This film is part of The Broken Promises Trilogy, the first instalment of which you presented at the 2024 edition of FID, entitled One Power for All the Land. Could you tell us how the idea for this trilogy came about and what links there are between the new film and the other two works that make up the series?
The trilogy emerged from a commission of new work by the Irish Museum of Modern Art responding to their exhibition ‘Self-Determination: A Global Perspective’. I have long been interested in the early modern era and how it transformed art, politics and societal construction. I began by looking at Ireland in relation to Europe, but then, naturally, the question of which Europe arose. There have been many different Europes in the last 150 years, and we’re in a changing Europe at present.
Consequently I chose to make a trilogy of films that looked at the question of Europe and modernism in the nation state era: Ireland, the former country of Czechoslovakia, and Germany. To me each country represented a notion of western, central, and eastern Europe. All three countries have been divided, have had different iterations, and have contained different countries and histories within them in the recent past.
I would like to know how the interest in the invisible connections between the avant-garde of modern architecture in former Czechoslovakia and the history of the 20th century has guided the formal construction of the film, from the writing and creation of the images to their assembly in the editing process.
Architecture played a crucial role in defining modern nation states, and giving them both a national and international context. It was a clean break with the traditions of the past, but also contained within itself a clear relationship with the ‘national’. It was both fully liberated and inward looking in the same moment. The fact that you had ultra modern municipal buildings - social housing, social clubs etc being constructed alongside commercial buildings and private villas illustrates that period was not calibrated with a fixed socio-political agenda. Many avenues for advancement were being concurrently experimented with.
My films are generally very formal, and, to be blunt, I adore the architecture, art and cinema of the early modern period, all of which have strongly influenced my approach to filmmaking. I believe one needs to consider carefully anything one points a camera at. I also feel it is important that cinema ‘shows’ us things rather than tells us things. As such, I felt a key aspect of the films was to show the architecture both as it was intended at the moment and how it has aged since.
The era and values that the buildings represent may be long gone, but that is not to say that they do not continue to transmit their vision and aspirations. One just has to look carefully, and without distraction.
Colour appears in the image almost halfway through the film, in a shot where the red of the armchair in the living room of Villa Tugendhat stands out. Could you tell us about this formal choice? The previous film in the trilogy, if I’m not mistaken, also combined black-and-white images with colour.
All of the films in the trilogy contain both black and white and colour film. I wanted to document the architecture as it was filmed in the moment of construction (black and white, naturally) and to contrast this with how the legacy of the buildings was documented in subsequent eras, up to and including the present, but with an emphasis on the mid to late 20th century. All of the key ideology of the first quarter of this century is built on the foundations of how Europe was reconstructed post 1945, and how it collapsed around the turn of the 20th century.
The film consists of images in which the human figure is absent, except in one scene, once again in black and white, where a woman appears sitting in the bathroom, an almost ghostly silhouette. Could you tell us how you conceived this scene and what significance this presence held for you in the economy of the film?
That shot came about by chance. It was an extremely difficult shoot. The film was self-funded and the camera jammed on the first day. Thankfully I had brought a back up camera, and back up film, so I was carrying all the equipment around in person, or in taxis occasionally, as I am unable to drive. Additionally, I had a severe foot injury, and so could barely walk. I limped from location to location with cameras, film, tripod and sound equipment in almost 40 degree heat. It was grueling, at times, but the architecture is so astounding and my desire to make this film so strong, that my focus was purely on getting it done.
This was amplified considerably in being able to film inside the Villa Tugendhat. The staff there are fantastic and were incredibly accommodating. It is such a marvellous construction - completely sublime and forward looking, with such a desperately tragic history. If the failure of the 20th century to reach its aspirations were to be encapsulated in a single building, there are few better candidates than the Villa Tugendhat.
My partner was with me on our “holiday”, and was particularly looking forward to the Villa Tugendhat visit. As such, she dressed in a manner appropriate to the architecture rather than a film shoot, and wore an elegant skirt she inherited from her Romanian friend’s aunt who had lived through the war.
It was such an extraordinary opportunity for us to be in the villa alone; every corner is built with sublime care, and I could make a film twice as long just depicting the building itself. While there, the unmistakable tragedy that the Tugendhat’s, and many of their neighbours, endured was palpable. When I was filming the bathroom I had the idea for the shot, and that it might create a ghostly sense of those chased out of Europe, or worse, murdered within Europe. We still owe them all an overwhelming debt that can never be repaid.
I could see how the shot would work in the end film, and asked my partner if she minded sitting on the edge of the bath. Thankfully she agreed, and the shot came out exactly as I had envisioned it. I was very lucky.
Interviewed by Margot Mecca
