Cinemas will wither away, but movies will remain!

Palfi’s Final Cut – Ladies and Gentlemen assembled with more than 500 love scenes from cult films is as if a hint in thinking about what is “a real movie about love” and who is “a real man” and “a real woman” (from Metropolis to Indiana Jones, from The Cranes are Flying to Avatar). This film is an experiment that can be appreciated by both professionals and inexperienced amateur movie fans. Besides, the film became not only author’s declaration of love to the art of cinematography, but is also a kind of a study of nature of movie magic that comes from common cliches.

Today the 38-year-old Gyorgy Palfi is a star of European film industry. The first major success was brought to him by the film debut Hiccups released in 2002. The film received many awards at international film festivals, including Kyiv “Youth” Festival. His next films Taxidermy and a low-budget I am not Your Friend, based purely on improvisations of both amateur actors and its creators, caused just as much public attention.

The premiere of the film Final Cut – Ladies and Gentlemen took place at the anniversary Cannes Film Festival, where it closed the traditional program “Cannes Classics.” This film also closed the 22nd International Festival of Documentary, Short Fiction, and Animated Films “Message to Man,” which recently finished in Saint Petersburg. After the Russian premier Gyorgy Palfi gave an exclusive interview to The Day.

You call Final Cut a recycled film. Have you really seen all the films episodes of which were used in the movie?

“No, perhaps somewhere around 95 percent of them. But these are the films that I like and I picked them myself. The rest were chosen by the editors when we started working on this project. They added scenes from their favorite movies, which I did not have enough time to watch.”

Please, tell us where did you get an interest and love for the cinema?

“It all began when I was still a child (10-11 years) when I first saw Star Wars. Honestly, I did not quite figure out the plot back then, but I was stunned by the visual component of the film. This was one of the most exciting memories from my childhood. Impressed by the Star Wars I bought a camera on my pocket money and together with my friends began to shoot amateur gangster films. Eventually, I realized that I wanted to become a film director. This is how I got into filmmaking.”

Original scenes used in Final Cut often convey a different meaning. Such phenomenon is called Kuleshov effect. How did you get an idea to make such movie?

“I first learned about film installation about 13 years ago when I was a student at the University of Budapest. I read about it in a Hungarian magazine about movies and wanted to do something similar. But at that time I did not have enough money to implement such project. Last year there was an opposite situation – I wanted to make a new film, but because I did not have enough money for it I decided to go back to the old idea of making an installation film. I gathered a team and we started thinking about the plot. Originally there were two options – a love story or a history of confrontation between good and evil, with positive and negative characters. Eventually we picked the first one because we realized that a love story is much easier to tell. First we sketched a skeleton of the script and then began working on the details.”

Your movies have great success in European countries. Can you say the same thing about your home country? How do they fare in the movie distribution in Hungary?

“Final Cut has not been released into distribution yet. There were several special screenings which gathered full houses. But just like in case with my earlier films, I do not think that it will be a great success in distribution in Hungary. The problem is that the Hungarian audience in principle do not like to go watch Hungarian films. They think these are boring, cheap, and often obscure films. We also have no support for filming and promoting films from the state.”

But once Hungarian films were extremely popular: Zoltan Fabri, Miklos Jancso, Bela Tarr. Where did this go?

“Well, that period was a ‘golden age’ for the Hungarian cinematography. Besides, Jancso had millions of fans in Hungary, as well as huge support from the state. Now all are troubled with other problems and the government officials do not consider it to be necessary to allocate funds for filmmaking. The audience has also changed. I myself when I go to a cinema I want to watch a blockbuster with a good quality image and an intriguing plot. First of all I simply want to relax. I would better watch some Hungarian or European film at home on DVD. And mind you, you hear it from a person who makes films and understands the importance of demonstration of a movie on a big screen! What do we expect from ordinary people?”

What about the unsurpassed emotions you receive in a cinema hall watching a movie with dozens of other people?

“Well, I simply have many friends. We get together with them and watch movies on DVD. I believe that cinemas will live for not too long. They are already withering away. But films will not die until there will be people willing to tell a story through cinematographic means and those willing to watch it. How they will find each other is another question. In past decades there appeared a great number of new ways of distributing movies – DVD, Internet.”

So you would not agree with the famous statement of Peter Greenaway about the death of cinema?

“This applies rather to cinemas than to films. Films keep on living. And this will continue in the future because cinematography is the most powerful way to influence audience. It is both the simplest and the most difficult way to tell a story, to convey some thought, affect the public in some way. For example, it can take a few days to read a book – not everyone is willing to spend that much time on it. Watching a movie takes much less time.”

There is a tradition at the Festival “Message to Man”: its participants and guests are asked to voice their “message to mankind.” How would you formulate it?

“Our life is very short so I encourage all to love each other. I am not original in this, but the most important thing in life, in my opinion, is love!”

The Day’s FACT FILE

Gyorgy Palfi (born on April 11, 1974 in Budapest) is a Hungarian film director and screen writer. He made his debut in a film as an actor when he was only 14 years old – he then got a small role in the drama Documentor (1988). In 1997 Palfi presented his first directorial work – short film A Hal starring Ferenc Elek. In 2000 Palfi tried to work on television, he shot an episode of a TV series. The following year he acted as an assistant director and cameraman while working on the film An Island of Their Own (2001). And in 2002 the director began making films based on his own scripts. First of such films was Hiccups (2002).

Hiccups (2002, European Film Awards in the category “Discovery of the Year,” special mention at San Sebastian International Film Festival)

Taxidermy (2006, Sundance/ NHK International Filmmakers Award)

I am not Your Friend (2009, nominated for “Crystal Globe” at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary)