"When I attended" "Las Palmas film festival" "I enjoyed myself and it made me feel full of life." "There I met Mr Isaki." "Well we actually only spoke for about 5 minutes." "In reality we barely knew each other but we started talking." "For this reason I'd like you to understand that cinema thrives on words it is the fruit of exchange and communication among people." "Your style obviously changes depending on who you address." "If I'd written to another filmmaker" "I'd have done it differently." "Writing to Naomi makes you adopt a particular style." "This aside" "I don't think this was my first filmed diary." "Some films speak in the third person th characters who are not the author but reflect the personality of the person behind the camera." "Sam Peckinpah for example never appeared in his films but they transmit what he was like." "I made some films years ago in which the narration the text or what's being said has nothing to do th my life." "But the images were from my domestic life and they were saying:" ""I love this woman..."" "There are moments of love of desire captured in films from years ago." "And even if the plot is unrelated they're a kind of personal diary." "I saw the first letter from Mr Isaki when I met him for the first time in Las Palmas." "I had the impression... that he was a serious person." "In this sense he's rather masculine." "As for me" "I like to have fun and I'm laid back." "Sometimes he seems to get upset when I play a joke on him." "For this reason I finished my first letter thinking that I should be more serious." " The first one?" " Yes." "In the second one you changed your mind." "In the second one I felt fear." "There's no single explanation for this letter it has an undercurrent of hidden meanings." "Therefore you have to really think about it in order to understand it." "I sent the second letter which is about the present about being here and the things I'm doing." "Well..." "I went to his home town and I thought he'd show me many things." "We went to a lake where the lake bed is volcanic ash." "We strolled around." "Then we went to a place that looked like a museum but it made me a little afraid." "I've been thinking it's sad that in the 21st century" ""virile" and "masculine" are insults." "20 years ago it would have been fine." "Sorry?" "She said that she found me masculine." "20 years ago that was a compliment now it's a criticism." "And so..." "I feel humiliated." "OK but..." "Naomi..." "I forgot to turn the earpiece on..." " Can you hear Isaki?" " Now I can." "What was she saying?" "For some time I've wanted to work on a kind of cinema that speaks of the present the past and also interprets the future." "That's not asking much is it?" "I don't think that films only talk about the past and the present." "I like to think of them as bottles you throw into the sea that will turn up again one day." "In fact this third letter is also conceived in relation to the fifth." "The tone changes." "That's something I wanted to do:" "use different tones so we could show our different sides." "The reasons that I work in cinema are about striving to know myself." "I mean I didn't admire any famous director in particular." "And I didn't want to work with any actor who I particularly liked." "Above all I wanted to explore myself." "So I began working in the world of cinema." "That's more important." "When I create a work it has a great influence on my life." "And the influences that you come across in life lead you to walk forward." "Me walking ll be the subject of a letter." "So it has a synergistic effect because everything is connected." "I guess that's how it works." "You like to direct films and everything it entails that's why you do it right?" "No I always thought I would write." "I'll change to Catalan the Generalitat's paying for this..." "I'd always thought that I would write." "And later I started..." "I hesitated between studying economics or film." "I wasn't strong on economics so I went over to film." "And I discovered something I'd never imagined a bit like what you're saying that I wasn't interested in film as a way of telling stories or as a way of creating a way of life or a status" "but as a way of creating experiences that I wouldn't otherwise be able to have." "This is something that I often say because I think it's important." "When we made La leyenda del tiempo" "I lived with those people for many months in an intimacy that was unthinkable without the camera as an excuse." "All the trips we've made this year have been thanks to making films." "The same goes for being with Naomi now." "And it's not just the life experiences you have during the shoots but also their consequences." "And another important thing is your relationship with the technical team." "I like to shoot with a team that's like a family." "Many of them are here today." "You can tell the focus is worse in this film the sound is worse because I've had to make it alone thout them." "That's something I like working with friends." "What we were discussing about filming bodies and ghostly presence is almost inevitable." "It's part of the natural essence of cinema." "In itself cinema embalms characters." "I thought that Darder was probably my main influence my putative cinematic father because in the 1 9th century before cameras existed Darder did the same thing as the Lumières in the 20th:" "he wanted village folk to see what Africans were like what wild animals were like." "And also to keep alive dead bodies from the past in some sense." "Now I think it's appalling..." "Darder did some appalling things and in the 22nd century people ll think that filming people like we do is just as terrible." "The films I'm interested are those you can apply this to." "When we watch films... the film I showed about Banyoles is the first film made in 1 907 by Segundo de Chomón an essential filmmaker." "Aside from the mise en scène the charm of these films is seeing people and places that no longer exist but remain alive in the films." "In other words we're the taxidermists of the 21st century." "All I do is film things that are irreplaceable to me." "This means that... in reality..." "I'm going to change the subject now..." "I'd like to film in Spain." "It's also true that I enjoyed myself in Las Palmas." "Suddenly I found myself facing Mr Isaki and he suggested doing an interview there in Las Palmas." "Like now Mr Isaki started to talk about many things very quickly." "And I thought..." "How complicated!" "I guess it would be more fun to talk as friends in a place like the port for example." "I also ate sardines and other things." "The taste of those sardines like the taste of ice cream is something I will never forget." "The taste of the paella we ate in that village we went to together..." "There at the lake we met a man two women who were tns and some men who looked like fishermen." "All these things made a deep impression on me." "These things are part of everyday life but there's a limit when it comes to filming them right?" "We have a memory." "But it is lazy." "Today you'll go home and tomorrow you won't remember the colour of the clothes Isaki is wearing right?" "You ll probably all forget." "It's blue..." "Memory becomes lazy like this." "Then again film is a little bit like memory." "Basically" "I transform memory and express it in filmed images." "In this sense I'm like a translator." "I try to translate things through cinematic images." "I think it's very interesting to use films to translate the dramas of people's everyday lives." "I capture the landscape that I want to preserve." "I create the landscape that I want to preserve." "Well I think I do." "I'm sorry." "I rejected the chat." "In Las Palmas there was a misunderstanding with the organisers." "I was actually going to Fuerteventura." "In any case" "It'd be terrible if it ended up seeming like Naomi is the vitalist while I'm the European theoretical intellectual" "so I'd like to point out that what she just said is a great example of film theory and that between each shot of the boat we were fucking on the beaches of Fuerteventura." "I won't show you those images." "The Mourning Forest." "has anybody seen it?" "OK great." "What a strange lot!" "Everybody who has seen it is here." "In this film" "there's a young woman between 25 and 30 years old whose two year old son has died." "But the actress isn't even married and has never given birth." "And obviously she hasn't ever lost a child." "So this sadness is pure acting right?" "But I wasn't convinced by her acting." "Even if it was fiction..." "I wanted the girl to really feel sad and totally alone." "I put that girl in a very small room with a tatami thout a bathroom so she could live on her own." "For the first half of the shoot..." "I talked to the whole team... but I totally ignored her." "This is a terrible thing." "Imagine a director totally ignoring an actress." "Then she'd go home and be alone again." "Then she started expressing herself really well." "Once we had filmed those scenes" "I told her I had been watching her the whole time and that she could relax." "After that we shot some scenes that were more lively." "What am I trying to say?" "That the most important thing for creation is reality." "I really wanted each of that girl's cells to be totally pervaded by sadness." "I think it's important to express reality in this way so that audiences do not feel they're watching some made-up story even if it is fiction." "When I'm aware of a feeling the ordinary things I feel" "I want to transmit it to the viewers exactly the way I've felt it." "It's difficult to know how much you affect the lives of others and it's a big responsibility for those of us who make films." "In La leyenda del tiempo the final sequence where Makiko starts crying and cries a lot" "was planned as a fiction sequence." "As Naomi said the search for truth was not so much in the filming but in the casting of the characters who had lived through similar experiences so in the shoot we were inviting them to re-live them in front of the camera." "It's a curious expression:" ""to live in front of the camera"" "as if actors were dead." "It's inevitable to "live" in front of the camera unless you film corpses." "In this sequence" "Makiko had to call her father." "It is a fiction sequence and there was nobody on the other end." "She was being told her father had died." "And she had to start crying." "We'd tried it several times and she cried very well because something very similar had happened to her in real life." "But on the day of the shoot" "Makiko couldn't cry." "We couldn't film it." "We let it go and moved onto another scene and while we were filming" "Makiko was sitting on a bench beside us and she started crying inconsolably." "We turned the camera around and started filming her and it's a long take that runs for 5-6 minutes of continuous tears." "Later Makiko told me they were tears of frustration because of her failure to cry when we were filming the scene." "We argue about this every time we meet." "She claims that she wasn't aware she was being filmed." "But I'm convinced that she was." "When I watch the the raw footage in the DVD extras" "I know the exact moments when Makiko shows us her face... she turns her face to the camera so the light shines on it." "This was near the end of the shoot so she knew how it worked and how to approach it." "And I bet..." "I can point out the moments when Makiko offers us her face so we can film her." "But according to her - and she really means it - she is convinced that she didn't know." "That we were filming secretly." "That brings up questions about the filmmaker's rights over a character or a person." "If we were filming Makiko secretly at an intimate moment we were exploiting her private life." "I don't think we were." "In any case she authorised us to put it in the film." "Given my rhythm of life and work" "I'd love to make one feature film a year or every 10 months but this is impossible in Spain." "It took me 4 to 5 years to get each film off the ground." "If you don't do anything in the meantime you lose the rhythm of your work." "Picking up a camera becomes charged with meaning and that's not right." "Filming should be a natural thing th a certain lightness." "If we look at the history of cinema all the great masters made many films..." "The filmographies of the greats from Ford to Bergman Hitchcock Goddard they all made many many films compared to today's filmmakers." "There's no comparison." "There seems to be some prestige in not doing much." "I don't share that at all." "I'd like to work as much as possible." "Luckily I've had other projects between films commissions where I was asked to participate in exhibitions or..." "I'd be given a premise but I could do whatever I wanted to." "Nobody ever said" "I had to make a particular film th a particular story." "They gave me the subject matter and I had total freedom so I've done whatever I've wanted" "I've had fun I've kept learning and trying things and I'm sure if I'd had to wait until I could make a feature film" "I'd still be trying to focus the camera:" "in the first film I'd have learnt to turn it on and in the second one to focus and I'd have to wait five years to learn to film a character." "The short films I've made which haven't been shown although that's not important have allowed me to discover things." "Naomi's work hasn't gone down that path but one of her films was a commission:" "Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom a commission by Nishii a writer who was terminally ill which she filmed in the last months of his life." "He had terminal cancer." "He called me one day and told me he had two months left to live and he asked me to make a documentary about the time he had left." "First I wondered why he asked me to do it." "When I asked him he told me that he chose me through intuition." "I couldn't reject the intuition of somebody who had two months left to live." "That was all." "With the third letter we'll see..." "When you make a film it's important to reach a certain point of course." "There are four parts:" "exposition development climax and resolution." "If you watch until the climax you ll stay to the end." "So as long as the plot develops as long as the audience watches to the end and gets to the resolution that's the whole point." "Will you go first?" "Sorry?" "I didn't understand the question." "Would you make the third one first?" "I'd decided on an ending but it's very likely that I ll change it now that we've met." "Now that we've been together" "I might change the fifth letter." "I find it curious how it changes things getting to know each other through the audiovisual letters... what an ugly word!" "Getting to know each other through the letters we have filmed through the films we had watched or meeting in person." "I think that I've learnt most about Naomi through her films." "I got to know her best through her films then through the letters and lastly in person." "I have found that films are a very clear personal expression while in private life there's a need... there's a need for protection." "Firstly thank you because... the letters are great I really liked them." "I wanted to ask you particularly in the case of Isaki's letter which is more constructed and elaborate to what extent you used the correspondence format" "to channel or direct projects or ideas that might have been breng in advance." "And also why it has to finish th two more letters." "I'm curious about the protocol or pact that structures these letters." "Now that you are getting to know each other to see each other perhaps you hadn't really seen each other in the letters perhaps you could continue but I don't know the protocol" "behind these letters." "Perhaps you could say something about this." "Well firstly... a little explanation for Naomi:" "the other day we were discussing Spanish directors and she said she really liked Victor Erice and we told her there was another one who was very good... that's him." "He is a very good Spanish filmmaker." "José Luis Guerin Naomi Kawase." "And now the question." "In a sense these letters... are an outlet for ideas that were on standby just like commissions provide a chance to formally try out feelings that you want to express." "You take the opportunity to do it when you can." "As for the protocol we had set ourselves some game rules:" "to make four letters which would start by explaining that we had only met briefly as a process of getting to know each other and end with a letter filmed by the two of us in the same space which is the one we filmed in Banyoles the day before yesterday." "But all the footage we shot is unusable because the camera chewed up the film and the only thing we've filmed together is an invisible film a film you can't see." "So we've decided to swap that joint letter..." "Well my idea was to take her to Banyoles the place where I grew up and yesterday when we saw there was nothing usable" "Naomi suggested that I finish it." "For me it was important to make a fifth letter because the third one brought up things that are interrupted which ll end in the fifth." "When I told Naomi she suggested a plan:" "I would finish a letter from Banyoles and she would make one in Nara." "That conclusion would make sense" "In regards to documentaries" "I think they're a little bit different." "There is another self on the other side of reality watching what I have experienced in my own skin." "As for Mr Nishii..." "I say it in Mr Nishii's film." "In the film" "Mr Nishii said that film is a recording and I told him that in my documentaries the most important thing is memory." "I said this because I think recording is part of a place" "that we don't usually belong to something that is kept in an art or natural sciences museum." "Nevertheless now I feel that films are recordings." "And that's why everybody can watch them." "It's good that viewers think different things." "And memorise those different feelings." "I think that's good." "I'm especially interested in capturing moments from real life and real emotions." "And I don't care whether I capture them using traditional documentary techniques or fiction techniques." "That doesn't matter to me." "What matters is what we capture not how we do it." "I was thinking about what you said earlier and I think that the importance of an influence is more about personalities than nationalities." "For some years now we've been hearing about Oriental filmmakers" "Filipinos South Americans who have not watched films and make "primitive" cinema." "That's obviously not true." "Kiarostami has an incredible cinematic knowledge which isn't obvious because of his temperament and talent." "With Raya Martin people say:" ""He has created a new cinema because he's in the Philippines and he hasn't seen anything..."" "and the guy spends all day hooked on YouTube and Facebook." "He has watched everything just like us." "I'd like to know whether Naomi showed her films to her great-aunt and what she thought about her way of working." "What did she think when she saw herself filmed?" "I started making films that dealt th subjects that were close to me." "At first I dealt th the person I lived with." "I've made 3 or 4 fiction films now and I've experienced many things." "But when I want to identify with myself she always comes up again." "She is somebody essential to me." "When I was born my parents separated." "That's why I have a suspicion or a doubt..." "The doubt that perhaps I would not have been born." "But she took this idea out of my head." "It's clear that I owe my existence to her." "I make films that deal th this." "At first I was aware that she saw the images." "When she saw the scenes that contain the most powerful words she told me that she felt as though she would be th me forever." "Now she can't follow the images because she's senile she has alzheimers." "But when I turn the camera towards her she seems to be very happy as though she were participating in my work." "Do you have any advice for young filmmakers who ll come after you?" "She has more experience." "I thought Isaki was older than me!" "I'm older but I've made less films." "Isn't he older?" "How old are you?" "I'll try to overtake you." "33." "33?" "I don't have much experience and I can't give advice... but I can say that my intention" "is to go further on my own and... reach the other side of the Earth." " Yes." " That's true." "In the centre it's hot but apart from that no problem." "I was just remembering when we released Cravan... and we went to festivals for first works and filmmakers would tell me they were presenting their first film which they'd made to get a foothold in the industry." "They said: "This film was a commission but the next one will be closer to what I want to make"." "But they never made the second one so they only made one film and it wasn't the one they'd really wanted to make." "If you only make one make sure it's the one you feel like making." "My advice: always try to do what you want to do rather than what you're asked to do."