The 19th edition of Pordenone Docs Fest has dedicated a retrospective to the Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter, consisting of four titles: Homo sapiens, Our Daily Bread, Donauspital and his latest national premiere, Melt. The director then held a masterclass in which he told the process of creation, the rules and features of his minimal cinema: little, but linked to the problematicities of the real, is characterized by the absence of music and everything that can alienate from reality, sometimes even of the word, but not for this neutral or objective.
A wide geometric look, which leaves interpretations to its audience, almost a direct request for participation in the work. During the meeting we talked about how the film vision of Nikolaus Geyrhalter was born and how his observational direction is nourished by research. The director told that as a teenager he was passionate about photography. At the time the documentaries were uncommon, they were only seen on television; someone had seen it at the cinema. “I applied three times to study cinema, but at the time the academies were not interested in documentaries,” he added, “I liked photography, I worked on radio and in the theatre, but I felt that in these means there was something missing that then the cinema gave me. I brought all these experiences into my cinema.”.
His films are often filmed in various places in the world, in contact with extreme nature, but the center is man: it is an anthropocentric cinema that describes the relationship between man and the environment. In his last work, Melt, we see men who tame, live, work and have a special relationship with snow, even create it. The film not only deals with the future of snow, but also the future of these people and how human behavior influence the world. The responsibility that man has on the environment is one of the central themes of the cinema of Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He himself defines himself as a humanist: “I am interested in our human species, to analyze its behaviors. I am interested in the human approach on these issues, whether it be a hospital, whether it be waste disposal or a snow film: it is not important thematic, but the human being”.
The director claims to love the wide shots, with the big angle, of wanting to let the viewer decide on what to make the look fall, a sort of image democracy, as happens in Homo sapiens, films on the places that man abandons after having changed and destroyed them. In this perspective of democratization is inserted the duration of the plans, much longer than what is usually preferred in fiction films or other documentaries. The director says: “Sometimes my films twist reality, the rhythm is different from this. My works in some ways are films against, because I create contradictions that go to the opposite of how we perceive and show reality. Through social media we can use images quickly, without understanding and sedimenting them. For example, in this room there are many faces: I take them all through the wide corner, for the viewer it will take a few minutes to see them all and then decide on who to focus. I give the viewer the time of choice through long and wide scenes; the same goes for sound, hardly the sound in my cinema, there is for a few seconds”.
Melt, his latest film, is a cry of help and attention to glaciers and snow, also shot in different locations. The reference points are images, but not those that are commonly associated with these themes, such as snowless glaciers, animals that are ill or undressed nature. The Austrian director shifts attention to the latest snowy landscapes and these images are exciting, because he catches that may be the last time they are seen. Geyrhalter’s motivations are different from those of the environmental documentary. The director claims to be interested in the ecosystem and its preservation, but what he cared about most was to crush the snow, which he always loved since he was a child. “Melt is a monument to snow”, says “the viewer when watching the film must think that the snow will eventually disappear, for this reason the film is called Melt, dissolution”, says with conviction “this could be the last movie starring the snow, so it represents a legacy for future generations”.
The filmmaker leaves us with a preview on the next film, which like the previous Homo Sapiens, Earth, Out of Place Material and Melt, will deal with environmental issues, specifically the melting of the Antarctica glaciers. “We are still in an embryonic phase, but we have received funding,” he explains. “This dissolution could lead to the raising of tides of at least 58 meters, which means that Paris, London, Vienna and even Pordenone could be submerged.”.
L’articolo Pordenone Docs Fest – Meeting with Nikolaus Geyrhalter proviene da SentieriSelvaggi.
