Richard Leacock

You grew up on a banana plantation in the Canary Islands. How come you turned towards filmmaking ? There wasn’t any school in the Canary Islands so when I was eight my parents sent me to a boarding school in the UK. How can you tell your friends who live in a terrible island, all with running noses, what heaven is like ? At eleven I saw a silent film about the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, and thought : “I could do that !” So I wrote the script, went back home with an 8mm camera and shot Canary Bananas (1935). I was thirteen then.

But then you went on to study Physics at Harvard University ? Yes, I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker but Physics was the best I could have studied because I learnt about light and optics. After that I served as a combat photographer for the US army during the Second World War, which eventually led to a job as cameraman for Robert Flaherty (on Louisiana Story, 1948 - ed.).

You are often described as one of the inventors of the ‘Cinéma Vérité’ genre. What do you think about that label today ? The problem is that it’s based on a misconception. It started with the ‘Kino-Pravda’ practice of Dziga Vertov, and he was saying that it was the cinema-truth ; a truth but not the truth, and this was misinterpreted. For me it’s not so much about the truth, what I always have been after is the feeling of being there.

What do you do, practically, to obtain that goal ? I observe. It’s just me and my tiny camera. No tripod, no mic boom. I hate all these big things. I never ask anyone anything. I never ask someone to do anything and I never ask for permission, I just shoot. And no headphones, because you look stupid !

Sounds like you are not really directing much. I create visual tension with my camera. In film school they teach students to explain what’s going on by starting with long shots so that the viewers can orientate themselves in the image. I do the opposite, which I learnt from Robert Flaherty. A close-up gives a lot of information but it also holds back things. That’s why I don’t like widescreen. You can’t make a portrait of beautiful women on widescreen ; you always have to put something else in the picture that destroys it.

How important is the editing ? The directing is in the editing. I always edit my own films, or now I do it together with Valérie (Lalonde - ed.). And I edit in my head already when I am shooting, so I don’t shoot a lot. Also, we are very disciplined, Valérie and I. Every night we have to watch everything we have shot. And we’re not allowed to press fast forward.

From banana farming to a musical drama rehearsal in Siberia, how do you choose your topics ? I used to think there were good and bad topics. But then I started making films about people I hate. For example, I spent three months living with the Ku Klux Klan (for Ku Klux Klan – Invisible Empire, 1965 - ed.). So it’s not about the topic, it’s about the making of the film. When I met Valérie, the lady of my life, I wanted to make a film on Video 8 about nothing in particular. She understood what I meant and we made Les oeufs á la coque de Richard Leacock (1991).

Looking back, what’s been most challenging in your way of making films ? I can’t answer that. Mostly I’ve had fun. But I’ve never made a film that made money. My dad was a communist and I never understood money. TV hates me and I hate them. Cinema is nonsense. I don’t know for whom I make films. Now we just make DVDs of our work and give them to our friends.

Anna Weitz