Director F.'s dream

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Last time I met director F. we were opposed to each other. That was because I wanted to talk with him but not the other way round. Director F. simply talks awfully reluctant, you know. He has a real idleness of talking. He looked at me as the blabermouth I was and I did what I had to do - blabering. Of this and that, all kinds of stuff, F. sat down at his favourite table in his favourite inn, started building beer-mat- towers and said nothing. Of course I sat beside him in a way he couldn't escape. Then I kept moving towards him hoping he would understand me better that way until, after a long pause, he asked me to "gain distance a bit." "I'm a little oldfashioned at this",he added. Happy about the first sentence I continued blabering about function of art and movie - a favourite subject of my hanging-around-phases. Running out of wisdom I was looked at by F. over the edge of his shades, and he said then, silently to some extent: "Actually I'm not very fond of going to the movies." And as I looked at him in a baffled way he continueds: "I always feel somewhat castrated in there."
What do you mean, asked I and F. said he was squeezed into narrow seats there and he could neither see or hear the folks around him and he often felt completely unable to do something in there. "You know, I'm so fond of living. And life's hard in such dark halls." He could only forget this feeling when the film was as exciting as life or more than that.
Staying in a movie is often manacing me a lot."
His tower kept growing so I fetched him new beer-mats. "Do you leave often?" "I always do when it comes so far that people do things they couldn't do that way or which they only can do in a movie." When I asked what he thought to be exciting about a movie and - building on - he answered that he always had liked to go watch a movie in which people had one, several or a great big pile of problems and started out on solving them. "Problemfilms?" I foolishly questioned and he was quiet a long time again - it really was a foolish question. "Watching them do things I can't do, I'm certainly interested in what makes them be able to to do that, or why I'm not. Yes", he smiled like to go to the movies." He wouldn't understand much about what I said about art in the beginning, not even film art, at best as much to believe it had a function, an uncomplicated and practical one. "Which ones?" "To find ways." "Which ways?" I asked again and F. said very simply: "Above all the way to free the human being."
An art which would leave that be - with all respect - in his eyes was for the birds. Wanted to be taken as an artist in those days I turned pale around the nose I driveled about "neccessary experiments". "Oh" F. said "you're experimenting?" I was going to soon, I stammered hoping dearly he'd be interested in one of my n umerous unstarted projects. "To study an art one should experiment diligently ." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my opinion," I was blushing of excitement suspecting finally the first of our opinions matched. "But not the experiment is the art, it's effect is a means to create art." The breath I had inhaled to elevate myself into the "experimental artists'
Olympus" remained in my chest with a beat. I hastily grabbed for a cigarette and tried to understate the dizziness in my head by asking why he made films. F. thought it over and answered: " I make films to get things going. Experiments get nothing going, unmotivating films - there are enough of them. Let's leave them to those who gone tired, old or weak, Some day they 'll fall back into their emptyness. So", he said, put the last beer-mat on the tower, nudged it and everything tumbled together. He seemed to be amused about that, for he giggled some time. To make him feel in favour of me I laughed, too, although it didn't sound especially cheerful. All of a sudden he pointed his forefinger at my breast, took off his shades and looked in my eyes the first time. "Time is ripe to go for the stars!" Then he took a drag of his beer and added: "Those stars which shine and twinkle, to remember the peoples' never lived dreams again and again. The dreams of a better life."

Volker Maria Arend