ey back.” Glob­al sales were dis­ap­point­ing and I had to deal with a lot of crit­i­cism.

And I was dis­ap­point­ed, because it seemed as if the film had­n’t been under­stood. But the only rea­son to make the film was that there was no mon­ster! I was – and still am – con­vinced that the idea was good, but maybe my real­i­sa­tion of the idea was­n’t good enough. But now, 15 years lat­er, I’m going to try to make anoth­er film that breaks the rules of its genre. The view­ers’ expec­ta­tions will not be ful­filled, so that the film takes an unex­pect­ed turn.

What’s inter­est­ing is that most peo­ple who read the script will make rec­om­men­da­tions that would make the film con­form to the expec­ta­tions of its genre. And they make these rec­om­men­da­tions think­ing that they are their own good ideas. Of course, it makes things eas­i­er when some­thing has already been stamped as “good” by the gen­er­al pub­lic. Most peo­ple don’t realise that they just want to see some­thing that they’ve already seen before, and that’s the way things should be! But I want to take the risk of not ful­fill­ing view­er expec­ta­tions: to do some­thing where you are not sure whether it will work or the audi­ence will like it. Only lat­er can you look back and say if it was worth the risk. But in the cur­rent moment, you can nev­er know for sure if some­thing will work.

My expe­ri­ence at the film acad­e­my showed me that if I fol­low my own plan, the indi­vid­ual pieces will come togeth­er in the future and form some­thing that I can­not yet see. Some­thing that seems wrong can turn out to be cor­rect, true or good in the future. These are all very rel­a­tive terms that are defined by the times.

I can only pur­sue things that inter­est me per­son­al­ly. It is the only way to cre­ate some­thing that will also inter­est oth­ers, or that oth­ers will find good and excit­ing.

While I was study­ing, I could­n’t fol­low the so-called rules of good film­mak­ing. And I feel that it is my duty, now, to tell you that you won’t be able to do it either. You should­n’t be able to do it. Because no mat­ter what hap­pens, you will only do a good job if you are doing what you tru­ly love and if you are ful­ly con­vinced of what you are doing. Try­ing to be like some­one else is a recipe for fail­ure. Because you’re only doing some­thing that some­one has already done! You will only find suc­cess by doing some­thing very per­son­al that you want to do and love very much. That is why I want to ask you to do some­thing: keep look­ing. Don’t repeat some­thing just because it worked well in the past. Redis­cov­er film­mak­ing on your own terms and rein­vent the wheel. You – and all of us – will be amazed at what you can achieve, and you will look back and say that it was obvi­ous that things would work out the way they did. But now, at this moment in your life, I hope that you will have the courage, and not accept what oth­er peo­ple are say­ing. Every day, you should con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that every­one else is wrong.

Jes­si­ca Haus­ner made this speech on 10 June 2017 at the DFFB diplo­ma cer­e­mo­ny at Wed­dinger City Kino. Thanks to: Ben Gib­son.