By transferring the ripple of the presence of the screen to the screen, the director has gone deeper into the “Wild” than the impassioned chronicler. The website of the exhibition reads: “” Wild “is a procedural event – an exhibition in a wild area between Duks and Newfoundland, without working hours and caretakers, it is designed as an experience that can be immersed in both 15 minutes and a week.”
Sonora Brock: What is “Wild” and, like in the movie, I will ask the question – who were you in the “Wild”?
Ugis Olte: “Wild” is a rather large territory in the north-east of Vidzeme, which, in my opinion, very accurately reflects Latvia’s identity. It is an area where nature predominates, but people also take part in it. These people, who work there in nature, are artists invited by Andris Eglītis and his like-minded people, who basically go into the forest, feel something and then create a work that is allowed to continue to be in that nature and allow nature to transform it as it sees fit. This outdoor exhibition is taking place for the second year. In the first year I was there as a visitor, and in the second year I was invited to return there from time to time with a camera – without any intentions or precepts, just to experience some events, to film something, and to make a short film at the end of the year when nature is asleep. .
So the idea to capture “Wild” cinema was not made by you, but by the creators of “Wild”?
Yes, but the moment I said “yes”, I also became a “Wild” creator. That is the point –
there is no single author, it is the work of a group of people. When I first pressed the red record button, I was a co-author.
Knowing that it’s a pretty popular place to go to quite a few people who experience the place with their own eyes, I deliberately decided it would be a story – a visual story in which we try to “wild” the way the brain shapes memories. . The events have been linear – the beginning, the end, but then they mix – the sound of one event mixes with the picture of another event. It is possible to take cinema and play with that intention.
“Who Are You In The Wild?”
Photo: Emils Lacums
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According to one of the people interviewed in the film, “Wild” is described as a crooked mirror on which other people and their creativity have applied very interesting distortions, filters and patinas. Uģi, as a director you have also left your patina – we are indirectly experiencing “Wildlife” through your vision. What tasks did you set yourself – what to film, what to try to capture? Was this filming of the exhibition different from, for example, work on a program or on literature?
What the television documentary stories have in common is that you look at the camera with one eye and what is going on around you with the other. Maybe you need to reorient somewhere, look at something else. Here I had two very clear tasks – not to compete with the experience of any other viewer (I did not try to compete with how a person might feel), and the other was to do only what I could get there, so with the sound recordings and pictures that were made during the summer. length in the “Wild” area. The only thing that is made after that is the captions, but I also drew them with my own hands. These were the two frames to hold on to and define your exercise in this way.
Overlapping with diabetic sounds and music, brand new associative circuits are formed, such as in an episode with the search for the right direction, with a swarm in the swamp, against the background of which women’s vocals can be read, say, as a motif of leaders.
Leaders or sirens, yes.
When was it decided that the music heard in performances and concerts would be part of your film?
I was there four times in the summer, and in fact it was quite a limited amount of material. Looking through the material, I tried for no reason to understand what the first impulses were that I noticed. One of the first impulses – a conductor who conducted a wind orchestra from Smiltene – could conduct poets. It is interesting to look at the timeline of the editing, whether such an orchestra’s rhythm does not coincide with the poet’s inner rhythm. It turns out that coincides. When I was filming atonal songs, I had a dog with me. He heard these ridiculous atonal songs intelligently at first, but then reacted to his usual nature. I thought – if the dog was already affected by these sirens, maybe the very first hike, where there were no signs of people getting lost, was looking for a way – maybe it was actually a fallacy in the direction of those voices. Such is its nonsense.
Over the years, I have noticed that the more you play with something, because this energy of play can also be one of the factors that may interest people.
They can also be very abstract things, but if they have that rock and roll energy, they are also cool to watch.
“Who Are You In The Wild?”
Photo: Madara Gritāne
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As already mentioned, the filming seems to be very dynamic because it is present almost everywhere, noting not only central but also peripheral events. How big was your team? How mobile did you have to be to record what’s going on?
Of the four days, the team was one day. I accompanied the old master Daina Kļava with the other camera, because a concert of wind orchestras and also poetry readings were planned. I think – what I’m there alone, we’re better two – one is filming, watching, the other filming, talking. Other than this one day, it’s my solo job. And solo in the sense that the commissioner and producer Henrik Elias Sergner said that a film had to be made, but that was the only prescription. Everything else – what and how I do – was one hundred percent freedom, which is the best conditions you can get into.
Cyril Ece says in the film, “I don’t have many places where I’ve been able to achieve such a gripping intimacy with myself and others, and that’s me.” Wild. ” The film creates similar feelings – we, the viewers, get unusually close, as if we are part of what is happening. By creating “Who Are You in the Wild?”
It is a spontaneous reaction to it. I really wonder – the young people I filmed there, who expressed their thoughts about how they felt there, mentioned the words “closeness to nature”, “intimacy” and “security”. It really surprises me because
In my feelings, this unaccustomed nature of the Drusta area is one of the scariest in Latvian nature. I have a feeling that staying there a few nights alone could be quite a dark event.
Probably because of the fact that you have to travel far, there are fewer and fewer houses left when approaching the destination, the roads are those with good grass on both sides.
When you get there, it is clear that you are no longer the crown of nature, that now you have slipped quietly like a mouse and then tried to get out.
I made the film with this feeling – in a play, but in a rather dark play. When these people, who had seen the whole event, saw the film, they said “interestingly, it seemed a much brighter event to us”. Okay, that’s a good vision, but mine is dark. Maybe that is my predestination about Latvia’s nature, because I feel it as threatening and dark, and not so calm and calm. I address the same theme in my upcoming feature film, Sacrifice. There is no quiet, nurturing, intimate place in Latvia either.
The film shows a procedural impression, with all the characters in the film taking part in one big event. I also read on the exhibition website – “The Wild is a procedural event.” How challenging is it for the director to portray such a processuality, in principle a meta-processuality in a film?
These are the points in the plan – you come back every time and try to detect what has changed. What is the tree in which the plant swings or does the leaves hold or fall? Is there still a terrible glow, or has the fog already begun?
What was most interesting to me was seeing the change in the faces of the people who lingered the most in the wild.
For the first time, they are walking with wines, they are smoking all the time – in such a city bubble they are floating through their nature. Then they dig up the ditches, some kind of savage appears there. Then they swing on the moss carpet by the lake – they can smell the city even less. He arrives in two months and a savage is already on his face – those eyes are tired, overheated, but more archaic. It was very interesting to watch the change, and it was the people who felt the change the most.
But how did the heroes of this film crystallize – the people we see the most?
Only by reacting spontaneously. There is an event, someone is more visible in him, someone is less visible. You turn to it and then follow the same event while editing, don’t try to escape from your instinctive decisions made during filming.
Can the condition of the film be divided into sections, sections?
At one point I was even thinking of separating them with titles and also calling them scenes – there is a scene of glow and an atonal scene, a scene of the morning, but I figured out – what to prescribe now for things that are also felt. However, they can be allowed to live without such a detectable boundary. It’s also easy to assemble – you watch the material and you know – I’ll have this and that picture, and if you just make them, maybe a prefix will appear, but very rarely. When you make them, you also know – this will go very well in the next one through it. They find their place automatically. I always think in small scenes and then I string them in some way, but even when I try to get out of it, in the end it turns out that there are scenes.
The film begins with steam, which can be both lunchtime and mid-summer, and is slowly approaching twilight. However, this one day, which we seem to see, is made up of a longer period of the film. Was it decided to make this film like one day?
No, if you follow the instinctive impulses that come from your own consciousness, then it is possible that the same formulas that exist elsewhere in nature are repeated there. Obviously, we start with something calm. Sometimes you can start with something explosive, but in this case I started with calm. Then something takes effect. Then there is the sun in the south, it is terribly hot – it was also reflected in the film. Then everything cools down slowly, water is found, some voices are followed, night falls. None of this is special. Such representations for the season or the day of representation occur only by intuitively following one’s own impulses. That was also why I was interested –
if there are no precepts, then it is very cool to follow your own internal precepts, which reveal themselves without even asking.
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