"E. Greèner Nylon Moon" "I got into film rather late." "I started with literature, then theater, but nothing of film." "Only at my high school I learned that you can actually study film." "One of my older friends went to study photography." "That's how I learned." "And I was fascinated." "In 1949, I went to Mariánské Láznì, with a fake press pass that I made myself." "I was a 'newspaper reporter'." "I stamped it with a potato stamp and got the accreditation." "Then I saw Rio Escondido by Fernandez, starring beautiful Maria Felix." "Film was what I was looking for," "I knew that's what I'd do, and I've never changed my mind." "The exams to the film academy, FAMU, took place in Bratislava." "The whole committee came, lead by Brousil." "There were about seventy candidates." "I handed in a direction folder of Gorki's play The Philistines, which I directed as a student, and also some of my writings." "I started writing quite young." "It was mostly poetry, I started with poetry." "I even had to sing, all of us did." "I'd say I don't terribly love to sing, more like I love to sing terribly." "But I can do a few songs, especially the balladic Slovakian rebel songs." "The Czech committee, who's favorite Slovakian thing were the rebel songs, bought into that." "I started studying directing with Václav Wasserman." "For me, coming to Prague was so amazing, like coming to Paris today, for people who travel a lot." "We need to keep in mind that we were kind of locked in, in the space we were given." "Even to Budapest you could only go on a guided group tour." "To think of going to Vienna was close to a treason." "Prague represented maximum." "And I think that the Slovakian New Wave, as it was called, came from our being in Prague, at the Academy, absorbing this unlimited quantity of culture." "It wasn't just Prague, it was our professors, too." "Prague gave us the scope to meet the artistic avantgard." "I went to E.F. Burian, to his JHD theater, and applied to assist-direct." "And he said yes." "It never happened, though, I don't know why." "Maybe I wasn't excentric enough, which was probably true." "I started with directing, but didn't finish the first year, because I got tuberculosis." "For a year and a half, I wasn't able to study." "At the end of the treatment, I couldn't go back to directing." "The doctors wouldn't allow it." "Because of the lights in the studio." "The UV radiation of those lights was contraindicating the cure." "So I started studying dramaturgy with professor Kratochvíl." "I was very happy in his class, he really opened our eyes." "Most of all, he was a practical man." "But he did theory, too." "He could analyze a screenplay, every semester, we'd submit a literary work, then we analyzed it together, learning to notice stuff in the text, the construction of the plot, the motive." "At the end of the second year, we'd write a short film story." "Graduating, we had to submit a literary screenplay." "My short was on Janko Král, kind of my life-long topic." "I never finished the screenplay, I didn't graduate in dramaturgy." "I'd always seen dramaturgy as provisory, thinking that when I'm better, I'd go back to directing." "But that didn't happened until after I'd left the school, through assisting Štefan Uher in making documentaries." "Fifties." "Fascination with the idea of a fair world." "That came from the end of World War II." "All the disillusion." "When humanism ends, comes existentialism." "In young people's eyes, the society collapsed." "Communism seemed like the new, earthly religion, bringing justice." "In the 50ies, when put in practice, it brought another disappointment." "We saw what's actually happening:" "People accused of bourgeois nationalism," "Husák, Klementis, Novomestský, the Moscow trials that came before that." "Our conviction, and I'm speaking about my own inner self, this conviction was shaken." "In my first year in Prague, I joined this group of people, lead by writer Emil Vachek." "There was also Miloš Forman, Zdenìk Borovec, and I represented Slovakia." "I actually brought a certain polemic tone into this circle, because I deffended the idea of communism, which irritated Vachek a lot." "But he actually opened my eyes." "Because my big idol whom I always mentioned when speaking of the rightness of communism, was Maxim Gorki." "Vachek asked me:, Do you know Gorki's work Untimely Thoughts?" "'" "I said I didn't, and he brought this tiny book to me." "Untimely Thoughts is a polemic between Gorki and Lenin." "For me, it was total news, and absolute awakening," "I realized what's actually happening." "In Bratislava, film studios are being built on Koliba mound." "The first two halls started operating at the end of August." "A delegation lead by the director of Slovakian film came to Prague." "They said, Come immediately, you can finish your studies later.'" "We need young directors, we need young people.'" "That's when Barabáš left, and I went, too." "The director simply roped us in, we left school for practice." "Then, you had to assist-direct several films, and only then could you try to get an actors film yourself." "Thus, I made Poznaèení tmou together with Štefan Uher." "When he started making actors films, I assist-directed with him, we did My z 9.A and Slnko v sieti." "In Slovakia, there was this strange situation." "Bahna and Bielik both thought of us as competition." "To be honest, we did, too." "We didn't want the old school." "We didn't want to go that way." "That's normal." "But we did respect Bielik." "Bielik was impressive." "He learned everything himself, and in the given environment, he did an absolute maximum." "It was also thanks to him that the Koliba studios got built." "What we didn't like was the old school film expression, as our idols were Truffaut, Godard and such." "The poetics of Slovakian films, the expression, the editing, and most of all the acting, was very close to theater." "I for example saw as crucial that all is said visually." "Everything started happening after the Hungarian revolution." "We were close to Budapest, so we were very concerned." "Whoever had still believed in communism, witnessed clearly that it's all a scam." "We were probably one step ahead in knowing." "It was talked about a lot among film people, and maybe it also showed in our work." "I think that there was this intellectual elite in our team." "There were Marenèin, Dominik Tatarka, Alfons Bednár," "And things were discussed very openly." "There was an attempt to film stuff that really mattered." "Well, children, we can start." "We pick only the beans." "Poznaèení tmou was a short film about blind children in Levoèa." "It was challenging and interesting to visualize blind people's word." "That was the theme of the film." "A very interesting experiment." "I was only assisting." "Just watching how it's done, without any creative input." "Only when I modeled a hand out of clay." "I once wanted to be a sculptor." "They wanted to do a shot of a hand reaching for light, as a symbol of being blind." "So that hand is my creation." "There's a whole world in this room." "It's only photos, curved wire, modeled plaster..." "But their sensitive hands find countries, cities, mountains." "I admire documentaries, but I cannot make them." "I never thought of making one." "Since I started, film meant a certain stylization for me." "And if you look at my films, the reality, the background of the story is lost in a haze." "I never knew how to work with, as to say, actual reality." "And I still don't get it today." "Making the film My z 9.A, I was finally very involved." "I picked the actors, scouting at schools and all," "Štefan gave me a free hand, relying on my choice." "There's an interesting story about that." "We were at a high school, the principal accompanied me," "I would come to classrooms, talk to kids, pick some, and when we were let's say in a fifth classroom, the principal asked me:" "'Do you know those kids?" "'" "'Or else, what's your criteria?" "'" "I asked him why, and he told me:" "'Because you infallibly, pick the worst rascals.'" " What color is that?" " Blue" " And this?" " Red." " Is there a difference?" " The one on the left is lighter." " Lighter what color?" " Red." " Grey, yellow." " Where's grey?" " On the right." "It was a different screenplay, a different topic." "As he was interested in blind people's perception of things, here the main character, the girl, was color blind, and she wanted to study arts, painting." "So again, the inner paradox was probably what he went for." "Why is he standing?" "Uher asked Milan Pašteka to help us out, to have a specialist on color." "He made some nice sketches." "But he wanted to do something different." "Slnko vsieti is a new film just being made in Koliba studios." "Being a film actor isn't easy." "All those questions!" "'Have you done theater?" "Can you swim, play volleyball?" "'" "The most important thing is to be photogenic." "But Stanislav Somolánic and Štefan Uher know their stuff." "Originally, Barabáš got asked to do Slnko v sieti." "But he couldn't identify with it." "He said he wasn't gonna do it." "Then Uher read it, he found it interesting, and he got the film." "Fajolo!" "I'll only be here for a minute." "I'll go down." "Juro wants me to." "Somebody has to be with mom." "I admired Uher for his vision." "He had an absolutely clear idea of how the set should be." "Stano Somolánic is a great cameraman." "Uher helped him." "He would set up his conception through the camera, told Stano to shoot it, to do the lights and all." "Often, there was an argument." "Štefan, the good guy he was, would push his concept through." "Listen, Peo, leave Bela alone." "She wouldn't fit in your harem." "I can see through Peo." "He wants to get Bela." "Then he'll make a notch on a wardrobe." "One collects hands, the other makes notches on wardrobes." "Everybody does their own stuff." "Hands." "Strange image of people." "They can't lie, they can't pretend." "Not even when making a notch on a wardrobe." "Still in rehearsing process, Marian Bielik hurt his eyes." "Because of the lights, Uher used the same as in Slnko." "Those lights hurt his eyes and he was tearing." "They wanted to re-cast his part, but I was fighting to keep him, as he was a beautiful type." "Keep the hand there!" "Don't, Fajolo." "Listen, there's gonna be an eclipse." "tefan found Bilaková, the lead, in TV." "He asked her to audition." "He insisted she wears her usual clothes, no costumes." "I just had to go through her wardrobe." "That was the touch of neo-realism, of the desire to stylize as little as possible, to do the most with natural expression and costumes." "We all had in mind the fishermen in their own clothes..." "It wasn't just Visconti, Disantis did the same thing." "We wanted to bring this style over here." "Where's Bela?" "When there are stars..." "I really like it." "When there's an eclipse, the stars come out." "What stars, Miro?" " Bela, this is awful." " That's Venus, that's Mars." " Mars is this way?" " Yes." "Blue?" "No, Mars is red." "Is there a blue star as well?" "Is there a blue star?" " Mom." " Bela." "It was also a generational resistance, including working with non-actors." "Because the performances of very good Slovakian actors, who worked with Bielik and Bano, was pathetic." "It was repulsive." "Of course actors started asking why we wouldn't want them." "But actors who were pathetic with those other directors could actually do much better." "And some never changed." "Listen to this, Peter." "When I come back, everything's gonna change." "I'll take you to my pontoon." "It's not mine, but I found it." "It's a quite cove, with Danube in the back." "There are little boats, netts hanging on the water." "Poet... asshole is he, not a poet." "Hey, fish." "Throw it away." "We filmed with the intention to get a concrete image, to compose the sound of real sounds and noises." "I was very involved in this, together with tagruker." "We'd go recording authentic noises, we had a huge collection." "Then we picked what we wanted and mix the sound." "Zielenka was in his electronic phase, and tagruker was the boss of the TV electronic studio." "Together, they composed the sounds." "It was based on the image of the antenas on the rooftops." "As if the antenas radiated some electronic message." "The music comforted to this conception." "Where there was Sun, it's now terribly dark." "The final conception was in the hands of Uher." "We were just providing material, we knew what he wanted." "But afterward, he often had to get bossy, as the editor, Vodierka, was quite conservative." " What's up, superficial?" " Why?" " That's what you are." "I wrote to you, not to Peo." "You're no good, Bela." "I thought you were not," "but you actually are a chump." "I don't know when Vìra Chytilová made her film The Ceiling." "But it was at that time." "Then Forman made Black Peter." "It was the New Wave, it was FAMU." "That's where the whole concept was born." "Czechs and Slovaks took turns, strongly influencing each other." "The film Slnko v sieti was kind of a breakthrough." "I think even for Czech filmmakers." "Milo Forman called Uher" "'Jan the Baptist' of the Czechoslovakian New Wave." "It's not worth it to wait hundred and twenty year for Black Sun." "Black paths, Black Sun..." "Go to the fisherman, sit with him on the pontoon, watch him fishing." "The next film was called Every Week 7 days." "Uher helped me, he reluctantly agreed to be a supervisor." "I wouldn't have gotten the film, hadn't he been the guarantee." "Because I had never done a documentary before." "The theme was in a way a product of that time, when they started testing atomic bombs." "We saw it as a very real threat, and thought art should express that opinion." "In 1945, everything got silent inside of me, as I call it." "I was 14 when I heard about the first bomb and the consequences." "I talked about it with my father." "He said the biggest mistake was to allow the bomb to be made." "That it is the end of human kind." "I adopted that omnipresent panic." "This film was my reaction to it." "I thought It'd speak to the others, but too bad, that didn't happen." " Yes?" " You say in 2 minutes after explosion, it's not dangerous." "Your books say so." "I never went to study, but I know that before the second comes the first minute." "Well, that's not part of my lecture." "The first minutes are marginal." "I guess..." "Let's watch a short film about cosmic radiation." "Please, we will be projecting there, behind you." "It's a story of a sculptor, making a war memorial sculpture, it's about his perception of the atomic times." "Form wise, it was supposed to be an illustration of modern composition." "From my time of admiring surrealism," "I kept this one rule." "I even wrote an article on it." "It's called Film as a free verse." "Composing metaphors together." "This was the conception." "I understand." "But I won't lecture in your year after this semester." "Look, for example, today I was at an autopsy." "And you know what?" "Incorrect diagnosis." "A philologist can write a sentence that nobody understands." "An engineer can construct a machine that will never operate." "But a doctor can't make a mistake." "I can't actually raise, pardon me, murderers." "Hiroshima, My Love." "Absolutely." "It encouraged me that somebody is dealing with this topic, that the topic is actually suitable to make films about." "But the biggest influence was Marienbad." "I went to a screening in Marienbad, and I left absolutely mesmerized." "Coincidentally, I was there with tefan Uher." "I must say it was the first time that our esthetics totally differed." "tefan said:'Did you get it?" "'" "I said it was great." "He told me, Oh, come on.'" "I watched dying stars with a telescope." "You know why I do lectures on radioactive death for old people?" "To get cash I need for booze." "In the sculpting class, quotas were accomplished." "I'm a man outside of quotas." "Rosinec had a huge impact on the final expression of the film." "We got very close." "When I explained the concept to him, he really got it." "Like me, he was against the classical composition." "We got along really well." "Listen, are you this serious with every woman?" "Laughter is only the turned-away face of sadness." " Philosophers should get fined." " It wouldn't help." "They'd pay the fine and keep thinking." "Ria, stay like this, please." "Just a moment, Ria." "There." "Now it's right." "The space composition came up by the way." "Because all the interiors, the sculptor's studio, all that was done in Koliba studios." "We even brought Rudovský's sculptures 'in-progress'." "We set it all up in the studio." "What is your opinion on cooperating with writers?" "I think it is very important." "Especially considering that the most promoted films, and the most intensive trend in the industry are authorial films." "And for authorial films, screenplay is the first thing." "After Every Week 7 Days, in which I wanted to manifest my film poetics, my film visions, and which didn't have a high attendance to," "I had a talk with our manager, Gajdo, who told me:" "'Comrade Greèner, do not think that we're going to waste' working people's money on your experiments.'" "Nylon Moon was a bestseller, and I decided to try it out." "It is a light fiction," "I intervened a bit, put more philosophy into it, to the point it had become quite a heavy film." "Working on a topic, I have a disposition to dig in it, to get something deeper, something that will last." " She's good, but not my type." "She's a meteor." " What?" "Meteor, bird of paradise..." "You get burnt touching her." "Mainly, I fel for the story because of the generations clash." "And it got accepted as such, thus my most succesful film." "For me, this one is the least." "Not that I didn't appreciate it." "But I don't think it was my best." "It just happened that way." "I was a big fan of the Beatles and later, of the beatmen." "The conflict of the old and young, which I wanted to show in it, was very well visualized by casting a bold man as the father, and a hairy beat kid, called Miro." "The conflict could be shown visually, without dialogues." " Let father sit down first." "Get up." "Big deal." "Come have lunch." "Bon apetit." " So, did you see the old guy go?" " Son!" "What?" "He was a beast." "Father said it himself." "Don't speak ill of the dead." "Even if he's a bad boss." "Eat now." "You don't know, maybe dad will..." " Really, dad?" "You might now be the beast?" " Josef!" "How much would they chip in?" "I even became a patron of the beat generation then." "Because such was the atmosphere." "Police arrested guys with long hair and cut their hair against their will." "As stripy socks or tight pants, it was considered a manifestation of resistance against the regime." "From my position as a director, I issued certificates for those guys, that their hair is necessary for filming, that they perform in Nylon Moon and need to have such hair." "Thus, for 2 months, I was the king of the promenade." "Hairy guys would politely greet me on the street," "I was well respected, as I protected them from police." "The female lead I found when auditioning at student dorms." "I found Vanda-Helena mihulová at a disco somewhere." "Visually, I really liked her, the camera liked her, too." "But her voice was dabbed by Eva Chalupová." "Because Vanda looked great, but her voice was unacceptable." "I'm not attractive enough for you." " It's not about attractiveness." " Yes it is." "It always has, for you." "And I'll tell you one more thing." "You don't love me." "It's very simple." "After Nylon Moon, I decided to go only for films of my choice." "That's how I made The Return of Dragon." "I thought this would be the best display of my film poetics." "I wrote Dragon when I still had no idea I'd direct films once." "Stano Barabá often played his part in it." "I actually wrote it for him, offered him to make it a film, but Stano didn't pick it up." "He said it wasn't for him." "Hey, going to the village?" "Zachar." "Don't you recognize me?" "Alexander Matuka, a literary reviewer, told me of the origin of Dragon." "He said it was an anagram." "Drak, Dobroslav Chrobák." "When Chrobák wrote the novel, he was very critisized by dr." "Felix, who claimed that Chrobák had made a plagiarism before." "Matuka, who watched the whole dispute, claimed that Margita Figuli was behind all that." "Both Felix and Chrobák liked Margita Figuli..." "The main motive in Dragon being lost honor, for Chrobák it was an attempt to rehabiliate his name, to show he can write a novel that's not plagiarism." "I thought this theme is worth it." "The fight for one's honor." "He is a hero who picks up a thing that can hardly be achieved." "Folks, Dragon returned!" "Dragon is back!" "It's true." "He's back." "I passed him down by the road." "As a filmmaker, I was challenged to visualize what's between lines." "And the stuff radiating from Chrobák's lyrical fiction, stuff that can't be seen, nor photographed." "That was the biggest issue." "To me, folklor is an image of a nation's soul." "Our ancestors and those before them settled in folklor, and they kept leaving their messages in ther." "I'd like to interpret that." "Without any kitchy feeling, as I'd seen in Sluk's work." "Dragon is my attempt to do this." "I was inspired by Milo Bazovský, whose work I admired." "It was the spirit of the nation, shown in absolutely modern way." "I even went to Bazovský, like I used to do, looking for visual inspiration." "But Bazovský told me he loved Chrobák and his Dragon, but he's too old to get into this." "I think that in combining folklor with modern art, nobody had done better than Slovakian surrealists, who acknowledged Janko Král as their spiritual father." "The message of our nation is hidden in these ballads, in Slovakian original costumes, in their songs." "It was these three aspects I wanted to respect in Dragon." "Real art isn't as fancy as it was shown on stage." "In folklore, as I learned during my unfinished studies, the poorest region have the prettiest ornament." "Humble, simple, meaningful." "The wealthier the region is, the more the costume degenerates." "This was a starting point for me." "I didn't want any ornaments besides red thread." "Although the film was black and white." "The simple Slovakian costume was usually white canvas, with red seams, also red thread around the collar." "The simplest and the most telling decorations." "I learned that from Weiss." "I watched Weiss working with Vincent Hloník, which was very absorbing and inspiring, how Hloník designed costumes for quite an informal, civil film." "I learned to follow the idea of working with a visual artist." "Therefore, I approached Laluha to come work with us on Dragon." "It always helps when a visual artist looks at the story and gives it the visual touch of his or her own." "We shot the first three hundred in the Koliba studios." "When I saw it, I felt absoutely miserable." "It wasn't at all what I wanted." "Krajcoviè made a great set, but I saw plaster in it, I saw how artificial it looked." "I had no idea how to get out of that." "I played a sample to Stano Barabá, asking him what to do." "We were debating it, and I remembered Slnko vsieti," "Samolani's transfocator, the long focus, and I knew only the long focus can help us get the human faces, to make the set unimportant, just a space where they live." "The very first day of works, I knew this was it." "Together with Vincent Rosinec, we had stuck to this style." "Basically 90% of the film is shot using the long optics." "It created this somehow mysterious atmosphere, in the space where the story takes place." "Casting a Czech actor in the part aroused quite an outrage, among Slovakian actors." "And I had a problem with that." "It somehow seemed to them that a Slovak should play it." "As if nationality could be visually captured." "Valach was against until the last moment." "He tried to convince me it had to be a Slovakian face." "I told him the whole point of the story is the fact that Dragon is a foreign element in the domestic context." "He does not belong." "I told Valach, A face like yours fits in Slovakian environment.'" ", There's no reason for people to hate it, to ostrachize you.'" "I needed a face that isn't at all a village type, that doesn't belong there, that can arouse hatred." "That's how I came to Lukavský." "He was rather unusual." "He didn't talk much, but he was very nice." "We got along very well, We agreed in analyzing the story." "Afterward, when he saw the whole film, he told me:" "'You didn't tell me what a beautiful film I'm in.'" "'I'd had no idea, the whole time.'" "I initiated that kind of music." "I said we needed something very pagan." "Zielenka asked me what should it be like." "I told him about Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, and I gave him a recording of it." "That's how Dragon should enter, as something dangerous, mysterious, something evoking to be on alert, because there's a sorcerer." "Zielenka is, in my opinion, a brilliant composer." "He watched the edited version of Dragon once, and he didn't need any more." "He remembered everything." "He came with music that got me off my feet." "Fantastic." "It was exactly how I felt it." "I think that without the music, the film would be quite dull." "It filled it with excitement..." "We'd done some touch-ups." "I wasn't sure about the moment Dragon enters." "In Chrobák's words, women meet, gossip, chat, and Zielenka made it a chorus, conducted by Laco Holásek." "There are these scattered vicious female voices, accompanying the whole walk, the two walking in the middle." "It's a very long sequence, filled with anticipation." "Something is going to happen, A danger, the voices tell us." "I got invited by the director of the Pesaro Film Festival to bring my latest film." "It never got screened, though." "Students had taken over the cinema, screening something with the deceased Che Guevara." "They forced the whole festival committee out, watched Che Guevara's funeral, chanting his name." "I was there with Ivan Sviták, we shared the hotel room, and he was very interested in the student movement." "I was, too." "But also irritated, for they ruined my moment." "I asked them what the student revolution means," "They said it's a protest against the burgeois and all that." "We had been through that by then." "I asked them , Well, and what if you win?" "'" ", What kind of a regime do you want?" "'" "They said, This revolution will never end.'" "Ivan Sviták was amused, he said:, It will, it will.'" "There came the heavy morning of an August day 1968." "Shocked, we learned about the internment of top members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and of the top state authorities." "I never had to deal with a situation where I'd be forced to film something I didn't feel." "I was never persecuted." "I was, but it was for my attitude as a citizen." "After 1968, in a magazine called SME," "I published kind of a call for passive resistance." "The occupation shoul be accepted with resistance, and we should constantly refuse to cooperate." "A short article that I signed." "The chief editor called me up..." "Then it was SMENA, not SME..." "And he says:, You want to sign it?" "I wouldn't do that.' To which I said:" ""I'm asking people to take a stand, So I can't be an unreliable anonym."" ""How could people believe it?"" "Well, it was published, signed by Eduard Greèner, the author." "My implacable enemy, Vladimír Bahna, got the good old committee in, showed them this piece, and that's how I got interdicted." "I escaped an instant punishment, as I was on a treatment in Tatras when FITES got dissolved." "When I returned, The Assosiation Of Dramatic Artists was on." "They chose whom they wanted and whom they didn't." "Whenever I applied to get in, it was denied." "And I couldn't get a film, because I wasn't a member." "I was kind of stuck, and not even my friend Miro Válek could help." "He told me my enemies weren't in the party, but at Koliba." "A committee redeployed people, Solan or Jakubisko, and they wanted to redeploy me to make documentaries." "I already mentioned what I think about my talents for that." "I got scared of such an idea, and I told the committee I'd prefer if they just fired me." "Gejdo, who respected me even under these circumstances, said 'What do you want to do?" "'" "I said I worked with dubbing for ablatura for ten years." "I like working with actors." "Could I do dubbing?" "And Gejdo said:" ", Well, that's a solution.'" "Both Jakubisko and Solan went to do documentaries." "And both are good in it." "I would've been bad, would've had to leave, anyway." "I'm very happy that I'm old." "I got very lucky in my life." "I got born right and reached the age of 25 in the time when 12 Slovakian films got financial support." "Had I been born a bit later," "I would never have made those few fims I made." "I was always very happy when making a film." "As I'm happy now doing dubbing." "Eduard Greèner had worked in dubbing until 1991." "After the revolution, he got involved in film organizations," "He made a film called Earthly Disturbance (1992)" "And Jasek's Dream (1996)." "He taught university students, then went back to dubbing."