August 7, 2009

a distant trumpet...



"MY CASE*: Straub complains. This time he complains that Heiner Müller who, upon meeting (the Straubs) in Berlin, lets fly something like 'it's good that people like you continue to exist!' A sentence where I, too, have heard the candid desire of death underlying it and to which one should be able to reply: 'Yes, I know I absolutely cannot count on you."



(Serge Daney in "Journal de l'an présent", TRAFIC, No. 3, été 1992.)




Interviewer: They say you are a marginal filmmaker?

Straub: Who?

Interviewer: A certain press, certain people...

Straub: Those are the ones who have an interest in supressing us, namely the industry pimps and, I was going to say, the whores who work for them, but that would be unfair to the whores. There's no reason to put a yellow star on certain filmmakers. Okay, so we have a yellow star. It's more interesting to check why. That means all journalists are whores and all producers are pimps. Well, almost everyone! (…) What does it take for a film to be marginal? The fact that it is left on the sidelines! From the moment a film enters the circuit, it stops being marginal. If it has the least sucess, you stop talking about marginalization! You then have the family blessing! Some racists labels are much more polished.



(Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet. Lisboa: Cinemateca Portuguesa, 1998.)

No comments:

Archive