When in 2021 the book of collages by the well-known film director Jim Jarmusch hit the shelves of US bookstores, many were surprised by this creative side of him. It is known that he shoots films, writes scripts and poetry, composes, but it turned out that for years his passion was also making collages from newspaper clippings.
A year ago, in a public conversation with writer Jonathan Ames at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Jarmusch said that these collages are a way for him to be still and at peace with himself. But only recently has he realized that he’s actually been working on the principle of collage all his creative life: “I hadn’t really grasped it until my collage book came out and I had to do some interviews. I thought: damn, I can’t think of anything to say… And then I realized that I actually use this same method of collage in all my creative work. When I make films, I always write the script myself. I collect ideas for a long time, I always carry a pad with me and write down different thoughts or incidents. And when I’m ready to start script, I put these ideas together like a collage, and they create a picture by themselves.
Also, when I shoot – and I know that not all directors do this, but I like it – I just collect the material from which we will make a film.
Because the film itself is actually created in the editing room. And it becomes a very similar process – I gather things together and let them form a story. I just listen carefully to what I’ve collected – and that applies as much to making collages as it does to writing scripts, filming and writing music.”
Jarmusch’s peculiar, sometimes slow and contemplative films are not a product of mass cinema, but they are highly valued among film critics, highlighting Jarmusch’s self-irony, bright types, atmosphere and the director’s ever-present self-irony, which permeates the already mentioned interview in Chicago.
“Frank O’Hara once wrote an essay called ‘Personism’ where he talks about creating poetry for one reader only. I think I do the same with my films. That’s why they’re such blockbusters!”
I know dozens of people around the world have seen my films! And some even like them!
So I’m not complaining,” says the director with a self-deprecating grin.
It turns out that Jim Jarmusch never watches his own movies after they’re finished and delivered to audiences. Because you simply can’t get anything from them anymore. However, he watches a lot of other movies – at least two a day, if possible. But don’t ask him what he meant by a particular scene in one of his films: “I’m not an analytical person: don’t ask me what my work means! I don’t know and I don’t want to know. As Bob Dylan once said: It’s not my job, man! I respect filmmaking as a process.”
Jim Jarmusch once studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in Manhattan. Several decades later, the Latvian director Matīss Kaža also studied there, who met Džarmuša in person during his studies and watched many of his films.
“Jarmush is very important in this film school,” says Kaža. “He is one of those whose films are shown. Because there is an emphasis on European cinema and American independent cinema – unlike many American film schools on the other coast, where young people who will be able to integrate into commercial cinema are prepared more. But this is a school that is more preserves that New York “underground” spirit. Jarmusch didn’t visit the school while I was studying there, but he had an anniversary screening of the film “Death” right there, at the local cinema, five minutes from the school by foot. And it was also the first time that i saw him in real life.
He is an extremely powerful storyteller, both intellectually, and his stories from the field are also very curious. The methods he works with are sometimes very unexpected and improvisational. There you can feel the impulsiveness characteristic of his cinema, especially his early films.”
Matīs Kaža’s first experience with Jarmusis cinema was not a successful one. At the age of thirteen, he went with his father to Jarmusch’s film “Limits of Control”, which today is remembered as a “rapid screening” – the slowness of the film put more than one viewer to sleep. Later, Kaža gave Jarmusch another chance, watching his early films and getting to know him as one of the most interesting directors of American independent cinema. Why, in his opinion, should it be worth getting to know Jarmusis better? Matīs Kaža answers: “There are many reasons. First of all, it is a good starting point for getting to know American independent cinema, which is significantly different from what Hollywood offers. Second, Jarmusch maneuvers very deftly with both these genres and cultural contexts, and you will definitely be surprised. the movie you’re going to see is going to be something different at the beginning and then it’s going to go in unexpected directions and maybe challenge you intellectually. Then there’s definitely wonderful characters and types in these movies. It feels like these people you see on the screen , are, if not your friends, then you want to be friends with them, despite the fact that they may even be quite brutal “mafiosi”. Their company, peculiar dialogues, facial textures – this is something that cinema loves, and Jarmusch has great talent to select these types. And this cinema also has this atmosphere of urban loneliness (with the exception of Mironis, which is a western). If that’s a world you like to live in for a while, a lot of his films have this very lonely, industrial environment, a sense of abandonment, where two or three people wander around the unfathomable corners of the city at night. So it’s also moody cinema at the same time.”
Matīss Kaža also highlights Jarmusch’s unusual approach to dramaturgy, often telling not a classic story with a beginning and an end, but putting together separate etudes united by a theme, mood or environment in the already mentioned collage manner of the director himself:
“But despite this fragmentaryness, there is still such a feeling of catharsis or emotional tension and fulfillment. It is very masterful to achieve such a thing from short blocks of individual etches.”
In addition, it is impossible to put Jarmusis in the frames of a specific cinema genre. He plays with them as he comes to mind – here he films a western, here a zombie film, here – an oriental fighting film. Last year, Jarmusch spoke about his relationship with film genres in an interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival: “I really like crime movies. Since my teenage years, I have liked watching the dark world of criminals and immorality on the screen… It was the first genre I fell in love with. And I liked the idea of a genre as a frame in which you can trick your ideas. The western genre, for example, is very interesting, very American. So is the crime genre. I like to watch a lot of different movies in general – fight movies, comedies, almost anything except musicals.”
At the Riga International Film Festival, you will be able to see a selection of four films by Jarmus: his first major film work, 1984’s “Stranger than Paradise”, which is included in the US National Film Registry, or “cinema canon”; The 1995 western “Mironis”, the 1999 film “Ghost Dog. The Way of the Samurai”, as well as the 2003 hit “Coffee and Cigarettes”. Film director Matīs Kaža considers them to be Jarmus’ strongest film works, to which he would also add “Mystery Train” and “Night on Earth”.
In the last decade, three films by Jarmusch have appeared on cinema screens – the vampire film “Only Lovers Live”, the meditative “Pattinson” and the zombie ode “The Dead Don’t Die”. Perhaps we can expect a new movie soon.
“I recently finished work on a new screenplay,” Jarmusch said in an interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival last year and revealed something interesting about his writing experience. “When I write, I usually have specific actors in mind for my characters, and then I try to lure them into filming with me. And I often succeed! But when I write, I sometimes get into a state where I just hear the characters talking and write down what they say. I don’t think about this dialogue, I just listen and write it down. It’s such a dreamy feeling.”
2023-10-13 07:26:22
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