Interview Aliona van der Horst.
Why BAM? In your film you don’t give answers but you follow the thoughts of the survivors.
Through them you create the story of the city and the life before the earthquake. It’s an unreal
city in which the containers overlap the ruins and the memories.
What is BAM in your experience? Which BAM did the actual inhabitants describe to you?
As thinks usually go, it is very subjective. The strange coincidence happened that my husband and I
were walking along the coastline and he said to me that he wanted to go to that beautiful ancient city
with that very old limestone fortress in Iran, Bam. When we turned on the television that evening we
learned that that city was just destroyed.
I am not a filmmaker looking for the terrible spots on earth and making films about disasters or war. I
would never think of myself of going to a place where the earthquake happened. But the earthquake in
Bam happened just during a period in my life when I was very sensitive about the subject of losses in
life and I felt I had to go there.
When I went there to do research, I was very moved. I’ve never seen a city where everybody, without
exception, was in mourning. It was unreal. And life just goes on. You have to eat and drink and work.
And I am fascinated by the force of life, which is not ‘bad’ or ‘good’ but just exist as a force of nature,
that people after having lost everything continue with their life. When you loose a loved person, you
think that it is not possible to go on living, that you never will enjoy life again. And then after a while,
life slowly returns to you. It is this almost intangible process I wanted to capture.
So I hope it became an universal film about the force of life and mourning.
Your research started from a story published on a leaflet. Soon after the earthquake, the
photographer Parisa Damandan traveled to Bam with the idea to dig under the debris of photo
shops. The negatives and photos left helped to reconstruct the memory of the city and the
survivors. What was your first interest in this story? Why did you think this could become a
film?
When the earth shook under the town of Bam, Parisa was immediately filled with one thought: I have
to go there. I have to do something. Should she help with finding and rescuing people? Should she help
digging? No, she decided rather soon, if I can help, I'll have to do it the way I know best: from that
moment on she started digging, together with a group of volunteers to save at last part of the
immensely valuable cultural heritage of Bam, namely its photographic history. Armed with a street
plan, she led the men and women helping her to the studios and shops that have been covered with
powdered clay. She dug and searched while the chaos around her was great, and she was confronted
daily with the sorrow of those that survived the disaster. Confronted also by the international media,
who beside wanting to know about the general proceedings, were also interested in her quest, because
by now everybody realized the importance of saving what can be saved in order to rebuild this
marvelous and beautiful ancient city.
The idea that the only visual memory of the place were in the photos found in the rubble was just a
very absurd and strong idea. I was fascinated by the pictures because they showed a world most people
don’t know anything about in a very intimate way: Iranian people having dinner on the floor, dancing,
making funny faces. Playing with their kids. Like we all do. So on one hand it was very exotic and on
the other very close and human. Especially because you realize: this doesn’t exist anymore.
When I heard that 30,000 people died out of 100.000 it was something very abstract. So I wanted to
understand what it meant. And the pictures gave me an opening to go there.
A photo documents a moment in the past. But in your movie, the photos deal with the present.
They actually become the starting point for an intimate dialogue between the survivors and their
dead persons. Could you tell me what you mean for “monologue interior”? How did you come to
this idea?
I never like to come to my goal just straight away. I like to take the off road, to go around it. I don’t
like films where you feel the emotion is thrown into your face.
Documentary film usually works with interviews, which you can use off screen. But still the words are
for you, the spectator, mediated through the interviewer. I wanted something different. Something more
introvert. In literature it is a very common proceed. For a long time I was looking to use the form of the
monologue interior
And there are some feature films using it for instance In ‘Der Himmel über Berlin’, you have the angels
who listen to the thoughts of people.
When I was walking in the city, it struck me that everybody seemed normal, but they were like zombies
because in their head they were thinking or speaking with the dead, who still were a part of their life.
The pictures seemed a very natural starting point for people to talk to.
How was your experience during the recording’s process of the voices? You could not follow the
meaning of the phrases said by the people but could you feel the intensity of the emotions?
For more than two weeks I sat in my hotel room with a DAT recorder. We invited the people we came
to know to speak to the pictures of the dead persons. It turned out that many people were speaking to
their dead loved ones during the day, so they liked to do it. To have a break from their daily business. It
was very relieving for them. I was sitting behind them, so they couldn’t see me and they forgot my
presence. I could only hear their voice. The Persian language is very beautiful and melodic, and it was
as if I were listening to music. Often my eyes were filled with tears, of the intensity of the emotion and
a certain timbre in the voice.
Sometimes I regret that I didn’t film them, because their gestures and body language was so beautiful.
Slowly the time is suspended and the continue moment of the camera on the details that surround
the scene create a more concentrate and interior view. Is this the shape you gave to your concept
and to the survivors’ dreams?
Maasja Ooms, who did the camerawork and I were trying to find a way to go out of the reality as we
called it, but staying in the same shot, not making something up.
A local “graphic designer” substitutes the landscape of the photos with a colorful and artificial
background. At that moment, the dreams of the survivors and the world of the dead persons
become closer. The photos are not talking anymore only about past events but they give advises
and hopes to the survivors for the present life.
I think that is a good description.
He is called by the people of Bam ‘The dreammaker”. He restores the dreams and the dead loved ones.
It is also a kind of dream of paradise, where they hope their dead loved ones are now. It comforts them.
You realize the child on the picture is dead now. When we first met him we all cried when we saw his
work. I also think this is the ultimate way to show how important pictures are for people. It is their sole
memories of the life before the earthquake.
You were stopped on the border of Iran and you could not get in during the entire period of the
shooting. Your crew was able to go on with the project, and follow the developmeny of your
ideas on distance. What did happen? In which way did you manage to direct your own film?
I still don’t know what happened and why. And I think I never will. It is the worst nightmare of every
director I guess. What rescued the film was that I had a very, very thorough preparation period.
Maasja and I worked very close together since film school. And she was with me during research trip
and we both developed the style and concept of the film: to film with long shots, in the moment, the
daily life and look for little ‘openings’ in the shots, when you get out of the reality, to hear the voice in
their head. Also, I had established very intimate relations with the characters of the film and recorded
their thoughts. I made a selection of their associations, thoughts, memories on CD’s and Maasja
listened to the voices to get inspired to make the images. There is not much of a storyline, it is very
associative and visual.
Because of practical reasons it was not possible to postpone the shooting. So there was only one way
out: let Maasja do the directing of the film. The crew was already in Iran, and we had all the
permissions to make the film. So this was an extreme solution for extreme circumstances. It was
jumping in the deep for both of us. It was hard for Maasja and the crew in the beginning but they
worked very hard and Maasja did an extraordinary job. I have been waiting in Amsterdam for 7 weeks
to get a visa, and nothing happened. Of course I was biting my fingernails all the time. Maasja and I
spoke over the phone about the film.
Aliona van der Horst (1970, Moscow half Dutch/Russian background) graduated from the
Netherlands Film Academy in 1997 with the documentary film “The Lady with the White Hat”
(40 minutes) which won several prices in the Netherlands and abroad. She made several short
documentaries about/for children and youngsters. In 2001 she made the documentary “After the
Spring of ‘68” (58 minutes) , which won the Dutch Academy Award. The five part documentary
about the love for art in the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg “ A passion for the Hermitage”
also received the Dutch Academy Award.
The films are aired at Dutch Public Broadcasting, Australia, Sundance Channel
Worldpremiere Voices of Bam: International Film Festival Rotterdam (25 January – 05
February 2006)
Production company:
Zeppers Film
info@zeppers.nl
Didascalie alle immagini:
Voices of BAM, film still, 2005. Produzione Zeppers Film.