BD: I just love it. I’ve spent a lot of time photograph- ing it. I filmed Arena of Life during a night called the “Green Night,” when everyone does a few tricks and then the troupe builds a stage and throws a banquet to enter- tain each other. We came up with the idea to add the ovations later, after the shoot.
EB: Your second “circus film,” Szapito, has a very differ-
ent tone. One thing I noticed is that light and darkness, the contrasts, become very important.
BD: Darkness can be powerful and mysterious. Unlike the Eastman Kodak film, which gave you colors that were more candy-like, the film I used for Szapito lacked clarity when it comes to bringing out the shadings, but it had great plasticity. In Szapito, I brought the performers back to the set and they started to train again. It was a kind of return in advanced age, a chance to be a protagonist again. They had an incredible sense of playfulness, and you could see them revive over the course of the film.
EB: They put on a show, as in Arena of Life, but the
stands remain empty. BD: We shot in a circus school with a real arena, but I
was not interested in the audience, only in the perform- ers. The man who invited me in was very distinguished in the circus world. He had lost his wife and lived alone with his dog under a decrepit merry-go-round. The elephants were also from an actual circus. In the scene with a mouse, you can see that the elephants are afraid, because a mouse can go inside their trunks, attack their brains, and drive them insane.
EB: Zygmunt Nowak, who did the sound for Arena of Life, A Few Stories about a Man, and Szapito, worked on
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some big studio productions, such as Jerzy Hoffman’s his- torical epic, The Deluge (1974). Your work with him, how- ever, was different.
BD: We would synchronize sound but, at the same
time, change its tone. For example, where you would expect a hand hitting a table, we used something more metallic. We wanted to play with the viewer’s percep- tion, with the sense of what’s realistic and what is not. The concept is always key, but once you have it, I believe that you must work quite simply. Simplicity is very difficult. At times it should even be crude to give the desired effect. I’ve been very fortunate with my collaborators.
EB: One of them is definitely Jerzy from A Few Stories
about a Man. We see him in very private moments, but he remains a mystery till the end. How did you two meet?
BD: A photographer friend of mine showed me some images of an armless man diving, who appeared to be floating in the air. That same day I traveled to meet Jerzy. I spent some time with him, because when I make films it is important that a person trusts me. Jerzy was a fantastic speaker, a great storyteller, but I decided not to use his words. I believe that this made the film more universal.
EB: In some of your other films, you show sports that interest you personally.
BD: Yes, in a way I’m very close to those disciplines. But I also believe that sports are ideal for drama, in gen- eral. They contain just about everything—laughter and tears. Sports are dynamic and so make an ideal subject matter for a filmmaker.
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