Tanja Beer and Jan Valnoha

 

A Conversation

 

Have you seen the whole movie? – No, I have just seen our own minutes. – So you have no idea what the film is about? - Do you? – No. - I have heard about it and about the director. - What is the name of the director again? - Bill Morrison. - Is he the person who wrote the script or is he the director? - He is the director or producer. - What is the name of the film?... Google it, Google always helps. - If you do not know anything about the movie or the plot, why does it start like that? Let us watch it again, shall we? - I have no idea, but it could mean that it has got to do something with production or copying of movies. - But you have seen more of that, you have seen more minutes. You know that in the movie people are acting, talking, having problems and yet solving them. But why the hell does it start like that? - The movie is only black and white and there are bubbles all over it, so it looks as if it were broken. At first I thought that the movie was just not working. Maybe I did not copy it right. At the beginning you see the reels spinning and it looks as though they are copying it. - I think it is broken, but not our digital version. The actual film material has decayed. I think the film copy is so broken that we see the artifacts made by dust and scratches. - But that makes it special. I have actually heard that someone made a movie and when the director saw it he basically destroyed the film material and that is how they released the final product. It looks like the director in this case made the same choice. What is this? You see the reel over there? It reminds me of the name of the website SideReel where you can get links to streaming pages. - I think that when the upper wheels spin the film goes through the machine while it is being copied. - Oh yeah! It starts from up here and goes from top to bottom. I just do not get it. - I just do not know why the film starts with it. Maybe it is some sort of secret encoded message that you can send to your friends. - Oh, have you heard about the guy that was caught for running MegaUpload? How many years did he get? Fifty or something? - That is worse than raping or killing somebody. Yeah. You get five, fifteen years. Sharing movies is not like killing somebody; you also share some different bits of culture. You also share thoughts and opinions. - But you also have to think about all the people that behind this. They spent their time on this and should be paid for it. They do not actually see any of the profit if the movie succeeds later. The producer gets the money. And if he does, he has enough and can produce more movies. - Yeah. - I heard this joke about sharing music… If I get arrested for sharing music, I just hope that we will be in separated cells by genres. – Haha. But why would they start the movie like that and then put this kind of music under it? It is so creepy. - Because in a silent movie the music does not matter. In the 20’s when they started producing movies, the cinema owners always had a piano player with the show. When I was studying for my exams, I was listening to my own music while watching silent movies because the original was shit. And you do not really need it. - So do you think there is a meaning behind the music? - I do not remember the music actually. - It was like IiiiiiIIIIiiiiiiiiiIIII.