The dialogue here transcribed took place on 24 January 2017, in Cristi Puiu’s painting studio in Bucharest, and was part of the preparations for his Sieranevada photography exhibition, held at the Baril Gallery in June and July of 2017.

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CP: The circle does not exist. It’s a concept. If you research it, it doesn’t exist anywhere in nature; its existence derives solely from our perception. If you look at the solar disk, you see a circle, but its edge is obviously uneven, and it’s the same with any other circle. If you get microscopically close, the margins cease to exist; rather you enter a world of fractals. That’s why I made these, by the way, and I included here all the figures after the decimal point of 3.14. Because this here is a fixed number, and I superimposed them one on top of the other, and these are the psalms.

SN: Wait a minute, I don’t get it.

CP: So, after the decimal point of 3.14, there’s an infinite series. It’s infinity.

SN: Yes.

CP: But I removed the ”3” and I left it like that. It’s interesting that it starts with a 1 and ends with a 7, and the same with the psalms, they start with a 1 and end with a 7. But it’s just a coincidence. And this is where I placed the psalms. In the Orthodox tradition, you have 151 psalms. And the first psalm has six verses, the second has twelve, the third eight, the fourth eight, the fifth twelve, the sixth ten, and so I placed them in a series that I superimposed on the other one. I took the psalm number from the series the comes after the decimal point of 3.14.

the object that contains within itself my vision about art and what art is

CP: I got it from Sweden; I think it’s a masterpiece. Sculpture, modern art . . . I think it’s extraordinary. I think the Romanian one is more intelligent; it has a shorter arm; it’s a little different.

SN: But I thought this was a tool used in shoemaking.

CP: Yes, it’s called a dreifuss.

SN: I thought it was used in the hammering of metal plates . . .

CR: No, I asked them to bring me one, because I think it’s the very object that contains within itself my vision of art and what art is. Actually, I think that the art object is that which, par excellence, has a function, with [“Art” occurring] as a secondary effect.

SN: This contradicts every theory of art . . .

CP: Why? Not all of them . . .

SN: Not all of them, just the theory that art doesn’t have a function.

CP: I don’t believe that. As far as I’m concerned, all I can see in it is a bourgeois whim. I think it’s a form of flirtation, you know? A form of petty bourgeoisie self-indulgence and flirtation with the idea of key historical figure, somehow. I mean a lot of things are possible, you can imagine yourself in every possible way, but how you imagine yourself as an artist will, to a certain extent, represent the idea of the unique, the original, you know? You’re not an assembly line worker; you’re not Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. And even if you were Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, you would still be unique, because he can’t be superimposed.

SN: All right, but where is the argument for utilitarianism? I mean functional art, pragmatic art?

CP: There are two things. I mean you can look at the story from two standpoints: From the standpoint of the author or from that of the viewer/consumer/addressee. Obviously, I can be a potential or real consumer and not necessarily the addressee, although I think we are all addressees without the author knowing who exactly the addressees are. Because you cast a word or a gesture into the abyss, and the abyss answers you. Because there are voices there, brains on the same wavelength as yours. So anyway, whether you want to be or not, you are the addressee of an act on the part of an artist, to whom you become attached because he or she is talking to you in a certain way.

SN: All right, but you’re still not providing me with an argument for . . .

CP: Right. And the question is: Why am I doing this? Do you drink petrol? You’ll never drink petrol, will you? You’ll never ingest something harmful to you, but only things that somehow build you up, that bring you into some sort of balance with the cosmos. This is the number one function of art, even if people dance around it.

SN: Yes, but it’s something that has to do with the spirit, not with concrete things, whereas we set out from this object.

CP: Yes. But from the author’s point of view, things change. As an author, the distance you have to cover, to get to an object that is somehow fuzzy in your mind and which you peel away, progressively increases within you, and it is never achieved, it is achieved only partially, temporarily, just like the satisfaction you get when the train stops in a station on a long journey. The train stops in a station, you take a breather, you get off the train, run to the water fountain, fill a bottle with some water. This is more or less what artworks, masterpieces, are like, but the journey is a very, very precise one, toward something not necessarily defined or definable. Although it might end up being defined. I mean you can define it, you might find yourself in the situation where you can put into words what you want to achieve, and you discover that there is a function, a precise purpose, you know? One that you will never reach, with everything else being just gestures you make on the way.

the fluctuation of speculation

SN: But there is a spiritual purpose. Let me give as an example the following question: Whether or not architecture is art. Most architects say it is art, because they put creativity into an object that has a final, very precise function.

CP: All right, but I think that what we also have here is the contamination produced by the fluctuation of more or less philosophical speculation as to what architecture is, what painting is, what art is. And somehow all sorts of imbalances occur. There’s the notion that art deals with what is beautiful and is connected with the beautiful, to put it crudely. Now, what I have noticed concerning the boot tree, the dreifuss, is that whoever thought it up (and maybe every brain on the planet thought it up in parallel; I suppose such instruments to serve specific purposes must exist in all cultures, more or less the same), that person didn’t set out to create a beautiful object. But its function demands that the attention be highly focused on ergonomics. And as a secondary effect this leads to a harmonious object in itself, and you can take it from there, plant it, look at it . . .

SN: But only since Duchamp.

CP: Yes, because he made the gesture first, and prior to him nobody else had made it. Because everything was in front of your eyes, like the glasses you look for when they are sitting right on your nose. It’s not because things weren’t like that, but because you never thought they were actually like that. That’s why I’m talking about the fluctuation of speculation and, moreover, everything that an art object means in one period of time cannot necessarily be superimposed on what the same art object means in another period; functions change. But to leave Duchamp aside, there is something that has appeared very clearly to me. For example, I have some paper that I want to mount on canvas, some parchment, Japanese paper. This is what I do, and the object I obtain moves me in a very strange way. Whether or not I ignore questions of transparency, texture, and the materiality of the object I obtain, my intention was to mount it not in an artistic way, but in a practical way, in as practical as possible in order to obtain from the process an object I can use as the ground for a painting. But if I step back and look at it, I like it the way it is, and it moves me in a very strange way. If I draw lines and my intention is to draw lines as straight as possible . . .

SN: So, you are constructing an object that will at some point become art . . .

CP: . . . bearing in mind a specific purpose.

SN: And on its way to becoming “art”, in inverted commas, it becomes a beautiful object, capable in itself of moving you, it might even make you want to work over it, etc. But it has that function, which moves you as a collateral effect.

CP: Exactly.

SN: It’s not an end in itself.

CP: Exactly, it wasn’t your intention to do that.

SN: In the moment when you take the finished object in order to make “art”, in inverted commas, you don’t know whether you’ll produce it or not . . .

CP: No, we don’t know . . .

SN: The object embarks upon its own purpose, in order to serve it, but there is a very clear limit. Visually and morphologically, up to a point it has a very concrete function and it’s not art, according to the theory that art is not a function, but rather a beautiful object that moves you, and as soon as you start to work on it . . .

CP: . . .you get caught in another loop.

SN: Yes. And it’s the same with the dreifuss, up until its creation, it serves a particular function, to make your further work easier, so that you produce an item of footwear. And whether or not it is beautiful perhaps also depends on the culture of the viewer.

the secondary effect of a natural gesture is the truth

CP: No, no, no! Of course, it does depend on that, on whether it is beautiful or not. It has to be beautiful. Period. If it is ergonomic, then it is beautiful. Meyerhold makes the same observation when he talks about acting. He says: Look at a lathe worker. He works on the lathe in order to obtain an object within certain parameters. Let us leave aside the fact that the lathe is also a dangerous machine; if you’re not careful you can mangle your hand. But there’s nothing superfluous, nothing of any kind at all, when he works the lathe to obtain a precise object. And he said: Look, this is acting. When you work with actors, the trouble is that they have a tendency to add things they think are important and which they want to say. But then they abandon the territory of the truth of the situation. For example, in a particular scene an actor has to drink a glass of water. But he knows that in that scene they’re discussing, let’s say, politics or love, and he will contaminate his gesture with the influences the conversation in progress supposedly has on him. “When I drink a glass of water and people are talking about Romania, I drink it in a different way . . .” No, you don’t drink it in a different way. You drink it in the same way. You drink it in the same way whatever the situation. Cinema and theatre have speculated on these situations, and you will notice that in cinema there is a game where glasses or coffee mugs or wine glasses are employed to disrupt the continuity of a story, to emphasise, to highlight a sudden state of surprise or profound emotion. I saw The Big Lebowski a couple of days ago, and Julianne Moore says to the Big Lebowski, to the Dude, that she wants to get pregnant with him, just as he is lifting a glass of white Russian to his mouth, and he spits out the drink . . . I don’t think things happen like that in real life. But from life’s continuum you take all sorts of elements that you accentuate; you highlight them because you have something to say. But if you simply allow things to tell themselves, what you get – the secondary effect of a natural gesture – is the truth.

SN: Let me see if I understand . . . this example would fit what you were saying earlier, that art is always what slips through your fingers.

CP: Yes.

SN: And in fact, the actor needs to be as disciplined as a lathe worker at his machine, to keep his mind on his work, because art will come of itself. What I wanted to ask you is this: Where does the actor’s art begin? He has a script and a director behind him. So, is art what is achieved through discipline and through what slips through his fingers?

CP: Yes, exactly. It is essential that you provide the actor with the framework to allow him to obtain secondary, collateral effects, to obtain the ineffable. If there’s no framework, the ineffable is impossible. Chasing after the ineffable leads to lies. The ineffable, the unrepeatable, can be obtained only when you employ a framework. If you do that (and that was the question concerning figurative painting), if you make abstract painting because you want to achieve a gesture, because the gesture alone is capable of generating emotion, then I think you lose a lot. Because we stretch the figurative – of whatever kind – like a rubber band until we come really close to abstract painting. In this or that image, you get to discern potential figures, and this is what you do with abstract painting anyway. It’s the same with that six-metre work by B. Newman, Who’s Afraid of Red, and with the works of Yves Klein. You’ll anyway look for some kind of ground, some kind of fulcrum from your own world, from what is the visual within you as a viewer. But I think the following idea is correct and has been noticed for a long time: In Jan Schmidt-Garre’s film about Celibidache, Celibidache refers to Schiller and identifies himself with Schiller’s statement as an artist, as a creator, where Schiller says that the purpose of art is truth, while beauty is just the bait. If this is to be understood . . . Of course, you understand it rationally, but in practice, when you are at work, you discover there is something much more substantial beyond that. Damien Hirst’s Dots are coloured circles, and I think this is something that helps you cross the threshold; this is how you arrive at painting or the artistic gesture, through quite a rigid framework. Because you cover the surface with coloured dots, which are coloured circles, which are coloured circles of the same dimension, but of different colours that create a certain type of resonance, let’s say. And it’s the same thing with Jackson Pollock, the same thing with Rothko’s surfaces and planes. And it’s the same with Velasquez, except that in Velasquez the figure stands out very strongly, and as a viewer your need for stability, for a point on which to gain purchase, is so great that you will reduce Velasquez’s painting to the figures represented within the paintings. But painting goes beyond the figure represented, you know? And we get the feeling that all of a sudden, the figurative is merely the bait to capture chromatic vibration, the ineffable, the accidental.

SN: All right. Now I’m going to challenge you some more, although probably I understand your point. In the dreifuss or any other beautiful but functional object, might the ineffable play some part in the equation?

CP: No, because that isn’t its purpose. It is part of the equation, but it hasn’t been put there by the person who conceived and produced the object. Because their sole aim was to make the object and to make it as functional as possible, in order to serve an activity that could not be more specific.

SN: All right. But for the object to convey more than its function, it must necessarily be placed in a context. Imagine Duchamp’s urinal in a public toilet as opposed to a White Cube – it is obvious that changing the context also changes the semantics; it functions aesthetically in a different way. Even if it is in a public toilet, it might mean something to someone who is visually sensitive, but in itself, in a different context than its own, it is stripped of its function. If we want to arrive at the ineffable via a beautiful-functional object, we need to change its context. Likewise, in painting, when the artist wants to represent a real image, he plays a trick. Some people cannot play this one, they play another, but let’s take the situation further. One of the tricks is that from the range of greys that exist in reality, from black to white, he will compress the greys, he will blend them. He will go from black to grey or in the opposite direction, from white to a certain grey, or from dark grey to light grey. Let me go so far as to say that in order to obtain the ineffable, he changes something, he makes some kind of intervention.

CP: No, he has to stick very close to the established framework. But by the nature of things he does what he does in an imperfect manner. Not as a performance but because he is engaged not only as a craftsman, as a fabricant, a creator or whatever you want to call him, but also with all his personal history, I mean the options he makes; if he allows himself the freedom to listen to his inner impulses, they will add up and make the ineffable possible. But by sticking very close to the rigour demanded, the framework demanded. Whether self-imposed or not. For me, painting in general overlaps with the icon. What I mean is that for me all paintings are in fact icons.

SN: I would like you to clarify what you mean by icon.

CP: Whether or not he admits to it, a painter does nothing but paint icons his whole life. Windows onto something else. The function of such an object is to convey something else, something much higher.

SN: In the Byzantine icon, we have the liturgical function.

CP: Not directly . . .

SN: With religious artists, a painting has to take the icon as a reference, even if it's not an icon.

CP: I’m not talking about that aspect. I’m talking about the most concrete aspect of when things happen in a felicitous and unconditional way. Looking at yourself from the perspective of death, you will discover what things are really important, and the only thing that is really important is what you are in yourself. Period. It is almost impossible to get away from that. If you travel down that path. But it has nothing to do with what we know about this or that. About icons or religious faith.

SN: When you said icon, I thought about the fact that the Icon is in a way the opposite example. To sum up, we’ve gone from the object, from Duchamp, to the ineffable. But the icon is an object without functionality, without any explicit functionality, and its purpose is not aesthetic. On the contrary, it is beyond any reading of emotionally moving beauty. It aims at the truth, since we’re talking about Schiller. This is why I asked you to clarify the term icon. In the range of the aesthetic that generates the ineffable, the icon goes beyond the threshold of the human.

CP: Yes, but as an artist, you are not in that situation, and it’s wrong to believe that, to put yourself in the position of someone who says something about the absolute, about transcendence, about God, about the cosmos, etc.

SN: In other words, that is not your argument . . .

CP: You shouldn’t even say it . . .

SN: Yes . . .

one of the author’s major problems: where to stop?

CP: It's very wrong to set out from that premise. When in fact the only thing you can do is to confess. And confession is a very laborious process. It is not very easy. The fact is that the history we construct about ourselves and about the world will be a history consisting of words and employing words. Consequently, starting with words, phrases, sentences, elementary grammar, you will end up constructing all sorts of histories about your own existence. That’s what a confession is, isn't it? You talk about yourself, using all the attributes of the language to talk about something that has happened to you, about something you have experienced, something you have lived; you evaluate yourself, you judge yourself in numerous ways, and you read your own life, your own emotions, your own thoughts, delivering yourself up, delivering up your thoughts. But that is the frame. The result may be a specific painting, whether abstract or figurative. It's about being committed to something, something very difficult to commit to, because the discourse is focused so strongly on the human. There is no room for any kind of participation other than your own, not only as an individual but also as a human being. And in reality, what I think is that anything connected to the high vibration of an art object belongs not to the author, but rather it comes from somewhere else. But it is necessary that the frame exist. For example, if you imagine it as a bowl, it should be able to contain what drips, what flows into it, what fills it from somewhere else, not from you. I mean it's like in that English saying – God gave man hands, but it’s the man who builds the bridge. And I think it is very important. It's to do with the fact that you are never alone. All right, maybe modern science will now say that the gestures you call ineffable belong to a psychological area, the unconscious, the subconscious, that all sorts of gestures and impulses that belong to the individual are rooted there, and that God has nothing to do with any of it. But such an analysis, such an evaluation, also comes from the standpoint of the need to focus speech on the human and value on control. The greater the author, the better able to control every detail of his canvas or film he is. But I don't believe that. Because from my direct experience with film, I cannot help but notice that the really good things, the spectacularly good things, that exist in my films – and they are very few – are not things that I put there myself. And if I’m not the one who put them there, and if I can understand that when I paint, from time to time I hit upon a solution, a gesture appears, a chromatic relationship, because you allow yourself . . .

SN: . . .a gesture you cannot repeat.

CP: That you cannot repeat! But even so, it appears, and you should be happy about it. But what can you do to preserve it? Because you have to work in a different area of the canvas, too, and more often than not it gets ruined, more often than not you’re going around and around in a circle, like an infinite loop. But it is very difficult, one of the author’s greatest problems: Where to stop? When to say it's finished? It’s from this perspective that I talk about the dreifuss, because not even for one second did that person have any intention of producing an object that was beautiful, that was a sculpture; he wanted a functional object. If you look at it, you'll see that it meets a large number of artistic demands. At some point in the history of mankind, a phenomenon arose, something similar to a kind of a robbery. What I mean is you steal from the created world in which you have been placed – each of us can choose: either the Big Bang or God – you steal a harmony, you put it on your canvas, and you say that you were the one who created it. No! This is one of the greatest tricks, I think. In order to get away from that, a lot of authors resort to dissonance, in order clearly to delimitate their territory. “This is something I created! Why? Because it is dissonant! Because it is disharmonious.” And it is obvious that nature doesn't create disharmony, does it? We have the three very precise functions of the living world: relation, nutrition, and reproduction. Somehow, in an indirect way, a human struggling to make a functional object will abide by the mathematics of the created world, whether created by the Big Bang or by God. In this sense, I think that if I were to conceive of a poetics, I would sooner say this: when you aim at a function, you get art. Because if you aim at the functional, you get harmony and a superior vibration.

SN: Are you saying this somehow in the sense that this is the safe option, that you don't let yourself get carried away by the thought that you might be a creator?

CP: You can call it the safe option, but I think it is the natural option. Because there are temptations of all sorts. And the one I call demiurgitis is one of the worst temptations in the world. Because all of a sudden you steal something, and you put your signature to something that doesn’t belong to you, that isn’t yours.

SN: Yes. Why do I say the safe option? Because, for example, if you want to make a film or a painting, you have no reference point in the physical world; you will never say that this painting will make better shoes. But you can say that when you make a dreifuss.

CP: Yes, but the thing is – and I think this is the function of art in a general sense, although of course things are more complex here, and depending on the period there is a margin of tolerance – the dreifuss is possible only if it comes from a world in which the function of the art is present. More specifically, if it refers the individual to the created world. What I mean is that I think the dreifuss was created at a time when . . . let's say it was conceived in Bach’s Germany by a man who went to church and listened to music, and music had a function that we now call art, but still it had a function . . .

SN: . . . an iconic function.

CP: Yes, exactly. He goes to church and understands the story told there, in musical notes and all kinds of rhythms and harmonies. And I think this has the effect of reconfiguring the world and everyday life. You can imagine a disharmonious object like the dreifuss only if there is disharmony around it. But this is pointless speculation.

SN: And the dreifuss is not disharmonious.

CP: It’s not disharmonious; it comes from a world where harmony was the norm, the reference point or the aim.

I went to take pictures for the Sieranevada poster and I don't want to trick anyone or invest them with more than what they are.

CP: I think it’s a problem if the images get jumbled up and we aim in more than one direction at once. They were made on different days and every day I made a lot. The question is whether or not it’s better to have a single day in a single place or to group them according to a different criterion. I mean you either have a variation or you have a situation of a different kind.

SN: Were I to seek some kind of logic, I would sooner begin with the logic of the image rather than necessarily a logic of behind the scenes, let's say. I mean I would combine them according to their poetics, not according to their function as . . .

CP: . . .their poster function.

SN: Not necessarily. Maybe you have them selected according to the different days, but I would rather proceed from one to the next; I would arrange them according to what is required by an image that has already been selected. Which one comes next on the musical stave. I would rather think of them . . .

CP: Rather a pre-established concept, a framework concept, and according to that . . .

SN: Yes, and consequently from those you have selected you exhibit numbers 15, 19, 48. But from what I saw of them the last time, I think they function well together and maybe the foreground/background ruptures are good, they go together well. Actually, I would postpone this discussion to the moment when they are on the wall in the gallery.

CP: Of course, you also make your selection according to the available space.

SN: Like we said last time, the Tarkovsky-esque atmosphere probably requires a counterpoint. Those images are very refined, misty, in a high range, maybe they need to be placed in opposition to something, to a more concrete image. An exhibition is also a kind of painting. You’re still making decisions when you construct an exhibition.

CP: Yes, yes, yes. Because it is an orchestration of voices.

SN: Have you printed a larger number of images yet?

CP: No, the only ones are these tests you can see. That’s all. And these are rough tests, you know, because all these greys need to be resolved; it mustn’t be too dull. Obviously, things are different on a larger scale. But they need to be lit. In this series of concrete images, there are a few that I think strike up a correct relationship with the most lyrical of the images, if I can call them that, which obviously give me some bother. For example, an image like this one quite rightly contradicts the deviations from the poetic setting, which verge on the kitsch, Kodak calendars, IKEA catalogue pictures. If there is anything that can be said about this, then that something is to be found where the concrete and the abstract meet. The dead end resulting from the identification of the subject after the first hiccough, if one might call it that. For example, in a certain image you need time to situate yourself. You ask yourself: Is this the sky here? I think I see a road. Is this sky again? No, it can’t be. Maybe the way down to the lake, you know? Sometimes it is clearer, at other times it is less clear. Because from a certain farther distance you can’t see. You can assume it’s a landscape but at the same time you can also assume that it’s a photograph on a folded piece of paper. Once the image is enlarged, you can see the blocks of flats, for example. Once the viewer gets closer, he is able to identify a structure.

SN: Aren’t you tempted by the idea of having one or more enlarged images, ones much more enlarged, two metres, let's say?

CP: I don't know if technically that’s possible. It's beyond me. If you can do it without getting a pixelated image . . .

SN: On the other hand, the idea is at odds with the way you set out. That they should be in a poster format.

CP: Yes. As far as exhibiting them goes, I think I establish an honest relationship with the audience, with the viewer. I went out to take pictures for the Sieranevada poster, and I don't want to trick anyone or invest them with more than what they are. After I enlarged them and made them poster size, I thought: aren't they a bit too big? Wouldn't they benefit from being smaller? But I think not. I think that at least with the first approach, in poster format they are in an honest relationship with the object, with what was in the mind of the person who made the pictures and what he was looking for. I cannot ignore the fact that when I was taking the photographs, I was almost always thinking that they were suitable for a poster. Obviously, there were also photographs that I took because I happened to see something that I thought was cool, without thinking about the poster, but the standard was set by the poster.

SN: Was almost every photograph you took a candidate for the poster, if only for a fleeting second?

CP: Not only that, but the composition impelled me to choose in such a way that I would be able to include the title and all the film information on the poster.

SN: And eventually you chose a landscape format, on which you heightened the sky.

CP: Yes, for resolution reasons. Because in fact I wanted to use another photograph, in portrait format. But in the end, I faked it. In fact, I didn't use the raw photograph, I made alterations to the photograph, not only with the writing, but also to the image itself. And this has to be very a clear and overt thing. It says something about the fact that you, as an author, get to interfere. In Truffaut’s film L'homme qui aimait les femmes, there is a character who starts writing his story, a mainly autobiographical novel. In the film, we see him at a certain point, when he is going home he meets a little girl who is sad and who is waiting at the entrance to a building, a little girl wearing a red dress. We see this action unfold in the film. He writes the book, the book is about to go to press, he goes to the printer’s to have a last look, and asks the lady doing the proofreading to allow him to change red to blue. That is a very beautiful gesture, because it says a lot of things about the process, the way in which we betray what is human in us in order to save the artist in us. I mean the creative impulse comes first. It becomes more important and it has to be protected, even to the detriment of the historical reality. I think that is very beautiful. And I wanted to do the same thing here, I wanted to be as correct as possible with myself and with those who were going to see the poster, but in fact I wasn’t able to. I didn't crop the frame, but even so, here and there I had to remove two or three things. There is a particular problem with the chip on which the image is stored. It creates a blotch. A lot of photographers have told me that this happens frequently. But anyway, I was a little annoyed that the blotch was in the same place in quite a few images. I didn't want to change the frame. No. I said to myself: That’s as much as I captured there. I mean it's not just a confession about me looking for the poster for Sieranevada, but also, it's about me, the person who excises from reality this fragment of an image, without manipulating it in Photoshop afterward. In reality, the photographer manipulates the images back in the lab. Because the object as an art object becomes much more important than the object as the expression of a confession, of a journey, of a lived experience. This is what happened to the poster too. Afterward, when I arranged them, I thought about a series, I thought about what they would look like in a series, and it was clear that if the criterion was the mist, they would give a very coherent appearance in the exhibition. In painting, if you want to create harmony, you mix ochre into all the colours and then it’s done, everything will be on the palette. These are primary school tricks.

SN: You told me last time that the poster, the image on the poster, is an extension of the film, not an illustration of it.

CP: Yes, and I think that is important. If it's not the number one criterion, it's one of the criteria. This was also what I did in Aurora and The Death of Mr Lăzărescu. A lot of the time, the posters are made up of images taken from the film, or if not, they are at least a re-enactment of a shot.

SN: You showed me the French poster for Sieranevada . . .

CP: Yes, over there they recreated the poster in order to illustrate the lunch, so that the audience would get the feeling that their money was well spent. If you see on the poster that people are having lunch, it might look like that this is what it is about. If you show blocks of flats, crows, cormorants – what on earth are they doing there? We don't want to see stuff like that in a film! I think this is the honest relationship you have with both cinema and photography. Cinema cannot do what photography does, and photography cannot do what cinema does. And then you have to let photography play its part – if the poster is a photograph – rather than make it say the same thing as the film. Above all else, the poster is a frozen image . . .

SN: Not ventriloquism of another art . . .

CP: Yes. If I push things to the extreme, it's like translating a piano sonata into a poem. It’s obvious that unless you call your poem The Moonlight Sonata, you won't find any connection between Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and your poem. But you can call your poem Grazing Cows in the Year 2000 and when you read it, it might occur to you that you come across some vague echoes of a possible encounter between the author and something that might be distantly and very tenuously connected to music, not to Beethoven. Such things are impossible; this is something that the author knows, but not so much the audience, the reader, the addressee. With cinema and photography, we are talking about contiguous territories; it is easier to compare them with each other than it is to compare film and music. You could create a musical piece that talks about a given film, if there were no music in the film. But photography is the same thing, I mean a moment removed from something else, a fraction of a second stolen from time, the world seen from a precise position, from the stationary position of the camera, and from that perspective there is very little to say about the relationship that kind of photography might have with cinema.

CP: I went to Basel once, when I was a student. I no longer knew where to look. I got the feeling that everything was tugging at me, that everything was yelling: Look at me, look at me! The same as on a fashion catwalk. There is something highly important here, which isn’t taken into account, a condemned word, as condemned as the word “solidarity” because of communism. The word humility is also condemned to the same degree, because of a faulty reading of the texts. It’s a misreading. I think that’s very important. Hence too the fear of dimension.

I don’t mean the things that are shouted out loud . . . but a way of focusing on yourself

CP: With the dreifuss it is as if there ought to be a poetic focused on the manufacture of functional objects and we ought once and for all to let art happen while we make functional objects. And the functional object does not necessarily have to be a dreifuss, God forbid, or a screwdriver or anything like that; it can also be a surface covered with lines traced according to a precise rule or a surface covered with numbers inscribed according to a precise rule. I think this is one of the strong fulcrums of painting, the fact that such objects are icons. But not in a Christian sense. They offer you the opportunity to place yourself in a relationship with that which is beyond the brain’s power of understanding through the use of words. Therefore, a relationship with a meaning, a different one, a higher one, something else. “A higher one” sounds wrong. I mean a relationship with the object you contemplate. You sit and look at it and it connects you to your own mechanisms. It is merely the fulcrum that enables the meditation in your mind; it's not merely a decorative object. Not merely the gesture that arises from a need to perform. Not a something hormonal that places you in the position of competing in some kind of sport or places you within a relationship with all the others in your field, as so often happens. It's not necessarily a bad thing; I’m merely making an observation.

SN: That makes me think about . . . anyway, I still see a difference between the examples you have given. The first one was the dreifuss and after that you mentioned a surface covered with lines following a certain rule. It reminds me of Agnes Martin.

CP: Yes.

SN: She says something like: In order to be able to paint, I must have no thoughts. Or to work as a lathe worker making an object, to take your example, but on the other hand, I can’t get past the fact that there is no function in Agnes Martin’s work. She is focused on a certain discipline . . .

CP: Yes, but there is something different here, and if we clarify it, then we clarify everything. There is an additional element, and something takes place in the case of Agnes Martin. What I think is that the function of her paintings is indissolubly connected to her, to the addressee in the singular, who is part of the loop that is created. She has the painting as author, the painting has her as viewer, in a circular way. More than in the case of traditional painting or the rest of us who make films or write books, where the addressee is somewhere outside you, a person at whom you cast the message. In this sense, she is somehow making a dreifuss. Do you see what I mean? This needs to be clarified. Basically, you start out along a road; the roads are infinite. If you start out along the road of a certain type of asceticism, the relationship is solely with yourself, and those things have a function in relationship to you. The relationship is placed in context by historians and theoreticians, it’s minimalist, it’s somewhat overlooked, put forward again, revived, but it’s not really part of the world of artists who address others.

SN: Demiurges?

CP: More or less. Artists who take the other into account. I think she takes herself into account. Thus, her works are the result of a meditation. I mean I meditate by painting. I meditate by walking. Walking cannot be recorded. The peripatetic. He’s in a thinking process. Like somebody else is in a thinking process by playing football or whatever . . . but there is a dimension that is probably obsolete or even inexistent in her work, the dimension of the thinking-in-dialogue process. Because those who make things for others, who have the other in mind, in a more or less responsible way, also feed on the same thing. I know that I myself am like this. I too feed on dialogue with others, on the reactions of others. I saw a film about her and I thought she was in a completely different category. What’s more I think she is in the category of the ascetics. I don't know. I mean not things that are shouted out loud, but a way of focusing on yourself. Something that generates changes in your own life. If you are a person with a social life within the norms and practices, it is impossible for her kind of painting not to be connected to her own life. But this has to do with the honesty of the artist. What you do cannot be honest and correct if it doesn't engage you, if it doesn't cost you. If it doesn't cost you, it doesn't matter. If it didn't cost you, then it won't cost the other either.

SN: When you say this, are you thinking about sacrifice? What kind of cost is that?

CP: Personal exposure, that is the cost. The boomerang effect of your gesture of generosity toward the others. Or toward yourself. You are in your own laboratory, in your own workshop, and at a given point the works are made public and the world shits on them and thereby on you. And that brings you a lot of suffering. You have a withdrawal reaction, you go back inside your own shell, you want to forget about the world. It can’t happen any other way. This is how human beings function. And I was thinking about Agnes Martin – maybe she is more intimately connected to her own life. The same as in the case of any other artist, the first works reveal the mark of belonging to a group or trend, but little by little you distance yourself from the world and move closer to yourself. If you get beyond that level of being accepted by others, you might be able to move things forward, to do them in a way that is yours alone and that testifies to your struggle with your demons. For me, that is what art is; it is in fact the struggle with demons. Period. And the secondary effect is this: What results is an object, a rôle, and you cannot see the whole work, you see only fragments. Not because you are a whistle blower, but because you are listening to your own human impulses and you are being yourself, a single element of a whole and also a part of the whole.

SN: And because you cannot do anything else except that.

CP: And because you have to do it. It’s an urgent need. And the urgent need does not arise from the fact that you have to sell in order to get famous, because that will show. This stays there. There are rare cases in which the urgent need to famous is accompanied by the dimension we are talking about, by the generous laying of your own entrails on a platter. A lot of the time, you compose a public image for yourself. A lot of people fake it. I think you can find traces of truth in every artist. To my mind, they are arranged in a sort of an approximate and random hierarchy. But were I to listen to myself, I couldn't discount the mark of authenticity in every painting on this planet. Be it high art or not. And it's not a matter of quantity. It has to do with a precise geographical point on the road you have chosen. One is nearer, another one is farther away. Everything is a struggle with yourself, a struggle with the demons that tempt you. It's a world full of temptations. I don't know whether that is the correct translation, because there is a tendency to salvage statements that belong to different worlds and adapt them to your own philosophy. And a faulty reading also occurs. What do those demons mean? Or the people who talk about demons?

caught in the act of permanent translation, on and on

If you take the Lives of the Fathers, you can read there about all sorts of temptations. But that was the only language those people spoke. The language that they spoke was no guarantee that the event, the circumscribed reality, was covered. It was a translation of a state of things. And you employ that language. If you are a peasant from a village and you decide to become a monk or go up into the mountains and become a hermit, and you have a certain experience and an urgent need to share it with others, how do you do it? If you start to roar, to make all sorts of sounds, to make gestures, they can’t be translated. The urgent need also implies a will to reach your addressee and therefore you will use a language that others are able to understand. But you don't master it very well and you will say some things that will sound wrong from a Cartesian reading. Come on, what is this? Do you really buy it? They’re lunatics. But if you take into account the state of things, also in a Cartesian manner, then you need to take into account the fact that the person we are talking about has had a certain education, maybe he knows only a few words and he is employing those words with the meaning that he himself ascribes to them. You are reading a written text; you don't hear him telling it. When he speaks, he employs intonation, body language, facial expressions, and it may be that certain things that sound dull on paper move you; you might tremble when you hear him. Which often happens. We have a tendency to discount this and to be caught in the act of permanent translation, on and on. And then I ask myself the following question: Man, those guys are talking about temptations, but I experience the same thing in my own life, I am prey to temptations all the time. What literature and art have done all this time has been to put words and images to what the demons mean. But I know there are temptations, I know I was tempted to do this or that. Radical Cartesians will say: Yes, but you are weak and you succumbed. But wait a second, the thing is not that I succumbed, but rather that it’s calls to me. Those things call me to go there. I don't need them. Making a Cartesian evaluation, in that situation I'm not allowed to do this or that or that. Why do I go? How is it that I go? Out of curiosity? But each of us experiences it. And those are very fuzzy moments. Moments when I am stuck, when I have dark days and the feeling that everything I do is stupid. Not that I do something stupid, that’s part of the package, but that there's no possibility of escaping the dead end. It's as if you have accidentally got onto another wavelength and something is happening. It's not that you hear voices or you don't hear voices . . . sometimes it happens to me that I hear voices. But as resonances, as reverberations of the lack of meaning. Come on, really? What is this? I look at whatever you want, I look at the great masterpiece. Hey, I'm sorry, I’ll end up saying, like Maurice Denis: A painting is a rectangular surface covered with colours according to a certain rule. And I shit on his rule and I don't care. I know that such thoughts are a temptation. Because it is the temptation of complete power. I mean you should be able to the meaning into words. Don’t be humble, simply do things and don’t ask yourself questions when there's no reason to ask yourself questions, because your mind cannot contain them. This is something that Arsenie Papacioc used to say, in his own manner of speaking. I like Papacioc a lot. Maybe it’s a matter of education, but I like to look at simple people more than at sophisticated people. I get the feeling that sophistication is a smokescreen. It’s not the real thing. And he used to talk about the six kinds of temptation. The upward temptation, when you want to do more than you’re capable of. The downward temptation is not doing as much as you were meant to. He gives the example of St Augustine, when he walked along the seashore and saw a child who scooping water from the sea with his hand and pouring it into a little hole. The saint asked the child: What are you doing? I want to put the sea here in the hole. (At the time, St Augustine wanted to write a very complex work about God.) You can’t do that; can't you see how big the sea is? And how do you think you will be able to put God in a book?

Why am I moved by things that are not perfect?

To leave to one side its meaning in the economy of Christian discourse, this is a situation that I have to deal with. And it appears to you. And you do your best so that your film will be exactly like Gide said of the artwork, that it should be as perfect as an egg, that you shouldn’t be able to add to it or take away from it even the tiniest thing without ruining it. And this is something that we learned at school. And it's not only that we are educated in school and outside school, in the world in which we are born. The perfect artwork is somehow a goal. In reality, if I think about myself, I am not moved by the Maiastra, by the Bird in Space, which seem to be super-syntheses. No. The others. The imperfect ones, the wrong ones, the illustration of the journey. The others already seem dead to me. I think of whoever it was who said that only death is perfect. Death is perfect. Life is not perfect. It has all sorts of surprises, residues, leftovers. I never used to like Delacroix at all, for example, but when I went to Switzerland for the first time, in 1990, for the exhibition with Ștefan, Matei and Corina, I went to the Art Museum in Bern and saw a Delacroix self-portrait, a sketch. I thought, wow, wait a minute, this is a relationship. Why am I moved by things that are not perfect? But they must be imperfect in a natural way, like a breath that follows the pulsation of a body, a mind, a history contained in that individual.

SN: Before I came here, I was looking for some notebooks to put in my bag. And I had one that I had received as a present, it was nice, a little commercial, but it had a quotation. It said: “I’m attached to my imperfection as a raison d’être.”

CP: Yes, it's wonderful that it’s put like that: “I care about”, not with any intention of giving a definition. Because in fact you get attached to it. But you don't know what it is that you get attached to.

*

CP: I want to make this work and frame it, I want to glue it on red velvet and put it in a golden frame. Something doesn't require further comment, on the subject of the ready-made. Cinema. I think there is no better definition of cinema. Look at how she’s dressed! It also has that thing with the authenticity of the situation, because that guy has nothing to do there, he doesn't fit in the picture, I mean you have spangles, gold, Hollywood, fake, glued smiles: CINEMA. Well, yes, cinema. And politicians. Both of them debatable.

SN: The truth is that Elena is quite a character here.

CP: Look at her! It's like she's the Queen of Sheba.

SN: They’re not looking anywhere…

CP: They are not together. Elena is looking at the camera.

SN: By the way, there’s something else I wanted to ask you; we talked about it a little last time. What tools does an artist work with? At one point, you talked about about the metaphor as a tool. But technically you were talking about the position of the camera. How you position the camera . . .

CP: Yes, but the metaphor is just a consequence. It is born . . .

SN: The metaphor is not a tool.

CP: It is a secondary effect of a choice you have made. Meaning where you place the film camera.

SN: Is a metaphor an extension of the gesture of choosing a frame or is it a collateral effect of attaining the ineffable?

CP: This too intersects with the dreifuss. Because as a director you are interested in staging a given situation and this is the only thing you should be interested in. And you choose where to place the camera. Beyond that, the stage set is constructed, obviously; you have everything there. For all sorts of reasons, you choose certain objects, certain chromatic relations, the characters’ costumes, you direct the actors, and you get a film sequence. That sequence needs to lead to something. To a point that will become a hook for the next sequence. I mean each sequence should carry you to the next one and so on to the end of the film. So, it should have a sort of peg on which you should be able to fit the next sequence, and so on. These are the data you need to keep in mind. If you keep in mind only these strictly functional things, afterward you will discover in the given sequence, in the content of the image, numerous elements, numerous parts of metaphors, of thoughts. I would be wrong if I said that they come from outside you. I don't know where they come from, but they are definitely not connected to anything you have done. It's as if your innermost self would be able to operate only within an established convention. You have to film that sequence. A character enters a sock shop and buys a pair of socks, he has a conversation with the shop assistant, and that’s all. There are a lot of possible camera positions. But you are interested only in a few things. The things you are interested in are connected to the wider story. I mean you can create a sequence that might be added to or inserted between other sequences, as part of a continuum. And if you pay attention only to this, the rest will come of itself. It will be given to you. I don't know how to put it. If on the contrary you are looking to stage metaphors, you will get a propaganda film. The metaphor is a secondary effect of a confession. The confession is not a metaphor. I want to tell the story of a man who going to bed. He goes about it like this: he makes himself a cup of tea, sits down in front of the TV, watches the end of a TV show, doesn't go to bed because he falls asleep in front of the TV, without turning it off. Or on the contrary, he turns off the TV, leaves the room, gets into bed, and lays his head on the pillow. And you have a sequence there. What is the sentence? What is the statement I'm interested in? What I'm interested in first and foremost is the story at the level of the character. To be more exact, the fact that the character goes to bed. And this is what you need to film. Rather than filming him going to bed as if it were an allegory of going to bed. An allegory of death . . .

SN: Of the suspension of reality . . .

CP: The concrete reality. The concrete reality comes in a package like all the rest. Obviously, here you will say wait a minute, it actually has to do with the person watching, because that is the person constructing the metaphor. That’s true, but you also do it yourself, as a director. But not when you’re filming. You discover it when you edit. Or you discover it after you finish filming. When you are editing and you return to what you have filmed, you suddenly see all sorts of objects, some of which you didn’t put there. Or the way the event links up and grows – no matter how banal it might be, it leads you to a different kind of emotion connected with the metaphor contained in the image. It's not you who put it there. It comes from the depths of your being. But that is something very difficult in cinema. It is very difficult to obtain, cinema is not made in your workshop, where people leave you alone while you work. You have a certain number of days, you have a budget, and you need to place yourself in quite an unfortunate position, under pressure. If you don't do it today, then maybe tomorrow the actor won’t be able to turn up, because he has a show somewhere else. There are all sorts of constraints – as vulgar as they may be – that basically compel you to give everything here and now. And probably that’s why I come and say that you have to take care only at the first level. A man goes into a sock shop and buys a pair of socks; that’s a very stupid film. If a situation like that moves you as viewer, it’s because the first level has been achieved. Living people are the most spectacular things. The most spectacular thing in absolutely every movie is life. It’s very hard to talk to actors about this, although I don't care about that and talk anyway. It's a struggle against the demons; as an actor, you have to say those words. But you need to be open toward the viewer and let the struggle with the demons show. Actors are people like the rest of us, and they have the tendency to conceal their own workshop. And I think that’s a big mistake. You need to let people see that you are pure flesh. You say those things to yourself, you let them show. You need to perform such an exercise in order ultimately to put yourself in the position of giving yourself to the other. When people talk about this, they think they need to be hysterical on stage or in front of the camera. No, that’s a different mask. I mean you shouldn't be ashamed of what you are. It’s the opposite. Not the image of a character, but the character as a pretext to deliver your own world. The human being that you are. The person with an ID, with a real life. And people will appreciate that. I think it's the same with all the rest.

there is nothing more important than what Papacioc says – the state of presence

SN: What do you pay most attention to when casting?

CP: To the human. Here’s something I liked, although I don't remember where I read it: King Carol I said we don't need professionals, we need characters. Yes, professionals don't matter, professionals can very easily make your life a living hell. And what about the rivalries! The fellow actors from your generation with parts in a film, who are having success, while you’re in torment . . .

SN Because of their success . . .

CP Yes, because that’s where education get us. Rivalry, rivalry, competiveness, hit him, punch him in the face. And there are also highly bizarre forms of getting your signature back. It’s incredible. You work with actors and cameramen and other people, there may be things that escape you, although you need to have a very good memory – in general, directors don't have bad memories, by the very nature of the job, you know? You know when that actor helped you; you know when that cameraman helped you. It’s very important when the film is finished to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. It’s valid for everybody else, you know? It doesn't happen like that in reality. And you will see that there are directors who recover . . . they did everything. You went into a cafe when you were writing the screenplay, you talked to some guy, you saw some situation there, and then you went and wrote them down . . . so you should be thankful to that anonymous guy too. Who is the author in fact? You know? Yes, it's you, but they might as well say it’s not you. You are a part of the world that is moving and that offers up on a plate all the information you need. This is about things that cannot be noted down, that you miss, that you forget. But what about the things that you know very well on the film set, aren’t you supposed to talk about those either? What interests me is that this thing happens in the film . . . I am the first viewer, I should be happy. I cannot be happy about the things that I included there. That is impossible for me. It means I'm an idiot. The things that I included there are not a surprise for me any more, are they? Because it's not a question of the surprise that moves you or about the novelty. It’s a question of something somehow related to them, you know? This is the ineffable. Not the surprise as a shock, not the surprise as the big truth hidden behind some trivial gesture, nothing like that. It’s impossible to put in words. A breath, a look, something which, all of a sudden, places you in a relationship with yourself. With you as a viewer. And you the director, as a viewer at the editing table, a viewer of your own film after you have seen it 15,000 times, after you have done the sound and the photography, and you discover something you didn't put in there and you thank God that it happened like that, that the actor had that particular look in that particular second. In Sieranevada I did eight takes of the final shot, and in the last Bughi sneezed at a crucial moment. I never thought of asking him to sneeze, I never think about things like that, I think it's the stupidest thing to try to construct an accident. An accident is an accident. That’s why it's an accident, because it's an accident, not because you have constructed it. And constructed accidents are very obvious. A guy drops his phone. If he drops it, all right; if he doesn't drop it, he just doesn't drop it. When it's an accident, it should be an accident. Because you cannot mimic an accident. I mean the intervention of influences alien to your petty mise-en-scène. When I made Lăzărescu for instance, Fiscuteanu was is in the ambulance and he was supposed to say: I have a married daughter in Toronto, Canada. And we film once, twice, three times and then Spahiu comes to me and says: listen, Puiu, can I say this – Torino is in Italy, pops! Great, I said! Extraordinary! Thank you! And we have also talked about this. It’s absolutely necessary, you have to say it, it's good. And do it publicly. So that people understand that the creative process takes place in a group, everybody takes part creatively. You should stimulate them in that direction. There is no situation in which an orchestra conductor will say no to a fair gesture. And an orchestra conductor would never be able to say to a violinist: This is how you play it, because I say so. He will say: No, this is too much, this is too little, and when it's just right, he will say: That’s it! When you work with actors you cannot say something else, you say all sorts of words. You mostly have discussions about the background of the character. His biography, how you imagine him, what he might have done, or what he is like. That kind of thing, very general things. But when you say: Camera, action, and everything starts, in the next take, you say: That was too much, that was too little. When it happens to be right, you say: That was very good, it’s a take! But why is it very good? Do you want me to talk about it? I'll tell you. I think it's good because . . . and I’ll still say something shit. The shot speaks for itself. You see that guy over there. You tell the actors there is nothing more important than what Papacioc says – the state of presence. If you are present, the air vibrates. But that’s not how it happens. They are there only in body, but their mind is somewhere else. To be more precise, their minds are focused on their own belly buttons, and in my case, the working relationship between director and actor is a relationship centred on therapy. And that wasn't my intention. Let’s move your focus away from your own belly button. It’s not about you, you know? But it is about you! Just let yourselves be! Don’t censor yourselves; don't put yourselves on a stage, because this is what we do every day. This is where the character protects you. The audience will say – wow, how well she acted. But you were you. You drank the water like you drink it every day. You dressed like you dress every day. In the old school, when I made Goods and Money with a state production house, there were all sorts of the employees from Buftea and they used to butt in after every take and say it wasn't good, the guy wasn't correctly dressed, his sleeve got caught. Well this is what happens in real life too, when his sleeve gets caught, it's harder for him to put on his coat. Yes, but he was supposed to get dressed in one go . . . But why? Something dripped . . . yes, something dripped on him, but things like that happen. And absolutely everything that was accidental was thought to be wrong. And I didn't know how to make accidents happen. Man, it's impossible . . . if it's not an accident, it isn't. An explosion occurs. If an explosion occurs here, it's good to make the explosion happen in such a way as to surprise the guy. You cannot act the reaction to a acoustic shock. If surprises don't happen, then you move in an ugly way and it's not aesthetic. I mean yes, this is a way of pushing things toward the documentary style, but it's not like the larger story is a documentary, it's not like your film is a documentary or the fiction that you have imagined is a documentary about the world you live in. But those authentic reactions of the people who make up the fiction, who are there in the image, those reactions are documents, you know? And that is something very hard to obtain. You can obtain it only with their approval. I mean they should let themselves go. Otherwise you would have to harass them a lot. And when they want to go home after take number 40, when they don't want to have anything to do with you any more, they stop being attentive to their own image. And things finally happen. Right, screw it! Wow, so it can be done!

I’m not a director, I get the feeling I'm a person who wants to make films from the standpoint of a director

SN: You come from the cinema and I was thinking about this route of yours between the static image, between the two-dimensional image and cinema. Things are very different obviously. I want to ask you: What do they have in common, in fact? I mean is it a coincidence in your case that you are interested in both cinema and painting? Or could you just as well have been interested in writing? I mean the differences are obvious. But I'm curious as to what brings them together. Making music for instance . . .

CP: I would have liked to do that, but I'm not good at it. I think that’s the real shit: Not to need words. It’s the same with painting. But there's a big upset there.

SN: When you start painting, you do it because you feel like doing it, right? You took a long break and in the meantime, you felt the need to paint. And years and years later, you finally started painting again, because you couldn't keep yourself from it anymore. You felt like doing it.

CP: I started again because I was able to do it. I had the opportunity.

SN: Yes, but you are still in images.

CP: Yes.

SN: So, what is it that they have in common? What does the one satisfy? What does the other satisfy? What is the shared starting point of these two drives? I don't know what it is like when you want to make a film. Because if you want to make a painting, you simply start painting. Right? You pick up a brush and in two hours you start doing it. But the need to make a film?

CP: I’ve never thought about that. I think it has something to do with the way I am. A result of my DNA or my education, I have no idea, a result of my entire life. I kept myself at a distance all the time, I didn't want to lose my mind. I cannot take myself seriously, I feel bad. When I was studying painting, I had fellow students here in Bucharest, in art school, and they all dressed in black, like priests, and they wore rocker boots . . . I think that’s stupid. I have always kept myself at a distance things like that. Maybe some people think that I’m acting clever when I say that I'm not a director. No. I'm not a director. I get the feeling I'm a person who wants to make films from the standpoint of a director. And who writes films from the standpoint of a screenwriter. I want to make a film. And that doesn't make me a director; it makes me a person who wants to make a film. That’s obvious. But if you put on this coat and it becomes part of your anatomy and you become a director, I think you are in serious error. Because all of a sudden, the way you look at the world will become the way a director looks at the world. There’s a sort of estrangement, you will live in a world where the truly important things will be those that you make, your films and your vision of the world from your director’s chair. And I was always terrified by that. Director, painter, chef, I don't know, driver, doctor, chemist, alchemist, whatever. So far as I can see, the highest level in the world of people who paint or make films is connected to the questions you ask about yourself and your human condition. You get to that level if you keep asking yourself questions over and over, or drawing or painting or making films, the echoes of your thoughts will be there in your mind, but not because you had the aim of putting them there. This implies a sort of humility and a permanent questioning of your own condition. And you shouldn't let yourself be tempted by this; you are the director. This goes along with a kind of suffering that is very special and that is provoked by people who surround you, especially when you make films, but also when you paint, except that it's not immediate, in the studio, it comes afterwards. The vast majority of those people have chosen a precise social status. Some of them are critics and they will talk like critics, not like people, some are actors and they talk like actors, not like people . . . There are some people who don't understand that they have been thrown into this world, they have been given a possibility, they have received – I'm not saying talent, because it sounds very bad and I'm not even sure what it means – they were offered a sort of ability or interest in one area or another, let's say. You should do your work and not let yourself be tricked. It’s very easy to fall into this trap and get the feeling that you are the alpha and omega. That is a very serious temptation. And you can also see it in the behavior of the director who wears a director’s cap and a director’s sleeveless jacket with a lot of little pockets: “Fuck it, I'm a director!” You’re a director my arse! I mean the business card becomes more important than the activity in itself.

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