Intervju med Andrés Wood
Wood er aktuell med et filmportrett av artisten Violeta Parra, nasjonal folkehelt i Chile. Bli bedre kjent med filmskaperen i dette intervjuet.
«Every movie has to be personal, and I think that even if I would make a movie in another country, it would be a movie about Chile»
Chilean director Andrés Wood, one of the top Chilean directors of our time, is attending this year’s Films From the South. We sat down and discussed Andrés perspective on his own work, Chilean cinema and about portraying the famous folk artist Violeta Parra.
– You’ve often been referred to as a filmmaker who captures the Chilean zeitgeist, why is it so important for you to make films about Chile?
– I think that films have to be a mirror of our society, and in a way I do films first and foremost for Chileans, because they are my main audience. Every movie has to be personal, and I think that even if I would make a movie in another country, it would be a movie about Chile. So the reason why I feel that the Chilean culture has been so important is because I am Chilean. My only way of seeing things is the Chilean way.
His newest feature, Violeta Went to Heaven, portrays the Chilean artist Violeta Parra (1917-1967), famous for reinventing the Chilean Folk music in the 1940s and 50s. We asked Wood about making a film of an artist as highly regarded as Violeta Parra. Having enough time in preproduction was very important to Wood, especially the possibility to give main actress Francisca Gavilán enough time to prepare for the challenging part.
– To me it was a big challenge, because how would you portray her big talent. It was my first time working with a person who actually lived, and that requires a lot of respect too. But it was a joy to work with Violeta’s creative materials. We had almost one year before the shooting, so we worked a lot with the part. The clue was to create this Chile – a special Chile – not certain types of places or the spirit of the age. We wanted to create of our own world, and not what you would think or expect from a film about Violeta in the first place.
Wood tells about the challenge working with the combination of historical facts and the character’s complexity:
– A person in the United States told me that in this movie he saw a lot of women that he knew. I think that with Violeta – even though you don’t know her from before, she’s a woman. So in a way I think that we were lucky enough to do an open movie about a very private issue, that is Violeta Parra. It’s impossible to do a movie for the whole world. You can do a movie for some audiences, and have those in mind, but when a movie crosses borders it’s something that you don’t really control.
Considering the success Andrés Wood’s films have had abroad, we asked him if he would consider moving away from Chile to work on a film:
– Making movies abroad is so restricted; they (films) are more franchise. (…) The market right now is the way that you have only franchise or very artistic and small movies. I would love that we did more movies thinking of the audience, but still aiming for quality, and that is something that in a way is risky.
It’s become much easier to make a movie, but at the same time much more difficult to get it out to an audience. I don’t know where the future of cinema is going, but I know that I nowadays see fewer movies that I love.
We showed three of Wood’s films at the festival. Here are the teaser’s:
Violeta Went to Heaven: